The bell rang and Trevor stepped into his classroom. “I get to pick the dance,” he said, gloating.
I held up my hand, revealing my fingers had been crossed the whole time I’d made the promise.
Instead of being angry, Trevor cracked a smile. He loved our game. And I knew this time he’d come back playing even stronger.
“Anyone home?” I called out when I arrived home from school.
The house was silent.
“Billy Boy?” I yelled as I roamed through the kitchen and family room. Both areas were empty. I opened the basement door. The light was switched off, but I hollered down anyway. “Billy—are you here?”
I ran up to Billy Boy’s room and knocked on his door.
He didn’t respond. “Nerd Boy—are you in there?”
When I failed to hear a response from calling him his least favorite name, I figured the nerd lab was clear.
Fortunately, my brother didn’t have Henry’s Mr. Gadget security system and was unable to lock his door from the outside. I gently turned the knob and opened the door.
I began my search for Valentine’s gravestone etchings, hoping they would provide a clue to his motives in Dullsville. I quietly scoured my brother’s dresser drawers, but all I found were tons of white socks and folded T-shirts. I checked under his bed and pulled out a baseball bat, a chessboard, and an unopened model spaceship, but no gravestone etchings.
I glanced at Billy Boy’s Star Wars alarm clock. I didn’t have much longer until he would arrive home. I rummaged through his desk drawers, filled with pens, computer games, and software.
I turned on his computer. I tried to access his history page to find out what he and Valentine had searched for, but I couldn’t log on. I didn’t know Billy Boy’s password. If I were Billy Boy, what would my password be?
I typed in “E=MC2” and pressed the RETURN key.
Nothing.
I typed “Maytheforcebewithyou” and clicked on ENTER.
Denied.
Knowing my brother, he probably switched his password every week. Frustrated, I typed in “Billy Boy” and hit RETURN.
Suddenly the computer signed on. Out of all the passwords—I never dreamed my brother would use the nickname I called him. For a moment, I felt flattered.
Then I heard the front door open and my brother start up the staircase. I glanced at Billy Boy’s half-open bedroom door. If I bolted now, he might see me race out of the room. If Billy Boy found out I’d been searching his room, I’d be grounded until prom was over. I switched off his computer, but it seemed like forever until it logged off.
“Come on,” I anxiously mumbled.
I could hear him coming up the stairs and down the hallway.
Finally the screen went blank.
I flew over to his closet, quietly slid open the door enough for me to squeeze through, and shut it behind me. Once I was safely inside, I cracked it open slightly.
I saw my brother enter his room.
I sandwiched myself between the wall and his coats. His jackets smelled like dirty air from outside, which was odd because Billy Boy spent most of his time inside his room like a hermit or at Henry’s indoor laboratory.
I could hear Billy Boy turn on his computer.
Underneath a pair of shoes in front of me, I saw a box marked PROJECT VAMPIRE.
I could hear the pinging sounds of Billy Boy instant messaging.
I quietly opened the plastic case. VAMPIRE’S NOURISHMENT was marked on a Ziploc bag. Inside were the four amulets. Another see-through bag was marked VAMPIRE’S HOME. Inside were two folded gravestone etchings of people’s names I didn’t recognize. The last bag was marked VAMPIRE. I opened it to find the back side of a three-by-five photo. I turned it over—it was a picture of me.
When I heard my brother leave his bedroom, I poked my head out the sliding door. Billy Boy must be heading downstairs for a snack, I thought. I had just a moment to make my escape. I climbed out of the closet and slid the door shut behind me.
I raced through his room and out the door.
Wham! I plowed into my brother head-on.
“What are you doing in my room?” he asked, stunned from our collision.
“What are you doing in the hallway?” I asked, rubbing my bruised arm.
“You were snooping around! What were you looking for?”
“I was doing a project for school and I needed your school picture. It’s called Project Nerd.”
I disappeared into my room and left my confused brother standing in the hallway.
“Valentine is making his presence known,” I told Alexander, who was waiting for me by the Mansion’s gate shortly after sunset.
“What do you mean?” he asked, his dark eyes concerned.
“He was at Hatsy’s last night.”
“You saw him?”
“No, it was all over school. Something strange happened. I guess Trevor still pines for Luna, because he asked Valentine how she was doing.”
“What’s weird about that?”
Men, I wanted to say. Even after Luna double-crossed Trevor at the Graveyard Gala, her ghost white fairy image was still emblazoned in my nemesis’s heart.
“It’s weird,” I continued, “because Valentine appeared confused. Like Valentine didn’t know, himself.”
“That is strange.”
“It gets more bizarre. Valentine grabbed Trevor’s neck like he grabbed mine in the cave.”
“In the diner? That’s really weird.”
“I know…”
“Valentine is thirsting for something,” Alexander said, “and if he’s becoming this brazen, who knows what he’ll do next.”
“I’m not sure what he’s trying to find out, but one thing is certain—he’s searching for it in Henry’s tree house, and through me, Billy Boy, and now Trevor.”
By the time Alexander and I arrived at the Oakley Park fountain, where Billy Boy had told me he’d be meeting Henry and Valentine, the boys were no longer there.
“We don’t even have time to make a wish,” I said, referring to the lit fountain, where a couple was throwing in a few pennies.
“Where could they be? They couldn’t have gone too far.”
Alexander led me by the hand and we hurried over to find the swings empty of any mortals, much less middle schoolers.
“There’s a stage down there,” I said, pointing to an outdoor domed amphitheater. “That’s where Luna was waiting for me. They might be hanging out there.”
Alexander and I hurried down the grassy hill and hopped over the few small bushes lining the sides of the amphitheater, then darted through the aisles of seats. The darkened stage, barely illuminated by the streetlight, was quiet and appeared empty as we headed around the orchestra pit. Alexander climbed onstage, then offered his hand and pulled me up.
We each searched a wing of the stage. All I found were cluttered chairs and music stands.
By the look on Alexander’s face when he met me center stage, he hadn’t found anything more than orchestra props on his side.
“We can try the rec center,” I suggested.
Alexander nodded. “Point the way.”
This time I took my boyfriend’s hand and anxiously hurried back through the theater aisles and up a small hill.
We jogged around the fenced-in tennis courts and adjacent hoopless basketball courts, which had been worn down by years of players’ squeaking sneakers. Oakley Park’s rec center had seen better days. When Becky and I were younger, we spent many summer breaks hanging by the pool, Becky nursing her tan while I sequestered myself underneath a Hello Batty visor and an oversized umbrella. Now that many Dullsvillians belonged to Dullsville’s new country club or the Y, the rec center had deteriorated.
The grungy dirt brown metal doors were locked and the handles were secured with padlocked chains. I leaned my head against the dusty windows. The few offices had their shades pulled closed. I peered into the game room. Several pool tables were still in good shape, while the
Ping-Pong table was missing a net.
We heard voices.
“What’s that?” I asked, pulling on Alexander’s sleeve.
He put his index finger in front of his lips.
The voices seemed to be coming from the pool area.
Alexander crept past the pool gate and empty kiddie pool, now littered with leaves and debris, while I tiptoed close behind him. Who knew who we’d find hanging out at a park after hours.
The crispiest French fries and the best hamburgers in town came right from this snack bar—where now shreds of red and white paint clung for dear life to the rusty metal roof, begging for a paint job when the pool reopened for summer break.
Then I noticed a coffin-shaped skateboard, emblazoned with a white skull and crossbones, and Henry’s and Billy Boy’s bikes lying near what a vampire might view as a huge vacant grave—Oakley Park’s empty swimming pool.
I raced over to the edge of the shallow end and peered into the drained pool with its chipping ocean blue paint.
In the deep end, Henry, Billy Boy, and Valentine were sitting in a circle facing one another, a lit antique candelabra next to them casting light on their faces.
The boys didn’t even notice that Alexander and I were standing only a few yards behind where the diving board used to be. As if in a trance, the nerd-mates seemed fixated on Valentine.
It was then I noticed each boy had pricked his finger with a pin, a bottle of alcohol perched on the pool’s edge.
“I really don’t think we should do this,” my brother said nervously.
“C’mon, it’ll be okay,” Valentine persuaded.
“Billy’s right,” Henry added.
“Fine,” Valentine said. “But think of this. Neither one of you has brothers, and mine has deserted me. This way we’ll all be brothers—blood brothers.”
Billy Boy and Henry looked at each other. They seemed to be mesmerized by that idea.
“Blood brothers,” Billy repeated.
“For now,” Henry said.
“Forever,” Billy Boy said.
“For eternity.”
“Over my dead body!” I climbed down the shaky silver pool ladder and dropped to the blue cement pool floor.
Alexander took off around the pool deck.
As I raced toward them, I could see the innocent mortals’ bloodstained fingers within inches of touching a vampire’s. I didn’t know the repercussions of their actions, but I assumed they wouldn’t be good. I jumped in between them.
“No!” Valentine screamed. “No!”
Valentine caught Alexander’s stern glare and started to run up the ascending pool floor to the shallow end, but Alexander grabbed him by the shirtsleeve, stopping the fleeing vampire.
“What’s going on?” Billy Boy asked, as if coming out of a daze.
“What are you doing here?” Henry asked me.
“I should be asking you that!” I yelled in a voice that reminded me of my mother’s. “Both of you go wash your hands,” I ordered. “Make sure you clean them with alcohol, too.”
Valentine breathed heavily. “I was so close,” he said, wiping his white bangs away from his fierce green eyes.
“What are you trying to do to my brother?” I argued. “What do you mean Jagger deserted you?”
Valentine balled his fists. “Where are Jagger and Luna?” he demanded.
“They’re in Romania,” I said.
“You are wrong,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“They haven’t returned. And I know you had something to do with it,” he said directly to me.
“Raven had nothing to do with it,” Alexander said in my defense. “Any grudge your family has is with me.”
“Do you know who you’re protecting?” Valentine argued. “I knew from the moment I laid my hand on her in the cave—Raven is not ready to turn her mortal life over to you.”
Alexander turned to me. His dreamy chocolate eyes turned sad and lonely.
“I never said that,” I disputed.
“But you thought it,” Valentine said with a cunning grin.
I knew Valentine’s piercing comments were like a stake through my boyfriend’s heart. Alexander stepped away from me as if registering a moment of utter isolation.
My eyes began to well. “Alexander—”
As Alexander looked at me, Valentine, who was standing on the shallower end, reached for Alexander’s neck. I could see his pale fingers clench tightly around my boyfriend’s throat.
“Alexander!” I screamed, running toward him.
Valentine closed his eyes as if channeling Alexander’s soul into his pale palm.
Alexander’s midnight eyes turned red. He spun around and knocked Valentine’s hand away. The force sent Valentine stumbling back until he wiped out on the pool floor.
“What are you guys doing to Valentine?” Billy Boy asked from behind me, his voice distressed.
Alexander and I turned to see Billy Boy and Henry standing several feet above us at the pool’s edge, shocked.
“Valentine was trying to hurt us,” I said.
We turned back to Valentine, who was climbing up the pool ladder. He hopped on his coffin-shaped skateboard and disappeared into the darkness.
13
Grim Grounding
Alexander and I didn’t even have time to discuss the event at the pool. We immediately whisked the nerd-mates into the car and chaperoned them safely home. Once again Valentine had threatened my brother’s safety and fled into the night. I wasn’t sure when he’d reappear with another plan of revenge.
When Billy Boy and I returned home, I was forced to spill my guts to my parents about my brother’s injurious actions. Valentine, like his older brother, Jagger, had a charm that was magnetic, if not hypnotic. The nerd-mates had fallen under the tween vampire’s bewitching spell. The only way I could impede their adoration was by involving Sarah and Paul Madison.
“You did what?” my mother hollered at Billy Boy when I told her about the blood brothers ceremony. “Do you know how dangerous it is to stick a needle in your finger?”
“We used alcohol,” Billy Boy protested.
“But you deliberately tried to mix your blood with your friends’ blood,” my mother argued. “I thought you were smarter than that.”
“I remember back in my day, it was common for boys to become blood brothers,” my dad confessed. “Like a rite of passage. However, times have changed, Billy. Now, what seemed like a harmless ritual can be very unhealthy, if not fatal.”
“We didn’t even touch each other,” Billy Boy whined. “Raven jumped in between us.”
My mother appeared surprised, then relieved.
“Raven has pierced every inch of her earlobe and she never gets in trouble,” my brother argued.
“I take offense to that. I’m in trouble all the time!” I defended myself proudly.
“I don’t understand why I’m getting all the heat,” Billy Boy said. “Alexander pushed Valentine.”
“He did what?” my dad asked.
“Valentine tried to choke Alexander,” I explained. “Alexander pushed his hand away, that’s all.”
“Maybe it’s best you and Valentine take a break from each other for a few days,” my dad warned.
“You can’t do that! He’s my best friend!” Billy Boy was enraged. He mumbled something unintelligible and stormed upstairs.
I felt this tense situation was going to get worse before it would ever get better.
Billy Boy’s grounding meant that for the next week he would be safe from Valentine.
However, the next day I stewed in class. Valentine was pursuing more than my brother’s thoughts in Dullsville’s rec center pool. In addition, Valentine confronted Alexander head-on, not only declaring I was inadequate for my vampire boyfriend, but also trying to read his soul. With every sunset, Valentine was becoming more confrontational, as if he were a grizzly bear hunting for food in a family’s backyard.
 
; I couldn’t shake the image of Valentine’s hand on my boyfriend’s neck. I wondered what Alexander’s thoughts were. Was he imagining breaking up with me, now that he thought I was a coward? I wondered if he’d regretted his decision not to be with Luna.
Instead of longing for the sunset, I was dreading it. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever be able to face my vampire-mate.
At lunch, once again I was desperate to tell Becky everything.
“Why are you so long in the face?” she asked. “Prom is only a few days away.”
I wanted to tell her my dilemma. Explain how Alexander had left Luna at their covenant ceremony because he didn’t want to take her into the Underworld unloved. Reveal then that Jagger, who followed Alexander to America to seek revenge, met me in Hipsterville and followed me back to my hometown. And now Alexander and I were faced with Jagger and Luna’s younger brother, Valentine, who was seeking revenge on behalf of the Maxwell clan. All the while, I was struggling with a big decision: whether to someday face my own mortality—or immortality—by bonding with my vampire-mate for eternity.
I was dying to spell out for my best friend how easy she had it, dating a mortal. Nothing more to decide at the end of the day than what music to download or what television show to watch.
“If I told you something,” I began, “and I made you promise not to tell anyone…not even your family or Matt, could you do it?”
Instead of Becky eagerly nodding her head, she bit her red chipped fingernail and thought. And thought. And thought.
“This isn’t multiple choice. It’s a simple yes or no!” I snapped.
“Well, it’s more complicated than that.”
“How complicated can it be? You can either keep a secret or you can’t.”
“I’m just not sure.”
“I’m your best friend. You should keep a secret just because I asked you.”
“I know…you’re right, but—”
“I’ve told you a million things before and it was never an issue.”
“That was before,” she admitted.
“Before what?”
“Before Matt came into my life. I don’t think it’s healthy to keep secrets from him.”