“Not really,” answered Sophia. “Your kind has a habit of breaking out the wooden stake first and asking questions later.”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “As if that’s happened this century.”
“Either way,” Brendan said diplomatically, “it’s hard to have relationships with nonvamps when you’re bound by a strict code of secrecy and have a weird diet.”
“True,” Ivy admitted. “It’s easier with you because you know,” she added to Olivia.
“Could that be why our parents split us up?” Olivia wondered aloud. She and her sister had been trying to figure out how a vampire and a human could be twins—and why their parents had separated them—for almost the whole time they’d known each other. “Maybe they were worried that if a vampire and a human grew up together, the vampire secret wouldn’t be safe?” Olivia suggested.
Ivy grimaced. “Well, I certainly proved them right.” She sighed. She’d broken the First Law of the Night by telling Olivia the truth about vampires, when bad scratches on her arm had healed before Olivia’s eyes.
“You know I’d never tell,” Olivia reassured her.
“Yes, and luckily,” said Ivy, “no one beyond this table knows that you know, except for my dad, and he would never tell.”
A question sprang into Olivia’s mind. “But aren’t all your friends going to guess that I know now, since it’s out that we’re sisters?”
Ivy stopped mid-sip of pink lemonade. “How come none of us thought of that?” she said to Sophia and Brendan.
The two of them shrugged worriedly in response.
Ivy bent to lightly bang her head against the table. “We’re so dead,” she said. “By the end of the day, every vamp in Franklin Grove is going to know we’re sisters, and everyone’s going to guess there’s been a violation of the First Law.”
“I suppose we could just deny it,” Olivia whispered.
“Our community doesn’t let things go that easily,” Brendan said.
Ivy nodded in agreement. “We have no choice. We’ll have to show everyone that you have a right to know.”
“But how?” Sophia asked.
“By proving that one of our parents was a vampire, so Olivia’s at least part vampire, too.”
Olivia got goosebumps. It was weird to think of vampire blood coursing through her veins. Maybe I should try eating more steak, she thought, but the idea made her stomach turn.
“The problem,” Brendan said, “is that most people don’t think it’s possible for a human and a vamp to have normal kids.”
“Well, they’re wrong,” Ivy said flatly. She turned to Olivia. “If we can locate our biological parents,” she said, “and prove without a doubt that one of them was a vampire, then no one will be able to object to your knowing the secret.”
“I’m game,” Olivia said immediately. She’d give up her poms to know the truth about their parents anyway. “But what can we do? We already tried the adoption agency route, and that was a dead end.”
“What about the VVV?” Sophia suggested.
“The what?” Olivia asked.
“The Vorld Vide Veb,” Sophia said, sounding like the bloodsucking bride in an old vampire movie.
Olivia’s jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me vampires have their own Internet!”
“It was a vampire who invented the Internet,” Brendan told her with a grin.
“You could try searching references to humanvampire relationships,” Sophia suggested.
“And we should definitely look up Owl Creek, where we were born,” Ivy added. “Olivia, can you come to my house after school? Then we can go online.”
“Sure,” Olivia agreed. “Maybe we can even find out something about what happens when vampires— Ow!” She broke off as somebody kicked her hard under the table.
“Hello, Camilla,” Sophia said brightly, fixing her eyes on Olivia with a meaningful stare.