A half hour later, Ivy walked into the Meat & Greet and saw her sister sitting alone in a booth next to the one where they normally sat, tucked in the back. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Toby lurking on the edge of the parking lot.
Ivy and Olivia exchanged knowing looks, and Ivy went to her usual booth. She sat so that she and her sister were back to back, separated only by the banquette. Ivy picked up a menu and pretended to study it.
“I can’t have Toby on my tail all the time,” she said to her menu. “What if he follows me to the BloodMart or something?”
From the booth behind her, Olivia loudly ordered some chocolate cake. Then Ivy heard her whisper, “Maybe it’s not so bad.”
“That’s what they used to say about public hanging,” Ivy murmured, “and they were wrong about that, too.”
“Think about it,” Olivia whispered over her shoulder. “If Toby’s following you all the time, you can control what he sees—he won’t find anything interesting if you don’t let him.”
Ivy thought about it. Her sister had a deadly point.
Sophia arrived, looking down at them with a seriously puzzled expression on her face. “Why are you two sitting in separate booths?”
“Serena Star assigned Toby Decker to spy on me,” Ivy seethed. “Olivia can’t be seen with me because she’s a double agent.”
“Craziness,” Sophia said, scooting in across from Ivy. “I just passed Toby on my way in.” Then she whispered, “Hi, Olivia,” to the back of Olivia’s head.
“Hi, Soph,” Olivia whispered back.
“Do you think my cell phone’s tapped?” Ivy asked.
Sophia rolled her eyes. “You’re under investigation by Toby Decker, Ivy. Not the FBI.” Ivy leaned forward. “Olivia found out from Toby that Serena’s really focused on the vampire angle now.”
“Oh, no,” Sophia groaned, dropping her face in her hands.
“Pretty bad, huh?” Olivia called quietly from the next booth.
Ivy let out a sigh. “Can we change the subject and talk about something that doesn’t make me feel like biting my own neck?”
For a long time none of them said anything. Then Olivia said, “Did Ivy tell you about my film project, Sophia?”
Sophia nodded. “She said you got all this killer stuff from a dead great-aunt.”
“Who married a duke,” Olivia added. “It’s actually really romantic.”
“I wish I could come over and see everything,” Ivy said to her fork. “That necklace sounds drop dead.”
She heard Olivia shift in her seat and say, “I don’t think my parents should see us together. What if they notice how alike we are?”
“You two still haven’t told your parents?” Sophia asked. Ivy shrugged by way of a response. So far, Sophia was the only other person in the world who knew Ivy and Olivia were twin sisters.
Suddenly Olivia stood up, walked to the diner window, and looked outside. Then she came back and slid into the seat next to Sophia. “He’s gone,” she said. “I just saw his mom pick him up.”
“That’s the first good news I’ve heard all day,” Ivy said with relief, as the waitress appeared and set down Olivia’s cake. Ivy and Sophia both ordered burgers.
Olivia was looking thoughtful. “I’ve been wondering how come one of us is a vampire and the other human,” she said once the waitress had gone. “Is it possible for someone to be born human and then get bitten and turned into a vampire?”
“It can happen,” Ivy admitted. “But for a human to get turned into a vampire, she first has to get bitten by a vampire—and that hasn’t happened in generations. Even then, it would rely on the person surviving the vampire’s bite.”
“And that almost never happens,” Sophia put in. “It’s seriously a one-in-a-thousand chance.”
“Anyway,” Ivy said, “I know I was born a vampire.”
“How?” Olivia pressed.
“Because of her eyes,” Sophia answered matterof-factly. “Born vamps have unusual eye colors. Trans-vamps don’t.”
Olivia’s eyes suddenly lit up like she’d had an idea. She held up her spoon. “How about this? Maybe I was born a vampire too, but then I got cured!”
“Cured?” Ivy repeated. She and Sophia exchanged a grin. “Being a vamp isn’t a disease, Olivia,” Ivy explained. “It’s not like it is on TV. It’s not a curse.”
“It’s who we are,” Sophia agreed. “It’s physical. It can’t be undone.”
Olivia frowned. “So I guess that means one of our parents must have been a vampire and the other a human,” she mused. “Have siblings like us ever happened before?”
Ivy and Sophia exchanged glances.
“Um,” Ivy began, not wanting to freak her sister out. “Actually, there’s a lot of folklore about that.”
“About us?” Olivia asked.
“About humans and vampires, you know, mating,” Sophia explained.
“Most people think it can’t happen, or that . . .” Ivy hesitated and looked at Sophia for help.
“Or that a human and vampire’s offspring couldn’t survive or would have four heads or something . . . strange . . . like that,” Sophia put in helpfully.
“Hardly anyone believes the monster thing anymore,” Ivy added hurriedly, seeing a look of alarm on Olivia’s face.