Back at Alexander's attic room, after weeks of adventures with the twin vampires behind us, Alexander and I finally had a chance to be alone and chill.
I had a lot of time to make up for in the lip-action department. We cuddled and kissed in his comfy chair until I thought my heart would explode out of my chest. He nibbled playfully on my neck, and I wondered if it was hard to resist my mortal self.
"Anytime you are ready," I offered. "The cemetery is only a few miles away."
"I like you just the way you are," he said, and brushed a few strands of hair from my face. "You know that."
"But you may like me better," I teased.
He began tickling me, and I cried out in laughter. I leaned back and accidentally kicked something hard against the wall.
It was the door handle to his hidden attic room.
I was immediately brought back into the reality of the situation.
"Just for a minute?" I pleaded.
Alexander hesitated.
"After all I've been through. All we've been through. It would mean the world to me," I added.
Alexander paused. His midnight eyes could not mask the dark conflict that he was trying to conquer in his soul. After a moment he rose from the chair and offered me his hand.
Exhilaration rushed through me like I was Veruca Salt about to step into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
Alexander pulled out a skeleton key from his pocket, pushed away the comfy chair, and unlocked the secret door. He slowly opened the entranceway into his cryptic world.
There, as I'd seen a few days earlier, a secret in the shape of a casket--a simple black open coffin with dirt haphazardly sprinkled around it. Next to it there was a wooden table with an unlit half- melted candle and a small, softly painted portrait of me.
I walked inside the room. Alexander followed me and lit the candelabra. The room was sparse--void of a decorative soccer headboard like Trevor's or hanging posters of sports teams like Billy Boy's.
I peered into his coffin: black sheets, a black pillow, and a rumpled blanket.
"I love it. You don't even make your coffin. Just like any teen."
I looked into his lonely eyes, which now sparkled.
Then I noticed something silver lying on the pillow, catching the candlelight. I leaned over and picked it up. It was my black onyx necklace that Alexander had replaced with the vampire's kiss one he'd made for me.
My heart melted as I held it in my hand.
"I sleep better knowing I have a part of you close to me."
No one had ever meant so much to me as Alexander. For my whole life, I'd suffered as an outsider. The fact that because of me he, too, felt less alone in his world was almost too much for this dreamy goth girl to bear.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
"May I?" I asked, motioning to the coffin.
Alexander's forehead wrinkled, then a smile overcame his face as if he were relieved to finally share a piece of him he had to keep private from the world. I unlaced my boots and held on to the attic door as Alexander helped me yank them off. He held my hand as I stepped into his coffin. The mattress was soft against my socks. I lay back, and pulled the cozy black duvet over me.
The candelabra gently lit the room and shadows danced around like tiny vampire bats. I smelled the sweet scent of Drakar on the pillow.
The casket was small and claustrophobic. The sides of the coffin entombed me. I felt like one of the undead.
"This is so cool!" I shrieked.
I smiled up at my boyfriend as he gazed down at me with pride.
"I'm ready."
"I don't think--"
"But I have to...I need to know what it's like."
A small handle had been nailed inside the lid with a dangling chain.
I reached up and grabbed the chain.
I took a deep breath. I gently pulled the chain toward me. The heavy lid began to lower slowly. Alexander's smiling face began to disappear from view. Then his shoulders, his AFI T-shirt. Finally all I saw was his handcuff belt buckle. Light in the coffin gradually turned to thick black darkness until I couldn't even see the chain I was pulling; then my own hand disappeared.
I felt as if I were being buried alive.
The coffin lid lifted open and a blast of light hit me.
"Alexander--" I could hear a faint voice call from the other room. I squinted and tried to adjust to the candlelight as I sat up.
Alexander held out his hand and pulled me out.
"But I didn't get to--," I began, like a disappointed child.
"We've got to go--"
"Alexander," Jameson called as he rapped against the bedroom door. "I'm going to retire for the evening and I'd like to say good night to Miss Raven," the butler said.
Alexander grabbed my shoes, blew out the candles, and locked the closet.
"We'll be right there," Alexander called back as I pulled on my boots and laced them.
If Jameson had arrived a few minutes later, I would have known what it was like to retire for eternity.
That night, as I rested in my own bed--a spacious double bed, with no walls or lids--I wondered what it would have been like to have lain in Alexander's closed coffin. Total darkness, without so much as a faint streetlight shining in.
I imagined how hard it must have been for Alexander to let someone, anyone--even me-- into his darkened world behind the secret attic door. I smiled, knowing what I must mean to him to be the one he shared it with.
As I closed my eyes, I imagined my true love spending his sunlit hours alone in his coffin, inside the confines of a hidden closet, buried away from any sources of life--the sounds of birds, rainfall, or people. The world that Alexander thought was so cold, dark, and lonely was just that. My heart broke and began to shatter into a million tiny pieces. Tears began to well up in my eyes, thinking while I was at school, surrounded by students and teachers, that the love of my life was locked away, alone in the dark. There was no one to touch, say sweet dreams to, kiss or squeeze. I wondered if the world I'd been romanticizing for so long--his world--as Alexander had often told me, wasn't so romantic after all.
The town of Dullsville returned to normal. Students at Dullsville High gossiped about the Graveyard Gala and the sickly siblings from Romania--"Were they really ghosts, vampires, or just goths like Raven?" There were no more sightings of Dullsville's motley twins at soccer games, Hatsy's Diner, or graveyards. School talk quickly turned to upcoming exams and proms.
Trevor, with his renewed popularity, was back to scoring on and off the soccer field. My stomach knotted, knowing he was even more popular than he had been before.
However, I did notice a slight change in my nemesis's behavior toward me. He didn't invite me to parties, drive me to school, or offer to carry my books, but I'd occasionally catch him staring at me. Once he signaled for Becky and me to cut ahead of him in the lunch line. When I dropped my English folder in the hallway, I was amazed when he said, "You dropped your notebook, Raven," instead of referring to me as "Monster Girl."
I was most surprised, though, when he cornered me at the drinking fountain one day and said, "I wonder what would have happened if it had been my family who moved into the Mansion instead of the Sterlings."
"Then Alexander would be talking to me right now instead of you," I said, and walked away. I couldn't resist egging on my flirty nemesis. I guess the soccer snob had gotten a taste of his own medicine--he knew what it was like not to be accepted. I'd let him soak it in a little longer.
Becky and I made a point of hanging out more--including a weekly after-school "girls only" shake snack at Hatsy's--while she and Matt continued dating.
The spring sun baked my pale skin and I was only comforted when the sun set and I could see Alexander again. During the evenings, Alexander and I snuck back into Dullsville's cemetery with garbage bags and picked up cans and bottles until we were exhausted. We discovered the coffins and nails and other gothic memorabilia were mysteriously removed from Henry's treehouse, presumably by Jagger as he and Luna fled Dullsville.
The following weekend Henry and his parents showed their appreciation for taking care of Henry. They planned a small backyard barbecue party for the Madison family and asked us to invite a few of out friends.
The backyard smelled of grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, fresh baked buns, and all the dill pickles one could eat. The sky was clear, showcasing a million twinkling stars overhead. Henry and Billy Boy were attempting dives in the heated pool. Henry's mother was giving my mom a grand tour of their five-bedroom house. His father and my dad were practicing golf swings in the backyard. Nina, the housekeeper, was serving refreshments to Ruby and Jameson at a picnic table. The butler seemed grateful to have someone else wait on him for a change. Matt and Becky were eating s'mores and hanging by the flower garden. Alexander and I sat together on a backyard swing. "This is like a dream come true," Alexander said as we gently swung back and forth. "We can finally just focus on us now. Continue the traditional 'Boy meets girl, girl falls for boy, boy turns out to be a vampire' story."
I laughed, and Alexander squeezed my hand. I could tell he was as relieved as I was to finally have Jagger and Luna gone from Dullsville.
"I'm going to miss my life as a vampire," I confessed softly. "I was really getting used to it. Hiding from the daylight, finding adventure in the moonlight. Hanging out with a vampiress. I have to admit that there is a tiny part of me that is going to miss Luna, maybe because she has a life I'd always dreamed of, or maybe because she accepted me. And there's a slight part of me that will think fondly of Jagger--not his vengeful side, but his passion for who he is--a vampire."
"It's okay to have mixed feelings for them," Alexander assured me. "They were unlike anyone you'd ever known before. That's how I feel about you."
"I felt like I had found a group where I finally fit in--mortal or not."
"That's how I feel when I'm with you. We really do belong together," Alexander said, his lonely eyes a little less lonely. "No matter where we are."
Then I remembered how isolated I felt when we were apart. Even though his darkened world may not have been as romantic as I'd imagined, how bad could it be if we were in it, together?
"Maybe sometime soon we can make my dream more permanent...," I suggested. It was fun to have vampires believe I was one of them. Now I just have to convince a third. But then I wondered if Jagger was right when he said I was more like a vampire than Alexander was. If I were turned into a vampire, would I be the kind of vampire Alexander was--or the kind that Jagger and Luna were? I looked at Alexander, waiting for his response.
Billy Boy climbed out of the pool. He ran over to me and shook his wet hair at me like a soaked dog.
"Get off, you creep!" I shouted, covering myself from the spray.
My brother laughed, and I noticed even Alexander chuckling as he wiped water off his pale arm. Billy Boy ran over to the lounge chair where his stuff lay before I could wring his neck.
"Maybe we can sleep out in the treehouse now that your parents are back," Billy Boy said to Henry as he grabbed his towel.
"Yeah," he said, climbing out of the pool. "I have to get it cleaned up before that dude comes over to look at it."
"Is someone planning to buy your treehouse?" I teased.
"Just doing a report on it," Billy Boy said proudly. "Henry and I overheard this dude at the library asking the librarian for info on area treehouses. Naturally Henry has the coolest one, so I had to tell him about it."
"Well, you should be careful inviting strangers over," I warned, sounding like my mother.
"He's not dangerous," Billy said. "He's only eleven and skinnier than I am."
"But he is kind of strange," Henry admitted.
Billy Boy laughed as he toweled off his hair. "He is major strange--looks like he should be your brother instead of me," Billy Boy teased. "Pale skin, pierced ears, black fingernails."
I stopped the swing. "Does this kid have a name?" Billy Boy nodded.
"What is it?" I demanded in his face.
"It'll cost you," he said.
"It will cost you more if you don't tell me," I said, taking his towel, threatening to snap it at his feet.
"Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "It's Valentine." He yanked back his towel. "His name is Valentine Maxwell."
Valentine? That was the name of Luna's younger brother. An eleven-year-old vampire.
I looked at Alexander, who gave me a knowing glance.
I froze. My blood raced. My heart stopped.
Oh. My. Goth. It was one thing to have met a nefarious vengeful teen vampire, then to encounter the wrath of his newly turned twin sister, and have them turn my world upside down. It was quite another to have a preteen vampire now lurking and hanging out in the same library and treehouse as my younger sibling.
I couldn't even fathom an eleven-year-old vampire--his motives, what he hungered for, what powers he might possess.
If Jagger and Luna had disappeared on the night of the Graveyard Gala, what was their younger vampire brother, Valentine, doing in Dullsville?
I knew one thing--I'd have to find out.