She narrowed her eyes and fixed them on the cup. Mrs. Stonyfield picked up the cup and brought it close to her face.
A brown stream of liquid hit her squarely in the face, all at once.
“ACK!” Mrs. Stonyfield exclaimed as she leaped up from her seat, her face dripping with coffee. Coffee spilled onto the desk and down the front her ill-fitting blouse.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Stonyfield?” Gregory Skinner, always the brownnoser, said from his seat in the front row.
“I’m fine,” Mrs. Stonyfield said gruffly. She grabbed a handful of Kleenex and patted her soggy face down. Because she was afraid of what she might look like with some of her makeup rubbed off (especially her lipstick), she kept the tissues pressed against her face. “Everyone is dithmissed ulay fow lunch,” she mumbled through the wad of Kleenex.
Filled with an equal mixture of satisfaction and guilt, Fern flew out of her chair. Sam caught up with her on the blacktop.
“Why’d you do that?” he accused.
“Do what? With the coffee?”
“Are you kidding?”
“She made a fool out of me in front of the entire class!”
“The coffee could have seriously burned her.”
“It was lukewarm. I cooled it down before I moved it onto her face.”
“How do you know that?”
“I thought about it and I could just tell. I’ve learned to trust my instincts.”
“Really, you cooled it down?”
“Yes, really,” Fern said proudly.
“You know what? I don’t care what you can do. I know I sound like Lindsey Lin here, but you can’t go around doing things like that every time you’re upset,” Sam said. Fern had always been the shy one in the family, hesitant to criticize or say anything that might hurt someone.
“Says who?” Fern said defiantly. “You don’t know what it’s like, Sam, when you can’t trust anyone and everyone thinks you’re a freak.”
“I know it’s hard, but people are going to catch on if you keep it up.”
“That’s what the Debunker Bunker is there for,” Fern said, intentionally making a reference that she knew Sam would not get. He’d forgotten everything about New Tartarus.
“Don’t do that. You can’t make references like that and then refuse to tell me what happened.”
“What if you don’t believe me again?” Fern said, bringing up what had already become a sore subject between the twins.
Last night, Fern had begun to tell Sam all that had happened at New Tartarus. When she launched into a description of the Preserve and the heck, Sam was beside himself. For the briefest moment, he didn’t believe her. His own memory of the event was clear in his mind—a memory that Chief Quagmire had put there. Sam made the mistake of expressing his disbelief.
Because Sam was the one who always believed Fern, no matter what, the fact that he didn’t, even for a second, crushed Fern. She shut him off completely. She could have ignored his doubting her and chalked it up to fatigue, but the truth was she was tired of explaining the things that had happened to her, to Sam or to anyone. If she explained only one more thing for the rest of her life, it would be one too many. Vlad didn’t need any explanations, and for the second time, she wondered if she really did belong with the Blouts. Maybe they weren’t as evil as the Rollens made them out to be. Vlad, at least, had not tried to kill her. Not yet, anyway.
“Fern, I’m sorry for saying I didn’t believe you at first. But you don’t understand. It’s weird to not remember a whole day! When you started talking about goblins and giants, it just sounded so ridiculous, I thought you were playing a joke on me. But now I do!”
“No one believes me.”
“I promise, I believe you, Fern. You can’t do this alone. You have to tell me what happened!”
“Nothing, really,” Fern said, full of spite. “We played pin the fangs on the vampire and made some blood stew. Just your standard vampire stuff.” She knew she was being overly sensitive, stupid even, but her status as an outcast had made her raw.
Fern caught sight of Blythe Conrad and Lee Phillips, who were making their way from Mrs. Stonyfield’s classroom over to Sam and Fern. They both had determined looks on their faces. They were coming to torment her again.
It was too much for Fern to bear. Without another word to her brother, she ran up the steps and across the blacktop. Once she reached the library, she pushed open the doors to the Hall of Legends.
It was empty, just as she had hoped.
She ran to the end of the hallway, finally collapsing against the marble statue of Socrates. Holding her head in her hands, Fern began to cry. The sobs came easily to her.
“Fern?”
Fern looked up. Sam and Lindsey were standing in front of her, out of breath.
“Fern, what happened at New Tartarus?” Lindsey demanded.
“Nothing,” she said, drying her tears.
“Please tell us, Fern,” Sam said.
“Fern, Sam can’t help the fact that he doesn’t remember. Chief Quagmire performed a Mnemosyne Obliteration! I’m sure of it.” Lindsey said.
“Huh?”
“Chief Quagmire erased Sam’s memory. Which, by the way, is highly illegal without a permit,” Lindsey said in a low voice.
“Why didn’t he erase mine then?” Fern said.
“He probably thought he did. Chief Quagmire is known as one of the most powerful Mnemosynes in history. He can manipulate anyone’s memory to reflect anything. I’ll bet he’s never had an Obliteration fail before.” Lindsey lowered her voice suddenly. “If you played along with Sam, he would have no way of knowing that it didn’t work.”
“Oh,” Fern said.
“Come on, Fern. You’ve got to stop moping around and start letting us help you.”
“Kenneth Quagmire let a heck loose on us while we were visiting New Tartarus. He almost killed us,” Fern said, almost under her breath.
“The chief?”
“Yes, the chief. And he told Mr. Kimble he was sending me back here to lure Vlad out of hiding so they could catch him. I’m the bait.”
“I don’t believe it!” Lindsey exclaimed.
“That figures,” Fern said. She got up to leave.
“Wait a second. I didn’t mean it like that, Fern,” Lindsey said. “You need to stop being so sensitive. Of course I believe you—I just can’t believe the chief would do something like that.”
“Hold on,” Fern said, now eye level with inscriptions on the opposite wall. She gasped.
“What is it?” Sam said, following behind his sister. Fern made her way to the opposite wall.
“That!” she said, pointing to one of the Greek inscriptions on the wall behind Aristotle.
“That’s it!” she said, pointing to it again. “‘Nothing in excess,’” she said, reading the translation beneath the Greek letters. “That must be what it means!”
“What is she talking about, Sam?”
“The day I disappeared to Pirate’s Cove! There was this strange hole and I climbed through it and there was an inscription just like that.”
Lindsey’s face turned the color of concrete. “Nothing in excess,” she repeated. “Nothing in excess. Fern, are you sure you’re not mixing up your Greek letters or something? I mean, you don’t even speak Greek.”
“I’m sure,” Fern asserted. “I remember it clearly.”
“What’s wrong?” Sam said, noticing Lindsey’s pale face.
“That’s where the stone is,” Lindsey said with emphasis.
“What stone?”
“The Omphalos,” Lindsey responded. “The one that prophesied the Unusuals and everything else.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Because that’s the way the legend goes. The stone is said to be buried underneath the inscription ‘Nothing in excess.’ A long time ago, the stone’s influence was used for all sorts of terrible things, one of them being the murder of giants. As a response, the giants took the stone
and buried it far under the ground, with a warning carved in the ground above for all who crossed its path: ‘Nothing in excess.’ I think it’s supposed to mean that too much power in anyone’s hands is a bad thing.”
“What’s that got to do with us?” Sam said.
“I don’t know, but the stone’s probably the most coveted item in the world. People have been looking for it for hundreds of years, thousands even.”
“And you’re saying it’s resting at Pirate’s Cove?” Sam asked. “That all this time it’s been there?”
“If Fern is remembering those letters correctly, then yes.”
“What if Vlad wants the stone? He must know it’s there! That’s why he was there that day on the beach, isn’t it?” Sam asked.
“I wonder why he didn’t just get it while he was there,” Lindsey said. “I wonder if he’s waiting for something—something to occur.” Fern wondered what role she played in his plan. “We need to start monitoring that place,” Lindsey said, practically frenzied. “Can we get there? What about your brother, Fern? Can he drive us? I’m not sure how to make a Sagebrush of Hyperion pick up a certain place, but we’ve got to try.” Lindsey was talking a mile a minute. “I can take part of the existing one and then we’ll plant it.”
“I don’t understand. Why do we have to monitor Pirate’s Cove?”
“In the wrong hands, the Omphalos can destroy entire countries. If Vlad gets to that rock before we do, the whole world’s in trouble!” Lindsey said. “Vlad’s already leagues ahead of the Alliance if he knows where it is.”
Fern shook her head in disbelief. So that’s why Telemus had given her the branch!
“You don’t have to figure out how to track a place,” Fern said proudly.
“What do you mean?” Lindsey asked, wide-eyed.
“I’ve already planted a Sagebrush that will show us the cove. It’s eleven trees to the right of the Kimble Sagebrush in the grove.”
“Are you serious?” Lindsey said.
“Yes. Telemus gave it to me.”
“The Cyclops?”
“Yes.”
“How in the world does he know where the rock is?”
“He doesn’t. Chuffy must, though,” Fern said.
“You were pretty busy while I was sleeping on the ride home, weren’t you?” Sam marveled.
“You could say that,” Fern said. It felt good to have her brother back.
If she had any chance against Vlad, she would need Sam’s and Lindsey’s help. She sat down once more, this time resting her back against Aristotle’s cold marble legs. Fern took a deep breath, pushed her explanation fatigue aside, and began from the beginning.
By the end of lunch, Fern, Sam, and Lindsey had devised a plan for monitoring Pirate’s Cove. Sam and Fern would check the Sagebrush before and after school, and Lindsey, who had a much easier time sneaking out of her house with no Commander lurking around every corner, would check once after dinner. Lindsey tried to give Sam and Fern a quick tutorial on the Sagebrush, teaching them to rub it in just the right way in order to coax the image out of the plant. Neither Sam nor Fern, it turned out, could make any progress. They would have to rely on Lindsey to keep the image alive.
As they raced home from the grove, their heads were processing the new information. Fern let Sam keep pace with her, and by the time the twins reached the kitchen table, they were out of breath.
“How was school?” Mrs. McAllister asked casually.
“Fine,” Sam said, refusing to look at Fern.
“Fern?” Mrs. McAllister followed up.
“Yeah, it was fine,” Fern said.
“Well, was there any talk of Fern’s adventure at Disneyland?”
“No,” Fern jumped in. “Curtis Bumble dyed his hair green and had to go to the office. Everyone was talking about that.” In actuality, the Curtis Bumble incident had occurred three weeks earlier, but Fern knew Sam wouldn’t dare rat her out. The Commander looked skeptical, but let the matter drop.
“I’ve got to go upstairs and do my homework,” Sam said, sliding the chair out and exiting the kitchen.
“Yeah, me too,” Fern said, following Sam up the stairs.
Normally the Commander would have been thrilled by her twins’ industrious study habits. But as Mrs. McAllister sat alone at the kitchen table, unrest took hold of her.
When Fern and Sam had returned home after one night at New Tartarus, Mrs. McAllister was so relieved, she thought she might faint on the spot. The entire day her children were gone had been torturous. Although she’d called Alistair Kimble’s cell phone until her fingertips were numb, she never reached Fern or Sam. Just when she thought she could stand no more, her children had arrived on the doorstep. The truck, with Mr. Kimble in it, was pulling out of the driveway before the Commander answered the door. Mr. Kimble wanted to avoid finding out what Mrs. McAllister might say or do to the duplicitous man. Any desire to throttle Mr. Kimble at that moment was swallowed whole by the joy of having her children safely home.
She’d asked a multitude of questions about New Tartarus—what they had seen, where they had stayed, whom they had met. Fern had responded with terse and unemotional answers. Odder still, Sam seemed to have nothing to say about his stay besides a few uninteresting details.
Fern had recounted their morning, explaining that Mr. Kimble had driven them home because word had come from Chief Kenneth Quagmire himself that she was now out of immediate danger.
“Thank heavens for that man,” the Commander had said, clapping her hands. The words had sickened Fern, but she could not bring herself to ruin her mother’s happiness.
The Commander’s elation was short-lived. The more questions she asked, the less firm Sam and Fern became on the details. The fact that Mr. Summers had come by again asking about Fern only heightened Mary Lou’s unease.
Fern, once lively and lighthearted despite all her idiosyncrasies, was distant and strange now.
As Mrs. McAllister sat at the kitchen table, her concern was overwhelming. She and Fern hadn’t really talked since before they all met that day in Kimble & Kimble’s conference room. There had not been enough time. Though she had no idea what she was going to say, the Commander climbed upstairs and knocked on Fern’s door.
“Fern,” she said, poking her head in Fern’s room. She saw Fern lying on her back on the bed with her hands over her eyes.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” Fern said, her voice shaky. Although Fern knew Sam was on her side, for better or worse, she was still unsure of her mother. Fern felt like the Commander had been angry at her ever since her first disappearance. Vlad’s predictions weighed heavily on her mind. What if the Commander had begun to think she didn’t have any real obligation to Fern? After all, Fern was not her real daughter.
“You don’t seem like yourself,” Mrs. McAllister said, coming in through the door. “What’s wrong?”
Maybe, Fern thought, her mother didn’t know who she really was. Fern might not ever know herself. After all, her perception of herself kept changing—first she was an outsider with no friends, then an Otherworldly with special powers, then a vampire and the daughter of a supposed Blout, and then finally an Unusual, whatever that was.
“Nothing,” Fern said, turning toward the wall.
“Was it a bad day at school?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” Talking about it, Fern knew, would mean talking about all of it.
“You sure?”
“Yes,” Fern said, lying once again.
“I love you.” Mrs. McAllister said, closing the door behind her.
What if I became a blood-sucking vampire? Would you still love me then? Fern put her hands to her face once more, plagued by the thought she might not be the only one lying.
Chapter 20
the most famous rock of them all
Although the McAllisters were now inextricably linked to vampires, as the days
passed, they were acting more and more like zombies.
Fern and Sam had become obsessed with checking the Sagebrush. Anytime they could get away, they’d go to Anderson’s Grove and monitor Pirate’s Cove. Lindsey made sure to keep the image alive so they could. They’d seen a couple engaged in an indecent act, two middle-aged men in a brawl, and a Brownie troop having a cookout, but no sign of Vlad (or dead birds). Upon careful inspection, the cave in question appeared to have no secret openings. Things were just as they should be. One week passed, then two, and then three. Fern’s stomach began to hurt constantly again and her rail-thin frame grew frailer still. Sam often woke up with dark circles around his eyes.
Eddie, though gone a lot because of social and sporting obligations, noticed the grim undertone of the household. He kept an eye on the twins, but couldn’t figure out why both were so distant.
But Mrs. McAllister worried most of all. She was disturbed by the mood of the household and felt powerless to bridge the growing distance between herself and her two youngest children.
Which is why she didn’t hesitate when Mrs. Lin called to invite the whole McAllister family over for dinner. The way the Commander figured it, the invitation was part of some sort of vampire outreach program. The Lins would welcome the McAllisters to the club, though Fern was the only real member. While she was there, the Commander might be able to ask Mrs. Lin for some practical advice about raising a teenage vampire.
That evening, Mrs. McAllister was dressed in a red skirt and white silk blouse and wore her blond hair in loose curls around her shoulders. Fern and Sam both wore jeans, and as they piled out of the car, they looked the part of the Salt and Pepper Twins. Eddie wore a polo shirt and slacks and looked as clean cut as ever. Fern’s stomach was acting up again, partly because she was sure that a white sedan had followed them from their house to the Lins. And because she, Sam, and Lindsey were all at dinner, no one would be monitoring Pirate’s Cove from the grove. Though Fern tried not to think about it, it was almost a month to the day since Vlad had last visited.
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