by Mimi McCoy
Nothing, Casey thought. Or nothing bad, anyway. And instead of pulling her hand away, she squeezed back. Then she laughed.
“When you said you’d come by tomorrow, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she joked.
But Erik didn’t laugh. He leaned toward Casey with a worried expression. “Do you think she did it?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Millie, I mean. Do you think she could have started the fire?”
Casey shook her head. “No, definitely not.”
“How can you be sure?” asked Erik. “After the other things that happened. How do you know she didn’t do this, too?”
Casey thought of Millie’s voice, clear and firm, urging her, Get up! Millie had been the one to warn her that the fire had started. In fact, Casey realized, she had been warning her all along.
“She was trying to protect us,” she said, thinking aloud. As she said it, she knew that it was true. “She knew what was going to happen, and she was trying to scare us out of the house, so no one got hurt. Only it didn’t work.”
She was like my guardian angel, Casey thought.
Erik’s mother came over to them. She held one of the twins, who was asleep on her shoulder.
“You poor thing. You look exhausted,” she said to Casey. “Why don’t you all come over to our house and get some sleep?” she added, turning to Casey’s parents. “Once you’re rested, you can use the phone to make some calls.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you,” Casey’s mother replied. “We’ll need to find a hotel to stay in until we can make arrangements with our subletters back in New York.”
Back in New York. Casey felt a sudden pang. Of course they would be going back to New York, since they no longer had a house here. Why hadn’t that occurred to her until this moment?
Suddenly, Casey wasn’t ready to leave Stillness. Who knew if she would ever come back? And what if she never saw Erik again?
She looked into his face and realized he was thinking the same thing.
Calm down, Casey told herself. You’re going to be fine. After all, she had just escaped a fire, jumped from a second-floor window, and held hands with a boy right in front of everyone. In the last twelve hours, Casey had surprised herself more than she ever had in her entire life. It seemed like this new obstacle was probably something that she could deal with.
The sun was just starting to rise as Casey’s parents helped her into the backseat of the car. Casey rolled down the window and leaned out, looking back at the house one last time. She was hoping she would see some sign of Millie.
But there was nothing. In the cold, morning light, the remains of the house looked utterly empty. The house was gone, and, Casey thought, so was Millie.
“Thank you,” she whispered, anyway, just in case.
Casey watched the house until they turned around the bend and it disappeared from sight. Then she turned to face forward, ready for whatever came next.
POISON APPLE BOOKS
The Dead End by Mimi McCoy
This Totally Bites! by Ruth Ames
Miss Fortune by Brandi Dougherty
BITE INTO THE NEXT POISON APPLE, IF YOU DARE …
HERE’S A SPINE-TINGLING SNEAK PEEK!
This Totally Bites! by Ruth Ames.
Over a delicious dinner of perfectly cooked hamburgers, Great-aunt Margo talked about her hometown in Romania. A small village with a funny name, it was nestled deep in the Carpathian Mountains, and it sounded beautiful. Margo described lush green forests, clear blue streams, narrow cobblestone streets, and ancient castles.
As she spoke — and Mom chimed in with memories of photographs her parents had shown her — I glanced out the window at the Manhattan skyline. Though I loved the tall buildings and concrete sidewalks of New York City, I liked the idea of such a rural, quaint place … the place my ancestors had lived! Suddenly, I realized that Great-aunt Margo had given me a great starting point for my social studies project.
Excited, I helped with the dishes and excused myself for the night. Then I headed into my room, grabbed my laptop, and sat cross-legged on my bed.
I opened Google, then typed in the name of my family’s Romanian village, grateful for the Did you mean? feature after I’d misspelled it twice. Then I clicked on the Wikipedia page; it showed a pretty picture of the forests Great-aunt Margo had talked about, and gave the basic facts: population, map coordinates, and weather. Then, as I skimmed the page, I spotted a sentence that made my jaw drop.
Located in the region once known as Transylvania, this small town is still home to many vampire legends.
I sat back, my pulse racing. Transylvania? As in, Count Dracula territory? I had no idea that my family came from there. Intrigued, I started to read more, but then my IM pinged. It was Gabby.
Bad news! she’d written. Dentist said I have to get braces!
I was still preoccupied by the whole Transylvania thing, but I tried to turn my attention to my best friend.
That totally bites! I typed back, hoping to make her smile.
Her response popped up immediately: Am so not LOL-ing. Of course u can joke about it, Em. U have perfect teeth!
I shook my head. Though my dentist had recently declared that I wouldn’t need braces (I’d celebrated with a candy feast that had resulted in three cavities), my teeth were far from perfect. I rose up on my knees so I was facing the mirror above my dresser, and I opened my mouth in an exaggerated smile. There they were, in the corners of my mouth — my super-embarrassing, super-pointy teeth. My dentist called them “incisors” and had even remarked that mine were sharper than most. I knew he was being nice by not calling them what they really were: fangs.
I heard another ping! and glanced back at my computer.
And ur “fangs” don’t count! Gabby had written.
She seemed upset, so I decided to call her. By the time we said good-bye, it was late, so I finished the Edgar Allan Poe story I had to read for English, brushed my imperfect teeth, changed into my pj’s, and crawled into bed.
As usual, I crawled into bed but I couldn’t sleep.
First, I flipped onto my side, then my belly, then my back. Passing headlights from cars threw strange shapes onto my ceiling. The falling raindrops sounded like fingertips tapping against my window-pane. Then I remembered the Wikipedia page I’d stopped reading, and I sat up.
Without turning on the light, I eased out of bed and walked over to my desk. Sinking into my chair, I opened my laptop, and went back to where I had left off:
Located in the region once known as Transylvania, this small town is still home to many vampire legends. one such legend is about a certain breed of vampires who can shape-shift into bats, which then feast upon human and animal blood. In ancient times, villagers became so fearful that they hung knobs of garlic from their doorways, as it was said that the scent warded off the fanged creatures.
BANG!
The loud sound made me jump up so fast that I almost knocked over my chair. The bang hadn’t been a clap of thunder, or one of the many sirens I was used to hearing at all hours. It hadn’t even come from outside. It had come from right next door.
From the guest room.
Maybe Great-aunt Margo, like me, had trouble sleeping. Maybe she was unpacking, and the two of us could have a midnight snack. Maybe we could even discuss the vampire legends of her town. I was curious to learn more. For someone who enjoyed horror stories, I knew very little about vampires.
I tiptoed into the hallway. A window was open somewhere in the apartment, and I shivered in my thin pajamas. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that the door to the guest room was ajar.
Moving as silently as possible, I crept over and paused on the threshold. The long, narrow room was blanketed in darkness, and the one window at its far end was open. The damp breeze lifted the gauzy white curtains, making them dance like restless ghosts. Piles of fancy-looking luggage were in the center of the room, and the scent of Great-aunt Margo’s perfume filled the air. But Margo h
erself was nowhere to be found. The bed was still neatly made, and the room was empty.
Except for the cages and cages full of bats.
Stuffed bats, I reminded myself as I stepped inside.
I was still getting used to the fact that Great-aunt Margo was Romania’s leading expert on vampire bats. She seemed like someone who’d have a more glamorous job. I held my breath, spooked by the sight of the dark, silent creatures. They all hung upside down from the bars of the cages, their leathery wings tucked against their furry bodies and their beady eyes shut tight. Like they’re sleeping, I thought, shuddering.
Great-aunt Margo was even weirder than I’d thought! Did she put her stuffed bats into these poses every night, as if they were her dolls or pets or something? And where was she? She couldn’t have gone outside in the rain. Was she in the kitchen?
Before I could turn to leave the room, lightning flashed outside, and I gave a start. For a second, the bat cage nearest me was lit up, and I saw that the cage door was swinging wide open. That must have been the bang I’d heard earlier: the wind blowing open the cage. I leaned over to close the small door.
Suddenly, one of the bats inside opened its eyes.
Its tiny, bright red eyes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi McCoy is the author of the Candy Apple books The Accidental Cheerleader, The Babysitting Wars, and Star-Crossed. She lives in San Francisco, CA, in a house with no ghosts. As far as she knows…
Copyright
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 written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Copyright © 2010 by Mimi McCoy.
Cover art by Liz Adams
Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, POISON APPLE, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First printing, May 2010
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e-ISBN: 978-0-545-35698-5
