At that, Hudson’s face clouded over. “Wait! Something fishy is going on with that invitation. And what do you think two angry purebloods are capable of, if they gang up together against one hybrid?” he asked sternly. “Who do you suppose would win that one?”
Now Lexie looked fearful. “Maybe you shouldn’t go, Maddy. You’ve taken this too far.”
“Oh, stop worrying. Later, bunions.” Maddy adopted an air of ease as she pulled on her coat and sunglasses, then tucked her inhaler, flashlight, and notepad into her pocket.
Hudson caught up to her at the front door. “I’ll stay in the family room. So if you need to echolocate, you know where to bounce an S.O.S.” He looked grave. “If you need me,” he whispered, “I’ll be right over. I’ll protect you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Although Maddy was quietly relieved to hear her brother’s courageous words. Crudson was turning out to be not so cruddy, after all.
She made herself think all-brave thoughts as she approached the unfriendly lion door knockers. She decided on the doorbell instead.
Snooks appeared with a smooth bow and crooked grin. “Welcome, invited guest.” As the word “invited” left his lips, the servant’s curse blew off as soft as a puff on a summer dandelion. Maddy strolled easily through the front door.
“The Master is napping. Madam is indoor sledding,” informed Snooks. “I’m accompanying her with this cheerful piece of music called ‘Moonlight Sonata.’” He moved off to the grand piano and began to play. Beautiful music filled air.
“Darling, look up…”
And Maddy looked up.
At the top of the stairs, Nicola was kneeling on a heavy silver serving tray. “Wheeeeeeee!” she squealed, pushing off. Maddy watched in fascination as Nicola first bounced, then skimmed down the stairs headfirst at an alarming bobsleigh speed, leaning into the curve of the banister, all the way to the bottom where, with a final whoosh, she shot past the first step, catching air, and then—
Bang! Both Krik and tray hit the floor and skidded across to stop at Maddy’s boots.
“Oh, exquisite fun! I rate myself a nine point six!” Nicola applauded herself. Then she stood and brushed off and picked up the tray, racing all the way back up the steps. She rubbed it down with a soft cloth. “Shined for speed. Your turn, Maddy. I dare you.”
Maddy hesitated. Obviously, it wasn’t the speed that bothered her. It just seemed like such a long, steep, twisty ride from top to bottom. She couldn’t rely on Hudson’s wings or Lexie’s strength, only her own sneakiness, which didn’t count for much in speed-and-strength moments.
But a dare was a dare. Maddy drew a breath and galloped up to meet Nicola on the landing.
“Hold tight to the handles,” said Nicola as Maddy kneeled on the tray, hunkering down. “That’s the trick.” Then two strong hands pushed her off.
“Eeeeeeeeeee!” A burst of speed, the carpeted steps rumpity-bumpiting under her, the flashlight flying out of her pocket in another direction, a final bump, then, swoosh, airborne—smack!—the platter touched bottom, and now she was gliding breathless to a graceful stop at the front door.
“I did it!” Maddy laughed. “I rate myself a nine point seven.” She tried to applaud herself but her hands held their grip. She tugged. “My fingers are stuck to the tray.” She wriggled. “My knees, too, and my cloak—ew, there’s sticky all over me.” Suddenly she realized. “Hey! I’m glued! I’m glued!”
At the top of the landing, Nicola laughed menacingly. “As I said, that’s the trick!”
“You didn’t rub down this tray for speed,” said Maddy as a cold pit fell in her stomach. “You put super-sticky glue all over it.”
“Extra-super-sticky glue! And I rate you a silly munchkin!” Nicola cackled again. Maddy recognized that imitation. Count Chocula.
Snooks continued pounding on the piano. In Maddy’s ears, this music didn’t sound cheerful, but extraordinarily melancholy. Suddenly Maddy recalled when she’d gotten lost from her family during an Old World outdoor Oktoberfest. It had been impossible to echolocate anyone while all the oompah music played. The live band had completely scrambled the radar. As it was doing now.
“Crud! Crud!” She wriggled helplessly on her tray as she bounced her brother’s name into the music static. “Hudson! Help help help!”
“Help help help!” Nicola imitated as she skipped downstairs and hoisted the weighted tray, with Maddy on it, so that both were held aloft over her head.
“Final proof,” Maddy gasped. “You do pick up echo wave frequency, and you’re as strong as—”
“A pureblood vampire,” finished Nicola calmly. “Which is exactly what I am.” The tray swayed as Nicola crossed the marble floor. No matter how hard Maddy pitched left or squirmed right, Nicola did not once lose balance. It was as if her skeleton were made out of steel. Maddy suddenly felt very, very small, and very, very stuck.
“Then why are you here?” she asked. “I thought purebloods preferred the Old World.”
“A lot of vampires are renouncing eternity and moving to Manhattan. There’s just so much to do here,” said Nicola. “Like getting seaweed wrap massages and ordering all this delicious human food such as Chinese takeout—which I’m sure tastes a lot better than you, Maddy. Especially since you’re a fruit-hybrid, it’s very likely that you’ll be much too sour.”
“You don’t have to taste me,” Maddy mentioned.
“Of course we do, silly. You are simply the most awful creature Nigel and I have ever encountered.” By now, they had entered the dining room.
“The Argos will catch you,” Maddy cautioned. “Slaying me violates the New World truce. You’d be exiled before the next sunrise.”
Nicola sighed. “Do you think we’re stupid? We’ve already made arrangements to freight-ship ourselves to an undisclosed location aboard a Fiesta Cruise ship. After we have you for tea, that is, you dumb little girl.”
“Well, I’m not so dumb that you didn’t escape my poison buttercrumb…” Maddy’s voice trailed off when she saw that the dining room table was already set for two. A cozy fire crackled in the fireplace, candles burned low in the candelabras, and all the vases were filled with thorny bloodred roses.
“Tea is served,” sang Nicola as she positioned the tray full of Maddy between the two place settings. “Come out, come out.”
“Come out, come out who? From where?” Maddy squeaked.
“If you’d added more chunks of raw garlic, you might have actually slain us, Maddy.” Nigel’s voice was soft. “That cookie trick was much too cruel for a part-fruit. But in the end, not cruel enough. We’re lucky your big sister is so kind, eh?”
Maddy stared around. “Where are you, Nigel?”
From under the table came the sound of a heavy lid being lifted and scraped back. Then Nigel appeared, looking sleepy but elegant in a dark running suit.
“Crud is finally wrong about something.” Maddy sighed. “Those weren’t clothes trunks, after all. Coffins, one hundred percent.” Her relief that Hudson could be wrong sometimes was marred knowing that von Kriks would soon be feasting on her blood.
“Time for Maddy tartar.” Nigel rubbed his spindly hands together. “Sorry, Maddy. Better luck next life.” He snapped open his linen napkin and tucked it into his collar. “Dearest Nicola, you must take the first bite of her.”
“No, darling, I insist, you first.”
“You.”
“No, you.”
“How about both of you go together?” suggested Maddy. “If this is my grim destiny, let’s get it over and done with.”
“Good idea,” said the von Kriks in unison.
Maddy sat up straight and closed her eyes. Disappointed as she was to be so heartlessly tricked, she knew that an expert vampire bite was not nearly as painful as falling off the top of a building or being struck by lightning—both of which had happened to her, and had taken quite a while to recover from.
Each Krik leaned forward and sunk fangs into her neck. A tingling fil
led Maddy’s body. It was as if her veins were being filled with dense liquid that was making her strong and powerful. Was she devoured yet? Because, really, it wasn’t at all bad. So nice that at first Maddy didn’t notice the humming in her ears.
“Mmmmmm! Mmmmmm!”
“Arright, I’m sure I taste great. You don’t have to rub it in,” muttered Maddy.
“Mmmmm! Mmmmmm!”
Maddy opened her eyes. A whorl of fur, a whir of wings, a flash of dark, dancing eyes—hey, she knew that bat! But how had Hudson managed to transform by day?
Both von Kriks had detached from her and were now ducking and reeling around the room to avoid a Hudson-the-bat attack. But something else was wrong with them. Why were they clutching at their throats? Why were they gargling and choking?
Nigel staggered backward and crooked a finger on her.
“You got us—again!” he wheezed, and then his finger fell off, dropping from his hand like a stick of chalk and breaking apart like a grotesque buttercrumbly as it landed on the carpet.
Maddy gaped. As he’d spoken, Nigel’s face, wan and waxen, had cracked like a china cup into a thousand pieces. She turned to see a duplicate horror as a brittle and splintering Nicola dropped into a chair.
“Your blood…too sweet…,” cawed Nicola faintly, and then, before Maddy’s disbelieving eyes, she collapsed. Joint by joint, tiny flakes of Nicola broke off and crumbled to fine powder. All that was left was a pile of dust, upon which rested her glittering black beaded necklace. With a groan and a soft phuff, Nigel dropped next, as if a trapdoor had opened beneath his feet.
By this time, Hudson had flown from the room, and the music had stopped. Snooks appeared in the door. “Suppose I ought to find a broom and dustpan.”
“How’d I do that?” Maddy inched her tray forward for a better look at the soft mound of hair, clothes, dust, and linen napkins that had once been von Kriks.
“Not sure, but…” Snooks dropped to kneel before her. “I am now at your service, little shrimp. And I hope you’ll give me more time off for holidays than those cheap Kriks.”
“No problem,” said Maddy. “But if that’s really the way the cookie crumbles, then you can start by figuring out how to unstick me from this tray and handing me that black bead necklace. Chop-chop.”
Lexie
11
TRICK OF THE MOON
L exie was honestly shocked. “You mean the thermos was full of holy water?” She wrinkled her nose. “I only used it because I found it in the fridge and it was cold.”
“Looks like that water you gave Maddy helped to save her life.” Hudson stretched his bony arms to touch the lip of the cracked porcelain tub. The three Livingstone kids were all hanging upside down and side by side from the shower rod in one of the many moldy bathrooms of the old von Krik house.
“It wasn’t all me. You were brave, sis,” said Lexie generously. “You probably thought you were done for. You must have felt so alone.”
“Oh, I had some extra help,” said Maddy with a secret smile at Hudson. “Anyway, all’s well that ends well, since the Argos gave us the deed to this perfectly fantastic townhouse.”
“Mmm,” Lexie answered.
Their parents had explained to Lexie and Hudson that Maddy saw the von Krik house differently from the rest of them. “There are some vampires who can see deeper into the past, at how things used to look. Instead of the way they are today,” their father had explained. Which meant what Maddy viewed as a stunningly beautiful townhouse, the other Livingstones saw for what it really was—a dark, dank, leaky, creaky, dreary old hunk of stone.
Lexie wasn’t sure she’d ever feel comfortable in it, but rules were rules. The battered parcel that came in the mail last week from the Old World had not only contained Maddy’s ruby-and-gold-dagger slayer’s pin but also the official transfer deed of the von Krik property to the Livingstones.
“I’m glad the Argos and the Old World ruled that your double-slay was self-defense,” their mother had said, pinning the pin on a proud Maddy. “And I have to admit, I do like being a home owner better than renting. Though you’ll never stop worrying me, Madison.”
Lexie left it to her parents to admire Maddy’s courage, but her own fruit blood curdled in apprehension. The von Krik victory had made Maddy brave, and a tiny bit of their puncture-wound blood now coursed through her. Lexie worried that it wouldn’t be long before her sister targeted her next victim.
Meanwhile, moving—even moving across the street—meant lots of work, especially since the Livingstone parents had decided to send Snooks away on a monthlong Fiesta Cruise. When they weren’t scrubbing at rot and fungus, or mopping the dust-carpeted floors, the kids were hang-and-stretch testing all the coat racks and the closet, shower, and curtain rods. It was a solid house with lots of nooks for hiding and swooping and roosting. And no amount of scrub and polish could get rid of the smell, not even for the special occasion of their parents’ three hundred ninety-fifth wedding anniversary, which was now also a housewarming party and their first-ever big celebration in the New World.
The smell of the Old World, mused Lexie as she walked inside, back from yet another errand to the Candlewick Café. Like the coffins we used to sleep in. Wet wood and mildew and stale ale. And ghosts, too. Though she hadn’t met one yet, she could smell them creeping around, quiet as cockroaches, waiting for the right opportunity to reveal themselves.
“‘The Spirits of the dead, who stood In Life before thee, are again, In death, around thee,’” Lexie quoted out loud, hoping to conjure a couple as she joined her mother, who was in the kitchen scooping cantaloupe and honeydew melon balls for her signature seven-fruit salad.
“Careful,” said her mother, taking the Candlewick bags. “We’ve got enough company coming without needing to raise up a bunch of ghosts.”
“Speaking of company, now that we’ve got all this room, I say we invite some pigeons to live in the attic,” Lexie suggested. “And maybe some nice mice, too?”
Her mother shook her head no. “Stray critters are too tempting for your sister. We have to keep watch on her appetite. Too much protein in Maddy’s diet isn’t safe.”
“Mom, why is Maddy so lethal? It doesn’t make sense.” Lexie shook her head over the question that had been stuck in it all week. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe she’s my full-blood sister.”
Her mother said nothing, but was scooping melon balls double-time. When Lexie glanced at her out of the side cracks of her eyes, her mother looked tense.
“Your sister, Madison,” she began softly, “is not—” And then the doorbell rang. “Our first guests!” Her mother dropped the melon scooper and patted her hair. “How do I look?”
“Great.” Although ever since Hudson had requested that the family please cut down using the dry cleaner’s on account of their environmentally damaging chemicals, their father had taken on the chore of ironing the family clothes. As a result, the laundry was either scorched or wrinkly. Today, her mother’s shirt was little bit of both. But Lexie didn’t have the heart to say anything.
“I hope everyone likes fruit and veggies and soy.” Her mother looked at the decorative platters of vegan food, some homemade and some from Candlewick.
“Of course they will. I’ll get the door.” Lexie took off the apron that protected her new dress. She had found it in her favorite thrift shop. The lace scratched, but she thought it looked unfreakish and undoomed and party-perfect.
“Mr. Apple!” Lexie smiled as she opened the creaky front door. “Come on in.”
Her former fourth-grade teacher beamed. “Look at you, Lexie. All grown up.” Behind Mr. Apple was Hudson’s entire class. Each child was holding an item of fruit. None of them looked happy to be there.
“Holy trick-or-treat, is this a real-live Halloween house or what?” hissed one of kids.
“Haunted,” whispered another. “Definitely haunted.”
A redheaded girl thrust a cantaloupe into Lexie’s arms. “We heard that if
we didn’t come, Hudson’s other sister would eat our eyeballs with a knife and fork and salt and pepper.”
“Or skin us alive,” piped up another fourth-grader.
“Or chop off our toes and feed them to ducks,” whispered another.
“Now, where would you get a silly idea like that?” Lexie shook her head. “Maddy would never do such terrible things. Follow me, and I’ll show you why you have nothing to worry about.”
The class dragged in. “See?” Lexie pointed out her sister, who sat at the piano, smiling and playing “Moonlight Sonata” and looking very lovely, Lexie decided, in her robin’s egg blue uniform and new black glass bead necklace. Too bad she had blown it with the real Elf Scouts. Now Lexie crossed her fingers to protect herself from the white lie she needed to tell to set all fourth-grade minds at ease. “Maddy’s an Elf Scout. That means she made an official vow to be thoughtful, helpful, and kind.”
There was some conferring among the others. “I never saw an Elf Scout pin that was shaped like a knife.” “She’s still got those mean, pointy teeth!” “But what’re those Band-Aids on her neck for?”
Lexie pretended not to hear them. “So you don’t have to be scared of Maddy,” she said brightly.
Nobody looked too sure about that.
The doorbell continued to ring. Every time, Lexie answered it expectantly, but the person on the other side of the door was never Dylan. Would he show up at all?
Big Bill from Candlewick came, as did other members of her parents’ band, the Dead Ringers, and lots of their Wander Wag dog-walking clients with their dogs. But no Dylan. At least the fourth-graders seemed more at ease once the dogs arrived. Soon the party got noisy.
Maybe Dylan’s never coming, thought Lexie. Her mind filled like floodwater with poems about waiting, yearning, aging, dying, and not meeting up with your one true love until the crucial minute right before you drank poison or got stabbed in the heart.
Vampire Island Page 8
