Free Sleepover Club Vampires by Fiona Cummings

these bat shapes and hung them up in the hall so they looked as though they were flying about.
    “Great bats, girls!” Uncle Bob looked at them admiringly. “Or should that be ‘vampires’, eh Kenny?”
    He started chuckling in that throaty way of his.
    “Now girls,” he continued. “I hope you won’t be too tired by this evening. The dancing gets pretty wild in these parts, you know.”
    “That’s just what we like!” I grinned, and we showed him just how wildly we can dance. Uncle Bob just stared at us with his mouth open. I guess it was a pretty scary sight.
    “Do you want to borrow some of our tapes?” asked Frankie. “We’ve got all the top tunes: S Club 7, Hear’ Say…”
    “Well, that’s very kind of you,” he smiled, “but I have a band lined up. In fact I was just coming to welcome them. I saw their van coming up the driveway a minute ago.”
    “Excellent!”
    “Who do you think it’ll be?” asked Fliss excitedly. “What about Travis, they’re Scottish aren’t they? Or Texas?”
    A real band! This was going to be amazing.
    “Who are they? It can’t be…” Frankie’s voice trailed away as a group of elderly men were greeted warmly by Uncle Bob. They had various instruments with them – a couple of violins, an accordion, a flute, a huge drum kit and…
    “Bagpipes?” we all gasped in horror.
    “How can you possibly dance to bagpipes?” groaned Fliss.
    And I have to admit that just at that moment, Uncle Bob’s party sounded about as exciting as an evening of back-to-back news programmes on the telly.
    “Look, we’ll just have to make the best of it!” Lyndz said brightly when we were back in our room getting changed. “Everybody’s gone to a lot of trouble for this party. And besides, it was great of your Uncle Bob to invite us up here in the first place. What would he think if we turned out to be a right load of moaning minnies, just because he’s not having the music we like to dance to?”
    Trust Lyndz to make us all see sense. And actually, we were way off-beam about the party anyway.
    As soon as we got downstairs and mingled with the other guests, we started having a great time. Although we were just the teensiest bit under-dressed. All the men (including my dad and Lyndz’s dad) were wearing kilts, and the women were wearing posh swirly tartan skirts.
    “I told you we should have brought our best party clothes,” Fliss hissed.
    But Lyndz’s mum came to the rescue when she provided us all with tartan sashes. At least when we put them on we didn’t feel so left out (even though mine did clash with my football shirt!).
    We’d been downstairs for a while when Shelley rushed up to us.
    “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she smiled. “I thought you might like these.”
    She gave each of us a bat badge and a great big information pack from the Bat Conservation Trust. It looked really great, with special sections for people our age and everything.
    “We’ll definitely contact them,” I promised.
    “How’s that little bat you took away?” Fliss asked her anxiously.
    “Oh just fine!” Shelley reassured us. “Gordon was right, the poor wee mite needed feeding up. We’ll probably bring him back tomorrow.”
    “Great!”
    Suddenly a loud gong rang out from the hall.
    “Ladies and gentlemen!” Uncle Bob announced very grandly. “Supper is served!”
    Excitedly we followed everyone else through to the dining room and found our places. We were sitting with the bat watchers, which was pretty cool. Gordon, who had seemed such a misery-guts the previous evening, actually turned out to be a real laugh. He never stopped teasing us about being a vampire. He’d even brought some of those fangs you get from joke shops, and kept swooping over us pretending to bite our necks! In fact he was just pretending to ravage Fliss when the most appalling racket filled the air.
    “Sounds like Headless Eric has met with another victim!” I whispered to