Thicker Than Water (The Briar Creek Vampires Book #2) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (16 page)

Not long after she had found out about her
mother’s death, she had ventured down to Violet and Tommy’s
basement when she planned to get drunk for the first time. So much
for getting drunk for the first time, Lexi thought to herself,
since the ‘beer’ that she had thought she had been drinking was, in
fact, blood. At least that explained why she had gotten so sick
after she drank it. Lexi covered her mouth in disgust, forcing the
image out of her mind.

As she approached the Honda Accord that was
parked in the driveway, one of the doors swung open and Mary-Kate
patted the seat next to her. Lexi climbed into the car.

“Hi, Lexi!” Julie said from the driver’s seat,
tossing her dark hair over her shoulder.

“Hey,” Lexi replied. She realized that the
black North Face jacket on the person sitting in the passenger’s
seat next to Julie belonged to Brandon. Lexi stopped herself from
saying hi. Even though she felt bad to act that way towards him,
things were really weird between them now. She hadn’t spoken to him
since that weird moment of awkwardness when she had seen him for
the first time after the accident, and she had been planning to
keep it that way until she started work again in a few days. He
didn’t acknowledge her either, which she was grateful for. Brandon
was really cute and Lexi realized now that she might have been
jealous of Julie when she first realized that they were together,
but she had Gabe now.

Next to Mary-Kate, there was a girl who Lexi
recognized from her gym class named Shannen Lee. She was a really
quiet girl who seemed to hate playing sports in front of people
just as much as Lexi did.

“Is anyone else just as excited for this corn
maze as I am?” Mary-Kate asked.

“No, I don’t think anyone could be as excited
as you,” Julie replied, cracking her gum.

“I just love this time of year,” Mary-Kate
explained to Lexi. “I love the pretty fall foliage and watching
Halloween movies. I love apple picking, pumpkin carving, corn
mazes, haunted houses, and hayrides. I always take the kids I
baby-sit for trick-or-treating, and I love to dress up with them.
The Briar Creek Halloween festival is also a ton of fun. Are you
planning to come this year?”

“No, I think I have something else planned for
that day already,” Lexi lied. She was planning to go to the
festival like the person who had written her that note had
instructed her to do, but they weren’t clear about whether or not
she was allowed to let anyone know that she would be there. Since
she had been told that she was to wear a costume that would hide
her face and her aunt and uncle couldn’t know, Lexi figured that it
was better to lie about it than to risk anyone finding out –
especially anyone who might tell Violet and Tommy. Even if
Mary-Kate didn’t tell them herself, she might tell her dad, which
would get the message back to Violet and Tommy even
quicker.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Mary-Kate replied, with a
pout. “I guess there’s always next year.”

“Guess what I brought for the occasion, guys,”
Julie said excitedly. “Apple wine! I also brought paper cups. That
way, if anyone asks, we can pretend we’re just drinking apple
cider.”

“Yay, apple wine is my favorite drink, ever!”
Mary-Kate squealed.

Lexi had never seen the way Mary-Kate acted
around her friends before. She seemed happy and energetic, like
always, though Lexi thought it was a little strange. The first time
Lexi had ever seen Julie, which was at Violet’s house after
Austin’s viewing, she was talking to a blonde girl about how they
both thought that Mary-Kate had something to do with Austin’s death
because she had been acting clingy and obsessive just before he had
died. Lexi wondered how good of a friend Julie really was to
Mary-Kate – or if Mary-Kate knew what Julie had said about her
behind her back. Lexi really wanted to tell her, but she also hated
starting drama.

As Julie turned onto a small dirt road, Lexi
could see the corn field in the distance. She was actually
beginning to get a little bit excited. Even though she had grown up
in New England, she’d never actually been to a corn maze. The few
friends that she had back home would rather strut around in front
of their boyfriends wearing Playboy bunny costumes at Halloween
parties than do anything really fun. Thinking about her friends
made her realize that none of them had even bothered to get in
touch with her since she came to Briar Creek. It had been months
and she hadn’t gotten a single text or phone call. Maybe they had
forgotten about her already.

They all piled out of the car and headed
towards the maze. The sign said that the theme this year was
witches; the maze was huge and shaped like a witch on her broom.
After paying the entrance fee, Lexi grabbed a scavenger hunt list
from the rest of the stack that sat in a basket at the entrance to
the maze. The outside of the maze was decorated lavishly; a huge
cauldron that was releasing fake smoke sat in the center of a
grassy area that was scattered with haystacks and dozens of
pumpkins. A few fire torches illuminated the area surrounding
them.

“Why don’t we split into two groups?” Mary-Kate
asked, grabbing another list and handing it to Julie. “Me, Shannen,
and Lexi will be one group and Julie and Brandon will be another
group. The first group to finish the maze wins?”

“Why does your group get Lexi?” Brandon spat.
Lexi felt his eyes on her. “That makes our groups
uneven.”

“Would you rather do girls against boy?”
Mary-Kate snapped. “I thought that you would rather be in a group
with your girlfriend than any of us.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Brandon muttered.
Judging from the other girls’ reactions, Lexi was sure that she was
the only one who heard him say it, except for Julie, who had gotten
a hurt expression on her face and seemed to pull away from him a
bit.

“Let’s not argue, guys,” Julie sighed, opening
the bottle of wine disguised as apple cider and began pouring each
of them a cup. “I don’t care whose team Lexi wants to be on. Either
way, me and Brandon are totally going to win this thing. I love
scavenger hunts!”

Lexi took the cup that Mary-Kate had passed
along to her and took a few large gulps. The last time she did a
scavenger hunt with Julie at the Briar Creek carnival, she had
almost been killed by an anonymous vampire attacker. Now that she
knew that most of the people in Briar Creek were vampires, she
began panicking that something similar could happen to her this
time, too, even though there didn’t seem to be too many people at
the corn maze.

“I think I’ll be on your team,” Lexi said,
taking a step closer to Mary-Kate and Shannen. The last thing she
wanted to do was be on Julie’s team for another scavenger hunt. It
seemed like it would be bad luck after what happened last time.
Plus, Lexi knew that she would feel awkward if she had to be on
Brandon’s team.

“Yay!” Mary-Kate squealed, taking her own cup
of apple wine from Julie. “Okay, let’s start this!” She turned to
Julie. “See you when we win! Hopefully we won’t have to wait too
long for you to finish.”

“Ha,” Julie scoffed. “We are totally going to
win this. Come on Brandon.” She yanked his arm and led him into the
right hand entrance to the maze. He glanced over his shoulder,
looking longingly at Lexi.

Mary-Kate walked into the other entrance, on
the left. “Okay, so the first thing we need to find is the witch’s
cauldron.”

Lexi followed Shannen and Mary-Kate down
through the path of corn, trying not to step in the mud puddles
that must have formed from the rain the night before.

“I thought that Dan was supposed to be coming
with us,” Lexi remembered.

Mary-Kate shook her head. “I didn’t invite him,
and I’m pretty sure no one else did either. He must be coming with
other people.”

After a few moments of walking, they approached
the large cauldron. Mary-Kate stamped their piece of paper with the
stamp that sat on the table. It added a small blue cauldron to the
paper.

Now that they were deeper into the maze, the
brightly lit entrance area was no longer in sight. With the full
moon being so bright that night, Lexi was surprised at how dark it
was inside of the maze. “Okay, so next we need to find the black
cat,” Lexi said, shining her flashlight over their item list. She
led the group onward to search for the next clue.

As Lexi turned one of the corners of the maze,
she realized that there was nowhere left to turn. “Dead end. I
guess it’s not this way,” she told the girls.

When Lexi turned around to go in the other
direction, no one was there. Mary-Kate and Shannen weren’t behind
her. Peering around the corner of the trail that she was on, she
didn’t see them anywhere. Lexi panicked.

“Mary-Kate? Shannen?” Lexi called, frantically
walking up and down the pathways through the sections of corn. She
still didn’t see them. Actually, she didn’t see anyone.

“Oh God…Not again,” Lexi whispered to herself.
Her stomach clenched when she realized that the situation felt
oddly familiar. During the scavenger hunt at the carnival, Lexi had
followed Dan into the House of Mirrors to see if it was where one
of the clues was leading them to. At some point, they had gotten
separated while they were in the House of Mirrors. That was when
the vampire had brutally attacked her, slamming her into a mirror
and leaving her there unconscious until Gabe had found
her.

Lexi continued walking up and down the
pathways, searching for Mary-Kate and Shannen, trying to calm
herself down. She had just seen them only minutes before. They
couldn’t have gotten far in that little of time. They were probably
trying to figure out where she was.

As she walked up to the next checkpoint, a
black cat statue at the dead end of the muddy pathway she was on,
Lexi heard the sound of footsteps on the pathway next to her.
“Mary-Kate?” she called, shining her flashlight along the
cornstalks that separated her from the next pathway. Immediately,
the footsteps stopped.

Lexi peered through the gaps between the corn
stalks. Through an opening at the bottom of the stalks, she could
just barely make out a pair of green glowing skeletal feet. Lexi
gasped as she felt her heartbeat speed up. It couldn’t have been a
checkpoint station; all of the checkpoints were brightly lit by a
lantern.

Lexi snapped off her flashlight once she came
to the realization that the skeleton feet had to belong to someone.
Almost as soon as she did, the feet moved. Lexi followed them with
her eyes until she could no longer see them through the stalks of
corn and the darkness of the maze.

When she was sure that the person was gone,
Lexi let out the breath that she had been holding in. Realizing
that she was just being paranoid, she decided to wait for her
friends at the checkpoint station.

Deciding that Mary-Kate had to have had her
cell phone with her, she pulled out her own phone and scrolled
through her short list of contacts. Right as she was about to hit
‘Call’, her cell phone bleeped and a new text message showed up on
her screen.

Lexi did a double take when she saw who the
text was from. She blinked hard, making sure that she was seeing
things correctly, and re-read the name several more times. Sure
enough, she had read the name correctly:
Justin
Collins.

Lexi could feel her stomach turning and the
goose bumps begin to run up her arms as she opened the text
quickly.
Never take off the necklace
, the text read. Looking
down at her bare neck, Lexi could feel the vomit begin to rise to
the back of her throat.

Someone had to have been playing a sick joke on
her. She had seen Justin’s lifeless body with her own eyes. She had
kissed his pale, clammy cheek.

The sound of running footsteps broke her out of
her thoughts. Instinctively, she crouched down behind the black cat
statue and watched as the person stood in front of her. The person
glanced around, as if they were looking for someone. Lexi assumed
that this was the person who had the skeleton feet that she had
seen only a few minutes earlier—they were wearing a skeleton
Halloween costume, which hid every inch of their body, from the
tips of their shoes to the top of their head. A menacing skull mask
hid the person’s face, so Lexi had no idea who was standing in
front of her.

Lexi wasn’t sure if the person could see her
from where she was hiding, but they took a step in her
direction.

****

Chapter 19

Lexi did the first thing that came to her mind.
She pushed the stalks of corn that stood in front of her to the
side and climbed between them to the next muddy pathway.

When she turned around and looked back at the
person, she saw that they now stood where Lexi had been standing
only a few moments before. They could have easily followed after
her, yet they didn’t. Lexi stood glued into place, feeling her
heart pound, as she stared at the skull mask in front of her.
Without any eyeholes, Lexi could only assume that the person was
staring back. They took a step closer to her and she
fled.

As Lexi raced away from him, she felt her
heartbeat speeding up.

She continued running, taking random turns in
the corn maze. The corn maze was just as empty as she had expected
it to be. Lexi wasn’t really sure if that was a good thing or a bad
thing. It was good because there weren’t many vampires to attack
her (she hoped), but there also weren’t many people to witness an
attack if there was one. Turning onto a new pathway, she finally
saw Mary-Kate’s familiar brown ponytail and jean jacket. Mary-Kate
threw back her head and laughed hysterically at something Shannen
had just said to her.