He lifted it. "You have very long love veins," he said, running his finger along a skinny horizontal blue vein, his black painted fingernail in sharp contrast to my pasty skin. "See here, how it splinters off? As if you were pursuing a path with one love, but then you chose another."
"I used to be crazy about Marilyn Manson. Now I love Alexander," I said sharply.
He held my hand tighter. "We are the same now, you and I."
"We never were, nor will we ever be, the same," I argued.
Jagger didn't seem convinced.
"How about we share a drink together?" he asked, lifting my wrist to his mouth.
"Then we will be closer than ever."
I quickly jerked my arm away. "Alexander quenches any thirst I have."
"Is it everything you thought it would be? Being a princess of the night?"
"Why don't you ask Luna."
Then it hit me: If Jagger was here, where was his twin sister?
I raced past him, out to the deck of the treehouse, and looked out to the yard.
Alexander was searching the poolside grounds.
A few yards from the treehouse, I thought I saw some long white hair poking out from behind one of the trees.
I turned around, expecting to find Jagger mischievously grinning. But he was no longer standing behind me.
Instead I saw Jagger and Luna darting from underneath the treehouse, through the backyard, toward my unsuspecting boyfriend.
"Alexander!" I called.
I was too far away to reach Alexander before they did. And what could I do against two real vampires, anyway? How could a mortal goth stop them?
Then I remembered. "Alexander—cover yourself! With a towel! Now!" I shouted.
He looked confused but snatched a folded beach towel from a lounge chair, crouched down, and enveloped himself with it.
I pulled my hoodie over my head and drew the strings tightly shut.
I grabbed the garage door opener from my pocket and pointed it at Henry's house.
I took a deep breath and pressed my finger on the silver button as hard as I could.
The lights burst on, illuminating the entire backyard, including Jagger and Luna.
The two vampires stopped dead in their tracks. The sudden burst of bright light was like kryptonite. They shielded their pale faces with their skinny bleach white arms.
They each hissed and fled into the darkness.
I flew down the ladder and raced to the pool deck. Breathless, I finally reached Alexander, still covered, on a lounge chair.
I aimed the garage door opener at the house again, pressed the silver button, and the once-illuminated backyard turned black.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I could see Alexander, his hair tousled, a towel by his side.
"Quick thinking," he complimented, and gave me a long kiss.
"We better get out of here—," I said.
"Jagger will be more determined than ever to get Trevor now that he knows we've found his hideout. They won't wait much longer."
8 Gossip and Garlic
If there ever was a morning I didn't want to get out of bed, this was it. After pressing the snooze bar repeatedly, I unplugged my Nightmare Before Christmas alarm clock and stashed it under my bed.
What I couldn't unplug was my mother's voice.
"Raven!" she called for the millionth time from downstairs. "You've overslept.
Again."
After a quick shower, I threw on a black-on-black ensemble. I dragged myself into the kitchen to gulp down some of the leftover morning sludge that Dad called "coffee."
I found Billy Boy already commandeering the chair by the TV with our new house guest, Henry. The nerd-mates were glued to the screen, watching historic footage of battleships blasting their cannons and devouring Pop-Tarts and Crunch Berries.
With every crunch of the captain and boom of a cannon, I felt like my head was behind enemy lines.
"Turn that off!" I whined, and switched the channel to the Home Shopping Network.
A petite blond with a perfect french manicure was modeling bedazzling silver bracelets.
"Hurry, there's only fifty seconds left!" I warned Billy Boy. "You could own one in just five easy payments. The blue topaz matches your eyes."
Billy Boy raced to the TV and wrangled the control out of my hand. "Get off!" he said, switching it back to the History Channel. "If you'd watch, maybe you'd learn something. Then your report card could be framed in Dad's office, instead of ending up in his paper shredder."
I stirred cream and a pound of sugar into a java-filled Dullsville Country Club mug and poured myself a small bowl of Count Chocula. The gun battle and excessive crunching continued. I could barely open my charcoal eyelids wide enough to see the chocolate vampires floating in the milk among the marshmallow ghosts and bats.
My mom burst into the kitchen in her Corporate Cathy gear—a crisp gray DKNY pantsuit and Kate Spade mules—and opened the fridge door. "Morning," she said gleefully. "I thought you'd never get up."
"I didn't either," I grumbled.
"I saw Mrs. Mitchell at the pharmacy last night buying Trevor some cough syrup," she said, placing her Tupperware bowl filled with low-fat, low-taste premade salad in her Bloomingdale's tote bag. "Trevor must have the same cold you had."
"Yeah, he's been out of school. It's been the first time I only detested school instead of hating it."