Thicker Than Water (The Briar Creek Vampires Book #2) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse by Jayme Morse

even
mentioned whether or not he paid child support – not that her mom
had needed it, since her income as a doctor was more than most
families with two working parents.“Why didn’t you tell me we were
sisters before now?”
    “I wanted to tell you when we first met at the
hospital. It was why I introduced myself to you in the first
place…I wanted to get to know my sister. But I didn’t want to mess
anything up. It’s a weird thing to tell someone you don’t know all
that well,” Mary-Kate shrugged. “There’s never really a right time.
Plus, I wasn’t sure if Violet and Tom wanted you to
know.”
    It was strange that Violet and Tom hadn’t ever
mentioned that Mary-Kate was her sister. In fact, Violet had never
seemed too thrilled with the idea of Lexi hanging out with
Mary-Kate until she had saved her life.
    Maybe Violet had just been afraid that Lexi
would find out the truth if they hung out…but why wouldn’t she want
her to know? It didn’t make any sense, especially when Mayor
Lawrence was always hanging out with Tommy.
    “How did you even know what I looked like that
day at the hospital?” Lexi asked, confused. “We never saw each
other before that.”
    “Well, there were two ways,” Mary-Kate replied.
“I knew that you were going to be there because my dad told me that
your mom died. He had me come to the hospital to bring him
something. The other way was because I had seen a picture of you
before at Austin’s house. He was always showing me pictures of you
and your mom. I know that you guys hadn’t spoken in years, but he
thought really highly of you. I’m pretty sure that he always wished
that you hadn’t moved away and that he had been able to have a
relationship with you.”
    “What did your dad ask you to bring to the
hospital?” Lexi asked curiously.
    Mary-Kate shrugged. “It was so long ago that I
don’t even remember. Oh, wait, yes, I do remember actually. Some
bleach because he spilled a cup of coffee in his car.”
    Lexi knew that bleach could be used to hide DNA
evidence…and to get rid of blood stains.
     
    *
     
    As Lexi lay on the air mattress next to
Mary-Kate’s bed, she tried to fall asleep. She couldn’t get her
mind off everything that was happening, though. Why had Nick and
his friends tried to kidnap her? Even though Dan didn’t think that
they could have been the ones who had attacked her the night of the
carnival, Lexi had her doubts. Yet, she still also had her doubts
about Gabe.
    Feeling the urge to pee, Lexi crawled out of
her sleeping bag and went into Mary-Kate’s bathroom.
    When Lexi tried to wash her hands, she realized
that there was no soap. She opened the bathroom cabinet to find
some. On the top shelf, there were medications which were
prescribed to Betty Lawrence, who Lexi assumed was Mary-Kate’s
mother. There were also four bottles of sunscreen. It was so weird
how people in Briar Creek stocked up on so much sunscreen, even
though the summers in Pennsylvania were short and often
rainy.
    There was a bottle of cucumber melon soap on
the second shelf. When Lexi picked it up, she noticed three vials
behind the bottle.
    All of the vials were filled with a thick red
substance. It was blood.
    When Lexi went through a box of Austin’s
belongings, she had found a vial of blood. She had wondered why he
had it at the time though now, months later, she still wasn’t sure.
Was he a vampire? Maybe he carried around blood vials for when
he…got hungry.
    Whatever the case with Austin may be, why would
the Lawrence’s also have vials of blood in their bathroom cabinet?
It seemed like they thought it was natural, the same way a person
might have Pepto-Bismol or band-aids in their cabinet. Either way,
it was something that Lexi knew she shouldn’t bring up.
    As Lexi crawled back under the blankets, she
listened to Mary-Kate’s soft snoring. She was obviously sleeping.
There was no way someone could fake snoring that well. That also
meant that there was no way