The only person in school who didn’t treat me like a leper was Ego. He sat with me every day at lunch and when he saw me in the halls would come over and walk with me.
“You don’t have to do this,” I told him one day at lunch when I noticed some of the nasty looks the kids at other tables were giving him. “I’m moving away soon.”
“I wonder why.” He made a hideous face at a cluster of scowling girls passing by us. “I heard your golden-armed brother is none too happy about it.”
“Gray is never happy, period.” He still hadn’t talked to me at home, and the few times I’d tried to speak with him he’d simply turned and walked away. “My point is, you’re going to have to live here after I’m gone. You shouldn’t make yourself a bunch of enemies just so I don’t have to sit by myself.”
“I know Barb told you that I was dumped here like garbage when I was a baby,” Ego said. “It’s okay; she tells everybody. The people here have taken care of me, but they’ve never cared about me or how I feel. No one has ever tried to find my birth parents and ask them why they left me behind. I’m just a stray they’re going to feed until I’m old enough to hit the road.”
I’d never heard him talk this way. “But your foster parents care about you.”
“Larry’s not a bad guy. Marcia hates me. She’s already told me, the day I turn eighteen, and they can’t collect anymore checks for me?” He kicked the table. “Out I go.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve been saving every paycheck I’ve made for the last three years. I’ve got ten thousand dollars in the bank, and I’ll have fifteen thousand more by the time I graduate.” He seemed pleased by my shocked expression. “I’m going to move to Texas, get my own place, and open a landscaping business. I’ll cut lawns during the day, go to school at night, and on weekends I’m going down to Mexico and see if I can find my mom and dad.”
“You are the smartest kid in this school.” My sympathy became a mixture of admiration and envy. “But how are you going to find your birth parents?”
“Internet records,” he told me. “My parents’ first names aren’t all that common, so that gives me an edge. Right now I’m searching through all the migrant worker sites to see if they’ve registered and are still working in the U.S. Haven’t found anything yet, but I’m going to keep trying.”
I hadn’t thought of using a computer to learn more about my mother’s family. “Can you run a search for information on a couple who lived in Virginia back in the eighties? They’re my grandparents, and I don’t know anything about them.”
“Sure. What’s the name?”
I wrote it down for him. “I know they’re both Dutch, and they had a horse farm. That’s about it.”
“Fanelsen is definitely an uncommon name, so that helps.” He folded up the note and stuck it in his pocket. “I’ll run a search tonight and print out whatever I can find. Don’t thank me yet,” he said when I started to do just that. “Grandparents are usually old people. They might have sold their farm and retired, or went back overseas, or even passed away.”
“I won’t get my hopes up,” I promised.
Ego looked past me. “Uh-oh. We’ve got paparazzi at two o’clock.”
I followed his gaze and saw the Goth girl I’d talked to at Gray’s tryouts; she had a camera aimed at us. “Does she like you?”
Ego gave me an ironic look. “Cat, she’s wearing death camouflage and a guy haircut. She probably likes you.”
Kari put her camera away and then strolled over to our table. “Since you caught me, I thought I’d ward off a summons to the dean’s office and explain. I think you two make such a cute couple that I was overwhelmed by warm fuzzies and had to capture the moment for posterity.”
“Try again,” I told her drily.
“I’m a hired gun,” she said bluntly. “I’m getting paid a pittance to take pics of you for the Lost Ledger.”
Ego laughed, but I was still mystified. “I beg your pardon?”
“The Ledger’s kind of an underground subversive newswire thing,” Kari said. “It’s passed around school in unmarked notebooks every week. Whoever gets one of the notebooks reads the stories in it, adds their own, and then drops it in someone else’s locker or backpack when they’re not looking.”
“You know who writes the Ledger?” Ego asked.
“Wish I did,” Kari said. “I love the guy. I’d have his babies. But no, I just get an envelope in my locker with the pittance and instructions. I leave the photos I take in a certain book at the media center. It’s all very anonymous.”
“But why have an underground notebook newswire or whatever it is?” I asked. “And why does it have to be anonymous?”
She grinned. “First, because a lot of creepy things happen in this town that don’t make it into the official media sources.”
I wondered what Kari would think if I told her that the wealthiest, most important family in town were not human. She’d probably agree.
“Second,” she continued, “our benevolent dictator, I mean, the school principal, has sworn that when he finds out who started the Ledger, they’re going to be expelled. Thanks for the warm fuzzies and all.” She sauntered off.
“Ego,” I said, watching her leave, “why does the Ledger need pictures of us?”
He buried his face in his arms. “You really want me to tell you.”
“I really do.”
“It’s not me, it’s you,” he said. “You’re the cover story this week.”
“What’s this story about?” When he didn’t answer, I glared at him. “Ego. Tell me.”
“The story’s about the incident you had at the zoo,” he admitted. “The headline is, Who Wants to Kill Cat Youngblood? ”
I saw Ego in the halls the next day a few times, but he would only produce a painful smile and abruptly change direction. He also didn’t show up at lunch. Since he was the last friend I had left, I wasn’t going to let him dodge me without an explanation.
I knew his schedule, and asked my last period teacher if I could leave a few minutes early to go and make an appointment in Guidance. She couldn’t write the pass fast enough. I then went and waited outside Ego’s classroom until the bell rang, and he filed out with the other kids.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I said, grabbing his arm when he tried to dart off. “We need to talk.” I hauled him over to a quiet corner behind the stairwell. “Who told you to stay away from me? Was it your foster parents, or the Ravens?”
“No one told me to do anything.” He dug some folded papers out of his pocket and shoved them at me. “Here’s the stuff I found out about your grandparents. I gotta go.”
I yanked him back by his collar. “Is it Jesse? Have you heard something?”
“Cat, you don’t want … ah, here.” He took the papers back from me and unfolded them. “Your grandparents aren’t Dutch, they’re Americans. Your grandfather’s ancestors came here from Amsterdam in the nineteenth century. And it turns out that they’re a big deal. Millionaires. The family made their fortune breeding hunting horses, and now they breed race horses. You’re an heiress. Congratulations.”
“This is why you’ve been ducking me all day?” I didn’t believe him.
He gave me a resentful glare. “Fine. When the first Fanelsens came over here, they changed their name. The government probably made them do it, considering. It’s kind of the same, but it’s … ah, come on, Cat. You don’t want to hear this.”
I rolled my hand.
“It’s all in here.” He took out another bunch of papers but these he didn’t give to me. “Your grandfather’s name was originally Van Helsing.”
“Van Helsing.” I blinked. “As in—”
“Professor Van Helsing, the vampire hunter. The guy who tried to kill Dracula.” He flinched as I ripped the papers from his hand. “I swear to God, I’m not making it up.”
“I didn’t say you were.” I shuffled through the papers, skimming through them rapidly. “This i
s wrong. Dracula was a work of fiction. The author invented the characters. They weren’t real.”
“Actually they were based on real people. Dracula was modeled after Vlad the Impaler.” He tried to smile. “Stoker just never bothered to change the name of the guy he used for the vampire hunter.”
“It has to be a coincidence.” I found the printout with the ship’s manifest. In 1875, Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Van Helsing had traveled to America. Another page was a copy of a newspaper article written about my grandparents and how they had been breeding horses since my grandfather’s ancestors, the Van Helsings, had immigrated to the states. “This doesn’t prove anything.”
He took the papers from me and sorted through them until he found one and handed it back. “This does. It’s a research paper written by a literary professor who spent thirty years researching Bram Stoker’s inspirations for the novel. He discovered that Stoker and the real Van Helsing met a few times in England. In an interview one of Stoker’s friends claimed Van Helsing gave the author details about vampires and how they could be killed. It’s all there.”
I read everything twice while Ego waited. The connections were tenuous, but he was right, they were there. My mother’s family had been vampire hunters, and guessing from what she’d written in her letters to my father, were still hunting them. I was Abraham Van Helsing’s direct descendent.
Abraham Van Helsing. AVH. The same initials stamped on the trunk filled with vampire books and vampire sketches and vampire-killing weapons.
“I appreciate this, Ego.” I folded the papers and put them in my backpack. “Are you going to tell anyone about this?”
“Who would believe me, besides that weird chick Kari?” He ducked his head. “I wasn’t going to tell you. I was going to lie and say I didn’t find anything. But I know what it’s like to have family you’ve never met.” He gave me a hopeful look. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“No.” I reached over and kissed his forehead. “But I need one more favor.”
His shoulders drooped. “Please, don’t ask me to look up your dad’s family. They’ll turn out to be werewolf slayers or zombie sharpshooters.”
“I need the number to the phone in the main house on Raven Island,” I said. “Jesse told me about it.”
“Yeah, but why? My mother is the only one who will answer it, and she’ll just hang up on you.”
I thought of Jesse’s parents and my brother, and how much all of them had been keeping from us. That was going to stop, tonight. “Not this time.”
Twenty
Trick was letting Grayson bring me home from school again, and when I went out to the student parking lot my brother was waiting in his truck. He didn’t look at me when I climbed in but started the engine and took off.
“Sorry I was late,” I said. “I like to wait until the halls are empty before I leave school. It’s safer for me now that I’ve turned invisible and inaudible. What if I fell down and got trampled in the rush? No one would ever find me.”
He muttered something under his breath.
“What’s that?” I cocked my head. “Trick hates me, everyone at school hates me, and I’ve utterly destroyed the beginning of your brilliant athletic career? I know. Lately I do nothing but marvel at my own capacity for destruction. You’re driving too fast again. That also my fault?”
He slowed down. “You’re my sister.”
“Tragic, isn’t it.” I released a heavy sigh. “Can you disown a sister? We should check into that when we get to California.”
He shook his head. “I don’t hate you.”
“This is the first time you’ve spoken to me in a week,” I pointed out. “Your idea of sibling affection needs some fine-tuning.”
He fell silent for so long I thought conversation time was over. Then he asked, “Why is Trick doing this?”
“Didn’t he tell you?” I beamed at him. “It’s a great reason. We’re moving because we’re not safe here anymore.”
The steering wheel creaked under his hands. “What did you do, Cat?”
I glared at him. “See? We’re back to it’s my fault. Does it matter? We’re packing. We’re leaving. In ten days we’ll be unloading the horses, unpacking the boxes, and registering at a new school. Then in six months we’ll do it again, and again next summer, and again next winter, and—”
Gray hit the brakes, so hard only my seat belt kept me from going face first into the dash. He pulled off onto the side of the road and shut off the engine.
“What is the matter with you?” I demanded.
He turned toward me. “He hasn’t been the same since the night you went on that field trip. He won’t talk to me and I have to know. What did you do?”
Gray never yelled at me, so I just sat there for a minute with my jaw in my lap. “I committed the unspeakable crime of introducing him to my friend Jesse and his parents. He was rude to them and when we got home, he said we were moving. That’s it.” I saw his hands were shaking and all my own anger evaporated. “Grayson? What is it?”
“It wasn’t you. It was me.”
I folded my arms. “Okay, then what did you do?”
Gray turned away, closing his eyes as he put his head back. “I told him about a nightmare I had. In it I saw you standing by silver water, and then something pulled you in. I tried to get to you, Cat, but I was too far away. By the time I reached you, you were gone.”
“Gray, I don’t mean to be insensitive here,” I said gently, “but no one moves out of town because their brother had a bad dream.” He mumbled something, and I leaned closer. “Sorry, what?”
“I said, my dreams come true.” He gave me a defensive look. “They do. I’m not joking.”
I thought of the dream I’d had of Jesse jumping up into my bedroom. “I’m not laughing. When did you have this dream?”
“The same night you were at the zoo. I was reading and I fell asleep. It was so real that when I woke up I was yelling, and he was there shaking me, and … ” He bent over and rested his forehead against the wheel. “I shouldn’t have told him.”
“You’d rather let me drown than move to California?” As soon as he turned his head, I said, “I’m kidding.”
He straightened. “We have to talk to him. We can’t live like this anymore. It’s not just about football. I’m tired of being afraid.”
When we got home we found a note instead of Trick.
“He’s gone into town,” I told my brother as I read the note, “and he won’t be back for a couple hours. We’re supposed to finish our rooms and start packing up the stuff we don’t need out in the barn.”
“I’m taking Flash for a ride.” He stopped by the kitchen door and looked back at me. “We will talk to him tonight, together. We’ll make him listen this time.”
I doubted we could make our older brother bat an eyelash if he didn’t want to, but I wasn’t going to discourage Gray. For once he was on my side. “Sounds good.”
I waited until sunset before I picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed the number Ego had given me. As I listened to the rings I rehearsed what I was going to say in my head. I’d be polite. I’d be honest. And I would talk to Jesse before I hung up the phone.
His foster mother Marcia answered with “What is it now, Diego?”
“Hello,” I said. “I’d like to speak to Paul Raven.”
“Who is this?” Marcia demanded. “How did you get this number from my son?”
“I beat it out of him,” I said, keeping my tone pleasant. “Now would you please go and tell Mr. Raven that Rose Fanelsen’s daughter wants to speak to him.”
For a moment I thought she was going to slam down the phone, but then she said, “Please hold.”
I stayed on hold for a couple of minutes, and then heard the line engage and Paul Raven’s deep voice. “Why are you calling, Miss Youngblood?”
“To talk to you, sir.” He didn’t respond to that. “Obviously you know about my mother’s family, and I’m sure they’re the reaso
n you don’t want me to see your son. But I’ve never ever seen my grandparents. My brothers and I have had no contact with them at all. We would never do anything to Jesse or your family.”
“You cannot help what you are, Miss Youngblood, any more than we can.” His voice softened. “You do not understand the nature of the abilities you’ve inherited. Perhaps you are not yet aware of them.”
“I don’t have the ability to do anything, sir,” I assured him. “Except maybe get into trouble.”
“You and your brothers were bred to do this work, as all of the Van Helsings have been,” he said flatly. “From what Jesse has told us, you and your younger brother are coming into your abilities now. Soon you will understand.”
“We’ve never met the Van Helsings,” I repeated. Was this what Trick was so afraid of? That Gray and I would find out from our grandparents that vampires existed, and our mother’s family hunted them? “They haven’t taught us what they do.”
“These abilities are not taught. Van Helsing children are born with them.” His voice became sympathetic. “Have you never wondered why cats follow you everywhere? Why your brother does so well at a sport that he has never before tried to play?”
The man had been living on an island too long. “Mr. Raven, those aren’t special abilities. Lots of kids like animals and play football.”
“Do those children win every game they play,” he asked, “or stop wild beasts in their tracks?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“No one knows how the Van Helsings acquired their abilities, but they have been hunting and killing vampires for centuries,” he continued. “In every generation there are two who are born to hunt the vampire. A brother and a sister.”
“I have two brothers,” I felt I had to point out.
He ignored that. “When your mother came here with your father, we were still living in the manor house. Rose knew what we were from the moment we met, but like you, she was not afraid. She told us of her family, and how she had left them, and that she would never hurt us. She believed that humans and vampires could live together in peace.” He hesitated. “One night my wife found your brother in the woods. He was drawn to us, as all Van Helsings are. Sarah brought him back to the farm, but when Rose saw her with your brother in her arms, she attacked my wife. If not for your father, she would have killed Sarah. Your parents left Lost Lake the next day.”