TRISTAN

TWO MONTHS LATER

As much as I loved the great outdoors, a guy could only take so much of it before he started to miss a little technology in his life.

I found Ms. Evans and her dog outside taking an earlymorning walk, got the okay to use her living room TV, then headed inside the trailer. Through the bunk room's closed door, I could hear Emily's loud snoring, and beneath it the tiny sounds of music. Savannah must be having to listen to her MP3 player all night long to cover Emily's log sawing.

Careful not to wake up either of the girls, I quietly searched through Ms. Evans's DVD collection, figuring the best I would find would be a chick f lick. But at least it would be something to watch.

Huh. She had The Eagle on DVD, one of my favorites. I popped the movie in, turned the TV's volume as low as it would go, then kicked back on the sofa and sighed. Oh, yeah, this was way better than being cooped up inside the truck.

Five minutes later, the bedroom door slid open. I quickly grabbed the remote and paused the movie, worried I'd woken up Emily. She was a bear when she first woke up, and not even the sight of Channing Tatum in a leather skirt would make up for disrupting her sleep.

Instead, Savannah slid the door shut, turned in midyawn and stumbled to a stop. Blinking in confusion at me, she slowly tugged her earbuds from her ears. "Oh. Tristan. Hi."

"Hey." The word came out as raw as if I were talking around a mouth full of gravel. I cleared my throat. "Did I wake you?"

She shook her head, shutting off her MP3 player.

When had talking to the one person I loved more than anyone or anything else on earth become so awkward?

"Want to watch TV with me?"

She shifted her weight and glanced at the TV screen. "Um, sure. What are you watching?"

"The Eagle."

She blinked a couple of times. "What's it about?"

War, I started to say, then realized that would make her instantly hate the movie. "It's about a guy trying to recover the honor of his family's name."

She stared at me, and I could practically see her guard rising.

"It's a Channing Tatum movie," I added, remembering that she was a huge fan of his ever since seeing him dance in Step Up.

That did the trick. One corner of her mouth twitched as she took a step toward the couch.

I quickly sat up and swung my feet to the f loor to make room for her.

She hesitated then sat at the other end of the couch closest to the TV, even though it meant she would have to crane her head back at an uncomfortable angle to see the movie.

Two months ago she would have sat right beside me, curled up against me with my arm around her. But not today. I swallowed my disappointment, not wanting her to read it in my thoughts.

I restarted the movie from the beginning so she could get caught up. A couple of minutes later, her gaze darted sideways in my direction.

"Um, Tristan, could you stop staring at me? It's kind of distracting."

"Right. Sorry." I forced myself to stare at the TV instead.

Halfway through the movie, Joan returned with her dog. As soon as they entered the trailer, Lucy started yapping and dived for my ankles.

What the... I yanked my legs up in the air out of the reach of its tiny snapping teeth, then stared at the dog in disbelief. It had to be the ugliest animal I'd ever seen, like some kind of deranged zombie dog with bald patches all over where its hair was falling out from mange or something. Yellow pee dribbled down its hind legs as it barked nonstop and leaped up in the air, doing its best to get at my feet. The smell of urine hit me so hard I nearly gagged and had to hold my breath.

"Lucy hates vampires," Savannah explained with a sigh, also levitating her legs in the air so the dog couldn't go after her ankles next. She stuck her left elbow on the couch's armrest then rested the side of her head against her fist.

I got the distinct feeling she'd had to deal with this a lot over the past two months.

I looked at Ms. Evans, waiting for her to grab her dog and lock it up in her room immediately. Instead, she cooed baby-talk gibberish in its general direction while she spent two minutes making herself a cup of instant coffee in the microwave and I stared at her in disbelief.

Finally the microwave dinged. Ms. Evans retrieved her mug, sighed loudly then picked up her dog and took both the barking hellhound and her drink to her room. Even once the door was shut, Lucy continued to yap.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. Holy hell. Maybe hanging out in the truck and outside was better. At least it was quieter and my ankles were safer.

Savannah got up, carefully stepping over the yellow puddle on the linoleum, and opened the cabinet doors under the sink. She stood up with an empty plastic spray bottle in her hand and a frown on her face. "Uh-oh. Out of bleach. I'll have to get some from the storage area. Be right back." Forcing a tired smile, she took the spray bottle with her outside.

Why was Savannah cleaning up after her mother's dog? And the way she automatically did it without hesitation made me think this must be a habit with them.

Something was off around here.

Then again, maybe this was some kind of arrangement they had worked out together?

If so, it wasn't right. But why was Savannah going along with it instead of saying something? There was no way she could like having to clean up something as pungent as this dog pee, especially when it came from a dog who seemed determined to kill every vamp it came within ten yards of if given the opportunity.

The whole thing seemed warped. But I wasn't exactly qualified to be the best judge of it, either. I didn't know too much about Savannah's relationship with her mother, other than that Ms. Evans had been gone on the road a lot even before Savannah had to move in with her dad after her grandmother's death. And since then, Savannah had only seen her mother every few months, though they had seemed to stay in fairly regular contact through text messaging and phone calls. Maybe they got along better at a distance, like Emily and our mother?

Women and their mothers. They made no sense.

I sighed and grabbed the remote. When Savannah returned, she might want to see the part of the movie we'd missed during Lucy's attempted attack.

I tried to rewind the movie to the point where Ms. Evans and her dog had interrupted. But I was unfamiliar with the remote's buttons and must have hit the chapter skip button instead, which rewound the movie too far. The f loor cleanup was probably going to take a few minutes, so I let the movie play and turned up the volume to drown out the dog's continued yapping from the other end of the trailer, planning on hitting Pause once we got to the right spot again in the movie.

Two minutes later, Emily barged out of the guest bedroom, the wild blond curls around her head and the murderous glare on her face making her look like a vengeful fallen angel come to kill every last demon in her path. "Would you turn that down? I'm not deaf, and I know you sure as heck aren't, either!"

With one hand rubbing the top of her huge belly, which had seriously rounded out over the past couple of months, she waddled over to the kitchen and slammed things around while pouring herself a mug of milk from the fridge. More banging half drowned out the yapping dog while Emily searched for and retrieved a bag of graham crackers from the tiny slide-out pantry cabinet. Then, growling something unintelligible under her breath, Emily headed back through the kitchen in the direction of either the trailer's exit or the bunk room.

Wherever she was headed, though, she didn't reach it.

The trailer's main door opened and Savannah stepped inside. Glancing at her, Emily forgot to watch where she was walking and stepped barefooted into the puddle Lucy had left behind.

Shrieking, Emily hopped on her clean foot all the way to the bathroom.

"Oh, crap," Savannah muttered, vamp blurring from the trailer door to the kitchen where she grabbed a roll of paper towels. She vamp blurred again, reappearing in a crouch beside the urine puddle, which she began to clean up.

Great. Now she'll be yelling for hours, Savannah thought to herself as she scrubbed the linoleum.

Shouldn't her mother be cleaning up after her own dog? I thought to myself, forgetting Savannah could hear me. Two months of hanging out with her dad had spoiled me into being able to think anything I wanted without fear of Savannah's reaction.

Savannah's head popped up, her mouth open in surprise. She dropped her head again, refocusing on cleaning every last speck of mess. Normally Mom cleans up after Lucy, but since Lucy does it constantly, sometimes Mom forgets to come back and clean it up for a while. Which of course drives Emily nuts and sometimes even triggers her nausea from the smell. So it's easier for me to just go ahead and clean it up.

But all I heard was how it upset Emily.

The shower turned on in the bathroom. Emily must have decided to clean her foot off in the shower stall. Seconds later, another shriek filled the trailer from the bathroom.

The dog's barking grew louder as Ms. Evans slid open her bedroom door and stuck her head out, using a foot to keep her dog from escaping past her. "What happened?"

Emily reemerged from the bathroom with a dripping hairball pinched between her thumb and index finger. "First I step in a puddle of pee left by your dog, and then when I go to wash my foot off in the shower, I find this!"

"Is it yours?" Ms. Evans asked, eyebrows raised over tired, I-couldn't-care-less eyes.

"Of course not!" Emily snapped. "My hair's blond."

"So is mine."

"No, yours is gray. Just like this hairball."

Whoa. Savannah and I both winced.

"Emily-" I muttered.

Ms. Evans's eyes narrowed as she pushed her dog back, slipped out of her bedroom doorway, shut the door so the dog couldn't get out, then grabbed the hairball from Emily. I could hear the older woman's teeth grinding as she threw the hairball into the trash can under the sink then slammed the cabinet door closed. "There. Happy?"

Emily's chin rose several inches as her arms crossed over her chest. "Actually, now that you asked, could we please try not to leave our dirty cups on the countertop with used coffee bags and spoons inside them when the trash can and the dishwasher are right there?"

"Emily," I said, this time letting my growling tone do the warning. Emily was way out of line, no matter how frustrating the situation was for her.

Savannah stopped scrubbing and seemed to be focused on taking slow, deep breaths. Probably to replace the pee smell in her nose with the freshly applied bleach, though to me the cleaner solution smelled equally as bad.

"Sure," Ms. Evans said. "And could we also try not to leave our used milk cups on the countertop with an empty cracker wrapper inside it when, as you pointed out, the trash can and dishwasher are right there?"

Savannah's eyes rounded as she stood up. "Mom-"

"No problem," Emily said. "Oh, and by the way, could you possibly start cleaning up after your dog instead of making your daughter do it for you all the time? She's not your freaking Cinderella, you know."

"Emily, I don't mind-" Savannah tried to say.

"Oh, stay out of it, doormat," Emily said, her scowl darkening.

Savannah gasped.

"How dare you!" Ms. Evans said. "You ungrateful, spoiled brat. You come into my home and think it's okay to insult my daughter? Who do you think you are?"

"The only person around here who's bothering to speak up for Savannah. Because obviously she's too scared to do it herself." Emily threw an arm out wide in Savannah's direction without looking at her.

"I don't know how you used to do things with your mother, but if my daughter has a problem with anything I do, she knows she can tell me about it."

"Really? Are you sure about that? Because what if she says something you don't like? Aren't you going to just run off and sulk for months?"

It was like watching a cross between a political debate and a tennis tournament.

"Wow, hello, Dr. Phil," Ms. Evans said. "I didn't know we had a licensed therapist in the house. And here I thought we were only having to put up with the Coleman princess of hypocrisy."

"Hypoc-" Emily started to say.

"That's right," Ms. Evans said. "You have the nerve to stand there criticizing everything I do, in my own home, I might add. But you can't even be bothered to remember to switch the wet clothes over to the dryer sometime this century!"

"Excuse me?" Emily said, dragging out the first word.

I looked at Savannah in confusion. What are they talking about?

Savannah's horrified gaze darted my way then went back to ping-ponging between her mother and my sister. Emily offered to do the laundry, but she has a bad habit of forgetting to move the wet clothes over to the dryer.

Which would explain the sour smell I'd picked up from Ms. Evans earlier. I'd thought it was her dog.

Why don't our clothes smell? I asked Savannah.

Her lips rolled in to press against each other. Because I've been washing them for us so Emily wouldn't have a chance to let them sour.

Huh. Then again, it was pretty amazing that Emily had even offered to do laundry in the first place. At home, we'd had a housekeeper to do our laundry for us a couple of times a week.

I blew out a long breath and scrubbed a hand over my face. "Look, ladies, maybe we're all just getting a little stir-crazy around here. Emily, why don't we get a cabin for you-"

"Because they're all already booked up for the summer," Emily snapped, still glaring at Ms. Evans. "And quit trying to change the subject, Tristan."

Ms. Evans shook her head. "That's right, Tristan. Better do as the deposed queen says or she'll cut off your head! Oh, wait, that's right, she can't now that the Clann's probably kicked her out."

"They haven't-"

"That you know about," Ms. Evans said. "When's the last time you were in contact with anyone in the Clann?" In the wake of Emily's silence, she smiled smugly and nodded. "Uhhuh. That's what I thought. You could have been kicked out of the Clann by now and not even know it."

"They wouldn't do that."

"Why not? They kicked out your brother. Or do you think you're too good to be cast out? News f lash. You're not."

"My mother only did what she thought was best for the Clann."

"By being the biggest hypocrite of them all?"

"She wasn't a hypocrite!" Emily said.

"She didn't cast you out. Just like a typical Coleman. A hypocrite to the end, punishing the Clann's rule breakers but only when it suits them." Ms. Evans shook her head. "All my childhood life, all I ever heard was how wonderful the Colemans were, how fair they were, how hard they worked for the good of the Clann and to keep the peace, and how Sam Coleman was the most progressive leader the Clann had ever known. Mr. Vampires-Aren't-Bad-Just-Misunderstood. So why did he marry your mother, who everyone knew was the biggest vamp hater of them all? And why was it okay to negotiate peace with the vamps, but it wasn't okay for me to marry one or have a baby with one? And now look at you. The Coleman princess, knocked up with a vamp's baby just like me. The perfect example of the biggest hypocritical family I've ever seen in the entire history of the Clann, and your mother still didn't kick you out before she died."

I stood up. This had gone way too far.

"You..." Emily's hand rose in the air from her hip and drew back openhanded over her shoulder.