“Totally!” Charlotte agreed. “Black is so last season.” She gestured toward Serena Star’s turquoise stiletto heels. “I absolutely love your shoes, by the way. Are they from Hollywood?”
Olivia seized the opportunity to slip away, racing up the steps and through the school’s front doors. She had to talk to her twin about what was going on outside.
From down the hall, she spotted Ivy standing by her locker with her new boyfriend, Brendan Daniels. Even Brendan had yet to notice that she and Ivy looked alike. “See you later, okay?” Olivia heard Brendan say.
Ivy twirled the emerald ring on the chain around her neck. “Okay,” she cooed. Her sister was so smitten. Olivia thought it was super cute.
As she waited for Ivy and Brendan to finish their good-byes, Olivia played with the ring on her finger. It was actually their matching emerald rings that had helped Ivy and Olivia recognize each other. The rings were all either of them had from their birth parents.
Brendan walked by with a friendly “Hey, Olivia!” and Olivia scooted up to her sister.
“Let me guess,” Olivia began. “You still haven’t told him about us.”
“I swear I’ve tried,” Ivy answered, pulling off a sheer black sweater to reveal a gray baby T-shirt with an illustration of Edgar Allan Poe’s face on it. “But it never seems like the right moment to say, ‘Hey, by the way, I have a twin sister I never knew about’.”
“Eventually,” said Olivia, “we’re going to have to tell everyone, including our parents.”
Suddenly there was a commotion down the hall, and Olivia looked up to see Garrick Stephens strolling along in sunglasses and a black T-shirt that said INTERNA 3—REST IN PEACE! The other Beasts were trailing behind him. People were parting to let them through, like Garrick was a star quarterback who had just won a big game—or else a quarterback who had just lost the big game by running into the wrong end zone. “Autographs?” Garrick called nonchalantly. “Autographs?”
Ivy shook her head angrily. “I’m going to strangle him,” she said. “Can you believe I had to come in the side door this morning? Brendan did, too. Otherwise we never would have made it up the front steps alive.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Olivia replied. “I saw Charlotte being interviewed by Serena Star. She said two Goths once growled at her in the bathroom.”
“That wasn’t a growl,” Ivy protested, “that was a bark. For night’s sake, she got a perm last year that made her look like a poodle.”
Olivia laughed, but her sister turned serious.
“This is really grave, Olivia,” Ivy said anxiously. “I thought maybe the story would just go away quietly, but that’s not going to happen with all these reporters hanging around and people like Charlotte and Garrick jockeying for the spotlight.”
Sophia Hewitt, Ivy’s oldest friend, appeared, her big digital camera hanging around her neck. “Code black,” she whispered cryptically. “I repeat, code black.” And with that, she disappeared down the hall.
Ivy rushed to pull her black leather bag onto her shoulder and slammed her locker shut.
“What’s code black?” Olivia asked in a low voice.
“Science hall bathroom,” Ivy said, taking off down the hall. Olivia hurried to keep up.
The two of them pushed through the bathroom door to find Sophia checking the stalls to make sure the bathroom was deserted.
Then she spun around to face Ivy and Olivia with her hands on her hips. “Garrick Stephens wasn’t on a dare. He was window-shopping!”
“Are you serious?” Ivy asked.
“Dead serious,” replied Sophia.
Olivia said, “I don’t get it.”
“Vamps upgrade their coffins like most people upgrade cell phones,” Ivy explained.
“And the Interna 3 is the latest, greatest dream box of all,” Sophia added. “It’s not like Garrick could afford it. He just thought it would be fun to try it.”
Ivy frowned. “Funeral homes are often run by vampires. Their showrooms are multipurpose. But this time they must have gotten the showroom coffin mixed up with the dead guy’s.”
Sophia bit one black fingernail. “I’m really worried, Ivy. Serena Star seems desperate for a big story. Even if she can’t find one, she’ll probably make one up!”
Just how much was at stake started to dawn on Olivia. This wasn’t just some TV tabloid news story. This could mean the greatest witch hunt since, well, witch hunts. What would people do if they found out that vampires were living among them?
“We really need to get Serena Star off our trail,” Sophia said.
Ivy and Olivia both nodded.
“What do you have in mind?” Ivy asked.
“I don’t know!” Sophia said exasperatedly. “That’s why I dragged you two in here.”
Ivy sighed, and all three girls fell silent for a moment.
“We need a distraction,” Olivia mused eventually.
“Exactly,” Ivy agreed. “My father thinks that Serena Star will forget about Franklin Grove the moment there’s some fresh Hollywood gossip.”
“Great!” Sophia responded sarcastically. “All one of us needs to do is start dating Celebrity magazine’s Hottest Man of the Year.”
“Can I volunteer?” Olivia put in, trying to break the tension.
“I’m just saying,” Ivy snapped at Sophia, “that we need to find a story that’s more interesting to Serena than vampires.”