Olivia crept up to her sister's house early Sunday morning, the shadows of willow branches reaching out at her eerily. Even though Mr. Vega's car was already gone from its spot beside the house, she hesitated beside the porch. Somehow it didn't seem right to just walk up in broad daylight and ring the doorbell when she and Ivy were about to snoop around inside. She decided to go around back.
Kneeling beside her sister's bedroom window, she saw Ivy pacing the floor of her room below.
Olivia rapped on the glass with her knuckles, and Ivy jumped, clearly startled. Then she rushed up the stairs and opened the window.
Olivia clambered through onto the basement stair landing.
"You scared me to death!" said Ivy.
"I thought vampires were already dead," Olivia joked.
"Ha-ha.Very funny," Ivy replied.
Two seconds later, Olivia was following Ivy up to Mr.Vega's study. Her sister immediately began rummaging through the enormous mahogany desk, Olivia started with a shelf in the corner filled with tiny drawers. She felt a little awkward about snooping through Mr. Vega's things, but she was certain she'd seen the Lazar symbol yesterday and she needed to know why Mr.Vega had something with that symbol on it.
The first drawer was packed with gray fabric swatches.The second had nothing but little metal plates - none of them with the Lazar symbol on them. The third drawer was filled with minigargoyles.
A half hour later, the sisters still hadn't found the wooden box, and Olivia was starting to get discouraged. There were countless urns, vases, busts, drawers, boxes, and pedestals. The box could be anywhere.
Ivy began circling the room like a caged panther. Suddenly she stopped and slapped her palm against her forehead. "I'm such a fruit bat!" she exclaimed. Then she walked to the front of the desk, where a bunch of files were propped up between two brass gargoyle bookends. She twisted the head of the bookend on the right, and across the room two bookshelves sank back into the wall and slid apart to reveal a dim passageway.
"Cool!" Olivia said, following Ivy eagerly into the shadows. She found herself descending a tightly wound spiral staircase. "Where are we?" she whispered.
"Between the kitchen and the living room," Ivy explained. "This passageway is the only entrance to this room."
The steps ended at the floor of a tiny circular room. Row after row of small, shallow gravestoneshaped holes were carved into the walls. Instead of holding bones, each one held books and scrolls.
"My father's special collection," Ivy announced.
Olivia crept up and peered into one of the hollows.
It was sealed with a pane of glass, and inside she saw a marble tablet carved with mysterious hieroglyphics. Alongside it was stretched an ancient-looking scroll that looked like a blueprint.
"What is all this?" she whispered.
"My dad's old decorating textbooks," answered Ivy from over her shoulder.
Ivy started combing through some books in a hollow across the room, while Olivia gravitated to a nearby stone recess. She pulled down a fat black book with a cracked spine and discovered it was a photograph album.
Olivia's mouth fell open with shock.There was a picture of her as a little girl, wearing a witch's hat and holding a broom! I don't remember ever wearing that for Halloween, she thought. Then she realized that of course she was looking at pictures of Ivy, and she started to giggle.
"Remember when I said next time we'll look at pictures of you drooling and wearing embarrassing clothes?" Olivia reminded Ivy, starting to flip through the album excitedly. "Well, the time has come!"
Ivy winced. "Aren't you supposed to be looking for our box?"
Olivia was about to slide the album back into place, when something caught her eye at the back of the recess. It looked like there was something else there. Something brown. She pulled out another album and reached in curiously.
Olivia's pulse quickened as she felt a wooden edge. Slowly, carefully, she pulled out the box hidden there on its side. Without Olivia having said anything, Ivy appeared beside her.They both looked down at the gilded symbol on the lid - the same symbol that was on their rings.
It's the box I saw yesterday, Olivia thought, her heart pounding. She heard Ivy's breath catch.
Olivia lifted the lid and they stared down at a stack of yellowed papers inside. Ivy lifted out the top sheet by its edges, as if she was scared it would crumble to dust, and turned it over.
"'My love,'" Ivy began reading, but then she stopped. Olivia followed her sister's gaze to the bottom of the page. The letter was signed, Forever yours, Susannah.
"Why would my dad have a letter from our biological mother?" Ivy wondered aloud. Olivia thumbed quickly through the papers and saw that they all seemed to be letters from Susannah.
Underneath the stack was a smaller piece of shiny paper with scalloped edges. On it, in neat script, were the words, Susannah and I on our wedding day.
Slowly, carefully, Olivia picked up the small piece of paper and flipped it over. She could barely believe what she was looking at. It was a picture of her parents.