The Knaveheart's Curse (2 page)

Maddy crumpled the card in her hand before her brother could see.
“What is it?” asked Hudson.
“It’s a . . . a walking cane that Susanality made for me.”
“What do those initials, G.D.U., stand for?”
“They stand for ‘Grrr—Don’t Use.’” Maddy knew they stood for Dakota’s initials, Gertrude Dakota Underhill, but she was a good on-the-spot liar. And now she wanted to be alone with her gift. “Crud, you know the rules—no roosting in my room without permission. Out!”
She shook him off so that he collided into a very wet and joyful Lexie. Squealing, Hudson dug his hind claws onto his other sister’s shoulder as Lex plopped into Maddy’s desk chair and clicked the back of her throat.
“What’s up?” Her big sister looked so happy that Maddy didn’t have the heart to remind her about room rules.
“You know that bulletin board at Candlewick Café—the one with all the Help Wanteds? Like for babysitters or Italian lessons?” Lexie paused to breathe as the others nodded. “Well, last week, I saw one that offered to teach guitar accompaniment to all the saddest songs by your favorite doomed artists. So of course I tore off and called the number, and Zelda—that’s the name of the teacher—told me the price for lessons. It was way too much money, but fortunately—
ulp!
” Lexie started hiccuping with excitement.
“Fortunately, what?” They were both waiting.
Lexie scooped in a long breath. “Zelda asked why I wanted to learn guitar and I said because I loved sad songs and then I started reciting ‘Annabel Lee’ and by the sixth stanza—
ulp!
” Lexie hiccuped again. Hudson thwopped her on the back.
“Sixth stanza, what?”
“Zelda said she’d teach me for free! All I’d have to do is help her set up her concerts. She plays at lots of kids’ theaters and festiv—Mads, why’re you looking at me like I’m chewing gum stuck to your shoe?”
Maddy couldn’t help but frown. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re a great reciter, Lex, but you didn’t exactly inherit Mom and Dad’s gift for music.” Their parents, dog walkers by day, were also members of an alternative rock band called the Dead Ringers. “When you play clarinet, it sounds like a seagull with pneumonia.”
“Mom and Dad say I just haven’t found my kindred instrument. Maybe it’s guitar.” Lexie looked thoughtful. “And Zelda rocks. I met her yesterday in person, and she loves doomed poetry. We’re like two long-lost identical twin sisters.”
Maddy cut her eyes at Hudson, who wrinkled his nose back at her. Lexie was always hoping to find herself a long-lost identical twin. Maddy and Hudson thought it seemed creepy. Who wanted to run into somebody wearing your face?
Anyway, Lexie and Maddy looked as alike as plenty of sister pairs. Both of them had pencil-straight, ink black hair, matching dark eyes, and ears and noses that pinched slightly on the ends. The main difference was that Lexie was tall and Maddy was not, as if Lexie had somehow stolen Maddy’s extra inches for herself.
“If you stink at guitar, we’ll tell you,” promised Hudson. “Mom and Dad are too easy on you, probably since they can’t believe they made a kid who’s so tone-deaf. But we don’t want anyone to tease you about it—outside of us, that is.”
“I hope I have
some
talent.” Lexie sighed. “If not, as good ole E. A. Poe would say, ‘Oh, my sear’d and blighted heart!’” Lexie’s brain was like a weepy accordion file, packed with scraps of sad poems.
“Speaking of seared and blighted, check out my blisters.” Maddy stuck out her feet and wriggled. The blobs had just about crusted over.
The others hissed in sympathy. As hybrids turn human, their bodies put a lot of effort into making blood, so they hate to give up even one drop. “As Susanality would say, ‘A throbbing toe pain’ll drive ye insane.’” When Maddy had invented Susanality, she’d decided that her imaginary friend should possess the Livingstone family flair for quotes, poems, recipes, jigsaw puzzles, geography, history, and dressing up.
But now Lexie had noticed Dakota’s gift. “What’s that?”
“My new walking cane.”
“From Susanality,” added Hudson.
“A cane? Why?” asked Lexie. “Do you hobble?”
“Are you hunchbacked?” asked Hudson. They started to laugh.
Maddy jumped up and turned her stick into a weapon. Lexie was easy to prod out the door, but since Hudson could fly, he was trickier. Eventually Maddy had to find her bath towel to snap him off. “Ack, your towel smells like mildew! How can you even use—” But by then Maddy had thrown him out.
Little brothers were so annoying, especially when they could fly.

A VISITOR

M
addy waited for sundown to test her cane. She liked the clonk of the wood on the sidewalk cement. She wondered what Dakota’s favorite uncle Godfry had meant about calling on friends near and far. Could this stick have powers? Maddy’s extra-sensitized vampire fingertips couldn’t feel the tingle of a charm or a spell surging through the wood grain.
No sooner had she returned home than the doorbell rang. Maddy hid her gift in the back of the umbrella stand before opening the door. A good thing, too.
There, on the welcome mat, stood the birthday girl herself.
“G’day, Dakooty,” said Maddy in her best fake Australian accent.
“I’m only here because you nicked one of my presents.” Dakota put her hands on her hips and tried to look threatening. “Please give it back.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine.”
Maddy crossed her arms. “Describe your gift, and I might return it.”
Dakota’s cheeks flamed. “How can I do that when I never got to open it? All I know is it’s from Uncle Godfry, so I’m sure it’s a beaut. If you don’t give it, my mum is going to call yours. I’ve got witnesses.”
“Believe me, your uncle’s present was a snore. Matter of fact, I wrapped it right back up again. Stay here, I’ll go get it.”
In the next minute, she’d returned with the gift, its tissue refolded and twine retied. Dakota tore it open. “Oh.” She lifted the object. “It’s a . . . thingamabob.”
“A clarinet,” Maddy clarified. Which belongs to my big sister, she didn’t add. But since Lexie was into guitar, Maddy figured nobody wanted to hear her play
two
instruments horribly. One was plenty.
Palming it off on Dakota was a genius idea.
“I don’t play clarinet.” Dakota looked confused. “Was there a card?”
Maddy felt itchy. Even for her, this was a lot of mischief for one day. “Yeah, but I guess I threw it away.”
Dakota brightened. “Let me come in and poke around your rubbish for it?”
“Sorry, I only invite my friends inside my house.”
Dakota pursed her lips. “What if I said I was your friend?”
Hope swelled through Maddy. She was surprised by it. Why did she care if Dakota wanted to be friends? Then again, what good was an imaginary friend like Susanality? “You can’t just
say
you’re my friend. You have to
be
my friend.”
“But we’re far from friends, Maddy,” said Dakota. “You’re a horror.”
“You could give me a trial friendship,” Maddy said. “Like for one day. Tomorrow, how about?”
Dakota’s wispy brows knit together. “S’pose I could do
anything
for a day. But if we make that deal, it means absolutely, positively no vile tricks out of you.”
Maddy considered this. All school year, she’d been the odd girl out when it came time to pick partners for science or lunch line. She always sat alone on the bus. She’d never been to a sleepover. Not that she cared. “It’s lonely at the top,” she always reminded herself—though she wasn’t quite sure what she was on top of. And all this summer, while Lexie giggled with Pete and Hudson planned adventures with Duane, Maddy had been left to herself. School aloneness was one thing, but family aloneness was . . . lonely.
No pranks in exchange for one day of flesh-and-blood human friendship was as easy a swap as a cursed necklace for a new cape. “We’d be friends all tomorrow?”
“Quite right.”
“I go where you go?”
“Gorgeous.” Dakota always used festive words like that. Maddy figured it was an Australian thing.
“I do what you do?”
“Stunning.” Dakota did look stunned. “You don’t play golf, though, do you? Because that’s what I’m doing tomorrow. We could always pick another—”
“I
looove
golf,” said Maddy, who’d never played. “The card’s up in my room. Top floor.” She held open the door.
Dakota paused, then decided. She rushed inside and up to Maddy’s attic.
“Ooooh . . .” Dakota’s dark eyes were wide as a lemur’s. “Damp. Bit like a cave.”
“That’s the idea,” said Maddy, crossing her fingers that Dakota wouldn’t run away. Lexie had warned Maddy that any mortal who dared to venture into this room would be too spooked to return. But Dakota seemed fine. Maddy scooped the card from her wastepaper basket.
Dakota read it greedily. “Must be more to this clarinet than I reckoned.” She tucked the card in her pocket. “Thanks, Madison.” She sounded so grateful that Maddy experienced a twinge of guilt. Followed by a twitchier twinge as she watched Dakota lift the clarinet and blow into the mouthpiece—probably still spitty from Lexie’s last lesson.
The resulting honk of noise was awful but way better than Lexie’s clarinet version of “Last Goodbye.” Then Dakota lowered the clarinet and paused, her head bird-tilted. “I don’t hear a thing,” she whispered. “Do you?”
Supersonic-eared Maddy could at that moment hear a thousand sounds:

 
“Sorry, nothing,” Maddy said.
Dakota’s plump shoulders slumped. “No matter. Uncle Godfry’s cracked,” she said. “He lives in remotest Yap, Micronesia, and he scuba-dives all day. Not sure why he sent me a clarinet. I hope this one isn’t stolen.”
“Yeah, me too. Okay, see you tomorrow,” said Maddy.
“Thrilling.” Dakota looked about as thrilled as a glass of milk.
Then she raced off, Lexie’s clarinet snug under her arm.
From her doorway, Maddy watched her unexpected almost-friend-for-one-day stop at the next traffic light and, in the wait for the green, lift the clarinet and blow.
Though everyone who heard this awful noise was now glaring at her, Dakota’s upturned face was so hopeful that Maddy almost,
almost
wanted to do the right friend thing, to run down the street with Uncle Godfry’s
real
present and trade it back.

K IS FOR ...

I
n the Old World, Lexie, Maddy, and Hudson had each slept in his or her own coffin down in their medieval cottage’s cobwebby cellar. During those days, they’d relied on their animal instincts. Like many nocturnal creatures, their “sleep” was so light that the ping of a wind chime could rouse them, alert, prepared to flee the pureblood predators that slayed gentle fruit hybrids for sport.
In the New World, though, Maddy needed real sleep. The kind that made her drool and snore and didn’t end until her battery was recharged. After all, she was on her way to fullblood mortality. As long as she kept up good human behavior, the Argos decreed that she’d lose every single one of her vestigial vampire traits by high school.
Sad as it would be to say farewell to her fangs and night vision, Maddy enjoyed certain aspects of mortality. She was getting older. And taller. In the Old World, after the Bite, she’d aged only one human year per century, a process so slow it was like staying the same age forever. But in the New World, Maddy aged one year per year. She even had a growth chart taped to her door, and she marked her progress every morning.
But tonight, Maddy’s eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling as thoughts stormed through her head. How early should she arrive at Dakota’s apartment? Would Dakota’s mother still be upset about the stolen gift, now that it had been (sort of) returned? Maddy kicked her covers.
It took her a while to realize that something else was keeping her awake. Her ears tuned in one part of the house, then another, until she got to Hudson’s bedroom, from which crickety sounds were emanating.
Chhrrrrup. Clickity snick click . . .
Distress clicks. What was wrong?
Annoyed, Maddy jumped out of bed and sped down the stairs. Hudson’s room used to be a portrait gallery and still looked like one. Hudson had liked the oil paintings of grim, long-dead humans, so he’d kept them up. He never used his bunk bed, either, because he slept like a bat, dangling upside down from his double-jointed knees in the closet.
Maddy approached the closet door, where Hudson’s DO NOT DISTURB sign hung from the knob. “But
you’re
disturbing
me,
” she hissed, stamping her feet.
“Sorry,” her brother whispered from inside. “I’ve got news. I better call a family alert.”
Family alert! That didn’t happen every night. Maddy opened the cedar-scented closet and flipped her body upside down in the identical position to her bat-morphed brother. Within minutes, Lexie and their parents had also followed Hudson’s sonic call.
“Will this clothing rod hold all our weight?” asked their father, eyeballing it nervously. “I’m not the scrappy young nightwalker I used to be.”
“Try yoga, darling.” Their mother yawned as she rearranged herself to hang upside down by her sweatpanted knees. “This better be important, Huddy. I don’t like being echolocated for no good reason.”
“Then I’ll get to the point.” Hudson ruffled his neck fur. “The Ninth Knaveheart Leader has entered the New World. And he—or she—is very close.”
The others gasped. The word
Knaveheart
, referring to the most powerful and despicable of all vampire species, hadn’t been uttered in so many years that Maddy’s ear-drums singed to hear it.
“Are you sure?” asked Lexie.
Maddy asked, “How do you know?”
“Orville says they’ve found rat husks,” said Hudson. “The Argos is on alert.” Orville was an aged hybrid who, like Hudson, could transform into a bat. He was also part of the Argos, a secret New World organization that watched over all Old World creatures who had renounced vampirism and sought New World sanctuary.
Maddy cowered. For a Knaveheart, a full-grown rat is the same as a refreshing glass of water for a human. A healthy Knaveheart meal plan depended on eight rats a day.
“Why’s he here?” whispered Lexie.
“Only one reason,” Hudson answered. “There’s a search on for the heir, the Tenth Knaveheart Leader, to take over the Old World Knave Kingdom.”
“Ooh, the Tenth,” said Lexie. “Ten is my lucky number.”
“There’s nothing lucky about this news,” chided their father.
“I don’t get it. There’s a jillion vampires in the Old World,” said Maddy. “A Knave’s got tons more heirs to choose from over there.”
“True, but in
The Gospel of Terrible Species and Unknowable Creatures,
the text indicates that the Ninth Knave will cross into New World in search of a successor. We can’t say we weren’t warned.” Hudson flexed a claw. “Orville advises us to stay on the lookout.”
“So not only is the Ninth Knave here, but the Tenth heir, too? That’s two too many Knaves for my comfort.” Their mother shuddered.
“It’s funny, I was just thinking about writing my back-to-school book report about the Seventh Knaveheart, Vlad the Impaler,” mentioned Hudson. “Since our summer assignment is to write about a brave leader.”
“Hud, hon, I’m sure your teacher meant for you to write about a mortal leader,” advised their father. “Someone more like that New World explorer, Daniel Boone, who chopped down forests. Knave Vlad preferred to chop off heads. He might give your class nightmares.”
“I could write a comparative essay of
both
leaders,” mused Hudson.
“Okay, this family alert is adjourned,” said Lexie. “My knees are locking up.”
When Maddy returned to her bedroom, she took out her hybrid-language, Old World copy of
The Gospyll of Trydrbllel Species & Unknwyble Chryttres.
Flipping to
K
, she read: