Olivia closed her lips firmly, but she couldn’t completely hold back a giggle as she imagined it. ‘Now that’s an image that deserves to go viral on the Vorld Vide Veb!’
‘Better than the Happy Vampire, that’s for sure.’ Ivy scowled.
‘I dunno . . . she was kind of cute,’ Olivia said, batting her eyelashes. Then she took off running before her vamp twin could grab her.
She skidded to a halt in the doorway of Café Creative. Hmm . . . it’s going to be hard to do any investigating here!
Under Lillian’s management, the café had become a huge success. Today customers were filling almost all of the tables, sipping frothy coffee drinks and smoothies, while other visitors wandered through the open space around them, picking up the pens, felt tips and paint brushes that had been left out for community use and making their own contribution to the latest mural growing on the walls.
Unfortunately, now that the café was so popular, it was a lot harder for the twins to snoop around with any subtlety.
As Olivia and Ivy peered into corners and knocked on walls looking for hidden compartments, Olivia caught more than one visitor giving them strange looks. And when Ivy started poking around underneath the tables, Olivia winced at the expression on the faces of the customers who sat there. They pulled in their legs and tugged their bags closer.
‘Um . . . Ivy?’ Olivia beckoned to her twin as Ivy emerged from one table and started towards the next. ‘Do we even know what we’re really looking for?’ she whispered.
Ivy’s shoulders sagged. ‘Not really,’ she confessed. ‘Just . . . anything weird. Right?’
Before Olivia could answer, a rasping voice sounded just behind them.
‘You two!’ It was Joan Calhoun, the head barista. She glared at them, her muscled arms crossed over her apron. ‘You girls may be related to my manager, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to loiter around here and disturb my customers. If you’re not going to order food, or’ – she jerked her chin meaningfully at the community mural on the walls – ‘doodle something, then you need to find somewhere else to be. Got it?’
‘Sorry.’ Olivia cringed. As her twin mumbled an apology of her own, Olivia took a deep breath and turned on actor-mode. ‘Actually . . .’ Smiling ruefully, she sidled up to the café counter. ‘Could I order a cake and orange juice, please? That was why we came here in the first place. We were just distracted by . . . erm . . . remembering how amazing the Halloween party was.’
‘That’s right,’ Ivy agreed, nodding vigorously. ‘We were . . . uh . . . looking for clues to how Camilla did the special effects.’
‘Hmmph.’ Joan grimaced as she stepped behind the counter and pulled out a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerated case. ‘I’m just glad I wasn’t working that night. Unlike some people, I don’t find scares fun.’
Olivia gave a heartfelt sigh of agreement. ‘You and me both!’
‘Besides . . .’ Joan shook her head as she uncapped the orange juice. ‘Living in Franklin Grove my whole life, I’ve had more than enough of the real thing to deal with.’
Uh-oh. Olivia felt Ivy tense beside her. It took all of her acting training to keep a sympathetic smile on her own face as she said, ‘What do you mean?’
Please, please, please don’t let those scares have been vamp-related!
‘Haven’t you ever heard the legends?’ Joan fixed her with a beady look. ‘This town is full of spectres!’
Olivia’s eyes widened. ‘You mean . . . ghosts?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Joan didn’t even bother to look down at the orange juice she was pouring. Her gaze held Olivia’s with magnetic intensity. ‘Most people around here seem to have forgotten the old stories, but not us Calhouns. According to my grandma, back down South, our family used to be a wealthy lot. We moved up here in the late nineteenth century, and we have a legend of our own.’ She leaned across the counter, lowering her voice to a very serious whisper. ‘Apparently – and you two will appreciate this part – there were a pair of twin sisters, my great-great-great aunts, who were separated by tragedy in their teenage years. We have a portrait of them right here in this museum, you know.’
‘Twin sisters!’ Olivia breathed, leaning closer. ‘I saw that portrait.’
‘It’s a good one, isn’t it?’ Joan nodded. ‘But it’s not a happy story. According to old family lore, the tragedy that separated the twins left their souls restless in the afterlife. Now, one of the sisters is said to be forever trapped here, cursed to haunt our town – and you can tell when you’ve seen her, because she’s always decked out in a fancy red dress.’
A red dress . . .?
Olivia used every ounce of her acting ability to keep her voice from quivering. ‘What were their names?’ she asked Joan.
But she had a horrible feeling that she already knew half of the answer.
Five minutes later, Olivia’s legs gave out in the museum hallway as she stared once again at the portrait of the Victorian twin sisters: Patience and Hope Calhoun. She leaned back against the wall and slid helplessly to the ground, her gaze still fixed on their faces . . .
Their familiar faces.
‘I can’t believe it . . . I might actually have talked to a ghost!’ she whispered. ‘It would explain why the girl in that fabulous red dress was behaving so strangely at Camilla’s party. I thought she was just in costume . . .’ She shook her head helplessly. ‘Could I really have been talking to the ghost of Patience Calhoun?’
‘Hey, woah there,’ said Ivy, sliding down beside her. ‘Remember, we still don’t know any of this for sure. Until we do, there’s no point overthinking it.’
‘You’re right,’ Olivia said. ‘But, still . . . Joan’s story is kind of checking out.’
‘I know, but we still need proof. Until we have some, we should keep an eye out for that girl you were talking to.’
‘You’re right,’ Olivia said firmly. ‘There could be a perfectly rational explanation . . . and if there is, we’ll find it. But . . . what now?’
Ivy sighed, thunking her head back against the wall. ‘I have to admit, I was just wondering the same thing!’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘But actually . . . maybe I do have an idea. Why don’t we go see Camilla and get the full details of exactly what she was planning for the party? Who knows, maybe there was some kind of technical malfunction. She was using a lot of fancy equipment – for all we know, something could have gone wrong, and that’s what really caused all the spooktacular stuff. All this fuss could be for nothing!’
‘You might be right,’ Olivia said, as she took out her phone to call her friend.
Olivia had been in Camilla’s room countless times since she’d first moved to Franklin Grove. But she’d never seen it look like this. Camilla’s mother had let the twins into the house and sent them upstairs, and when Olivia first opened the bedroom door, she couldn’t even see her friend inside beneath all the chaos.
It looks like Lillian was right – Camilla may just have gone crazy!
Two huge new corkboards had been hung on opposite walls of the bedroom, each of them completely covered in masses of newspaper clippings, photos, and random scraps of paper with notes scrawled all over them. Long lines of coloured string ran between the two corkboards, forming a spiderweb of connections across the room, with sticky notes attached to each string.
‘Come on in!’ Camilla’s voice sounded from across the room. She was kneeling underneath the final lengths of string, scribbling notes. She looked up with a mad glint in her eyes. ‘But don’t disturb anything!’
‘Um . . . OK.’ Olivia shot a wide-eyed look at Ivy before crouching down in front of the tangle of string that filled the room. She kept her questions to herself as she carefully crawled underneath the tendrils, but as soon as she reached her friend, she gently laid a hand on Camilla’s shoulder. ‘Can you tell us what’s going on here?’
‘I can’t stop thinking about what happened on Halloween!’ Camilla raked her hand through her spiralling curls, rattling
out her words with just as much intensity as if she were in the middle of shooting one of her movies. ‘It was just too weird! My parents told me to stop worrying about it, but I can’t, because something was very wrong! And at first I thought I was overreacting, imagining that it had to be something unnatural – but the more I look into things, the less crazy I think I am. You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?’
‘Uh . . .’ Olivia looked helplessly at her sister, who was crouching behind her.
Before either of them could answer, Camilla raced on, wildly jabbing her fingers towards the corkboards. ‘I had no idea until I started researching,’ she babbled, ‘but this Halloween was not the first time there’ve been reports of a poltergeist in Franklin Grove.’
Olivia winced. ‘Could we please use another word for it?’ she begged.
Camilla shrugged impatiently. ‘Whatever you want to call it, this town is full of ghost-like phenomena. Look!’ She pushed past Olivia and Ivy to wriggle out from under the mass of strings. As soon as she was free, she started jabbing at different notes on the boards. ‘See all these different incidents? They’re all reports of doors slamming shut or swinging open, windowpanes rattling, and eerie, howling winds. And it’s always around this time of year!’
Ivy gave a nervous-sounding laugh as she followed Camilla out from under the strings. ‘Well . . . at least the howling wind has an obvious explanation. The wind always gets a little more “howly” in the autumn, doesn’t it?’
‘That’s true.’ Olivia crawled after her twin. ‘In fact, in Franklin Grove, we could probably rename the whole holiday “Howl-oween”!’
Camilla shook her head irritably, picking her way through the strings until she found the one she wanted. ‘As soon as I figured out those details, I started digging, tracing all these incidents back as far as possible. Apparently, this kind of stuff didn’t start getting reported until the 1860s. So I decided to research some local history, see if there were any significant historical events in Franklin Grove that happened at the end of October in the 1860s. And guess what?’ She pinched the yellow string she’d found, holding it up as she followed it to the corkboard on the opposite wall. ‘I found one story that fits perfectly.’ With a grin of fierce concentration, she pointed to the note that was attached to the yellow string. ‘That wind that we heard sounded anguished, didn’t it? Like the howl of a person in pain.’
‘Well . . .’ Olivia shifted uncomfortably. Don’t panic, she told herself. Remember what Ivy said. ‘It did kind of sound like someone in distress,’ she admitted, ‘but I’m sure there must be some rational explanation . . .’
‘Oh, there is.’ Camilla pointed to the corkboard, where a photo of a much-too-familiar portrait had been stuck. ‘And I’ve found it! See, there was one girl in the 1860s who had more than enough to be distressed about, and her name was Patience Calhoun . . .’
Chapter Five
Ivy was wearing her best stomping boots as she, Olivia, Sophia and Reiko all headed towards the Meat and Greet diner for breakfast the next morning. Even her vamptastic bat-patterned black leather footwear wasn’t enough to cheer her up, though . . . not when the adult vamps were acting more freaked out than ever.
The girls might have nosed out a good lead the day before, but the mystery was still unsolved; and worse, Camilla had posted a blog, asking if anyone in Franklin Grove knew of any “spooky legends” – she was pretending she was researching for a new movie idea, but it was obvious what her real motive was – and that it was exactly the kind of thing that was going to put the vamp community on edge. That morning, Ivy’s dad had been practically vibrating with tension as he’d eaten his breakfast. Every time he’d tried to hold a piece of silverware, it had rattled against his plate like the worst drum solo ever. But when the rest of the girls had come by to pick Ivy up, he’d leaped up like a black-clad jack-in-the-box and given them all strict orders to Act Normal!
Which was kind of a joke, coming from him, Ivy thought glumly as she strode down the street.
The adult vamps were determined not to let anything seem odd or even slightly “off ” to anyone in town, not when their own secret hung by such a fragile thread. And unfortunately, Ivy wasn’t sure any more that they were wrong about that. She’d spent half the night tossing and turning, worrying about what would happen if the bunnies of Franklin Grove really did figure out the truth.
Of course, that meant she had spent the other half of the night nursing her new bruises! Ow. She rubbed her shoulder where she’d hit it hard against her coffin as she’d tossed and turned. A coffin is not a safe place for a stressed-out vampire. She’d finally given up and climbed out, turning on her computer to read up on the Calhoun twins, but there hadn’t been much to find.
Where on earth had Camilla got all of that information? The girl really must be obsessed!
Ivy frowned as she looked down the street and glimpsed a familiar dark-haired figure in a leather jacket and jeans lunging out of the front door of the Meat and Greet as if he were fleeing a stake-wielding mob. ‘Where’s Brendan going? He was supposed to meet us there.’
Even as she spoke, her boyfriend turned and saw them. Waving his arms, he rushed up the street. His gorgeous dark hair was mussed up and his leather jacket sat crookedly on his shoulders, as if he’d pulled it on in a hurry.
‘What’s up?’ Ivy asked him.
‘Let’s just say . . .’ Brendan slid a panicked look back towards the Meat and Greet. ‘I think we’d better find somewhere else for breakfast.’
‘How come?’ Ivy frowned. ‘We always eat there. And we’re supposed to be acting “normal”.’
‘Yeah, but . . .’ Grimacing, Brendan ran a hand through his hair, messing it up even more. ‘Look, the diner’s not acting normal, OK? And besides, it’s kind of . . . full.’
‘Seriously?’ Ivy glanced down at her watch. ‘How could it possibly be full this early on Saturday morning?’
Sophia, looking stylish as always in a fitted black coat and high-heeled black boots, leaned in. ‘What’s going on, Brendan?’
Brendan sighed. ‘I guess you might as well all come and see for yourselves.’
Ivy started for the diner with a scowl on her face. Every vamp-sense she had was tingling with the certainty that there was danger ahead.
Even before they stepped inside, she could see for herself that it was packed. People lined the tables against the front windows. When Ivy peered through the glass front door, she could see that the crowd was two deep at the counter.
‘Is there some kind of event going on that we didn’t hear about?’ Olivia asked.
‘It doesn’t look that organised,’ Ivy said grimly, ‘but it sure does look like everyone’s excited about something.’
Everywhere she looked, she could see animated conversations going on, with people leaning across the tables, hands waving. The glass was too thick for her to make out any words, but the buzz of tension and excitement inside was so strong, she could practically feel it.
Then her eye fell on Josh Dillon and his greasy cronies, all clumped together at a corner table.
Uh-oh.
‘Come on,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s time to get inside and do some eavesdropping.’
Brendan grimaced. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘but brace yourself.’
Ivy opened the door . . . and fell back a step, staggering as a wall of pure noise hit her sensitive vampire ears. Ouch!
Gritting her teeth, she stepped into the crowded diner. She forced herself to breathe deeply to steady herself as she waited for her hearing to adjust to the painful intensity of the noise. Gradually, she began to pick out individual words . . . or rather, the same words, over and over again.
‘. . . ghosts . . .’
‘. . . spirits . . .’
‘. . . woooooohh!’
Ivy’s shoulders relaxed as she looked around. No one had made the leap to vampires yet, thank darkness. But . . . She frowned as her gaze passed over all the unfamiliar faces in the diner.
‘That’s because they’re from out of town,’ Brendan replied unhappily.
‘I guess the news must have spread,’ Sophia agreed, looking around the room.
Ivy exchanged a worried look with the other vampires.
There were fresh eyes in town. And that meant a whole lot more people about to notice any vampire behaving suspiciously.
How did Camilla’s blog post spread so fast? We’ll have to be so careful.
Behind Ivy, Olivia heaved a sigh. ‘I just don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Why would the rumour of ghosts bring strangers to Franklin Grove? Wouldn’t that keep most people away?’
‘Are you joking?’ Reiko stared at her. ‘I would love to meet a ghost. I’d have so many questions . . .’
Ivy let the rest of her friend’s words drift into the background as she moved slowly along the line of tables, straining to pick up on the one conversation that worried her the most. She kept her eyes on the clock on the far wall, squinting as if she were trying to make out the time, but all of her attention was on the table in the corner where Josh sat with his gang.
Josh looking that excited can’t be a good sign!
It was hard to pick up individual voices in the mass of sound that pressed at her from all directions, but finally, she made out Josh’s smug voice. ‘He replied to my email himself, you know, and he says he’s definitely thinking about coming here to check out the town!’
Oh, this does not sound good at all. Swallowing hard, Ivy drifted closer, keeping her head carefully tilted away from them.
She had to find out more, no matter how little she liked it . . .
And she liked it even less when she realised exactly who the greasy gang was talking about.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Ivy said miserably, five minutes later.
They’d had to leave the Meat and Greet when they finally ran out of excuses to loiter in the aisles. Olivia had even tried to book a table so that they could stand and wait for it, but the man behind the counter had told them they might have to wait until Sunday night for that. Now they sat on a bench near the diner, huddled together in the cold air for a whispered meeting.
17 Spooktacular - My Sister the Vampire Page 5