Re-Vamped! (11 page)

SUMMARY:(1)
SUBJECT INVIOLATION OF 1ST AND 2ND LAWS OF THE NIGHT,WITH HUMAN SUSANNAH
KENDALL OF ANDOVER,

MASSACHUSETTS.

(2)
COUNT AND COUNTESS LAZAR IN STRICT OPPOSITION TO RELATIONSHIP.

(3)
SUBJECT’SWHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN

STATUS:POTENTIAL
HYBRID ALERT!
Olivia turned the page, and her gaze fell on a creased black-and-white
photograph of a stern looking vampire couple with their three children: a
little girl and two young boys. Behind them, an imposing castle loomed
ominously.
The Lazar Clan, Covasna
read the ornate caption.
Count
Rolen and Countess Rochette with children Kat, Karl, and Karina.

Olivia
peered at the photo more closely. Her gaze fell on a jeweled medallion hanging
around the countess’s neck. There was a symbol carved in it—and it looked like
an eye with a
V
inside it.

Olivia
gasped. Carefully laying the file on the stainless steel table for her sister
to see, she pointed with a shaking finger at the countess’s necklace.

“It’s
the same symbol that’s on our emeralds!” Ivy whispered.

They
looked at each other in shock, and Olivia gripped her sister’s hand. “I think
our parents’ names,” Olivia said slowly, “are Karl Lazar and Susannah Kendall.”

Ivy’s
eyes flashed. “Are you sure?” She started flipping through the file frantically
as Olivia looked over her shoulder. Suddenly her black fingernail plunked down
in the middle of a page. “Fourteen years ago!” Ivy said. “They disappeared
fourteen
years ago!”

“Are
there any pictures of them?” Olivia asked, her heart pounding.

Ivy
summarily dumped the file on the table, and they both started sifting through
the papers.

“Anything
about them having kids?” Ivy asked.

“No.”
Olivia shook her head. “Just a potential hybrid alert.”

Then
Olivia’s hands fell on a Xeroxed newspaper clipping from
The Andover Rover
.
The headline read, LOCAL, SUSANNAH KENDALL, 34, DIES IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT. Her
breath caught, and she pushed the clipping in front of her sister. Ivy closed
her eyes for a moment and let out a heavy sigh. Then her eyes flew open. “The
guard!” she whispered. Sure enough, Olivia could hear faint footsteps outside
in the hallway. Together, they frantically shoved the pages back into their
folder and shoved the folder back into the cabinet. Olivia pushed the cabinet
shut as Ivy turned out the lights.

The
main door of ASHH hissed open. “Shhh,” Ivy whispered to her sister. Olivia
backed into a corner as the tall shadow of the guard moved slowly along the
glass wall. Ivy saw a display cabinet behind her sister, with a small sign atop
it that said ALARMED.

“Wait!”
Ivy whispered as her sister bumped into the cabinet.

The
guard’s shadow on the wall froze, and Ivy and Olivia both held their breaths as
the glass cabinet rocked back and forth. Ivy prayed that it wouldn’t tip over
and shatter. Miraculously, it righted itself.

I’m
sure just a bump wouldn’t set off the alarm,

Ivy
thought with relief. That’s when the office flooded with flashing red lights
and a blaring high-pitched noise. Ivy and her sister dove underneath the
stainless steel table as the guard burst through the door.

Seeing
nothing out of the ordinary, he gave a confused grunt, and moved around the
table to examine the display cabinet. Olivia and Ivy carefully inched to the
other side of the table, then slipped out of the door under the cover of the
blaring alarm.

The
main door to ASHH slid open and the twins raced through it and down the hall.
The elevator beeped and started to open as they flew past it. As she rounded
the corner at the V-Gen end of the hall, Ivy glanced over her shoulder to see a
herd of uniformed guards stampeding out of the elevator toward ASHH.

We
made it!
Ivy
thought, and shared a giddy look with her sister as they walked through the
V-Gen lab door.

“Hey!”
Brendan waved from his seat in the corner, where he was sipping a large glass
of water.

“Are
you okay?” Ivy ran over and hugged him with mock concern.

“I’m
fine,” Brendan grinned. His face was damp—somehow, he’d managed to wipe off
Olivia’s blush. “It must have been something I ate at the school cafeteria
today.”

Mr.
Daniels appeared behind them. “They must stop putting garlic in everything when
so many young people are allergic,” he said in a serious voice. He turned to
Ivy. “Where did you two disappear to?”

“We
were in the ladies’ room,” Ivy answered quickly. “I was so anxious about Brendan’s
condition, I suddenly had to go.” She tried to look embarrassed.

“You
must have been gone for fifteen minutes,” Mr. Daniels observed.

“We
got locked out,” Olivia stammered. “We had to get a security guard to let us
back in.”

“Oh,
no,” Mr. Daniels said with genuine concern. “Well, it appears all of us have
had quite an eventful afternoon.”

As the
three of them skipped out of the office building arm in arm a few minutes
later, Ivy and her sister debriefed Brendan on their escapade.

“That’s
killer,” Brendan remarked. “You found out almost everything you could have
hoped for!”

“Thanks
to you,” said Ivy, squeezing his arm.

The
sun was starting to set as the three of them sat huddled on the curb in front
of the guard hut waiting for the bus.

“Maybe
our parents wanted to keep us secret,” Ivy theorized.

“From
ASHH?” Brendan asked.

Ivy
nodded.

“And
maybe from the whole Lazar family, too,” Olivia pointed out. “After all, the
Lazars didn’t approve.”

Ivy
entwined her sister’s fingers in her own and looked down at the alternating
pattern of pink and black fingernails it made. She lay her head on her sister’s
shoulder. “At least now we know their names,” she said.

“Karl
and Susannah.” Olivia sighed.

“Karl
and Susannah.” Ivy repeated thoughtfully.

All
day Tuesday, Olivia still felt giddy from their success at the ASHH offices. In
fact, she was still humming to herself Wednesday morning, when Ivy and Sophia
appeared at her locker while she was putting her jacket away.

“Code
black.” They grinned before darting away. Olivia knew from secret meetings
during the Serena Star affair that that meant she should meet them in the
science hall bathroom immediately. She quickly slammed her locker shut and
followed them down the hall.

“With
smiles like those, you two are a disgrace to Goths everywhere,” Olivia teased
as the bathroom door swung shut behind her. “What’s up?” Ivy bent down to make
sure all the stalls were empty. When she gave a thumbs-up, Sophia reached into
her black cat backpack and pulled out a magazine. She held it out to Olivia
with both hands.

It was
the new issue of
Vamp
. And she was on the cover! The picture was of Ivy
and Olivia, looking into each other’s eyes in the ornate mirror in Ivy’s guest
bathroom. The headline read, TWINS TO DIE FOR. “If anyone in our community
didn’t suspect you knew our secret before,” Sophia said proudly, “they sure
will now. But nothing swings public opinion like the cover of
Vamp
.”

Olivia
grabbed the magazine and flipped it open. She landed right in the middle of a
series of glossy pictures of her and her sister, each coupled with a little
paragraph of text.

“It’s
eight pages long,” Ivy enthused, and she and Sophia gathered around Olivia so
they could all look at the same time.

There
was Ivy playing the piano, while Olivia sat on top of it. “That was such a
killer idea,” Sophia murmured.

There
was Ivy in her cocktail dress, trying to pop a huge round pink bubble gum
bubble that had been photoshopped in over Olivia’s mouth.

“So
cool!” said Olivia.

And
there they were in front of the stairs, looking totally glammed out in their
burgundy and green gowns. The last spread was the grand finale: a collage of
artsy black-and-white photos of the twins together in the mirror.

“‘Ivy
Vega and Olivia Abbott share a bond that only blood sisters can,’ ” Ivy read
over Olivia’s shoulder. “ ‘They laugh at each other’s jokes and cry at each
other’s hardships. Now that they have discovered each other, they are, in a
word, inseparable.’ ”

“Awww!”
Olivia gushed. She took over reading. “ ‘These remarkable young women have
something to teach us all,’ ” she intoned, “ ‘about what is possible between
humans and vampires. For when there is no fear, there can be love— despite all
differences.’ ” On the verge of tears, Olivia looked up again and saw that her sister’s
eyes were filling up, too.

There
was only one paragraph left, but Olivia couldn’t go on. Sophia gently took the
magazine from her hands.

“‘In a
matter of weeks,’ ” Sophia read carefully, “‘Ivy will move to Europe with her
father. Having only just found each other, she and her twin shall be torn
asunder yet again. But now, even distance is not enough to keep them apart’
”—Sophia paused dramatically—“‘for they are twins for eternity.’ ”

Olivia
and her sister gave each other a huge hug.

“I’m
going to miss you so much,” Olivia whispered.

“I
can’t wait to make my father read this.” Ivy sniffled defiantly. “Georgia sent
me a full set of photos, as a souvenir to hang in my new room.”

“And
Kong sent me a full set of photos for my portfolio,” Sophia added.

“So I
can keep this copy?” asked Olivia.

“No,”
Sophia said abruptly, taking the magazine back. She reached into her bag and
pulled out a much thinner issue. “This one’s for you. Special delivery from
Georgia Huntingdon.”

“What’s
the difference?” Olivia asked.

“No
references to you know what,” Sophia answered. Olivia flipped it open, and saw
that the only article inside was the one about her and her sister—and even
there, lots of text had been deleted.

Olivia
frowned. “Can’t I have a regular one? I promise I won’t show anyone.”

Ivy
shook her head. “Yours is better.”

“There’s
a reason we call our periodicals the ‘black papers,’ ” Sophia explained.
“They’re printed on special paper with special ink, so the moment they’re
exposed to sunlight, the pages turn completely black. And even if they never
see the light of day, they blacken in a week anyway.”

At
least the final spread of Olivia and her sister in the mirror remained intact.
They’d only changed one line so it simply said, “These remarkable young women
have something to teach us all about what is possible.”

I’ll
treasure this for as long as I live,
Olivia thought happily.

The
issues of
Vamp
concealed again, Olivia followed Ivy and Sophia out of
the bathroom. They were hurrying to first-period class when Olivia saw two
sixth-grade girls charging toward them, arm in arm. One was dressed all in pink
and the other was totally clad in black, but in every other way, their outfits
were identical.

The
one in pink cried out in excitement when she spotted Ivy and Olivia. “Me and my
best friend, Marta, planned our outfits,” she said, her braces glinting as she
spoke, “so we could be twin opposites, just like you! I’m Olivia.”

“And
I’m Ivy!” her black-clad friend squealed.

Olivia
didn’t even get a chance to respond before her sister dragged her away down the
hall.

“And
people think
I’m
a bloodsucker,” Ivy said, clearly weirded out by their
cultish look-alikes.

“Well,
I think it’s fun,” Olivia said proudly. Sophia just shook her head in
disbelief.

Suddenly
Olivia heard a familiar voice calling her name. She spun around to see Camilla
chasing them down the hall, waving a newspaper in the air above her blond
curls.

“Have
you two seen this?” Camilla cried, thrusting the newspaper at them.

“What?”
Olivia and Ivy asked at the same time.

“You
made the front page of the
Gazette
!” Camilla announced. “They reprinted
Toby’s article from the
Scribe
word for word!”

Camilla
handed them each a copy of the local newspaper—and sure enough, there were the
matching pictures of Ivy and Olivia that had appeared in the school paper the
previous week.

“I
almost tackled my dad for it when I saw it this morning over the breakfast
table,” Camilla panted.

“Where’d
you get the second copy?” Ivy asked.

Camilla
blushed. “I begged my next door neighbor for it, in case you both needed one.”

“Thanks,”
said Ivy, sounding genuinely touched.

“You’re
the best, Camilla,” Olivia said with a grin, gazing down at the front page of
the
Gazette
. “Who would have thought,” she marveled, “that so many
people would be interested in our story?”