Never Bite a Boy on the First Date. Tamara Summers

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СКАЧАТЬ in a coffin and feed her through a tube until she is old enough to be trusted!”

      I glanced at Olympia. “You guys don’t really do that, do you?”

      “Not unless it’s necessary,” Olympia said, which didn’t reassure me very much.

      We were in the den, which is Wilhelm’s favourite room after the basement, where he sleeps. Olympia deliberately chose a house with very few windows – they’re hard to find, but cheap, because nobody else wants them. The den had only one small window. Like all the others in the house, it was covered with dark blinds and heavy velvet curtains.

      On the table next to Wilhelm’s Barcalounger was the only light in the room: a tiny lamp with a pale red shade. Olympia had convinced Wilhelm to give up his dripping Gothic candles after he set the last Barcalounger on fire. This new chair was covered in a prickly red-and-black plaid. The colours matched the dark red Oriental rug and the sleek, black metal coffee table, but stylistically the room was a bit of a mishmash.

      Not that I’ll ever tell my vampire parents this, but they’re not exactly the world’s greatest interior decorators. It’s like they’ve latched on to a couple of trendy things from each century and haven’t noticed that the world has moved on.

      This is unfortunately true of their clothes too. We’re not going to even discuss the tragedy of a medieval vampire in a pale blue leisure suit. I make Olympia run her outfits by me every morning before I let her drive me to school.

      “She is running wild!” Wilhelm bellowed now, talking about me again. “She will bring the vampire hunters right to us!”

      “This isn’t the Dark Ages, Pops,” I said. I love the way Wilhelm’s hair stands on end when I call him that. “There aren’t mobs of ignorant villagers outside with pitchforks and torches. Nobody even believes you guys exist. Us guys, I mean.”

      “That is precisely the kind of thinking that will get us all staked!” he shouted. “These new vampires think they can bite anyone they like! They don’t remember how the hunters watch for any signs of us! Careless, reckless, selfish—”

      “But I didn’t do it!” I yelled over the end of his sentence. “Call me what you like, but I DIDN’T BITE HIM!”

      Wilhelm glared at me with beady, bloodshot eyes. He wasn’t bitten until fairly late in life, so he’s kind of grizzled and grey for a vampire. Plus he’s had the same moustache since the 800s – long and droopy and fluffy. Apparently it keeps going in and out of fashion, so he sees no need to shave it. Personally I think it’s really distracting to talk to someone who looks like he has giant fuzzy caterpillars crawling out of his nose.

      “It might be true,” Olympia interjected. “We can’t be sure she did it.”

      “We can’t be sure she didn’t,” Wilhelm snarled. “We should move again, and quickly, before they come to hunt us down.”

      “Oh, no,” I said, remembering the long weeks of car travel and switching cities and identities. It was bad enough after my death; after Zach’s it was even worse, because he was there pestering me the whole time and there was no way to get away from him. I was kind of hoping we’d stay here in Massachusetts for a while. “Please don’t make me start junior year all over again.”

      “I hardly think relocating is the worst of your problems,” Olympia pointed out.

      “There could totally be other vampires here,” I said. “We saw this way suspicious guy at the school, didn’t we, Olympia? And it’s a pretty big town, right? There could be vampires all over the place!”

      “Most vampires are not as foolish as you are,” Wilhelm growled.

      “Let me find the vampire who killed Tex,” I said. “If I can figure out who did it, will you believe me? Can we stay?”

      Olympia and Wilhelm looked at each other for a long moment. Sometimes I think they’re actually talking to each other when this happens, which is fully creepy. Nobody wants parents with telepathy.

      Finally Wilhelm snorted, which made his moustache flounce up and down. “I am not happy about this,” he said. “I want that to be clear.”

      “All right, we’ll let you try,” Olympia said to me. “But if you haven’t figured it out in one week, we’re moving again.”

      “And then there will be consequences,” Wilhelm warned. I didn’t need telepathy to know he had locked coffins and feeding tubes floating through his head.

      “Be careful,” Olympia said. “Not all vampires are as civilised as we are.”

      Really? Less civilised than medieval Romanians? I bet.

      Finally I escaped upstairs to my room. Zach and I are the only ones who use the upstairs; we don’t quite hate the sun as much as the others do, and it occasionally manages to sneak in through the blinds on the top floor. Our deal is that I get the rooms to the left of the staircase and he gets the rooms to the right. He’s not supposed to come over to my side, although you can imagine how well he obeys that rule.

      Bert and Crystal have a room on the first floor. They’ve both been vampires for less than a hundred years, so they still do some human things like sleep in a bed, although their mattress is rock hard. I guess one day they’ll switch over to coffins, like Olympia and Wilhelm, who sleep behind a hidden door in the basement in parallel caskets of ancient stone. Allegedly one day I’ll want to sleep in a coffin too, but I am highly dubious about that theory. I like my bed to be as fluffy as possible, with about seventeen pillows and a down comforter. Wilhelm thinks this is a sign of my “moral decrepitude” and “debilitating laziness”. I think it’s a sign of I just like sleeping, dude.

      In fact, when I got upstairs, that’s exactly what happened – pretty much right away. I mean, I tried to start my investigation. I got as far as Googling Tex Harrison and finding out that he kept a blog on his My Space page. But it turned out to be all about sports and how awesome the Luna Tigers are and what an awesome quarterback he is and blah blah Patriots and Red Sox, plus a detailed rundown of his daily workout regimen and everything he’s ever eaten. Ever. Can you really blame me for falling asleep?

      When I woke up, I was lying across my bed in a mountain of pillows. My vampire instincts told me that it was dark outside. I rolled over and saw Zach standing in my doorway. Really “lurking” is the most appropriate description.

      “Go away,” I said, throwing a pillow at him.

      “You forgot to lock your door again,” he said.

      “You forgot to not be an ass again,” I said. “Stay on your side of the house.”

      “I hear you’re going to solve Tex’s murder,” he said with a smirk. “Looks like it’s going well so far.”

      “Um, hello? All the best detectives do their work in the dark,” I said.

      “I can think of better things to do in the dark,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

      That was my cue to leave.

      “Have some blood before you go out!” Olympia called from the kitchen as I stomped past.

      “No СКАЧАТЬ