“My dear Olivia, my beautiful daughter,” he interrupted, turning his hopeless eyes on her. “Yes, the Vampire Round Table accepts you. But that does not make you one of us. I could not believe it when I learned you had come to Franklin Grove. It was certainly destiny for you and Ivy to find each other.” He sighed. “I suppose, somewhere deep inside, I wanted it to happen. I left you both our rings. But I could not bear to lose you the way I lost Susannah,” he said hoarsely. “That is why we must be apart.” He rapped the desk with his fist, like a judge decreeing his decision.
Ivy wanted to say something to convince her father that everything would be okay. Except now she wasn’t so sure herself. What if something horrible does happen to Olivia if we stay together? she thought. After all, it was my embryo’s blood that infected our mom. Olivia’s hand slipped from her own, and the three of them were silent, lost in their own thoughts.
Then their father turned his chair away and gently asked them to leave him for a moment. Ivy and her sister walked slowly out of the room. There seemed to be nothing left to say.
Olivia and her sister sunk to the wooden floor in the hallway outside their father’s study.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Olivia said softly.
“You’re right,” Ivy said, a curtain of hair shielding her face. “It was mine.”
“What?” Olivia asked in surprise.
“You were the human baby,” Ivy explained sadly. “I was the vampire. Our mother died from having me.”
“Ivy, that’s not true,” Olivia protested. Her sister looked at her doubtfully out of the corner of her eye. “Brendan’s father said the human and vampire cells polarized. After that it would have been a normal pregnancy.”
Ivy shook her head. “We don’t know that.”
Our father spent the last thirteen years blaming himself for our mother’s death, Olivia thought. I can’t let Ivy make the same mistake. She stood up and held out her hand. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Ivy asked, allowing herself to be pulled to her feet.
“To find Mr. Daniels,” Olivia told her. “We’re going to get this straightened out once and for all.”
They spotted Brendan’s dad in the living room, talking to a short, pale man in sunglasses. “Sorry, can we pry you away for a minute?” Olivia asked.
Mr. Daniels followed them into the kitchen. “Ivy and I have something to ask you,” Olivia said.
“Of course,” Mr. Daniels replied. Ivy bit her lip and stared down at her boots.
“Could a human woman die from giving birth to a vampire?” blurted Olivia.
“It depends,” Mr. Daniels answered, and Olivia felt a flicker of worry.
“On what?” she risked.
“Mainly on whether she kept up her iron intake,” replied Mr. Daniels. “But, assuming a balanced diet, there’s no reason a human mother couldn’t act as a surrogate to a vampire child. Why do you ask?”
“Because we found out that our mother died in childbirth,” Olivia explained plainly. She looked over at her sister, and it was clear Ivy still wasn’t convinced. “Could she have died because she needed more iron or whatever?”
“No, no, that wouldn’t have been the situation in your case,” Mr. Daniels replied, shaking his wild mane of gray hair.
Ivy looked up. “Why not?”
“Because iron deficiency in the mother would almost certainly result in birth defects in the vampire offspring, and you’re healthy as a bat. The normal, human complications that often arise during labor were probably the cause of your mother’s death.”
“So it wasn’t having me as a daughter?” Ivy inquired softly.
Mr. Daniels squeezed Ivy’s shoulder affectionately. “No,” he said. “Certainly not,” he added more forcefully.
Olivia saw relief wash over her sister’s face. “Thanks, Mr. Daniels,” Olivia said triumphantly.
Ivy felt like she’d just had a blood transfusion. “Would you be willing to tell my father what you just said?” she asked.
He looked puzzled. “I suppose so, but why?” Ivy exchanged glances with her sister. We have to tell Brendan’s father the truth. Ivy thought, shepherding him further into the corner by the pantry, so no one else would overhear. “If we tell you a secret,” Ivy said, “will you promise to keep it?”
Mr. Daniels paused, studying the serious expressions on Ivy’s and Olivia’s faces. “I will,” he pledged finally.
“Remember when you told us about Karl Lazar,” Ivy said, “the vamp who fell in love with a human and went into hiding?”
“Yes,” Mr. Daniels agreed.
“Well, we found him,” Olivia whispered.
“You did?” Mr. Daniels’s eyes widened. “Where?”
“In Franklin Grove,” Ivy replied. “He changed his name to Charles Vega.”
“Inconceivable!” Mr. Daniels gasped.
“But true,” said Ivy. “My dad is our real dad. And he thinks our mother died because he got her pregnant with a vampire baby.”
Thankfully, Mr. Daniels understood at once why the girls wanted him to speak to their father. “Lead the way!” he said.
Ivy knocked lightly on the study door. “Dad?”
“You may enter,” his voice came faintly.
“Dad, Mr. Daniels is here.” Brendan’s father followed her into the room, and Olivia came in behind him. “He has something to tell you.”
“Your wife’s death was not your fault, Charles,” Mr. Daniels said simply.
Her father bristled. “I appreciate your concern, Marc, but—”
Mr. Daniels put up his hand. “Let me finish. I have been studying human-vampire childbirth for nearly a decade, and your daughters’ particular case around the clock for two weeks. When the girls’ mother was impregnated, the human cells and vampire cells separated and formed two entirely distinct embryos. From that moment on, the pregnancy would have been completely normal. All my research confirms this. There would have been no toxic effects from the vampire DNA in your wife’s womb.”
“Then what killed her?” Ivy’s father demanded.
“Human medicine and science have greatly advanced,” Mr. Daniels said. “But even now, in this day and age, there are unpreventable fatalities during childbirth. It is the way of nature. It is human nature, Charles.” Mr. Daniels spread his hands. “It has nothing to do with vampires.”