06 Love Bites - My Sister the Vampire

Sink your fangs into these:

Switched
Fangtastic!
Revamped!
Vampalicious
Take Two

Coming soon:
Lucky Break

Georgia leaned in to Ivy. ‘Looks like your
sister has herself a royal admirer!’
The realisation hit Ivy like a stake in the gut.
Alex likes Olivia!
A second thought followed
almost as quickly.
But Olivia has a boyfriend.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

‘I promise I’ll be quick,’ Olivia Abbott told her sister. She kicked the snow off her fuzzy wool boots outside the east entrance to the Franklin Grove mall.

‘As long as I don’t have to spend my morning surrounded by crazy, screaming fan girls,’ Ivy replied. The doors slid open and blasted hot air in their faces, sending Ivy’s black hair and matching scarf flitting behind her.

As they walked inside the mall past all the familiar stores, Olivia said, ‘We’re more than an hour early. How busy can a book signing be?’

She checked her reflection in the window of Trudy’s Beauty Palace. She was wearing her favourite jeans, pink-and-white striped sweater and rhinestone belt. It had been over a week since she’d last seen her movie-star boyfriend, Jackson, and it would be at least another week before she got to see him again – so she wanted to look her best.

Since the film set of
The Groves
had left town a few weeks before, Jackson had called her every day and visited at weekends whenever he could. It was hard dating from a distance, and it was going to be even harder tomorrow when Olivia and Ivy left for Transylvania for a week’s vacation.

Olivia picked up a noise, a hum of voices that got louder with each step. The twins turned a corner and Olivia couldn’t believe her eyes. They stopped at exactly the same moment, shocked by the roped-off line of girls that wove across most
of the huge atrium in the centre of the mall. The bookstore wasn’t even open yet, but it looked like an entire prom was waiting outside.

Ivy looked at the huge line. ‘Tell me this line is for free ice cream day.’

Olivia crinkled her nose. ‘I don’t think so.’

One girl at the front was clutching the entire set of Action Jackson dolls, and the girl behind her had a photo of Jackson on her T-shirt. The next girl was dressed up as an ice skater, the love interest in Jackson’s first movie, and the girl after that was holding the Caulfield Collection DVD box set of Jackson’s first six movies which, Olivia knew from personal experience, was very hard to get hold of. These girls weren’t waiting for a chocolate-dipped cone; they were waiting to gawk and giggle at and get autographs from
Olivia’s
boyfriend. It made her feel like a wet pom pom.

‘Revenge of the glitter zombie hoard,’ Ivy
said, flinging her hands up like a cheesy horror movie actress.

‘It’s fine,’ Olivia said, pulling out her cell phone. ‘I’ll call him and we’ll say a quick hello before the doors open.’

She dialled Jackson’s number but it went straight to his voicemail.

‘Um.’ Olivia hadn’t prepared for this. She had told him last night that she was going to come to see him before the signing.
Why hasn’t he left his phone on?
She took a deep breath. ‘No big deal. I’m sure Jackson’s told the security guard to expect us.’

Olivia led her twin past the crowd towards the front of the line.

‘The glitter zombies are looking at us,’ Ivy whispered, pulling on Olivia’s sweater, still pretending to be afraid.

‘Don’t make eye contact.’ Olivia plastered her sweetest smile on her face and kept going. But
she could feel four hundred eyes watching her every step.

They reached the store entrance. The windows were covered with pictures of Jackson and pink and red hearts.

‘Be Jackson Caulfield’s Valentine,’ the sign boasted. ‘Buy his book and get it autographed!’

But
I’m
his Valentine!
Olivia thought.

A security guard with an earpiece stood in front of the door with his arms crossed.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Olivia said, knowing that a little politeness could go a long way. But, like a secret-service man at the White House, he didn’t even flinch.

Olivia refused to give up easily. She took a step forwards and put her hand on the door.

The security guard thrust his arm across the door, right in front of her face. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I’m here to see Jackson,’ Olivia replied.

‘Yeah, you and every other girl in this line.’ He didn’t move his arm.

She didn’t want to have to do it, but she didn’t have a choice. ‘Really, you should let me in.’ She leaned closer. ‘I’m Jackson’s girlfriend.’

‘You can’t be!’ shouted the girl with the action figures.
‘I’m
his girlfriend.’

‘You are
not.’
The ice-skating girl looked ready to spit sequins. ‘I am!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ put in the girl with the photo T-shirt. ‘Last month, he autographed my magazine “Love, Jackson”.’ She thrust a crumpled magazine under the other girls’ noses. ‘See? I’ve got
proof
!’

Olivia felt like she’d tripped flat on her face during a cheer. She didn’t know what to say.

Ivy leaned in and said to the security guard, ‘Look, Jackson really is expecting to see us today.
Can’t you . . . uh . . . check your list?’

‘There’s no list, young lady. Just that line behind you, filled with two hundred of Jackson’s “girlfriends”.’ He pointed to the end of the line, which had doubled in size since they’d arrived. ‘Everyone has to wait their turn.’

‘You’d
better
not be trying to cut in line,’ said the girl with the action figures.

Ice-skater Girl glared at them. ‘We’ve been waiting here for
hours
! Who do you think you are?’

‘Uh, I, um –’ Olivia didn’t know what to say. If she told them that she really
was
Jackson’s girlfriend, she could get lynched.
I must be the only girl in the world who has to
line up
to see her own boyfriend,
Olivia thought.

‘No, no,’ Ivy told the girls. ‘We’re not cutting. Not at all. Excuse us, please!’ Ivy pulled Olivia away from the line. ‘Did you see the look in their eyes, Olivia? I may be a vampire,’ Ivy
muttered, ‘but these girls scare me.’

‘Olivia, darling!’ called a familiar voice.

She looked back to see Charlotte Brown, the captain of the cheerleaders, waving her over. Olivia felt her already twisted stomach do another flip. Olivia spent lots of time with Charlotte on the squad and knew that Charlotte was mean even when she was trying to be nice.

‘You’re not in line yet? Did you sleep through your alarm?’ Charlotte asked sweetly. Her blonde hair was messy and her frilly silk blouse looked crumpled.

She couldn’t have
, Olivia thought.
She wouldn’t. Did Charlotte –

‘Did you camp out overnight?’ demanded Ivy.

‘Of course not!’ Charlotte smirked. ‘Katie did it for me. I’ve only been here for three hours.’ She teased her hair with her fingers. ‘But I’m going for the “camped out overnight”
look for the TV cameras.’

Olivia couldn’t believe even Charlotte was willing to wait hours.

‘Too bad you can’t use your “special friendship” with Jackson to skip the line,’ Charlotte went on, using the biggest air-quotes Olivia had ever seen when she said ‘special friendship’. ‘You know, this
could
look to some people like you might have, um . . .
stretched the truth
about being his girlfriend.’

Olivia’s jaw dropped.
She did
not
just say that!
But she kept quiet – she didn’t want to get kicked off the squad.

Ivy stepped in. ‘And
this
could look like you were paying someone to be your Valentine.’

Charlotte narrowed her eyes. ‘Paying is clearly something you have a problem with, freak, judging from all those second-hand clothes.’

‘This is
vintage
!’ Ivy retorted, smoothing down her black satin high-waisted skirt.

This is so
not
how I pictured my morning,
Olivia thought. ‘Ivy, let’s go to the back of the line before it’s out of the building.’

She stomped to the end of the line, her face blushing, and crossed her arms.

‘Yeah, back where you belong,’ taunted one of the girls.

‘Just ignore her,’ whispered Ivy. ‘She’s wearing a pink glittery scrunchie.’

Olivia gazed down the long line of girls holding signs with her boyfriend’s picture on them. Twenty different Jacksons were watching from the posters plastered around the atrium. His face was everywhere – but Olivia had never felt so far from her boyfriend.

‘I can’t take any more of this torture,’ Ivy whispered.

Ivy Vega decided she could ignore the pink streamers hanging from the ceiling, and she
was pretending not to notice the cut-out hearts covering every store window. But being stuck in line listening to love-struck girls randomly bursting into romantic songs from Jackson’s movies was just too much.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Olivia mumbled for, probably, the thirty-seventh time.

Ivy gave her sister another hug.

‘It’s not the waiting that’s annoying; it’s the
Valentine’s
.’ Ivy just hoped she could escape soon. No matter how much they tried to sell it to her, she couldn’t buy into the whole stupid cupids-and-candy-hearts scene. In two days from now, couples around the world would be exchanging cards because stationery companies had told them to. She just didn’t get the commercial side of romance.

There was a young girl in front of them, with brown ringlets framing her face and a cute
red denim jacket. She turned around and said, ‘Hi, I’m Janie!’ Then she a thrust a little box out towards the twins. ‘Candy heart?’

‘Oh no, I’m melting . . .’ Ivy pretended to crumple to her knees.

Janie looked at Ivy like she really was melting.

Olivia intervened, taking a candy that was the same shade of pink as her lip gloss. ‘Thanks so much,’ she said to Janie and then whispered to Ivy, ‘Don’t be such a V-day humbug!’