‘Me, too,’ Olivia said and yawned. She snuggled into her pillow and pulled the blanket over her. ‘Goodnight, Ivy.’
‘Goodnight, Olivia.’
Even though it was the middle of the night, Ivy pushed open her luxurious coffin lid. It was a velvet-lined Interna Three, the best coffin money could buy. But she still couldn’t sleep.
She was so hungry. ‘Petty fors’ had turned out to be delicious little chocolates. Ivy had only managed to swipe three of them. She could have eaten the whole tray.
As quietly as she could, she climbed out of the coffin and headed downstairs. Now that everyone was in bed, the house was colder, but the light of the moon and her uber-vamp eyesight meant that she could make out everything clearly.
The mansion was silent until her bare foot made a step creak. She quickly hopped to the next one, which creaked even louder.
It’s like I’m walking on a giant, badly tuned piano, she thought. The portraits on the wall seemed to be frowning at her.
Finally, after four creaky flights she made it downstairs and snuck down the hall into the kitchen.
She paused, listening at the door. There was no sound inside. I’m sure I can unearth something in this huge kitchen, she thought as she went in.
Her head filled with images of the wagyu burgers that Alex had described. Mmm, she thought, but then pushed them from her mind. Nothing fancy, just filling.
She tried the huge walk-in refrigerator. The doors opened to reveal shelves full of delicious-looking things to eat.
Ivy didn’t want to get in more trouble by messing up a recipe or taking something she shouldn’t but, to her delight, she found a box of four pieces of cold meat-lovers’ pizza tucked away behind a jar of Platelet Paste and a stack of sausages. There was a note scrawled on it that read, ‘For N, C mustn’t see.’
Ivy chuckled to herself. Her grandfather Nicholas was trying to hide pizza from her grandmother Caterina. I’ll never tell, Ivy thought, as long as you don’t mind me taking a piece or two.
She pulled off two pieces and grabbed a carton of blood orange juice. Back in the relative warm of the kitchen, she sat on a stool in the dark and gobbled down her midnight feast. In the silence, Ivy looked around. The kitchen was immaculate but old. Copper pots hung from the ceiling and there were embers in the big fireplace in the middle.
As she licked the last bit of sauce off her fingers, she decided to leave a note, in case the Count wondered what had happened to his pizza. There were a few pens in a canister on the countertop, so she grabbed one, slipped back into the walk-in fridge and wrote, ‘Ivy’s stomach says THANK YOU!’ and drew a little smiley face with fangs.
She hurried out of the kitchen but before she could head towards the stairs to her bedroom, she heard a gasping noise. Ivy froze.
Someone else is awake! In an instant, she was back in Operation-Night-Stalker mode. Who could it be? She pressed herself against the wall – keeping a careful eye out for vases – and crept towards the noise. There was a door slightly ajar, so Ivy peered in through the crack.
Tessa, the maid, was sitting on a stool, crying softly. Ivy remembered how short the Queen had been with her.
‘Tessa, are you –’ Ivy’s words dried up as a strong hand clamped down on her shoulder. She whirled around. ‘Horatio!’ she gasped. He looked frightening in the night-time gloom.
‘You should not skulk in the dark, Miss Ivy,’ he said. ‘You might scare me.’ He chuckled.
‘Me? Scare you?’ Ivy said, her heart still racing.
He began to walk her back towards the staircase and Ivy glanced back over her shoulder at the door Tessa was behind, hoping she would be OK.
‘Your father did once,’ he admitted. ‘He and his brothers always try one trick or another. Little Karl . . . Charles . . . was most ingenious. One night, he hid behind armour and played taperecorded sounds of dogs barking. When I fled, he followed, playing other sounds like scratching and growling.’ The giant butler shook his head. ‘I do not like dogs.’
Ivy smiled.
‘Happy times,’ Horatio said.
Ivy touched him on his gigantic forearm. ‘It will be happy times again.’
Horatio nodded. ‘Now, it is well past casket-time. You should be sleeping.’
Ivy gave him a quick hug and began the long climb up to her bedroom.
As she crept back into her coffin, Ivy wondered why poor Tessa had been crying all by herself. I’ll talk to her tomorrow, she vowed. She knew what it was like to feel lonely and unhappy.
Olivia watched out of the car window for any sign of the palace. It had snowed overnight and there was a coating of white over everything.
‘This is quite an honour,’ the Countess said. She sat in the front seat of the luxurious eight-seater car, wearing a high-collared ebony jacket over her embroidered dress and short black gloves.
Olivia had chosen her light pink turtleneck and floor-length grey skirt with a wide grey belt and hoped she wasn’t under-dressed. Her blue pea coat was on the seat next to her, in case they were outside at all.
‘Yes!’ came an exclamation from Ivy, who was sitting beside her in her black sweater, pinstripe fitted skirt and multi-buckle boots. She was frantically pressing buttons on her phone. ‘Cell-phone signal!’
Olivia’s new phone buzzed in her bag. There were two texts from her mom, which she sent a quick reply to, explaining that there wasn’t a good signal at the house, and a third text from Jackson. It just said, ‘See ya.’
She re-read it seven times.
What does that mean?
Did he send that before she left? Was it a friendly goodbye? Or was it some horribly casual way of breaking it off? It seemed cryptic. No smiley faces, no ‘Love, Jackson’. Olivia rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache coming on.
What if she didn’t see him soon? She didn’t even know what town he was going to next. She wanted to ask Ivy about it, but she couldn’t in a car full of adults.
The first chance she had, she would talk to Ivy about this. Her twin would know what to do. She went back to gazing at the Transylvanian countryside as it sped past the car. Dark, forbidding forests and heavy grey skies. It was so unfamiliar and just made her think how Jackson was thousands of miles away.
‘Holy Water!’ Ivy whispered to Olivia.
As they drove up the semi-circular gravel driveway, Ivy realised that the Queen’s estate made her grandparents’ house look like a shed. The two of them peered up at the sculptures of eagles with their wings spread, perched on the top of the stone turret above the entrance.