“S-sorry,” Ivy stammered.
The man dropped the ball into her hand.
“Dad!” Brendan exclaimed, coming over to join Ivy. “What are you doing here?”
Ivy turned to look at Brendan and then back at the man standing before her. She couldn’t believe her luck. Not only was Brendan being more A positive about her move to Europe than she could ever have hoped but now she was getting to meet his father without even asking!
Brendan inched up to his dad. “I’m on a date,” he murmured in a low voice.
Somehow, Ivy thought, embarrassment makes him even more gorgeous.
“Your mother asked me to tell you to be home in time for dinner,” Mr. Daniels said haltingly. He glanced at Ivy again, then stared expectantly at Brendan.
“Dad, this is Ivy. Ivy, this is my dad,” Brendan muttered.
Brendan’s father extended his hand. “It is a great pleasure to meet you,” he said, turning Ivy’s hand over in his own curiously. He looked up at her with sparkling eyes. “I understand you have a twin sister?”
“Dad!” Brendan scolded. He looked at Ivy apologetically. “My dad’s a geneticist.”
“It’s okay,” Ivy said. Mr. Daniels seems just as eager to talk to me as Olivia and I are to talk to him! she thought excitedly. “Great to meet you, Mr. Daniels.”
He peered into her eyes. “Any health problems as a child?” he asked clinically.
Ivy thought about it. “No. I got a marble stuck in my ear once.”
“Are you allergic to garlic?” he asked.
“Of course,” Ivy answered.
“Inconceivable,” Mr. Daniels muttered to himself.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Brendan said, sounding annoyed, “but did I mention that Ivy and I are on a date?” He grabbed his father’s arm and dragged him away.
A minute later, Brendan reappeared, unaccompanied, next to Ivy at the Skee-Ball game.
“Sorry about that,” he said sheepishly as Ivy handed him a ball. “Ever since he heard about you and Olivia, he’s been desperate to meet you.”
Brendan shot the ball, and it bounced into the circle just outside the bull’s-eye. “Four hundred points,” he announced.
“You want to hear something deadly?” Ivy said, taking a ball. “I was actually going to ask if I could talk to your dad.” She shot one hundred points and grimaced.
“How come?” Brendan asked.
“Olivia and I found a research study that he wrote about whether vamps and humans can have babies. We kind of wanted to ask him about that.”
“Then you would actually be willing to come over to our house for lunch on Sunday?” Brendan said with a hint of relief. “My dad asked me to invite you and Olivia.”
“That would be killer!” Ivy said.
“Maybe to you,” remarked Brendan. “You don’t have to listen to him talk about work all the time! But at least this way he can get all his scientific mumbo jumbo out in one dose, and you and Olivia can ask any questions you want.”
“He doesn’t know that Olivia knows about, you know, though, right?” Ivy said cryptically.
“Ivy,” Brendan assured her, “I would never tell anyone your secrets. Especially my parents.”
Smiling, Ivy picked up the ball and aimed for the bull’s-eye. She’d invite Olivia to lunch with Brendan’s family when she went to Olivia’s house for lunch tomorrow. Ivy bowled the ball up the ramp, and it sailed into the five-hundred-point hole in the center. “Yes!” she cried.
Brendan sighed. “At least when you go,” he said, “I can have the high-score record for North America back.”
Chapter 6
Olivia skulked to answer the door on Saturday afternoon. Since finding out that Ivy was moving, her mom’s Ivy-related plans had become way too intense. Olivia glared at her own makeup whitened face in the foyer mirror before opening the door.
Ivy looked her up and down. “Don’t you think it’s a little risky to try and switch for lunch with your parents?” she whispered. “Besides, I would never wear black pants and black flats like that— it looks far too businesslike.”
“I’m not trying to be you,” Olivia seethed through clenched teeth. “My mom’s making us all go Goth in your honor!”
Ivy started laughing. “If you think I look funny,” Olivia huffed, “wait till you see my parents!”
She led Ivy to the dining room, where her mom had set the table. “Despite it being weeks ago, we’re pretending it’s Halloween,” said Olivia glumly. Her mom had draped the table with a black tablecloth on which she’d ironed white appliqué skulls. In the center of the table was a candle, and there were cheesy napkins with jacko’-lanterns on them from a costume party they’d had when Olivia was like six.
“Ivy’s here,” Olivia called in a loud voice.
Ivy looked around, clearly confused that Olivia’s parents were nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly there was a creaking noise, and just outside the French doors that opened onto the patio, the basement cellar door was flung open. Out climbed Olivia’s dad dressed in black leather pants, a dark purple button-down shirt, and a black tie with glow-in-the-dark eyeballs on it. His breath looked like clouds of smoke in the cold December air.
“Is your father wearing eyeliner?” Ivy whispered.
Olivia nodded, speechless with horror.
“Deadly to see you, Ivy,” her father said haltingly as he opened the French doors and came in.
“Hi, Mr. Abbott.” Ivy smiled. “Nice pants.”
Suddenly a few notes of eerie classical music boomed through the house, so loud that Olivia and Ivy both put their hands to their ears. Somebody turned down the volume abruptly, and then smoke started pouring out of the cellar.
“Dry ice,” Olivia’s father said proudly.
A pale hand emerged, quivering, from the cellar. Then Olivia’s mom floated up the steps in a shredded black dress and bunny ears that she’d spray-painted black. She was wearing heavy black makeup: eyeliner, mascara, lipstick—the works. She was even wearing gray blush, which made her look sort of dead.
“Welcome to the Abbott haunted house,” Olivia said under her breath.
Her mom entered the dining room. “Greetings, Ivy!” she said dramatically—in a British accent for no apparent reason.