Blood Ties Read Free

going to make all the vampires go away.
    Saving Emalie from the Brotherhood had put an end to the short period of time during which Oliver’s vampire schoolmates had thought that he was interesting and cool. Now he was considered the biggest freak in his class because he hung out with a human rather than his own kind. Nobody minded that Oliver also hung out with a zombie, Emalie’s cousin Dean, because all the vampires, including his parents, thought that Oliver had killed Dean and raised him as a servant. Only Oliver, Emalie, and Dean knew the truth: Someone else had killed and raised Dean, someone whose identity remained a mystery.
    â€œSo … summer break should help,” said Mr. VanWick, “and we will look forward to next year.” He held a large packet of papers out over the desk.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Oliver asked.
    Phlox reached out and took it. “This is your summer math work. We thought it would be a good idea to keep you busy.”
    â€œHave a tolerable summer,” Mr. VanWick said, pushing back from his seat and sipping from his stained goblet.
    The Nocturnes walked quietly down the empty hallway, weaving back and forth to avoid the slanting rectangles of sunlight. They took the stairs to the lower hall, headed to its end, then descended into the basement boiler room, where a small rusted door in a cobwebbed corner led to the sewers.
    As they walked home in silence, Oliver felt none of the excitement that one might feel about being out of school for two months. Part of that had to do with the long quiet moments that he and his parents had been having, like right now. Since Valentine’s Day, being around them had felt, well, uneasy. On the one hand, his parents knew about Emalie. Get over it … over her, Phlox had said. And yet Oliver had done nothing of the sort. He and Dean had been hanging out with Emalie all spring. Oliver just had to do it in secret, though for all he knew, maybe his parents knew he was still hanging out with her. They had a habit of knowing things without telling him.
    On the other hand, his parents had to realize that part of the reason why Oliver was having trouble in school and hanging out with a human was their fault. He hadn’t asked to be sired, which meant that he had been turned into a vampire from a human baby. Siring a child was supposed to be impossible. All the other vampire kids were made from the DNA of their parents and grown in a lab. And he hadn’t asked to be created to fulfill the prophecy of opening the Nexia Gate, a fact that led people in brotherhoods to try to kill him. So in a way, wasn’t anything that was weird about him really his parents’ fault? Oliver felt like they had to know that, and that was part of why they were so quiet and part of why, even though they’d told him to get over Emalie, they didn’t seem to be keeping that close an eye on him.
    The Nocturnes reached the sewer beneath their street, passing thick wooden doors set in either side of the stone walls. There was one for each underground vampire house on Twilight Lane. Their house was number sixteen. They entered and wound up a stone spiral staircase, lit with sconces of amber magmalight, to the kitchen. They’d just finished hanging their coats in the closet when Oliver’s older brother, Bane, came bounding in from the living room.
    â€œDid he flunk out?” Bane quipped, smirking.
    â€œNow, Charles,” Phlox warned, but her voice had none of the frustration that it used to get when Bane was harassing Oliver. Instead, as she crossed the kitchen and flicked on the plasma screen above the sink, she almost seemed to relax.
    â€œHello, son,” said Sebastian. “Oliver’s conference was fine.” He headed downstairs to change.
    â€œBoo.” Bane popped open the refrigerator, grabbing a Coke. He opened a cookie jar on the counter and took out a length of candied tapeworm. His arm whipped out, and