Re-Vamped! (15 page)

“I
lost her,” Ivy gulped. She ran to the front hall, uncertain where she should
look next. Sophia followed closely.

“Shhh!”
Sophia said suddenly. “I hear something.”

Ivy
froze, listening intently. From upstairs, she heard the faint sounds of her
sister singing loopily. She bounded up the front stairs with Sophia right
behind her. Olivia was prancing around the second floor hallway, her hands over
her head. “Olivia!” Ivy called in a whisper.

“I’m a
bunny!” Olivia whispered and then turned and wiggled her backside. “Hop! Hop!
Hop!” she said, and bounced away.

“Olivia!”
Ivy called again, chasing her.

Ivy
and Sophia had almost caught up to her when Olivia suddenly stopped in front of
the open door of Ivy’s father’s study, mesmerized by something inside. Ivy
lunged for her, but Olivia hopped away at the last moment, and Ivy ended up
belly flopping onto the floor.

Ouch!
Ivy winced. Raising herself to her
knees, she glanced inside the study.

Her
father was standing rigidly behind his desk, his hands flat on its surface. He
almost looked pink. Ivy quickly got to her feet.

“Ivy,”
her father said, his voice shaking, “this floor is no place for your guests to
horse around!”

“Olivia
isn’t a guest,” Ivy snapped. “She’s my sister.” She felt like screaming,
Why
is it so hard for you to accept her?
but she knew she’d better take Olivia
away before her father realized what kind of shape she was in. She marched down
the hall to Olivia and gently took her arm. “Come on.”

“But
my ring’s there,” Olivia mumbled, nodding toward the study.

Ivy
glanced down at her sister’s hand and was relieved to see that her emerald ring
was still securely on her finger. “It’s right here,” she said quietly. Sophia
got on the other side of Olivia, and together they started guiding her slowly
back down the hallway. Ivy didn’t even look at her father as they passed his
study again.

They
were finally making their way down the main staircase when Ivy saw Mr. Daniels
charging up the steps toward them. For a split second, Ivy considered trying to
make a three-legged run for it. Instead she just shot a resigned look over
Olivia’s shoulder at Sophia.

“Bethany
told me what happened,” Mr. Daniels said, reaching up to Olivia’s face and
pulling open one of her eyelids with his thumb.

“You
have hair like Einstein.” Olivia giggled.

“Let’s
get her to the kitchen,” Mr. Daniels said professionally. “Ivy, if you’ll help
me find the ingredients, we should be able to create an antidote.”

Now
why can’t my dad be more like Brendan’s?
Ivy thought gratefully.

In
Ivy’s front foyer, Olivia was saying good-bye to the last of the guests. Except
for the half hour or so when apparently she’d been completely embarrassing, it
had been a super party. Valencia Deborg solemnly produced a tiny V-shaped pin
from one of her sleeves and pinned it to Olivia’s sweatshirt before sweeping
out the door. Mr. Boros pumped her hand proudly. As for the Danielses, she felt
like she’d known them forever. Mrs. Daniels hoped she’d agree to babysit for
Bethany and promised to be in charge of the veggie burgers in future.

Still,
something kept niggling at the back of Olivia’s mind. It felt like there was
something she’d been meaning to say since the moment she’d returned to her
senses, but she just couldn’t remember what it was.

Sophia
came up and gave her a hug. “Remind me to bring VitaVamp to your next party,”
she teased. “You can be the entertainment.”

“Thanks,”
Olivia said sheepishly.

Soon
it was just Olivia and Ivy, plus Ivy’s dad, who was looming back by the
staircase. Olivia glanced at her watch; her parents were expecting her home in
twenty minutes.

“I
guess I’d better get going, too,” she said to her sister.

Ivy
nodded. Olivia turned toward the stairs. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Vega.”

“You’re
welcome, Olivia,” he said expressionlessly. For a split second, Olivia caught
his dark eyes, and in a flash, she remembered what it was that she had seen
when she was under the influence of Bethany’s pill.

He
turned to ascend the stairs, and the moment he was out of sight, Olivia pulled
her sister close.

“Your
father was looking at a wooden box in his study.”

Ivy
shrugged. “My dad has lots of wooden boxes.”

“But
this one had our symbol on it,” Olivia said, raising her hand to show Ivy her
ring.

“Olivia,”
Ivy said, rolling her eyes, “you were imagining things. You were out of it.”

“I saw
it, Ivy,” Olivia said firmly. “I know I did. I walked past the study, and he
was sitting at his desk with this box open in front of him. He was reading
something. And I saw—I remember it totally—our symbol was carved on the box’s
lid!”

Ivy
bit her lip. “But why would my dad have something with our symbol on it?”

Olivia
shook her head after a moment. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

Ivy
sighed. “He did seem freaked out when he realized we were up there,” she
recalled.

“Something
strange is going on,” Olivia decided, and she could tell that her sister didn’t
need any convincing. “We need to find that box, Ivy.”

“Well,
there’s nothing we can do with my dad around,” Ivy said thoughtfully. “But he’s
going out tomorrow morning. Can you come back first thing?”

Olivia
nodded. She hugged her sister tight before setting off for home. Ivy’s long
driveway descended toward the street like a giant question mark—and Olivia
couldn’t help feeling that tomorrow, when she walked back up it the other way,
she’d arrive at some answers at last.

Olivia
crept up to her sister’s house early Sunday morning, the shadows of willow
branches reaching out at her eerily. Even though Mr. Vega’s car was already
gone from its spot beside the house, she hesitated beside the porch. Somehow it
didn’t seem right to just walk up in broad daylight and ring the doorbell when
she and Ivy were about to snoop around inside. She decided to go around back.

Kneeling
beside her sister’s bedroom window, she saw Ivy pacing the floor of her room
below. Olivia rapped on the glass with her knuckles, and Ivy jumped, clearly
startled. Then she rushed up the stairs and opened the window.

Olivia
clambered through onto the basement stair landing.

“You
scared me to death!” said Ivy.

“I
thought vampires were already dead,” Olivia joked.

“Ha-ha.
Very funny,” Ivy replied.

Two
seconds later, Olivia was following Ivy up to Mr. Vega’s study. Her sister immediately
began rummaging through the enormous mahogany desk, Olivia started with a shelf
in the corner filled with tiny drawers. She felt a little awkward about
snooping through Mr. Vega’s things, but she was certain she’d seen the Lazar
symbol yesterday and she needed to know why Mr. Vega had something with that
symbol on it.

The
first drawer was packed with gray fabric swatches. The second had nothing but
little metal plates—none of them with the Lazar symbol on them. The third
drawer was filled with mini-gargoyles.

A half
hour later, the sisters still hadn’t found the wooden box, and Olivia was
starting to get discouraged. There were countless urns, vases, busts, drawers,
boxes, and pedestals. The box could be
anywhere
.

Ivy
began circling the room like a caged panther. Suddenly she stopped and slapped
her palm against her forehead. “I’m such a fruit bat!” she exclaimed. Then she
walked to the front of the desk, where a bunch of files were propped up between
two brass gargoyle bookends. She twisted the head of the bookend on the right,
and across the room two bookshelves sank back into the wall and slid apart to
reveal a dim passageway.

“Cool!”
Olivia said, following Ivy eagerly into the shadows. She found herself
descending a tightly wound spiral staircase. “Where are we?” she whispered.

“Between
the kitchen and the living room,” Ivy explained. “This passageway is the only
entrance to this room.”

The
steps ended at the floor of a tiny circular room. Row after row of small,
shallow gravestone shaped holes were carved into the walls. Instead of holding
bones, each one held books and scrolls.

“My
father’s special collection,” Ivy announced. Olivia crept up and peered into
one of the hollows. It was sealed with a pane of glass, and inside she saw a
marble tablet carved with mysterious hieroglyphics. Alongside it was stretched
an ancient-looking scroll that looked like a blueprint.

“What
is all this?” she whispered.

“My
dad’s old decorating textbooks,” answered Ivy from over her shoulder.

Ivy
started combing through some books in a hollow across the room, while Olivia
gravitated to a nearby stone recess. She pulled down a fat black book with a
cracked spine and discovered it was a photograph album.

Olivia’s
mouth fell open with shock. There was a picture of her as a little girl,
wearing a witch’s hat and holding a broom!
I don’t remember ever wearing
that for Halloween,
she thought. Then she realized that of course she was
looking at pictures of Ivy, and she started to giggle.

“Remember
when I said next time we’ll look at pictures of
you
drooling and wearing
embarrassing clothes?” Olivia reminded Ivy, starting to flip through the album
excitedly. “Well, the time has come!”

Ivy
winced. “Aren’t you supposed to be looking for our box?”

Olivia
was about to slide the album back into place, when something caught her eye at
the back of the recess. It looked like there was something else there.
Something brown. She pulled out another album and reached in curiously.

Olivia’s
pulse quickened as she felt a wooden edge. Slowly, carefully, she pulled out
the box hidden there on its side. Without Olivia having said anything, Ivy
appeared beside her. They both looked down at the gilded symbol on the lid—the
same symbol that was on their rings.

It’s
the box I saw yesterday,
Olivia thought, her heart pounding. She heard Ivy’s breath catch.

Olivia
lifted the lid and they stared down at a stack of yellowed papers inside. Ivy
lifted out the top sheet by its edges, as if she was scared it would crumble to
dust, and turned it over.

“ ‘My
love,’ ” Ivy began reading, but then she stopped. Olivia followed her sister’s
gaze to the bottom of the page. The letter was signed,
Forever yours,
Susannah.

“Why
would my dad have a letter from our biological mother?” Ivy wondered aloud.
Olivia thumbed quickly through the papers and saw that they all seemed to be
letters from Susannah. Underneath the stack was a smaller piece of shiny paper
with scalloped edges. On it, in neat script, were the words,
Susannah and I
on our wedding day.

Slowly,
carefully, Olivia picked up the small piece of paper and flipped it over. She
could barely believe what she was looking at. It was a picture of her parents.

Susannah
wore a long, white lace bridal gown with an elegant scooped neckline, and her
face was alight with a mischievous smile that reminded Olivia of Ivy. The
picture must have been taken a long time ago, because all the colors in the
picture were sort of brownish. Beside her, clutching her hand, stood the tall,
broad shouldered groom in a black tuxedo with a skinny black bow tie. He had a
huge black mustache and longish hair and was grinning toothily at the camera.

“It’s
our father,” Olivia whispered.

“Let
me see!” said Ivy, taking the picture and holding it up in the dim light. Ivy
blinked, and Olivia saw something change on her sister’s face.

“It’s
my dad,” Ivy whispered.

Olivia
nodded automatically:
Yes, our biological dad,
she thought. Then, all at
once, she understood what her sister had really meant. She snatched the picture
back.

Behind
the unkempt hair and the weird mustache, the grinning groom in the photograph
was none other than Charles Vega.

Ivy
felt as if her head were a cave suddenly crowded with bats. “My dad didn’t
adopt
me,” she heard herself say. “He’s my
real dad
.”

“And
my
real dad,” Olivia echoed in a faraway voice.

The
two of them stood there, stunned and silent for a long moment.

That’s
why there was no record of my adoption at the agency,
Ivy realized. All her life, she’d
wondered what her biological father was like, and now she saw that she’d known
the answer all along. She felt her heart swell, and a wave of happiness crashed
over her. “
My
dad is
our
dad,” she said.

There
were tears in Olivia’s eyes. They began trading the wedding picture back and
forth.

“I
can’t believe he ever had a mustache like that,” Ivy marveled.