Free Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer Page A

garlic because one taste could make you deathly ill or forcing yourself to stay awake all day even though down to the cellular level, you were more of a night person. Oh yeah—humans had it way easy, as far as Vlad was concerned.
    He followed Nelly down to the kitchen, where she dropped the kettle on the stove and heated up a cup of tangy blood for Vlad in the microwave. Vlad dipped a chocolate-chip cookie into his cup and bit into it. Something about the taste of chocolate and blood mixed together in his mouth just felt right. Vlad sipped from his cup and picked up another cookie.
    Nelly dunked a tea bag into the steamy water in her mug. She ran a curious finger over the symbol on the front of the book. “What are you reading? I don’t remember this. Is it one of mine?”
    â€œI found it in the attic. I’m not reading it, though.” He pointed to the locks with his cookie, still tinged deep red with his “tea.” “It’s locked and I have no idea how to open it.”
    Nelly tapped the cover. “I’ll just bet you this was one of your father’s. Tomas was always collecting strange old books.”
    â€œThis was the only one I found up there.”
    Nelly wasn’t listening. She was up and rummaging around in a drawer, mumbling to herself the way she did whenever she was looking for anything. With a triumphant squeal, she turned back to Vlad and dropped a ring of keys on the table. “Your parents gave me copies of all their keys on the off chance they lost any of them. I’ll just bet you it’s on there.”
    Vlad sucked down the last of his tea and, shoving two more cookies into his mouth, grabbed the book and keys and headed back upstairs to his bedroom. He flopped on the bed with the book in hand. There were more than a dozen keys on the ring, and Vlad shuffled through the ones he recognized, as there was no use trying them: keys to the house, the garage, the lockbox where Mom had kept things like birth certificates and Social Security cards, the cars. That left ten keys. Vlad slipped the first one in and turned it. Nothing. He moved through them one by one until there was only one key left to try.
    The remaining key was longer than the rest, and its tip was shaped like a woman’s head. At least, it looked like a woman’s head to Vlad. She had round, pudgy cheeks and pursed lips. On her head was a small crown. He placed the tip of the key against the lock.
    It was too big.
    Cursing under his breath, Vlad tossed the keys onto the bed, running his hand through his hair in frustration. He pulled the book closer and ran a finger along the shape on the cover. The glyph glowed brightly at his touch. Vlad pulled his hand away with a gasp.
    The symbol darkened.
    Vlad looked from the book to his hand and back, and with a curious eyebrow raised, he placed his palm against the glyph. It flashed, as if charged by his touch. He tried to pull his arm away, but his hand was glued to the spot. Frowning, he pulled again. His hand wouldn’t budge. The locks clicked, and as they popped open, the light dimmed and released Vlad’s hand. He rubbed his palm, debating whether or not he should look inside when the outside was so bizarre.
    Nudging the straps aside, he opened the front cover and was greeted by a line of strange symbols. He flipped through the pages—some had strange drawings of weapons and altars; most were filled with paragraphs of a bizarre symbol language that Vlad couldn’t understand. With a sigh, he rolled onto his back.
    The book slipped off the bed and made a rather loud thump on the floor. Vlad reached for it, pausing with interest at the page that had fallen open in the book’s descent.
    In the margin at the bottom were some scribbles that he recognized at once to be his father’s handwriting. Vlad ran the tip of his finger along the slanted words and read aloud. “Look to my study. There lie the answers to all that