Thicker Than Water (The Briar Creek Vampires Book #2) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (11 page)

Mary-Kate’s blue eyes darted away from her.
“Lexi…that’s a little harsh. Family is all you really have
sometimes. Blood is thicker than water.”

“I don’t consider these people my blood, so in
this case, I’d choose water,” Lexi replied. “Before all of this,
before Austin died…I didn’t see Violet or Tommy for about a decade.
That’s not family. We’re strangers, and I’m being forced to live
with them.”

Mary-Kate gave her a sympathetic look and
handed her a pair of pajamas to change into. “I’ll be back. You can
take a shower and change if you want,” she said, pointing at the
bathroom that was connected to her bedroom.

“Hey, don’t tell your dad what I said about
Violet and Tommy, okay?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t,” Mary-Kate said before
closing the door behind her.

When she was gone, Lexi headed towards the
bathroom and showered quickly. After she slipped into the fuzzy
fleece pajamas, she glanced around Mary-Kate’s bedroom.

The pale yellow walls were covered in artwork.
All of the paintings had MKL written in cursive on the bottom, so
Lexi assumed that she had done them herself. No one had ever
mentioned that Mary-Kate was such a good artist. Most of the
paintings were of pretty landscapes with pink flowers, grass, and
sparkling bodies of water. As Lexi moved towards the other side of
the room, the paintings began to get darker. There was a painting
of a black rose that was losing most of its petals during a
rainstorm. Another one featured a brunette girl, who Lexi thought
looked a little bit like Mary-Kate herself, looking down at the
ground as tunnel-shaped tornado whirled in the
background.

Lexi realized that this was a good time to
snoop in Mary-Kate’s room. Maybe it would lead her one step closer
to figuring out what had happened to Austin. As much as Lexi wanted
to ask Mary-Kate what she wanted him to do before he died, she knew
that the answer that she would get back might not necessarily be an
honest one.

She opened the big heart-shaped box that sat on
Mary-Kate’s dresser. There were a few hoop earrings inside. Under
it, there was a photograph of an adorable baby with a full head of
curly brown hair. She was wearing a pink dress with strawberries on
it and was sitting on a blanket, playing with a stuffed
animal.

Lexi flipped the photo over. On the back,
someone had scribbled
Mary Katherine
Hunter, D.O.B. March
12, 1993
in the top right hand corner.

Her heart stopped. Why did this picture say
that Mary-Kate had her last name?

****

Chapter 14

Mary-Kate’s bedroom door opened and Lexi
whirled around. Realizing that she had been caught red-handed,
there was no point in lying now. “I’m sorry…I-I didn’t mean to
snoop,” she stuttered. “But I found this.”

Lexi held up the back of the photograph.
Mary-Kate squinted.

“Oh, um,” Mary-Kate looked down at her
feet.

“What does it mean?” Lexi asked.

“This is going to be weird, Lexi. I didn’t want
you to find out this way, but I guess I have to tell you
now.”

“Tell me what?” Lexi asked.

“We’re biological sisters,” Mary-Kate said,
sitting on a pink beanbag chair next to the bed.

“What?” Lexi tried to force a laugh. Somehow,
that wasn’t the answer she had been expecting. She thought that
maybe there was some sort of mistake, or Mary-Kate was misinformed.
She never would have guessed in a million years that Mary-Kate was
her sister. “Am I adopted or something? Is your dad my real father?
No, that wouldn’t even make sense. Your last name would still be
Lawrence in the picture then.”

Mary-Kate shook her head. “No, Greg’s not your
real dad. He’s also not my real dad either.” She picked up a Beanie
Baby and squished it in her hands, sifting her fingers through the
beans. “We’re not sister sisters. We’re half sisters. My mom is my
biological mother. Greg…he adopted me after they got
married.”

“But you call him Dad, not Greg,” Lexi replied.
In a way, she was trying to make Mary-Kate tell her that this
wasn’t real; that she was just joking, and that they didn’t really
share a father. It was kind of weird that her cousin had been
dating her sister, even if she was only a half sister and Austin
was on her mother’s side, not her father’s. At least Mary-Kate and
Austin weren’t blood relations;
that
would be far too gross
for Lexi to handle.

“I call him Dad because he is my dad,”
Mary-Kate replied. “He adopted me. Ben was only in my life for the
first year. Once he met your mom, he left my mom. I didn’t see him
much after that. The last time I saw him, I was four, I think. My
mom hasn’t even heard from him since. He’s never paid child support
or anything like that.”

“Wow,” Lexi whispered, becoming more and more
surprised. She had never really talked to her mom about how she and
her dad had met, but she’d always assumed that they’d been together
for years before she was born. No one had ever said otherwise, but
she hadn’t ever been around any other family besides her mom – and
her mom always avoided talking about her dad. She had never even
mentioned whether or not he paid child support – not that her mom
had needed it, since her income as a doctor was more than most
families with two working parents.“Why didn’t you tell me we were
sisters before now?”

“I wanted to tell you when we first met at the
hospital. It was why I introduced myself to you in the first
place…I wanted to get to know my sister. But I didn’t want to mess
anything up. It’s a weird thing to tell someone you don’t know all
that well,” Mary-Kate shrugged. “There’s never really a right time.
Plus, I wasn’t sure if Violet and Tom wanted you to
know.”

It was strange that Violet and Tom hadn’t ever
mentioned that Mary-Kate was her sister. In fact, Violet had never
seemed too thrilled with the idea of Lexi hanging out with
Mary-Kate until she had saved her life.

Maybe Violet had just been afraid that Lexi
would find out the truth if they hung out…but why wouldn’t she want
her to know? It didn’t make any sense, especially when Mayor
Lawrence was always hanging out with Tommy.

“How did you even know what I looked like that
day at the hospital?” Lexi asked, confused. “We never saw each
other before that.”

“Well, there were two ways,” Mary-Kate replied.
“I knew that you were going to be there because my dad told me that
your mom died. He had me come to the hospital to bring him
something. The other way was because I had seen a picture of you
before at Austin’s house. He was always showing me pictures of you
and your mom. I know that you guys hadn’t spoken in years, but he
thought really highly of you. I’m pretty sure that he always wished
that you hadn’t moved away and that he had been able to have a
relationship with you.”

“What did your dad ask you to bring to the
hospital?” Lexi asked curiously.

Mary-Kate shrugged. “It was so long ago that I
don’t even remember. Oh, wait, yes, I do remember actually. Some
bleach because he spilled a cup of coffee in his car.”

Lexi knew that bleach could be used to hide DNA
evidence…and to get rid of blood stains.

*

As Lexi lay on the air mattress next to
Mary-Kate’s bed, she tried to fall asleep. She couldn’t get her
mind off everything that was happening, though. Why had Nick and
his friends tried to kidnap her? Even though Dan didn’t think that
they could have been the ones who had attacked her the night of the
carnival, Lexi had her doubts. Yet, she still also had her doubts
about Gabe.

Feeling the urge to pee, Lexi crawled out of
her sleeping bag and went into Mary-Kate’s bathroom.

When Lexi tried to wash her hands, she realized
that there was no soap. She opened the bathroom cabinet to find
some. On the top shelf, there were medications which were
prescribed to Betty Lawrence, who Lexi assumed was Mary-Kate’s
mother. There were also four bottles of sunscreen. It was so weird
how people in Briar Creek stocked up on so much sunscreen, even
though the summers in Pennsylvania were short and often
rainy.

There was a bottle of cucumber melon soap on
the second shelf. When Lexi picked it up, she noticed three vials
behind the bottle.

All of the vials were filled with a thick red
substance. It was blood.

When Lexi went through a box of Austin’s
belongings, she had found a vial of blood. She had wondered why he
had it at the time though now, months later, she still wasn’t sure.
Was he a vampire? Maybe he carried around blood vials for when
he…got hungry.

Whatever the case with Austin may be, why would
the Lawrence’s also have vials of blood in their bathroom cabinet?
It seemed like they thought it was natural, the same way a person
might have Pepto-Bismol or band-aids in their cabinet. Either way,
it was something that Lexi knew she shouldn’t bring up.

As Lexi crawled back under the blankets, she
listened to Mary-Kate’s soft snoring. She was obviously sleeping.
There was no way someone could fake snoring that well. That also
meant that there was no way Mary-Kate could be a vampire. Lexi
hadn’t known a vampire until she met Gabe, but she knew for certain
that all of the mythology said that they didn’t sleep. They
couldn’t.

Somehow, it made it even more difficult for her
to figure out why there was a vial of blood in Mary-Kate’s
bathroom. If Mary-Kate wasn’t a vampire, who did the blood belong
to and why did they have it?

Remembering the box of Austin’s belongings that
Anna had given her, Lexi crawled over to her duffel back and pulled
the box and Austin’s journal out and headed back into the bathroom.
She never got the chance to find out what the numbers on the bottom
of the journal entries meant.

Lexi flipped through the journal and collected
all of the seemingly random numbers that Austin had written at the
bottom of a handful of his journal entries. Matching the numbers to
their corresponding letters on the paper that Austin had in his
locked box, Lexi began to spell out the message.

Lexi almost shrieked in frustration when she
read the translated message:
Lexi is in danger
. “Thank you,
Captain Obvious,” Lexi muttered under her breath. Instantly feeling
guilty, she silently apologized to Austin. It wasn’t his fault that
his journal was giving her information that she already knew; he
was dead. But Lexi was hoping that Austin’s secret message would
tell her something that she didn’t already know.

What she wondered was how Austin knew that she
was in danger…and how much he knew.

*

“Lexi, get out of bed!” a voice shouted in her
ear.

Lexi felt someone shaking her arm. When she
cracked one eye open, she realized that Violet was hovering over
her. Lexi groaned. “What time is it?”

“Nearly noon,” Violet snapped. “I came to bring
you home. I cannot even believe what you did. You had us worried
sick.”

Lexi glanced at Mary-Kate’s bed. The sheets
were tossed off to the side, and it was empty. She wished that
Mary-Kate had waked her up. Lexi was sure that it would have been
way more pleasant and less annoying than Violet shouting in her
ear.

“Get up and get changed. We’re going home,”
Violet said before leaving the room.

Since Lexi hadn’t brought spare clothes, she
changed back into her wet dog clothes she had been wearing for the
past few days. As she slid into her shoes, she glanced around at
Mary-Kate’s walls. The paintings that Lexi had thought were dark
and depressing last night were gone. She could see the thumb tacks
on the wall where the paintings had been the night before, but they
were missing now. Why had Mary-Kate taken them down overnight? It
had to be because she didn’t want Lexi to see them, but why? There
was nothing incriminating about them; they just seemed a bit
depressing.

Instead of letting herself wonder, Lexi
strolled down the stairs, fully prepared to deal with her angry
aunt.

****

Chapter 15

The car ride home was not what Lexi had
expected. She had been bracing herself for the screaming and
lecturing that was bound to come, but Violet didn’t say a word to
her or even look in her direction until she pulled into the
driveway. “I have projects to grade for school, and Tommy’s doctor
is supposed to stop by the house. Your selfish behavior isn’t
something that I have time for right now, but I will be dealing
with you later. I hope you will be able to constrain yourself and
any further urges you have for running away.”

“Tommy’s doctor makes house calls?” Lexi asked.
Her mom had been a physician, so she was familiar with the way
things operated in the medical world. She had never heard of a
doctor making a house call in New Jersey. Either it was only
something that happened in small towns like Briar Creek, Tommy was
on his death bed, or Violet was lying.

“Yes, and your uncle is very sick, Lexi. You
should be nice to him right now. We don’t know how much time he has
left. The time that we get with him right now is precious, so you
should appreciate it until he takes his last breath.”