I had no other choice. I double-checked the garlic stashed in my purse.
I knocked gently.
When I didn’t get a response, I slowly twisted the handle and opened the door. I took off my glasses and my hood. I crept inside.
Light from the hallway shined softly through the bedroom. The dark curtains were drawn closed—one sign Trevor could already be turned.
The soccer snob must have had his own personal interior decorator. His bedroom could have graced the cover of Architectural Digest Teen.
Next to the curtains, a giant flat-screen computer sat on a white modular desk. On one side of the room was a wall-mounted gazillion-inch plasma TV. Underneath it was a teen’s dream lounge—a red futon couch, a soccer-themed pinball machine, and a foosball table.
Lastly and most ghastly was his midnight blue king-size bed with a soccer-goal headboard.
I almost gagged.
I could see Trevor’s golden blond hair sticking out from underneath his comforter.
As much as I would have liked to short-sheet his bed or stick his hand in warm water, I decided to open his computer desk to search for any hidden clues. All I found were unsharpened pencils, a school lock, and loose batteries.
I opened two shutter doors, which led to something more like a sporting goods store than a teen’s closet. A few feet away a glass bookshelf was adorned with a million soccer trophies and medals, and on the wall hung ribbons, a half dozen framed soccer pictures, and Dullsville High Chatterbox articles. I glided my finger across a dust-free gold trophy when I noticed something dust-filled hidden behind it—a decade-old Dracula action figure.
For a moment I almost felt a warming sensation filter through my icy veins. Then he stirred.
I quietly tiptoed over to him. I stood frozen. The normally sun-kissed soccer snob looked like one of the undead. But even when he was sick, Trevor was gorgeous. It almost made me ill that he had gotten so much by having a pretty face and a fast kick to midfield.
I wondered why this conservative snob was so attracted to the gothic Luna. Was it because she was pursuing him? Was it to get back at me? Or had my nemesis found the true love of his life? The major issue that perplexed me was why I cared.
I opened my purse and pulled out Ruby’s compact. My fingers quavering, I angled it toward Trevor. All at once, he turned over and knocked it out of my hand. I scrambled on the floor to find it.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
I curled up alongside his bed, breathing the shallowest of breaths.
“Jasper? Is that you?” he asked.
I lifted up his blue duvet so I could squeeze underneath his bed. Instead of an open space to hide, I found a handle to a king-size trundle drawer—as if he didn’t have enough closet space.
I had nowhere to escape. I’d have to switch to plan B.
“Hi, Trevor,” I said, popping up.
Startled, the soccer snob let out a scraggly yell. “What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted, sitting up.
“I just—,” I stammered, fumbling with the compact and trying to shove it back into my purse.
“How did you get in?”
“Your nanny let me in,” I teased. “I’m not surprised you still have one.”
“What are you doing in my room?” Trevor wondered, fingering his tousled blond hair.
“I heard you were sick.”
“So?”
“I wanted to know if you needed anything.”
“Are you insane?”
“I’m fulfilling my health class assignment: Help someone in need.”
“But I’m not in need, especially from you.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. I think you should start with some sunshine,” I said, like a gothic Mary Poppins. “I’m the only one who likes it this gloomy.” I went to his window and pulled back the heavy drapes.
“Stop!” he said, shielding his eyes.
But I continued to draw the curtains as far as they could go.
“Get out of here, freak!” he hollered, squinting.
I waited to see if there was any reaction. He could recoil. Maybe he’d melt.
I got a reaction from Trevor all right, but it wasn’t what I expected. He got up, his pale face now flushed with anger.
“Get out already,” he ordered. “Go back to the troll hole you live in. You’ve contaminated my house enough already.”
I grabbed the garlic container from my purse and held it out to him.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Garlic. It helps clear out the system. Why don’t you breathe it in,” I said, stepping closer.
“Get that away from me, you freak.”
Trevor didn’t recoil like Alexander had when I accidentally exposed him to garlic powder. Instead, Trevor got madder.
I pulled out a pen and a Hello Batty paper pad. “Now,” I said like a nurse filling out a patient’s records, “have you kissed anyone in the past forty-eight hours?”
“What’s it your business?”
“I have to fill out a communicable diseases questionnaire. You don’t want your new girlfriend, Luna, to get your diseases, do you?”
“Why, are you jealous?”
“Of course not,” I replied with a laugh.
“That’s what this is really about,” he said, his raspy tone suddenly brightening. “Why you are here, in my house. In my room—,” he said, stepping closer.
“Don’t flatter yourself—”
“You couldn’t handle seeing me with Luna—,” he said with a smile.
“Frankly, I can’t handle seeing you at all.”
“I knew it. I saw it in your eyes at the carnival,” he said, taking another step toward me.
“That’s not what you saw in my eyes.”
I tried to get a quick glance at both sides of his neck. But he mistook the reason for my gaze. He stepped toward me and leaned in to kiss me.
I held him at bay with my pad of paper.
“Get off!”
“But I thought that’s why you came—”
I rolled my eyes. “I need to know—have you been bitten by anything or anyone?”
“Of course not. But I won’t tell if you don’t tell,” he said with a clever grin.
“Then my work is complete,” I said, racing for the door. “Now take two dog biscuits and don’t call me in the morning.”
Trevor stood still, weary and confused.
“And most important,” I offered as I opened the door, “stay away from the cemetery.”
“I’m sick,” he said. “Not dead.”
I hopped on my bike. Coasting back home, I was relieved that Trevor wasn’t a vampire—for the town’s sake and for mine.
As the sun set, I lay in bed under the covers.
“I hate to leave you again,” my mom said, “but they are honoring your father at the country club. It’s been such a busy day, I feel like I’m neglecting you.”
“I feel tons better. I took a nap and I’m totally recovered.”
“Well, Billy is over at Henry’s. We’ll pick him up after the ceremony.”
As soon as I heard my dad’s BMW pull out of the driveway, I jumped out of bed, fully dressed, and headed over to the Mansion.
I found Alexander in his attic room. He was staring pensively out the window. When I tapped at his door, his mood quickly changed. He gave me a long hello kiss, and for a moment I forgot all about my childhood nemesis and a lurking vampiress named Luna.
“We have to do something,” Alexander said suddenly. I was quickly pulled from a heavenly cloud nine and back into the threat of the Underworld.
“I can think of a few things. Shall we stay in here?” I teased coyly. “Or take our party to the gazebo?”
But Alexander didn’t smile. “I’m serious,” he said.
I missed Alexander so desperately during the day, I felt grateful to be with him now. Though I was excited by the adventures of the town I now called “Vampireville,” I also
resented that Jagger and Luna took romantic time away from Alexander and me.
“But now that we’re together, it’s hard for me to think of anything but you. I’ve been waiting all day to see you,” I said.
“I know, me too,” he said with a sigh. “But until Jagger and Luna are gone, we can’t sit around. Did you see Trevor?”
“Yes,” I began, sitting in his beat-up comfy chair. “He was sick today and stayed home from school.”
“Sick?” he asked, worried. “Is it already too late?”
“No,” I said. “Fortunately Luna hasn’t sunk her fangs into him yet. He just has the flu.”
“Great!” he said, relieved, and leaned on the arm of the chair. Then he turned serious. “If he was home sick, how did you see him?”
“Uh…,” I stammered, turning away.
“You didn’t,” he said in a scornful voice.
“Well—”
“You went to his house? Alone?” he asked, glaring down at me.
“No, the painter was there,” I said, fiddling with a loose string from the fabric of the chair.
Alexander knelt down and took my hand. “Raven—I don’t want you to be alone with him. If Trevor isn’t a vampire, he is still a vulture.”
“I know. You are right,” I replied, his dark eyes melting me.
When my mom and dad were protective of me, it was annoying; when it came from Alexander, it was sexy.
“Promise me—”
“I promise,” I said.
“Well, if they didn’t get to Trevor already, then they must be waiting for the right moment.”
“That would be ironic. Trevor, who hates anything goth, gets to be a vampire, and I, who would love nothing more, don’t.”
“It is important to be whoever you are, for the right reason,” he said, stroking my hand reassuringly.
“I know.”
“Besides,” he began, rising and returning to the attic window, “Trevor has no idea what Luna has in store for him.”
I followed him and nestled in the dusty window seat. “What do we do?” I asked.
“Somehow we have to force them to go back to Romania.”
“With an iron stake?” I wondered. “Or a fiery torch?”
Alexander shook his head, still thinking.
“Maybe I could swing a discounted fare from Ruby at Armstrong Travel,” I suggested, pulling at a tear on my black leather boot. “We could convince Jagger and Luna that their parents miss them and demand their immediate return.”
“But at this point we don’t even know where they are,” he said, frustrated. “They’re hiding somewhere in the shadows.”
“If we can take away the shadows, then we take away their defense,” I said.
“You’re right,” he agreed suddenly.
“I am?” I asked, excited by my unlikely genius. “How do we take away a shadow?”
“Not a shadow…,” he said, scooching next to me. “We have to take away the one thing that makes Jagger safe, no matter where he is.”
I looked at Alexander curiously.
“The one thing that protects him from humans, other vampires, and the sun,” he continued.
“Yes?” I asked eagerly.
“We have to find Jagger’s coffin.”
“Wow. That’s perfect. Then he won’t have anywhere to hide.”
Alexander smiled, exhilarated that we finally had a plan.
“But wait,” I said. “Can’t Jagger just sleep in a bed like you, with the shades drawn? Or hide in the loft of a barn? You don’t sleep in a coffin.”
Alexander looked at me with deep, almost shameful eyes.
Then he rose and pushed aside his beat-up comfy chair, revealing a small attic door. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a skeleton key.
“I do,” he whispered.
He unlocked the bolt and slowly opened the door, and we stepped inside a dark, dusty ancient hideaway.
There, sitting in the shadows, was a secret in the shape of a casket—a simple black coffin, with dirt haphazardly sprinkled around it. Next to it was a wooden table with an unlit half-melted candle and a small, softly painted portrait of me.
“I had no idea—,” I said with barely any breath.
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“But your bed—it’s always unmade.”
“It’s where I rest and try to dream that I am like you.”
I grabbed his hand and held it close. “You never had to hide anything in your world from me,” I said, looking up into his lonely eyes.
“I know,” he said. “I was hiding it from myself.”
Alexander closed and locked the small attic door, once again concealing his conflicted true identity.
3
The Hunt
To find a vampire, you have to think like a vampire,” Alexander said, grabbing his backpack. “I won’t be gone more than an hour.” He gave me a quick kiss.
“Gone?” I asked, following him toward his bedroom door.
“You’ll have to stay here. I’m going to sacred ground.”
“I’m going with you. If Jagger thinks I’m a vampire, then I’ll be safe,” I argued.
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then I have this.” I pulled out my container of garlic powder from my purse.
Alexander quickly retreated.
“It’s tightly sealed,” I said, referring to the time it spilled out in my purse, causing Alexander to have an allergic reaction and forcing me to inject him with an antidote. “I’ll wait outside,” I pleaded.
Alexander paused. He wiped his flopping rock-star hair away from his gorgeous face and slung his backpack on his shoulder. He glanced at the door, then back at me. Finally he held his pale hand out. While it was hard enough to be separated during the daylight, it was unbearable during the moonlight. As Alexander and I walked down the windy streets and toward the cemetery, I realized it was a dream come true—to be walking with one vampire and searching for another.
I’d never seen anyone in the moonlight as handsome as Alexander, vampire or not. His pale face seemed to glow, and his smile seemed to illuminate what the moon and the stars couldn’t.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked.
“Your favorite place.”
“My favorite place is here—by your side.”
“Mine too,” he said, squeezing my hand.
“Will Jagger know I’m still mortal?”
“It’s not written on your forehead, is it?” he teased.
As he led me to an unknown destination, he walked with an air of confidence and determination I hadn’t seen before.
We arrived at the entrance to Dullsville’s cemetery.
“Remember when Old Jim took our tickets at the carnival, he accused you of sleeping at the cemetery?” he asked.
“But I wasn’t,” I defended. “I haven’t done that in months!”
“I know. So if it’s not you, then who do you think it is?” he asked.
I answered like an eager student. “Jagger.”
“Trevor is safe for the night—but we’re not.” Then he paused. “You better stay outside the cemetery,” he warned, changing his mind about our plan. “It’s sacred ground and you would be in danger.”
“You mean you bring me to the scene of the crime and don’t let me dust for fingerprints? Or at least leave any?”
“You’ll be safe only if you remain on the outside.” He tenderly brushed my hair away from my face.
As Alexander climbed over the gate, I reluctantly stayed behind. I anxiously dug my boot into the wet grass, feeling as if I were being left out of the adventure of a lifetime. What could I accomplish by staying behind? Alexander and I could cover more terrain if there were two of us searching the graveyard. Besides, if Jagger still thought I was a vampire, it would be more natural for me to be standing inside a cemetery than outside one.
I could barely see Alexander’s shrinking silhouette in the distance. Then I quickly climbed
the gate and jogged after him.
I ran among the tombstones, as quiet as a wandering ghost following Alexander’s shadowy figure.
As I approached him, I realized the figure I was running to was a monument.
I didn’t see Alexander anywhere.
“Alexander?” I called.
I wondered where he could have disappeared to so quickly. He must have turned behind the caretaker’s shed.
I raced around to the back of the shed, but all I saw was an abandoned shovel.
“Alexander?” I called again.
I continued to walk in the direction of the baroness’s monument. Maybe Alexander was paying his respects to his grandmother as he searched the graveyard. When I approached the monument, however, the only thing visiting the stone memorial was a curious squirrel.
I walked on. Underneath a weeping willow tree, I saw a newly dug grave. I carefully walked toward it when I noticed a familiar pattern of dirt. Gravediggers make piles, not circles. I tiptoed closer. Jagger’s stickered coffin could be lying inside, Jagger himself sitting on top, waiting for a mortal to be lured into his trap. I took a deep breath and peered down.
The grave was empty. No stickered coffin. No fang-toothed teen of darkness.
Where was Jagger? And more important, where was Alexander? I was standing in the middle of three acres of sacred ground. I’d picnicked alone a million times at Dullsville’s cemetery, feeling as comfortable as if it were my own home. Tonight, though, I realized I’d perhaps made the biggest mistake of my life. Alexander had been right when he told me to stay outside the cemetery’s gates. If Jagger was lurking in the shadows, he could easily sink his fangs into me before my true love had a chance to realize I was no longer standing by the graveyard’s entrance.
My heart began to throb. My blood pressure soared.
I did have some mace, but I wasn’t sure it would work against teen vampires.
I stuck my hand in my purse and clutched the container of garlic powder in my sweaty fingers and tiptoed through the tombstones.
“Alexander?” I whispered.