Star Style

by Sienna Mercer

  Olivia squealed and gave Ivy a huge hug. ‘We get to be twins on screen! This is amazing.’

  ‘But, Olivia,’ Ivy protested. ‘I can’t act. I’m happier behind the camera.’

  ‘So, why haven’t you told Harker this?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘I tried, but he wouldn’t listen.’ Ivy sighed. ‘The truth is, if I’m not in the movie, then you won’t be either. Harker insists it’s the two of us or nothing.’

  Sink your fangs into these:

  Switched

  Fangtastic!

  Revamped!

  Vampalicious

  Take Two

  Love Bites

  Lucky Break

  With special thanks to Sara O’Connor

  For Mom and Dad, just in case

  My Sister the Vampire: Star Style first published in Great Britain 2011

  by Egmont UK Limited

  239 Kensington High Street

  London W8 6SA

  Copyright © Working Partners Ltd 2011

  Created by Working Partners Limited, London WC1X 9HH

  ISBN 978 1 4052 5700 8

  eISBN 978 1 7803 1065 7

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter One

  I’m not dreaming, Olivia Abbott thought. She ran her fingers over the layers of pink chiffon that stretched out from her waist as she sat in the back of the limousine with her sister. The rhinestones on her pink peep-toe shoes winked at her.

  On the other side of the black dividing screen was a chauffeur with white gloves. There was enough room for ten back here, but her bio-dad, and chaperone for the evening, was sitting up front to let them have some privacy. Olivia was on her way to the biggest event of her whole life. It was like a fairy tale come true – without the wicked stepsisters.

  ‘This is so much fun,’ she squealed to her twin sister, who was sitting across from her, flipping through the song playlists on the limo’s custom sound system.

  Ivy Vega tilted her head to the side, making the black chopsticks holding back her dark hair look like the hands of a clock. ‘You mean, you enjoy wearing beautiful dresses and driving in cars through crowds of paparazzi all desperate to know who you are? How strange!’

  Olivia stuck her tongue out. ‘The dresses, definitely. The car, a little bit, but the photographers . . . not so much,’ she replied. She didn’t want crazed cameramen following her every move; she just wanted to see the first movie she’d ever been in. ‘The main thing is the movie!’

  A few months ago, Olivia had won a small part in The Groves, which starred the two biggest Hollywood actors on the planet: Jackson Caulfield and Jessica Phelps – and this Saturday night was the movie’s nationwide premiere right here in Franklin Grove.

  ‘My sister, the movie star.’ Ivy leaned forwards, holding out her hand like she had a pad of paper. ‘May I have your autograph?’

  Olivia gave an exaggerated toss of her hair and put her nose in the air. ‘I don’t do autographs.’

  Then the two sisters burst into giggles.

  Olivia couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting her autograph. Things like that just don’t happen to normal girls like me, she thought. It still felt a little unreal that she was going to walk down a red carpet.

  ‘Now let’s see what goodies we’ve got in here.’ Ivy lifted a leather armrest, revealing a bottle of sparkling punch and a bowl of cherries. Lifting the bottle out of the built-in chiller, Ivy pointed out the label advertising the film. ‘They don’t miss an opportunity for promotion,’ she said wryly.

  Since the announcement that The Groves would be fast-tracked through production to make a spring release, Franklin Grove had been inundated with advertisements. Even Olivia was beginning to tire of the posters that adorned every billboard and shop window in town with Jackson and Jessica’s smiling faces.

  She looked out of the tinted window to see clusters of people under the streetlights holding up handwritten signs and trying to peer into the cars. The advertising had clearly worked because everyone seemed near hysteria. The limo was two blocks from Franklin Grove’s Picturedrome, where the premiere was taking place, but the car could only creep forwards because of all the crowds.

  ‘Jack-son, Jack-son, Jack-son,’ chanted a group of four girls clustered on the sidewalk wearing matching cowboy boots, just like the ones Jackson wore.

  Olivia’s heart thumped a little quicker. After an embarrassing introduction a few months ago, Jackson Caulfield, mega-star, had actually become her boyfriend. Just thinking about it made her swoon a little. She was dating the biggest teen star on the planet! But it was a total secret to the outside world.

  Jackson’s manager, Amy Teller, had decided that it would upset Jackson’s fans if he had a girlfriend, so the two of them still hadn’t gone public. It wasn’t the biggest secret in Olivia’s life – that was the whole vampires-are-real thing she’d learned when she found out about Ivy’s dietary requirements. But keeping her romance quiet meant that she couldn’t be seen with Jackson as anything other than a friend and fellow actor. Hard, when all she wanted to do was kiss him!

  She looked across the limo at her sister, who was wearing a goth-gorgeous black Chinese dress with red dragons embroidered over it. They looked like complete opposites, but that was just going to make it more fun to walk down the red carpet together. If she couldn’t walk down with Jackson, Ivy was the next best partner.

  ‘You certainly look ready for your debut,’ Ivy said. ‘That dress is amazing.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Olivia replied. ‘But you mean: our red carpet debut. You’re coming with me!’

  ‘No way!’ Ivy leaned back into her seat. ‘I’m putting a jacket over my head and sneaking in the side entrance. Besides, the two of us together would look like a fairy princess and her evil stepmother.’

  ‘Come on, Ivy!’ Olivia protested. ‘I know you don’t like the fuss, but people really won’t be watching us. They’re all waiting for Jessica and Jackson.’

  The limo crept around the corner and suddenly the dark sky was lit up by spotlights, camera flashes and a huge neon sign announcing the premiere of The Groves.

  ‘Pardon me,’ came the driver’s posh voice over the car’s speakers. ‘We shall be arriving shortly.’

  Ivy shook her head. ‘All this glitz and glamour is not my style. This is one twin request too far,’ she said, avoiding Olivia’s eye. ‘Sorry, sis.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Olivia said. ‘You have dressed up as a cheerleader for me. You have worn pink, auditioned for a movie and giggled like your life depended on it for me – why is this any worse?’

  Ivy bit her bottom lip.

  ‘There’s something you aren’t telling me.’ Olivia raised her eyebrows, waiting.

  Ivy leaned forwards and whispered, ‘I was sworn to secrecy.’

  Olivia started to worry. Her sister never kept secrets from her; this had to be big!

  ‘Jackson,’ Ivy began, ‘is going to walk down the red carpet with you, but it was meant to be a surprise.’

  Olivia’s hands flew to her face. ‘Really?’ He must have argued with his manage
r, or he might not have told her about his plans. What about his fans? And the paparazzi? Still, she couldn’t stop herself from bouncing a little in her seat with excitement.

  ‘Really,’ Ivy confirmed, smiling.

  Olivia smiled back, pushing the worries aside. All that didn’t matter. She was going to walk down the red carpet with her boyfriend. No more pretending!

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Olivia whispered back.

  Just then, the limo took a sudden turn, sending Olivia and Ivy sliding into the side of the car.

  ‘Woah,’ said Ivy, her chopsticks clicking against the window.

  ‘Is that supposed to happen?’ Olivia wondered, as they drove away from the movie theatre.

  The black partition that separated the driver from the passengers slid down. Her bio-dad, Mr Vega, looked dashing in his full tuxedo. ‘Sorry, girls,’ he said. ‘Change of plan.’

  ‘Ch-change?’ Olivia stammered. Now that she’d found out what Jackson was planning, she didn’t want anything to change.

  The driver, still keeping his eyes on the road, said, ‘I’m sorry, Miss, but we’ve just had word that Jessica Phelps is mysteriously late. The premiere is being delayed.’

  Olivia groaned. Jessica always used her celebrity status to its full potential. She had a diva tantrum on her first day of filming and demanded all sorts of special treatment. Because she was the star of the movie, the show simply would not go on without her – and she knew it.

  ‘Don’t worry, Olivia,’ Mr Vega said, a sympathetic look on his pale face. ‘The FoodMart is just next door, and the production team has decided to use it as a place for all the stars to wait.’

  ‘OK,’ Olivia said weakly as the partition went back up. But really she wanted to say, ‘Arg!’

  ‘We’re not exactly dressed for grocery shopping,’ Ivy said with a smile.

  Olivia imagined all the actors and their assistants, plus the stressed-out event production crew running up and down the aisles of Franklin Grove’s biggest grocery store in their formal wear.

  ‘It’s going to be completely chaotic,’ Olivia replied. ‘Jessica must be up to something.’

  ‘We can always sneak downstairs if it gets too crazy in the store,’ Ivy said.

  Underneath the regular FoodMart was the BloodMart, where any vamp who was anyone in Franklin Grove went to stock up on all their midnight snacks. Biting people was so last century. You had to know the secret password to get in but Olivia was one of the few humans who had been initiated into the vampire world because she was Ivy’s twin.

  ‘Unless it’s busy down there, too,’ Olivia replied. She remembered the first time she’d gone into the BloodMart. It was just after she’d learned the vampire secret and she had been pretty freaked out by it all. But really, the worst she’d seen anyone get up to down there was a round of chess.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ivy said. ‘Most vamps will be lining the streets with the bunnies to see Jessica Phelps. They’ll want to see their vamp-diva in her full glory.’ If only the world knew that one of their Hollywood A-listers was a vampire who filed the points of her teeth! Most people didn’t believe vampires really existed – or know that normal human beings were jokingly called ‘bunnies’ by the vampire community.

  As they pulled into the parking lot of the FoodMart, Olivia sighed. She hoped Jessica Phelps hadn’t ruined her chance to walk down the red carpet with her boyfriend.

  The FoodMart was jammed with people, like a crowd at a hanging.

  Do they really need all these people to just walk down a carpet? Ivy thought.

  Under the glaring fluorescent lights, she, Olivia and Mr Vega fought their way past the bread section to the baby aisle, where it looked like there was some space.

  ‘Excuse me!’ Ivy said to a burly man clad in black who was blocking her way.

  He was on his phone and didn’t hear her. ‘Red fox underground,’ he was muttering. ‘Underground!’

  ‘Hey!’ said Ivy, poking him with her elbow.

  Burly Man peered down at her and then grunted, shifting the tiniest fraction so she could squeeze by.

  ‘What is going on?’ Olivia wondered, carefully holding up the train of her dress so it wouldn’t get stepped on.

  Ivy looked around. She couldn’t even guess. She only recognised half of the people as movie crew from her time as an extra on the set. Who were all the others? Just as she passed the diaper shelf, she came face-to-face with Sophia Hewitt, her best friend.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ they asked each other at the same time.

  Sophia was wearing a long-sleeved black mini-dress and black-and-white striped pantyhose. Her camera was at the ready in her hands.

  ‘There’s some mysterious, end-of-the-world delay with our female star, and we all have to wait here for her to be ready,’ Olivia explained.

  ‘And I have to say,’ Mr Vega put in, ‘that it all seems a little unorganised.’

  Sophia chuckled and spread her hands to indicate the supermarket. ‘Here lies the answer.’

  ‘Here?’ said Olivia, looking around at the pastel-packaged baby milk.

  ‘Well, underneath here,’ Sophia said.

  The only thing underneath the FoodMart was . . . of course! The BloodMart.

  ‘That is so rude!’ Ivy declared.

  ‘What is?’ asked Olivia, clearly baffled.

  ‘Jessica must have decided she needed a snack from the Blood Mart before facing the cameras,’ Ivy growled, realising that the people she didn’t recognise would be the ones following Jessica around. There was a girl in head-to-toe pink ‘JP’ merchandise and two heavyset men with sunglasses hovering nearby. ‘She’s made hundreds of people wait so she can grab a Vampish Delight or something.’

  Sophia nodded. ‘I’ve been assigned to her press entourage by VAMP magazine and she decided halfway to the Picturedrome that she simply had to stop for a snack. She’s downstairs now, browsing like she has all the time in the world.’

  ‘You’re on official magazine business?’ Mr Vega asked, looking impressed.

  Ivy knew that Sophia had made friends with Georgia Huntingdon, editor of the most popular fashion magazine in the vampire world, earlier this year when the twins were on the cover.

  ‘I’m the new Franklin Grove photo correspondent,’ Sophia said with a proud smile.

  ‘Killer,’ Ivy said.

  ‘With all the celebs in town, it’s keeping me very busy,’ she said, snapping a photo of Ivy and Olivia.

  ‘Stop it!’ Ivy said, batting away the camera gently, but Sophia just grinned.

  ‘You two were in the movie, and you look fantastic. If it gets me a photo credit in VAMP, I’m gonna go for it!’ She snapped a second photo, ignoring Ivy’s protests.

  ‘You were in the movie just as much as me,’ Ivy said. They had been extras in one of the diner scenes – along with the unbearable Charlotte Brown.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not the sister of the newest up-and-coming star,’ Sophia said, winking at Olivia, but she wasn’t paying attention.

  ‘Sophia, have you seen Jackson? Is he here, too?’ Olivia was wringing her hands.

  Sophia nodded. ‘I think he was by the vegetables when I walked past a few minutes ago,’ she said.

  Ivy hoped Jessica’s little food mission hadn’t messed up Jackson’s plans for the red carpet. She thought it was high time that her sister could stop hiding in the shadows.

  ‘Thanks.’ Olivia turned to Mr Vega. ‘Can I go find him?’

  ‘Sure, honey,’ he replied. ‘Just find me before you head out of here.’

  The crowd was starting to thin a little, as Olivia slipped away. Near the butcher’s counter, Ivy saw a short man with his back to her, waving his arms angrily in front of an assistant wearing headphones.

  ‘. . . think she can do this! Non, non!’ he was saying in a heavy French accent.

  Ivy guessed right away who it was: Philippe, the director of the movie. She knew from her time as an extra that no one did grumpy like he did, and he m
ust be livid about Jessica’s little detour.

  ‘Think I should try for a picture?’ Sophia said.

  ‘If you want to get your hand bitten off,’ Ivy replied. ‘He looks worse than usual.’

  ‘Ivy! Sophia!’ A trim woman in a tailored black pantsuit waved at them from in front of the fish display.

  ‘It’s Lillian,’ Sophia said, waving back.

  ‘Come on.’ Ivy grabbed her dad’s hand and pulled him over. ‘Dad, this is Lillian Margolis. She was the assistant director on The Groves.’

  ‘Second assistant director, actually,’ Lillian said, extending her slender hand. She was wearing a simple but elegant silver bracelet. Her usually messy black hair had been tamed into a classy bun, held back by a pretty onyx hair clip. She looked like Audrey Heppingburn in the classic vampire flick Breakfast of Tiffanies.

  ‘How do you do?’ Mr Vega asked, with a little bow. Two pink spots appeared on his usually pale cheeks as he took Lillian’s hand in his. ‘A pleasure to meet you,’ he murmured. ‘Please call me Charles.’

  ‘Charles,’ she said gracefully, smiling a little. ‘Lovely to meet you, too.’

  She gave Ivy and Sophia each a hug then turned back to Mr Vega. ‘You have two very talented daughters, Charles. I hope Olivia enjoys the final product tonight.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we all will,’ Mr Vega replied, smiling. ‘Uh . . . How long have you been in the movie business?’

  ‘That’s dangerously close to asking a lady her age.’ Lillian waggled her finger at him, pretending to tell him off.

  ‘No, no,’ Mr Vega looked sheepish. ‘I meant –’

  Lillian cut him off cheerfully. ‘Let’s say that I’ve worked on fifteen films and counting. And what do you do?’

  ‘He’s an interior designer,’ Ivy boasted. ‘If you like things dark and velvet, he’s your guy.’

  ‘Really?’ Lillian raised her eyebrows. ‘My home in LA actually needs refurbishing.’

  ‘Ooh, LA!’ cooed Sophia.

  ‘I love LA,’ Mr Vega said brightly, taking Ivy by surprise. He had only been there once, and with all the sunshine, it wasn’t exactly a vamp-friendly place.