Covet Read Free

driveway barred by a huge wrought-iron gate. Tristan rolled down his window, leaned out and punched in a code on a pad housed on a gunmetal-gray pole near the driver’s side window. The gate slowly rolled open.
    I wanted to jump out and shove it open faster.
    The driveway was long and curving, lined with some type of hardwood trees I couldn’t recognize in the gloom, their branches lashing in the wind. A few raindrops pattered on the windshield and roof. Dad didn’t bother to turn on the wipers. The trees ended suddenly as the drive circled in front of a three-story brownstone mansion, its every light blazing. I tried not to compare it to Nanna’s single-story, single-bathroom, three-bedroom brick home where I’d grown up.
    At least thirty or more vehicles lined the drive in front of the house. We added one more to the collection as Dad parked. We got out of the car, and Tristan led us around the outside of his house. More threatening raindrops fell, surprisingly cool on my skin despite the humidity. Once in the dark backyard, we all broke into a jog. I had time to recognize the yard as the same one in the dreams Tristan and I had shared many times over the last few months. Then we plunged into the even darker forest that ringed the yard. As soon as we did, I could feel it…a too-familiar prickling sensation of pins and needles down my neck and arms. Youch. A sure sign that descendants were using power nearby.
    The woods seemed familiar, intensely so, as if I knew the location and size of every pine needle above me and just how the springy green moss below my feet would feel if I weren’t wearing shoes. The moss grew everywhere, carpeting the forest floor and growing up the sides of the pines. When I caught glimpses of the clearing up ahead, I realized where I was.
    This couldn’t be the Circle.
    We were in Tristan’s and my dream woods, the ones where we met when our minds connected while we were asleep. Even the clearing was almost exactly the same. There was the stream, which ran across the mossy circular clearing where we’d danced and talked for hours. But where was the short waterfall that always spilled past the boulders and fed the stream? Maybe that had been an imaginary addition from Tristan?
    Both sides of the stream were filled with descendants, too many of them to count. They gathered like giant crows circled round the harvest, their faces hidden in shadow beneath their blue and black umbrellas. Had my mother come here as a young girl with Nanna for the Clann meetings, maybe carrying her own dark umbrella in case it rained? It would explain why Mom liked to work in the forestry industry…she’d grown up trampling through woods rain or shine for social gatherings.
    On the far bank of the stream, where in our dreams Tristan and I usually sat or lay on a picnic blanket talking, sat a stone chair occupied by Tristan’s dad, the Clann’s leader, Sam Coleman. Behind him hovered Tristan’s mother, Nancy, and Tristan’s sister, Emily.
    Yep, this was definitely the Circle. And we were so in trouble.
    Then I looked up and gasped. Floating several feet above the stream, as if hung by invisible wires, was Nanna.

CHAPTER 2
    TRISTAN
    Savannah’s grandmother, Mrs. Evans, appeared to be awake but immobilized in the air. The Clann must have caught her before she could get dressed; her long cotton nightgown floated around her legs and bare feet in slow motion as if she were a ghost. Savannah took a step toward her, and the descendants began to mutter. Hearing them, Savannah froze, her eyes narrowing and turning moss-green. A sure sign she was beyond ticked off.
    “Mom, Dad, what are you doing?” I shouted to be heard over the wind and across the Circle’s clearing. I had to put a stop to this before somebody got hurt.
    “Tristan!” Mom screamed, darting out from behind Dad’s throne. She took two steps toward me then stopped, her joyous smile flashing into shock, then fear, and finally settling into horror