Vampalicious! (5 page)

“Don’t let him see you!” Brendan’s little sister, Bethany, whispered in a panic and pulled her inside. Bethany was wearing enormous aviator sunglasses. She ran to the window, pulled aside the curtain, and peeked out at the street.

“Who?” said Ivy.

“The vampire hunter!” Bethany replied. Ivy took off her jacket and hung it by the door.

“Seriously?” Ivy asked.

“FREEZE, VAMPIRE SCUM!” a voice com

manded. Ivy’s stomach lurched, and she turned

to look. Standing in the door that led to the

kitchen was Brendan, wearing a long trench coat

and a yellow hard hat. In his hand, he held an

eggbeater. He laughed maniacally.

“EEEEEEEEEEKKKKKK!” Bethany shrieked and started running in circles around the living room. Brendan took straight-legged zombie steps

into the room.

From the kitchen, Mrs. Daniels called, “Please

use your inside screaming voice, Bethany,” but it

didn’t seem to have any effect.

Ivy couldn’t help smiling as Brendan clomped

right up to her.

“Aren’t you afraid of the vampire hunter?” he

asked with bulging eyes.

Ivy shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Why not?” the vampire hunter demanded. “’Cause I think he likes me,” Ivy replied coyly.
I

am going to miss you so much,
she thought. Brendan

touched her arm tenderly.

“You get away from Ivy!” screamed Bethany.

She charged and kicked Brendan hard in the leg. “Ouch!” Brendan cried.

Bethany leaped on his back. “You big mean

vampire hunter ugly man!” she shouted. Brendan winked at Ivy and gave a monstrous

roar. He and his sister collapsed to the living

room floor in a wrestling heap. Bethany was jumping up and down on his back, alternately giggling and shrieking, as he grunted and tried to claw at Ivy’s foot. Ivy kicked his hand away play

fully.

“You show him, Bethany!” she called. Suddenly Mr. Daniels burst through the front

door. “Eureka!” he cried, his Einstein-like mane

of gray hair pointing in all directions. “Let’s celebrate! I’ve had a major breakthrough!”

Brendan and Bethany both sat up.

Mrs. Daniels came rushing in from the kitchen

in an apron. “Marc! Please calm down,” she

admonished. “We have a guest.” She cast a meaningful glance toward Ivy, who was standing by the

couch.

Mr. Daniels focused his eyes on Ivy. “Ivy! It’s

Ivy!” He bounded over and hugged her enthusiastically.

“Um, hi, Mr. Daniels,” Ivy said awkwardly, her

arms pinned to her sides. “How are you?”

“How are
you
is the question!” he said,

releasing her. “How are you a vampire,” he

elaborated, waving his hands excitedly in the air, “while your twin sister is a human?” He puffed up his chest. “Well, today, Ivy, I found the answer!”

Olivia made her way through the Meat & Greet Diner. She could see her sister already seated at their usual booth in the back. Ivy had called her on her cell in the middle of study group and said she had to see her right away. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.

When Olivia reached the table, her sister leaped up and hugged her quickly. “My dad’s going to be here to pick me up in, like, fifteen minutes,” said Ivy, “so we don’t have much time.”

They slid into the booth opposite each other. “Let me guess,” Olivia said. “You found the perfect Mrs. Vega?”

“Better,” said Ivy. “I found the perfect explanation for
us
—or, rather, Mr. Daniels did. He figured out how it’s possible for you to be a human and me to be a you-know-what.”

Olivia’s heart leaped up into her throat. “Really?!” she squealed. “What’d he say?”

“Ever since we went to the V-Gen lab,” Ivy explained, “Mr. Daniels has been running all these tests on the samples he took from us.”

“The strands of our hair and stuff?” Olivia asked, remembering all the weird machines to which she’d been strapped.

“Exactly,” confirmed Ivy. “Anyway, remember how he said they wouldn’t have any results for months?”

Olivia nodded. “Well, he had a huge breakthrough much sooner than he expected!”

“Which is?” Olivia cried.

“Not very easy to explain,” Ivy admitted with a grimace. “You know how Brendan’s dad talks.”

“Ivy!” Olivia pleaded.

“Okay,” Ivy said. “I’ll do my best.” She scanned the table and grabbed the salt and pepper shakers from next to the napkin dispenser. “Pretend this salt is your DNA,” she said, shaking some onto the table. Then she made a little mound of pepper adjacent to the mound of salt. “And this is mine.”

“Oh, my goodness!” came a bubbly voice. “I know you! You’re the twins!”

Olivia looked up to see a pale waitress in a butcher’s apron smiling down on them. She was tall and thin, with her long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. “I’m Alice Bantam.”

Ivy was looking embarrassed, so Olivia smiled and said, “Nice to meet you.”

“Oh, I don’t want to bother you,” Alice blurted. “I just came to see if you wanted to order anything.” She smiled hopefully down at Olivia.

“Oh, yes, please,” Olivia replied. “How about a Sweet Strawberry Smoothie?”

“And I’ll have a Bloody Raspberry Shake,” Ivy put in.

“Be back in a flap,” Alice winked.

Ivy leaned forward to Olivia. “I think she’s new,” she whispered. “Anyway,” she picked up where she’d left off, “salt and pepper can’t mix.”

“You’ve clearly never made soup,” said Olivia.

Ivy rolled her eyes. “It’s a
metaphor
, Olivia
.
Human and vamp DNA are incompatible. That’s why the two species can’t usually breed.”

“Right,” Olivia said sheepishly.

“Mr. Daniels said that, in V-Gen’s tests, I didn’t show any traces of human DNA, and you didn’t show any traces of vamp DNA. He couldn’t understand how that could be possible, until he remembered what makes us so special.”

“Our incredible coolness?” Olivia joked.

Ivy smiled and shook her head. “The fact that we’re
identical twins
,” she said. “Which means we both started in the same embryo.”

Olivia shrugged. “So?”

“So Mr. Daniels thinks that somehow the cells in the embryo became polarized. All the vamp cells went to one end,” Ivy said, using the back of her knife to push the salt away from the pepper, “and all the human cells went to the other.”

Suddenly Olivia got it. “And then the embryo split into two babies!” She gasped.

“One vamp and one human,” Ivy pronounced triumphantly. “Mr. Daniels said the odds are like a billion to one!”

Olivia’s heart did a triple handspring.
We’re not a mistake
, she thought. “We’re a miracle!”

Just then, Alice returned with their drinks. Olivia and Ivy waited until she was gone before clinking glasses. “To us!” they toasted.

“You should have seen Mr. Daniels,” Ivy went on as Olivia slurped her smoothie. “He was so excited. When I thanked him for figuring all this out, he said
he
was the one who should be grateful. He wants to write his next book about us!”

“First Serena Star, then the Franklin Grove papers and
Vamp
 magazine
,
and now a book,” marveled Olivia. “We should get an agent!”

“As if.” Ivy smiled and rolled her eyes. Olivia knew Ivy had always hated the spotlight, but, no matter what her sister said, Olivia suspected that she was starting to enjoy the attention just a little bit.

Suddenly, Ivy’s face tightened. “There’s my dad,” she said. She hunched over and sucked back the rest of her Bloody Shake in one gulp. Olivia stared into the pink froth of her smoothie.

“Hello,” Mr. Vega announced.

“Hi,” Olivia and Ivy said together.

“Are you ready to go, Ivy?” Mr. Vega asked, without acknowledging Olivia.

All at once, the joyous rush Olivia had felt at Ivy’s news melted away. She felt like she’d been doing a magnificent aerial cheerleading move, only to discover at the last moment that there was no one there to catch her. What did it matter how she came to be in this world if her own father wouldn’t acknowledge her?

She wanted to ask her father why he didn’t seem to care about her, but the diner wasn’t the right place for that. Instead, she just raised her hand into the air and waved limply to Alice. “May we please have the check?”

Olivia, Ivy, and Mr. Vega said nothing as they waited for the bill.

After a minute, Alice brought it over and slapped it on the table. “Here you go!” she said. “Thanks so much. Really, you girls were a pleasure to serve. You have an energy, you know?”

Alice turned to trot away, but Mr. Vega cleared his throat. “Pardon me,” he called.

Alice spun around. “Yeah?”

“Do I know you?” he said. “I feel certain that I have seen you before.”

Olivia couldn’t believe her ears.
That almost sounds like a pickup line!
she thought.

Alice screwed up her lips and rolled her eyes around, like she was trying to see the inside of her head. “Nope,” she said after a second, “I don’t think— WAIT A MINUTE! Have you been to any parties at the art museum?”