12 Stake Out - My Sister the Vampire (13 page)

‘Maybe,’ Ivy said. She sighed.

‘So why do you look so sad?’

Ivy shook her head. She felt heavy with unhappiness, especially when she imagined Olivia’s reaction to the news. ‘One teenage girl has held the whole vampire community to ransom, Brendan. There’s something just not right about that.’

‘I guess n– uh-oh.’ They both came to a dead halt as they turned the corner of Ivy’s street. Every light in Ivy’s house was blazing – including the light in her bedroom, which she’d left dark. ‘That doesn’t look good,’ Brendan said.

‘It looks very, very not good,’ Ivy agreed. She gulped. ‘Why don’t you drop me off here? You can go home and –’

‘No way,’ Brendan said. ‘I’m not leaving you to face it all alone.’

Ivy squeezed his hand gratefully. Together, they walked up the front steps and let themselves into the house.

‘There you are!’

The Count and Countess were sitting in their dressing gowns in the living room, as rigid as statues, while Charles paced back and forth, quivering with tension. He swung around when Ivy stepped into the doorway. She flinched at the expression in his eyes. She’d never seen him look so angry . . . or so scared.

‘What on earth do you think you were playing at, young lady?’ the Countess demanded. ‘Sneaking out with your boyfriend on a night like this?’

‘That’s not . . .’ Ivy began, but her father interrupted her.

‘You might be interested to know,’ he said coldly, ‘that the wind blew your window shut and woke us. Did you really think that no one would notice you slipping out? Tonight of all nights?

Did you think we wouldn’t care?’

The Count glowered at her. ‘Did or did not your grandmother make it clear that no vampire was to leave their home tonight?’

Horatio slipped into the room, carrying a tray of steaming hot chocolate with whipped cream. Ivy turned to him gratefully. ‘Oh, thank y–’

‘This is no time for hot chocolate!’ the Count bellowed. With a wave of his arm, he sent Horatio out of the room, still carrying the tray.

Uh-oh.
Ivy exchanged a nervous look with Brendan.
If even Grandpa is turning down sweet treats, then things really are bad.

‘I have never in my life been so disappointed,’ the Countess said heavily. ‘It was bad enough for you to leave Wallachia Academy without any consideration for our feelings, but to flout our authority so blatantly tonight – at such a time! It is unbelievable. All I can think is that you refuse to consider yourself a part of our community.’ She shook her head, her expression weary. ‘Ivy, you have seriously let us down . . .
again
.’

Ivy’s throat burned as emotion choked her. She opened her mouth to say something, anything . . .

But Brendan was already speaking: ‘Wait a minute.’ He fixed the Countess with a fearless glance. ‘None of you has stopped to ask Ivy what she was really doing tonight. She wasn’t turning her back on the community. She was
saving
it.’

The Count glowered at him. ‘What are you talking about, young man?’

‘Sure, she took a risk, but only because she was so close to finding out the truth,’ Brendan said. ‘And she got it too. Ivy found out who the blogger is! She set up a stake out and even got photos.’

The Countess gasped. Her hand flew to her throat. Horatio edged back into the room, still holding his tray of chocolate – obviously he must have been listening from outside.

Ivy’s father put one hand on her shoulder. Gently, he asked, ‘Ivy? Will you please tell all of us who our arch-enemy is?’

Arch-enemy
 
?
Ivy swallowed hard. It wasn’t like her dad to use such grand terms. ‘Arch-enemy’ sounded historical, dramatic . . . dangerous.

She took a deep breath. ‘Our arch– I mean, the
blogger
is . . . Holly.’

China rattled as Horatio lost his grip on his tray. He caught it just in time, but none of the gathered vamps said a word. They looked too stunned to speak.

Finally, Charles shook his head. Speaking slowly, as if he were still processing the information, he said, ‘Olivia’s friend? The person we let into our home? But that’s not – she couldn’t –’

‘Just look.’ Ivy showed him the photos on her camera, and her grandparents and Horatio all gathered round to see for themselves.

‘There’s no denying it, then,’ Charles said sadly, as he gazed down at the last photo.

The Countess still looked oddly fragile with shock. ‘How are we going to confront this girl?’

‘We can’t,’ Ivy said. She’d been thinking as hard as she could all the way home. No, she didn’t like Holly, but she loved Olivia . . . and there was a better way to handle this, one that didn’t involve arch-enemies and anger. Of course she wasn’t going to let the vampire community stay in fear, but sometimes misdirection was better than attack.

She lifted her chin and looked her grandparents in the eyes. ‘I’m not sure we confront her, when we still don’t know why she’s doing this. But we could find out.’

Her father frowned. ‘And how are we supposed to do that?’

‘Well,’ Ivy said. ‘There’s someone Holly really, really likes . . .
Olivia
.’

Ivy didn’t tell her dad or grandparents the part that really scared her. If they were going to ask Olivia for her help, she would have to make a choice about who mattered most to her – Ivy or Holly. And for the first time since they had met, Ivy couldn’t be sure where Olivia’s loyalty would lie.

Chapter Nine

O
livia was still asleep when her cell phone rang the next morning. It had taken her hours to finally drop off – she couldn’t stop worrying about what Ivy was up to. She woke only just in time to grab the phone and mumble, ‘Wha– ?’

‘We need you over here right now,’ Ivy said. Her voice sounded tense. ‘Emergency meeting at my house. Please.’

Olivia bit back all the anxious questions she wanted to ask. Before anything else, she needed to see that her twin was safe after last night’s adventure. ‘I’m on my way.’

She scrambled into a pink vest and a pair of white Capri pants. Barely five minutes later she was fully dressed and ready to go.

Her adoptive parents both stared at her as she raced downstairs. ‘My goodness,’ Mrs Abbott said. ‘We don’t usually see you up so early on a weekend.’

‘I got a call from Ivy,’ Olivia explained, and forced a smile. ‘She’s cooking me a special breakfast.’

‘That’s nice, dear,’ Mrs Abbott said.

Mr Abbott beamed at her over his newspaper. ‘As Henry David Thoreau once said: “Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation.”’

‘Um,’ Olivia said. She remembered the tension in Ivy’s voice, and thought of the emergency meeting waiting for her.
I think there might be plenty of perturbation, actually.
‘I’ll try,’ she told her adoptive dad. ‘But I should really hurry now, or the breakfast might burn.’

Both of her parents smiled indulgently and waved her off as she ran out of the house and jumped on to her bicycle. As she cycled to her twin’s house at top speed, worries swirled through her head. What could have gone wrong last night to make Ivy sound so worried and upset even now? Had she been exposed as a vampire in front of the blogger? Worse yet, had she been hurt?

By the time she reached the Vega house, Olivia was feeling so frantic she jumped off her bike and left it sprawled on the lawn, in too much of a rush to prop it up neatly. She let herself in the front door and hurried inside to find the household in utter chaos.

She stopped in the dining-room doorway, staring in disbelief. A plate of smoked kippers sat ignored in the centre of the table while the Count and Countess were hunched over a laptop with Ivy. Olivia would never have believed that the rigidly proper Countess would allow computers at the table during a meal!

Meanwhile, Horatio seemed to be having a nervous breakdown in the kitchen. Olivia could hear Lillian making soothing noises, but his voice rose above hers in a near-wail: ‘If this bread doesn’t finish baking in the next five minutes the whole meal will be ruined!’

Mr Vega stomped into the room behind Olivia, a clothing catalogue in his hand. ‘Quick, everyone: pick out more bunny clothes! The uglier, the better.’

‘Don’t we have enough already?’ Ivy said, without looking away from the screen of the laptop.

‘Who knows how long the VITs will be in town? And Horatio has got enough on his plate without having to wash a bunch of bunny clothes.’

Olivia was impressed: her bio-dad finally seemed to be really getting into the spirit of all this! Until now, he’d always seemed too distracted to completely participate. She gave him an approving smile.

He leaned over to mutter in her ear on his way to the table, ‘I was
meant
to be getting ready for this afternoon’s engagement party by now!’

Aha
. Olivia hid a smile. There was still a little bit of the Groomzilla lurking beneath her bio-dad’s surface after all.

‘There you are!’ Ivy finally turned around and saw Olivia. Looking even paler than usual, she gave a weak smile and waved Olivia over. ‘Um, there’s something I need to tell you.’

‘We’ll be back in just a moment, my dears.’ The Countess rose hastily, giving her husband a meaningful look. ‘I think Horatio may need some calming in the kitchen.’

‘He is a perfectionist, you know!’ the Count said jovially. ‘That’s why his bread is so excellent.’ Despite his hearty tone, Olivia caught the worry in his eyes as he looked from one granddaughter to the other.

Uh-oh.

Olivia waited until their grandparents had left the room before she moved cautiously to perch on the chair next to Ivy’s.
What’s this about
 
?
Olivia thought.
I can’t bear another argument.
The air felt thick with tension. Olivia clasped her hands together to keep them from tapping on the table. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘First . . .’ Ivy took a deep breath. ‘I want to apologise to you for being so tetchy lately.’

Olivia felt a rush of relief. ‘That’s OK.’ She shrugged, but it was an effort to smile.
Don’t cry! Whatever you do, don’t cry
 
!
‘I understand it’s been a tricky time.’

‘I’m still sorry.’ Ivy reached into a bag that sat underneath the table. ‘And I made this for you.’

Olivia gasped. A pretty pink corsage lay in her sister’s pale hand. Mingled in with the pink blossoms, she saw pink rhinestones.

Now tears really burned behind Olivia’s eyes. She knew exactly why Ivy had picked those rhinestones – to match the pink rhinestone cowboy hat Jackson had once bought Olivia, the one she still cherished even after everything that had happened.

Nobody knew her as well as her sister.

Olivia’s smile was wobbly as she blinked back her tears. ‘Didn’t you come out in hives, just making the thing? I thought you were allergic to pink.’

‘I’m not allergic to anything about you.’ Ivy reached over and pinned the corsage to Olivia’s T-shirt, her long dark hair falling around her face. ‘Will you forgive me for being such an idiot?’

Olivia threw her arms around Ivy, finally letting the tears escape. ‘Of course I will. You’re my best friend, and you
always
will be.’

As she spoke the words, all the tension she’d been carrying for days fell away from her, and she realized it was the truth. This summer might have been strained, but she knew without a doubt that one thing would always be true: her twin would always be there for her.

‘Well.’ Ivy’s eyes looked suspiciously red as she drew back; she sniffed hard. ‘Talking of friends . . .’ She stiffened her shoulders, looking as if she were bracing herself for an attack. ‘You need to see this.’

She turned the laptop round so that Olivia could see what was on the screen.

Olivia leaned forwards, peering at the group of thumbnail-sized photos. ‘Headstones. It’s the graveyard.’

‘That’s right. Where I went to meet the vampire hunter.’ Ivy took a deep breath and clicked on the last thumbnail. ‘And there she is: Holly. She’s the blogger.’

‘What?!’ Olivia threw herself back in the chair. Her heartbeat sped up until it hurt her chest. ‘I can’t believe it.’

Ivy looked miserable. ‘I promise I wouldn’t make it up.’

‘I know that,’ Olivia shook her head. ‘I mean, the evidence is right in front of me. But Holly . . .!’ She stared at the photo: Holly’s face shadowed by the hood of her sweatshirt as she stood between two headstones.

Holly was the blogger, the one who’d threatened Olivia’s family and their friends. Holly, who’d been so kind to Olivia, such a good friend to her. Holly . . .

Olivia swallowed hard and tried to think logically, even though the betrayal made her burn. ‘The thing is, despite what you think of her, I just can’t believe that she’s really a bad person. She must have a reason for doing this.’

‘Olivia . . .’

‘Ever since I met her, my instinct has always been to trust her.’

‘I understand that.’ From the strain on Ivy’s face, Olivia could see that her twin was working hard to stay outwardly calm and reasonable. ‘But can you see that some of the things Holly’s been saying just don’t match up?’