"I know. Can you believe it?" I asked, my heart still racing. "Who knew?" "What was it about? You ran out of black lipstick?" Billy Boy teased.
"Yes. And I found a new one in your dresser drawer."
"Dad!" Billy Boy hollered, ready to pummel me.
"Now I know I'm not dreaming," I said, and playfully tousled my brother's hair.
"All right. Enough excitement for tonight. Let's all go back to sleep," my dad ordered, putting his arm around my brother as they left the room.
I settled back into bed.
"So what were you really dreaming about?" my mom asked curiously.
"It was nothing."
"Nothing woke up the whole house?" she asked.
She shook her head and started for the door.
"Mom...," I said, my words stopping her. "Does my neck look okay to you?" I whispered, pulling my hair back.
She returned to my bedside. "Looks like a regular neck to me," she said, examining it. "What were you expecting--a vampire bite?"
I gave her a quick smile. She pulled the covers over me as if I were still a child.
"I remember when you were a little girl and you stayed up all night with your father watching Dracula movies on our black-and- white TV," she reminisced fondly.
She handed me my Mickey Malice plush that had fallen beside my bed. "You never had nightmares then. It was as if you were comforted by vampires the way other kids are comforted by lullabies."
She kissed me on top of the head and reached for my lamp.
"Maybe you should leave it on," I said. "Just for tonight."
"Now you are scaring me," she said, and left my room.
Chapter 2 The Almost Great Escape
The official welcome sign to my town should now read, "Welcome to Vampireville-- come for a bite, but stay for an eternity!"
The town that I'd grown up in and had always called Dullsville was no longer dull. Not only was I dating a vampire, but now two other teen Nosferatus were living among Dullsvillians, whose biggest concern was getting the best price on the newest Prada purses or the latest Big Bertha golf clubs.
I was the only mortal who knew about the secret identity of the new bloodsucking inhabitants and I was dying to spill my guts to the Dullsville Dispatch. The front-page headline would read: GOTH GIRL GETS THE GOODS! Raven Madison Wins Nobel Peace Prize for Unearthing the Undead. Below, a color photograph would feature me standing next to Luna, Jagger, and Alexander--and I'd be the only one reflected in the picture.
If I came forward with my discoveries, my outcast life would be broadcast nationwide. I might be picked up in a chauffeur-driven hearse and my awaiting publicist would whisk me away on my Gulfstream jet for a media blitz tour; I'd be booked on CNN, Oprah, and MTV to plug my memoir, Vampire Vixen. My personal assistant would be in charge of making sure I had a bowl of black gummy bats and total darkness in the greenrooms at every talk show. My personal stylist would follow closely behind me, reapplying body tattoos, attaching blue hair extensions, and outfitting me in the latest Drac Blac dresses.
But in lieu of blabbing my discoveries to the world, I would have to keep Jagger's and Luna's ghastly secret to myself--that the twins were really vampires.
It had not always been so. Alexander shared with me that when the Maxwell twins were born, it was quickly discovered that Luna was not a vampire like everyone else in her family but rather a human--a genetic link that went back generations to a great-great mortal grandmother. A promise was made between the Sterlings and the Maxwells that on Luna's eighteenth birthday, Alexander was to meet Luna on sacred ground for a covenant ceremony--turning Luna into a vampire and bonding each to the other for eternity. When the day came, however, Alexander decided that Luna and he should both spend eternity with someone they love. After Alexander broke the two families' promise, Jagger sought revenge on Alexander. Once Luna was turned into a vampire by another vampire on unsacred ground, she joined her brother in Dullsville to meet a mortal teen with whom Luna could spend eternity. I knew that if I revealed the twins' true identity, then I'd be giving away Alexander's as well. I'd be putting my boyfriend in danger and could lose him forever.
So instead of being on the cover of Gothic Girl, I was going undercover.
The irony was that I'd have to convince Trevor, who had started the rumor in the first place that the Sterlings were vampires, that he had been right all along and now was in line to be the newest victim of Jagger and Luna's deadly duo. Though no one on earth repulsed me as much as Trevor, there was a gnawing inside me to warn him about the impending danger. And more important, if someone as wicked as Trevor became a vampire, all of Dullsville would be unsafe after sunset.
At Dullsville's drive-in, during the showing of Kissing Coffins, Alexander and I had tricked Jagger into believing I'd been bitten and turned into a vampiress. But several days later, at Dullsville's carnival, when Alexander and I confronted Luna in the Fun House's Hall of Mirrors, I was the only one whose image reflected. Would Jagger believe his sister or what his own eyes had witnessed at the drive-in?
"I'm not concerned," Alexander said, gently reassuring me that night when he pulled his butler Jameson's Mercedes into my driveway. "Jagger is seeking revenge on us through Trevor now. We can easily explain the Hall of Mirrors. Besides, Jagger's ego is too big to admit he was double-crossed."
"So we should continue to keep up appearances that I am a vampire," I said. "It would be easier if we just go to the cemetery and you take my blood as your own."
Alexander turned off the engine.
I know he dreamed of being in my world as much as I dreamed of being in his. But when he turned to me, his shadowy eyes reflected the loneliness of living in a mysterious world that was filled with darkness and isolation.
As I gazed back at him, I wondered if I really wanted to be a part of a world that Alexander didn't want to be in. Was I just going through a phase that would seemingly last forever? At this point, it was irrelevant, as we sat parked in the driveway, on unsacred ground. Alexander was making the decision for us both, by saying nothing.
"Then I'll start just by ditching school," I thought aloud. "I'll replace my bed with a coffin, sleep in all day with the shades pulled, wake up just in time for dinner. We can feast on bloody steaks and party among the tombstones. I'm going to love being a vampire!" He turned to me and placed his hand on my knee. "I've already caused you enough disruption by entering your life," he said softly. "First with Jagger, now with Luna. I'm not going to let this interfere with your family or school."