‘Sorry about that.’ Olivia popped into the frame. She was stirring a bowl of cereal with a spoon. Her hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail and she had a bright purple scarf looped round her neck. ‘Now, where were we?’
‘Um, Olivia?’ Ivy pointed over her twin’s shoulder. ‘Is your dad OK?’
Mr Abbott was struggling to roll over. The white sash tied around his forehead had fallen down over his eyes. ‘Did I break it?’ he moaned, crawling to his feet.
‘Not this time,’ called Olivia happily from just within the open French doors, before turning to whisper to Ivy. ‘Don’t worry. He’s trying to earn his yellow belt. Been working on that plank all week and hasn’t broken a finger yet.’ She shrugged. ‘So, how’s it going?’
‘Well,’ Ivy said, scooping up her laptop, ‘shall I give you the grand tour?’
‘Absolutely! Except right now the only thing I can see is a close-up of your cheek.’
‘Oops, sorry.’ Ivy pulled the webcam lens away from her face. She’d been cradling it as she span in her chair. She angled the video camera and the screen to face the room. ‘Better?’
‘Much!’
‘Here’s my closet.’ Ivy tried to do a quick sweep of the camera across the mess that was her wardrobe, but her sister wasn’t going to be fooled.
‘Ivy Vega,’ Olivia exclaimed. ‘Is that your closet? It looks like a natural disaster hit it! Go back, go back – I want to see the full horror.’ Reluctantly, Ivy turned the camera back on her closet. Crumpled T-shirts, skinny jeans and leggings littered the floor.
‘It’s not my fault!’ Ivy protested. ‘It’s cramped in here. See?’ She made a grand gesture with her arm. ‘This is the rest of my room. Well, my room that I share with five other girls.’ She showed Olivia the row of coffins that were arranged one on top of the other on wooden stilts, just like extra-special bunk beds with velvet-lined lids!
Photo collages of her room-mates and cool vintage posters of black-and-white Hollywood movies were plastered above the coffins, and each girl had a silver name plaque engraved in fancy script – Petra, Katrina, Anastasia, Alexandra, Galina and Ivy. Ivy had personalised her space by taping up a strip of pictures that she, Brendan and Olivia had taken in the photo booth outside the Franklin Grove movie theatre. Ivy was in the middle, making an exaggerated face of disgust, while Brendan and Olivia were kissing her cheeks on either side, smooshing her face in. Good times, thought Ivy, with a sudden twist in the pit of her stomach.
‘Oooh!’ Olivia gushed. ‘You have room-mates! How do you like them? Do you stay up late and gossip, or play Secrets and Lies?’ Olivia was remembering the vampire game they had played together at Tessa’s bachelorette party.
Ivy frowned. ‘They’re OK. But it’s not exactly an Ivy-friendly set-up, if you know what I mean. Six girls, six coffins. That means lots of chatter, especially after “nails-in”.’
‘Nails-in?’ echoed Olivia.
‘The vamp version of lights-out,’ explained Ivy, turning the camera back on herself.
‘Ah.’ Olivia giggled. ‘You’re not exactly Miss Sunshine most days, but a sleep-deprived Ivy? I bet that could scare even the most hardened vampire!’ At that, Olivia’s eyes went as wide as an anime character’s – not that Ivy could find any anime in Transylvania. It was all classic Russian novels and Victorian poetry.
‘OK, OK. Ha, ha. Enough with the fake shocked look.’ Ivy rolled her darkly lined eyes. ‘Surely I’m not that scary, especially not from several thousand miles away through a webcam.’
Olivia’s eyes were still round, and now she was shaking her head slowly. ‘No, it’s not that,’ she said in a hushed voice. ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but –’ she touched her finger to the screen – ‘I think there’s a bat in your dorm room!’
Ivy swivelled to check out the bat perched on top of the armoire. Its paper-thin wings were wrapped round its fuzzy brown body and its pointy ears stuck out from its head like an elf’s. She shrugged. ‘Oh, don’t worry, that’s just Ivan.’
‘Ivan?’ Olivia wrinkled her nose as if she’d just smelled week-old rubbish.
‘Yeah, everyone gets a bat on their first day at Wallachia. He’s harmless, but a little – what’s the word I’m looking for?’ She pressed a finger into her dimple, like she was thinking hard. ‘Bitey.’
Olivia shuddered. At least Ivy thought it was a shudder, but it could have been a glitch in the internet connection. Ivy was already getting tired of dealing with the difficulties of overseas communication. ‘No offence,’ Olivia was saying, ‘but if that’s the case, I might not be in a hurry to visit any time soon!’
Ivy swallowed hard. She knew her sister was joking, but she didn’t want Olivia to see that her joke had made her feel instantly homesick. ‘Anyway,’ Ivy said, trying to sound natural. ‘The bell for dinner is going to go soon. Will you be online later?’
‘Probably. I promised I’d help our bio-dad with some sort of “research project”.’ Olivia curved her fingers into air quotes. ‘Whatever that means. It’ll only take a few hours and then I’ll be back later,’ she continued, waving. ‘Oh, and Ivy?’
Ivy leaned forwards in her chair. ‘Yeah?’
‘I miss you.’
Ivy gave a weak smile and nodded in return. ‘I miss you too.’ Her stomach crawled up her throat as she reached for the mouse on her laptop.