Free ReVamped by Lucienne Diver Page A

tolerance?”
    “I guess we’ll find out together,” she answered with supreme unconcern. “Now, the missing kids.” She tossed us each a stapled packet. “We’ve identified them as Tyler Dyson and Teresa Mendoza. Agent Epps and I are already watching the hospitals and morgues. We need you out among the kids. Find out if anyone’s seen them and what rumors are circulating. They may even turn up. Gina, Teresa is apparently in your seventh-period art class, so you’ve probably met.”
    I shook my head. “I haven’t even made it to seventh period yet. Yesterday was the party, today the hospital.”
    “Geez Louise,” Sid groaned, running a hand down his face. If he’d been a cartoon, his features would have stretched and snapped comically back into place. Of course, if he were a cartoon, he’d probably still be in black and white. I mean, Geez Louise ? What decade were we in anyway? “Why the hell did we go through all the trouble of arranging your classes to expose you to the most cliques if you’re not even going to go?”
    “Hey, I go where the investigation leads.”
    “Wild parties? Run-ins with the police?” he ranted.
    “What’re you—my father? The kids went missing from the party, didn’t they? So I was in the right place, just—”
    All the righteous indignation left me right about then, but I wasn’t going to back down.
    “Just looking the other way,” Sid said, relentless. “Getting into trouble.”
    That hurt. Responsibility sucked rocks. Up until a few months ago, I hadn’t been responsible for anything more than color-coordinating my wardrobe. But foil one vampire vixen bent on world domination and suddenly people expect all kinds of things. Some days it just didn’t pay to wake up dead.
    “ Fine ,” I said through gritted teeth. “Bad secret agent. No cookie. So, what’s the plan?”
    “First, we get you dressed. I’m sure Maya will have something that fits.”
    “Damn,” Bobby said under his breath. Maya shot him a disapproving look and I smiled.
    “Then,” Sid continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “we hit the streets. Someone has to have seen something. We cover the hangouts, listen for the rumors. Maybe we’ll catch a break and the kids will show up safe and sound. We ought to be about due for a break.”

8

    Rick and Maya got the mall. I’d think I was being punished, but as consolation prizes go, Bobby was a pretty good one. He and I partnered up to hit the town’s main hangouts—the DQ, the Dunkin’ Donuts, and the Denny’s. I kid you not. Until Sid listed them off, I had no idea we had such a thing for the Ds. ’Course, it went along with the other fave five D words I was starting to pick up hanging with the goths—ditch, delinquent, dark, death, dreamy. No, no, dreary , not dreamy. Lord, was I losing it?
    We got to our first stop, the Dairy Queen, and I parked the tail end of my car with its Dracula Is My Co-Pilot bumper sticker up against a tree, just in case any of my crowd went cruising by—I’d told them I was done in. On the other hand, who hadn’t had a sudden craving for a chocolate shake or goopy sundae at odd hours of the day or night? No one I knew. Of course, my mom, being totally figure-conscious, always took me for the low-fat, slow-churned kind with sugar-free fudge, hold the whipped cream, when we went at all. Good times. I tried not to think of her and Dad back in Ohio, still mourning my death. Or not mourning and turning my room into a home spa. It could go either way.
    It wasn’t hard to redirect my thoughts with Bobby sliding across the bench seat toward me.
    “You know …” he said, trailing a couple of fingers over my thigh, which was clad in one of Maya’s black skirts that, sadly, fell below the knee on me. It was still better than her pants, which would have flopped around my feet like clown shoes. “It’s probable we’ll be seen together. We need some kind of cover story.”
    “Oh, like you tutoring me in math?” I