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Then he winked at Olivia. “No offense.”
“None
taken.” Olivia laughed as she and Ivy headed for the black-lacquered screen in
the corner of the room to swap clothes.
Brendan
started to laugh, too. “No wonder you couldn’t find my book!”
Ivy
pulled her top on over her head and came out from behind the screen in the
corner of the room, leaving Olivia to finish changing.
Brendan’s
eyes lit up when he saw her. “There you are,” he said, and Ivy’s heart
fluttered. With a grin, she walked straight to her desk and pulled Brendan’s
English book from the middle of the heap. She walked over to him and held it
out. “Thanks, Brendan,” she said, and she wasn’t just talking about the book he’d
lent her.
Brendan
brushed her hand as he took the book. “You’re welcome.” Then he added, “No more
secrets, though. Okay?”
“Okay,”
Ivy said, pushing aside a shoe and some bags and sitting down beside him.
“You
know,” Brendan remarked, “you both do this thing where you scrunch your nose up
when you’re nervous.”
“My
nose does not scrunch!” protested Ivy.
“Yes,
it does.” Brendan smiled gently. He leaned back on his elbows. “One vampire
sister and the other human,” he said, his black T-shirt stretching across his
chest. “That doesn’t happen every day, huh?”
“No
kidding,” said Ivy. “That’s why Olivia and I switched this afternoon. I went to
the vampire adoption agency to see what I could find out about our parents.”
Olivia’s
head popped out from behind the screen, half her face still covered with
spray-on whitener. “What did you find out?” she asked.
“Nothing.
They didn’t even have a record of my adoption. Apparently, no one named Charles
Vega has adopted a child in the last four hundred years! I think they must have
lost my file.”
Olivia’s
face fell.
“I’m
sorry, Olivia,” Ivy told her.
Olivia
sighed. “I’ve been spending so much time thinking about my mother and
Great-aunt Edna and their history, you know, for this film project,” she
quavered. “I thought we might be able to get at least a clue into our own family.”
Ivy
nodded sympathetically.
Olivia
was silent for a moment, and Ivy couldn’t tell if there was a tear falling down
her sister’s whitened cheek. “I’ll be done in a sec,” Olivia whispered at last,
disappearing behind the screen again.
Brendan
stood up abruptly. “We should have a party!” he announced.
Ivy
turned to him in disbelief. “A party?”
“Sure.”
Brendan nodded. “Or have you and Olivia already celebrated the fact that you’re
long-lost twin sisters?”
Ivy
shook her head, and Olivia’s voice called from behind the screen, “I could use
a party!”
Brendan
looked at Ivy. “What do you say we go to my family’s crypt? We’ll bring some
celebratory A neg for us, and we can pick up a fruit smoothie for Olivia on the
way.”
Olivia
emerged looking like herself again. “What’s a family crypt?”
“Lots
of vamp families have their own tombs,” Ivy explained. “It’s sort of like our
version of a vacation home.”
“My
family’s place really sucks, though,” said Brendan. “I go there all the time
just to hang out and play guitar. You’ll dig it. Seriously.”
“I’m
game.” Olivia grinned. “My mom isn’t expecting me home till eight thirty.”
Ivy
smiled. “Then let’s party,” she agreed.
“Does
anyone else know you guys are twins?” Brendan asked.
“Well,
there’s Sophia,” Ivy replied. “She figured it out weeks ago.”
“Then
let’s invite her, too,” Brendan suggested. “The more, the merrier.”
You
are seriously the most amazing boyfriend ever, Ivy thought.
Olivia
was bending down to put on the pink mule that was lying at the bottom of the
stairs. “Ivy, where’s my other shoe?” she asked.
Suddenly,
Ivy heard measured footsteps approaching from upstairs. “My dad’s coming!” she
cried. “He can’t see the two of us together! Olivia,
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