15 Secrets and Spies - My Sister the Vampire (12 page)

O
livia looked around the dinner table the next night and sighed.
This is the oddest
dinner I’ve ever had at my bio-dad’s
house . . . and that’s really saying something!

When she’d stopped by the house that evening, she’d hoped to grab a private moment with her stepmom to finally figure out what was going on. She’d arrived just as dinner was
ready, though, so now there were four people sitting at the dining table . . . and three of them seemed to be in another world entirely.

Charles had a notepad open in his lap, which he never looked away from even as he forked steak into his mouth. Ivy looked glum as she picked at her sweet potato, obviously lost in her worries
over Brendan. Lillian – who looked dressed for a royal banquet, rather than an ordinary dinner at home – seemed to have no appetite at all.

Weirder still, Lillian’s smartphone chirped in her handbag every few minutes. Charles didn’t even notice, and Lillian never moved to answer it – but her perfectly made-up face
twitched every time it made a noise.

I can’t take this any more
. It wasn’t just curiosity or nosiness for Olivia now. If someone didn’t tell her what was going on soon, she might
actually
explode!

Taking a deep breath, she set down her salad fork. ‘Lillian,’ she said. ‘How was your day?’

‘What?’ Lillian blinked, her mascaraed eyelashes dark against her pale skin. One hand moved to fidget with the emerald necklace around her neck. ‘Oh. Ah. Fine.’

Then she went straight back to pushing her uneaten steak around her plate, gold-and-silver bracelets rattling against each other on her wrist.

Time for Plan B: make Lillian and Charles talk to each other!

‘So, Dad,’ Olivia said brightly. ‘Has Lillian been to the museum yet? What did she think of the exhibit?’

‘Mmm?’ Charles didn’t even look up from his notepad, where he was busily scribbling notes even as he continued to eat.

Lillian’s words came out in a mumble. ‘Looking forward to Saturday, just like everyone else.’

Olivia forced extra peppiness into her smile. ‘But aren’t you impatient? Don’t you want a sneak peek?’

Lillian didn’t even look up. ‘I hate spoilers.’

Drat
. Olivia’s shoulders slumped. A dinner table with a fabulous meal was just
not
the right setting for any kind of confrontation.

‘Sorry. Did you ask me a question, Olivia?’ Charles shook himself, as if he were shaking off a trance. ‘This is very rude of me, isn’t it?’ He grimaced as he held
up his notepad. ‘I beg your pardon, everyone. Why don’t I take my food into my study so I can get some more work done without being impolite?’

‘Dad . . .’ Olivia rolled her eyes. ‘I saw the museum yesterday, remember? I think you’re done! Seriously, it looks as good as it needs to. Doesn’t it,
Ivy?’

‘Wha–?’ Ivy’s voice sounded bleary. Clearly, she had
no
idea what the others had been talking about.

‘Ivy agrees,’ Olivia said firmly to their father. ‘You’ve done a great job, so stop worrying about it!’

‘Why, thank you, Olivia.’ Charles smiled at her. ‘I appreciate the kind words. However, this isn’t about this weekend’s exhibit. It’s about what I might do
with the South Wing of the museum if it is, indeed, entrusted to me afterwards.’

‘What?’ Olivia stared at him. ‘But you’ve been working so hard on the exhibit. Can’t you give yourself a little break?’
Or some time to pay attention to
your wife?
she added silently.
Can’t you see how weird Lillian’s acting?

But Charles was already standing up. ‘I’m afraid not, my dear. There’s no time to be lost. I want to do something spectacular – but more than that, it needs to be
worthwhile
.’

He headed out of the room, leaving Olivia staring helplessly after him. At the table, Ivy was still busy using her fork to turn her sweet potato into mangled, not-so-sweet mashed potato, while
Lillian seemed to have turned into stone.

As Olivia watched Charles disappear through the door, irritation flashed through her, tightening her chest.
How can such a smart man be so oblivious to how his own family feels right
now?

Looking again at Lillian’s mask-like face, where all expression had been carefully hidden, Olivia released her tension in a sigh.

‘I like your dress, Lillian,’ Olivia offered. ‘It’s very . . .’
Formal
, she finished in her head. Who wore a black silk evening gown to a family dinner at
home? ‘. . . elegant,’ she finished out loud. ‘Where did you –?’

‘Sorry!’ Lillian’s head whipped to the side as her smartphone chirped yet again. She lunged for her handbag. ‘Excuse me. I just have to see who’s trying to contact
me – they seem rather
insistent
.’

‘OK,’ Olivia said. But she frowned as she saw Lillian race upstairs with full vampiric speed, obviously waiting to answer the phone until she was out of hearing range of everyone
else.
Why
would she need that much privacy for her call, if she doesn’t even know who’s trying to talk to her?

‘Oh.’ Ivy sighed, emerging for the first time from her distraction. ‘That reminds me, I left my phone in my room. Brendan might need to call me. Maybe . . .’

‘I’ll get it for you,’ Olivia said. She gave a mock-serious face, pointing to the mangled mess on Ivy’s plate. ‘Just promise me you’ll put that poor food out
of its misery!’

‘Will do.’ Ivy gave her a sad half-smile and a mock salute.

Olivia started up the stairs towards her sister’s room. As she walked past Charles and Lillian’s bedroom door, though, the sound of Lillian’s strained, unhappy voice stopped
her in her tracks.

‘I’m really, really not sure about this,’ Lillian said softly.

‘Are you nuts?’ The crackly voice of Jacob Harker sounded through the phone so loudly that even Olivia could hear it in the hallway outside. ‘You would have to be, like,
totally crazy to turn this down! It’ll give your career a
massive
boost.’

‘I know,’ Lillian said, ‘but –’

‘This director
really
wants you on the project. To prove it, he’s offered to produce your feature-length directorial debut after you wrap. He just wants you to help him out
on this one shoot.’

There was a long, agonising pause. Olivia could almost feel her stepmom’s indecision vibrating through the air. She held her breath to keep from making any tell-tale noises.

But why is this such a hard decision?
Olivia wondered.
Why would she be so unsure about taking a new job on a movie?
Yes, Lillian had moved to Franklin Grove, but she and
Charles must have factored in that she would need to travel from time to time. After all, it was her movie career that had brought her to Franklin Grove in the first place, at the beginning of the
year.

Finally, Lillian let out a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she told Harker. ‘Now
come in, please
.’

What?
Olivia’s eyebrows rose. Why would Lillian ask Jacob Harker – who was in another state – to come into the room?

. . .
Oh, wait. She didn’t ask Harker. Oops!

Olivia winced. After all the times the vampires around her had been caught off-guard in this past week, why did tonight have to be the night Lillian started hearing like a vampire again?

Bracing herself, Olivia opened the door.

Inside the bedroom, Lillian stood by a plush, ornate double-coffin in the shape of a heart. As Olivia stepped inside, Lillian placed her smartphone on the glossy wooden lid of the coffin and
turned to give her stepdaughter a stern look.

‘Eavesdropping is never nice, Olivia. You’re old enough to know that by now.’

‘I’m sorry!’ Olivia rushed forwards across the thick, dark carpet. ‘I really didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it.
Please
don’t think of it
as a betrayal! I just . . .’ She bit her lip, faltering just as she reached her stepmom’s side. ‘I got it in my head that you were getting ready to run away from Franklin Grove or
something.’

Lillian stared at her. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

Olivia twisted her hands together. ‘I saw you,’ she whispered, ‘in the supermarket, picking up a travel guide. And you’ve not been yourself lately – it’s like
you’re trying too hard to
prove
that you like Franklin Grove and you fit in here.’

‘Olivia . . .’ Lillian began.

Olivia couldn’t stop herself. ‘You’re trying too hard,’ she said, looking from her stepmother’s elaborately upswept hair to her evening gown and rich garnet
necklace. ‘You’ve been trying so hard to convince
someone
that everything’s OK, that it’s becoming so obvious everything’s
not
OK.’

Lillian looked at her for a long moment without speaking. Then, slowly, she smiled. ‘Gosh, I didn’t think it would take you such a short time to be able to read my moods so
well,’ she said. ‘If I’m not careful, you and Ivy are going to be able to twist me round your little fingers!’

Olivia laughed and walked across the room to her stepmom, wrapping her in a hug. ‘I’m right here if you need to talk,’ she promised.

Lillian raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’d like that. But . . .’ She flipped open the coffin and climbed inside, carefully arranging the skirts
of her silk evening gown against the rich crimson velvet of the coffin’s lining. ‘I’m going to need to be really relaxed for
this
conversation.’

Olivia blinked. ‘OK.’
I can deal with this
, she told herself. After all, she’d finally gotten Lillian to start talking. She could totally handle talking to someone
while they lay down inside a coffin!

As Lillian got comfortable, the lines of tension in her face eased away. For the first time all week, she actually looked genuinely peaceful. When she started to speak, her voice was quiet.

‘I wasn’t planning to leave,’ she said. ‘I was looking at travel guides because I was trying to find out how easy it would be to fly back and forth from the
Wanderer
location shoot to Franklin Grove.’

‘
Wanderer
? I’ve heard about that movie!’ Olivia grabbed the coffin edge in her excitement – then let go.
Too weird!
Backing away from the coffin, she
continued: ‘Mr Harker asked Jackson if he wanted to act in it.’

‘Really?’ Lillian seemed to ponder that for a moment. ‘Well, Jackson would be excellent as the main character’s son. Is he going to do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Olivia said, ‘but that’s not important. What matters right now is, why are you
not
doing it?’

Lillian sighed, shifting her head against her crimson cushion. ‘It turns out that it wouldn’t be easy at all to fly back and forth from the shoot to Franklin Grove. It’s a
post-apocalyptic movie, set largely in the desert. That means location work, mostly in Africa.’

‘Oh.’ Frowning, Olivia nibbled on her lower lip. ‘OK, so you wouldn’t be coming back every weekend. But it’s one shoot – four or five months at the most,
right? So . . . if the director wants to help you make your own movie afterwards, it might be worth it.’

Lillian sighed again and closed her eyes. This time, Olivia had to look away. Lying inside the coffin with her eyes shut, Olivia’s stepmom looked achingly beautiful and ethereal, but also
quite . . .
dead
. Olivia swallowed hard.
This is the
hardest part of vampire culture to deal with!

When Lillian spoke again, though, her words startled Olivia out of her discomfort. ‘It
is
just one movie shoot,’ Lillian said, ‘but Harker wants to film all three
movies back-to-back . . . over a period of eighteen months.’

Olivia gasped.
Eighteen months?
Taking that job really would mean Lillian effectively moving away!

‘Of course I can’t do it,’ Lillian said. ‘I couldn’t bear to spend that long away from my new family – and I would never want Charles to have to relocate Ivy
and separate you two girls again.’

‘Nooo . . .’ Olivia trailed the word out unhappily.

‘Olivia?’ Ivy’s voice called up from downstairs. ‘I’ve destroyed my sweet potato, like, five times while waiting. Do you need
help
looking for my
phone?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ Olivia called back. ‘I’ll be right down.’

She bit her lip, turning back to her stepmom. The thought of losing Ivy for a year and a half was unbearable, but it was
so
unfair that Lillian’s ambitions couldn’t match up
with her new life in Franklin Grove!

Lillian suddenly sat up in the coffin, reaching out for Olivia. Olivia had to look away sharply.
This is way too much of a horror movie moment!

Her stepmom’s touch was gentle, though, as she took Olivia’s hand. ‘I promise,’ Lillian said, ‘that it’s not Franklin Grove making me unhappy.

I can’t tell you how happy I am being married to Charles – and how thrilled I am that I get to be stepmother to the two coolest teenagers I’ve ever known.’ Olivia
squeezed her stepmom’s hand, feeling the gentle sting of tears in her eyes. ‘We’re really thrilled about that, too,’ she said.