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  Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Inkwell, Poppy.

  Title: Bloodsuckers and blunders / Poppy Inkwell.

  Description: New York : West 44, 2020. | Series: Alana Oakley Identifiers: ISBN 9781538384862 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781538384855 (library bound) | ISBN 9781538384879 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery stories. | Friendship--Juvenile fiction. | Vampires--Juvenile fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.I559 Bl 2020 | DDC [F]--dc23

  Published in 2020 by Enslow Publishing LLC

  101 West 23rd Street, Suite #240 New York, NY 10011

  Copyright © 2020 Poppy Inkwell. Original editon published in 2016 by Big Sky Publishing.

  Cover design and Illustrations: Dave Atze Typesetting: Think Productions

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.

  Printed in the United States of America

  CPSIA compliance information: Batch #CS19W44: For further information contact Enslow Publishing LLC, New York, New York at 1-800-542-2595.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 A spooky dump

  Chapter 2 Wishful thinking

  Chapter 3 Bedridden blues

  Chapter 4 Sleeping Beauty

  Chapter 5 Vampires vs Werewolves

  Chapter 6 Twinkle toes

  Chapter 7 Food for thought

  Chapter 8 A monster in their midst

  Chapter 9 An artistic meeting of minds

  Chapter 10 A dance with death

  Chapter 11 Dead to the world

  Chapter 12 It’s all her fault!

  Chapter 13 The shark circles

  Chapter 14 It’s all her fault!

  Chapter 15 No, it’s all her fault!

  Chapter 16 A dark secret revealed

  Chapter 17 A spirit reaches out

  Chapter 18 Emma strikes again

  Chapter 19 Law and disorder

  Chapter 20 A truth stranger than fiction

  Chapter 21 The heart wants what the heart wants

  Chapter 22 And the truth shall set you free

  Chapter 23 Double mystery

  Chapter 24 Alive and kicking

  Chapter 25 Still dead

  Chapter 26 Pretty little lies

  Chapter 27 A change of heart

  Chapter 28 A night to remember

  Chapter 29 Gross but cool

  Chapter 30 A close shave

  Chapter 31 Snooping, shopping, and an epiphany

  Chapter 32 Your own worst enemy

  Chapter 33 Prisoner of love

  Chapter 34 Kusmuk finds her banana

  Chapter 35 A shocking discovery

  Chapter 36 A detour through Woop-Woop

  Chapter 37 Fact 5 Pickles make you fart

  Chapter 38 Dead to the world

  Chapter 39 Outback adventures

  Chapter 40 Horror of horrors

  Chapter 41 Dead and gone

  Chapter 42 Lift-off

  Chapter 43 The battle begins

  Chapter 44 Football frenzy

  Chapter 45 Dead body identified

  Chapter 46 From the frying pan to the coffin?

  Chapter 47 Missing persons

  Chapter 48 To cut a long story longer

  Chapter 49 Love triangle

  Chapter 50 Drop-dead gorgeous

  Chapter 51 Thinking big

  Chapter 52 Cinderella

  Chapter 53 The ball

  Chapter 54 A dance to remember

  Chapter 55 Perfect timing

  Chapter 56 A ball like no other

  Chapter 57 Happy never after

  Chapter 58 A fairy-tale ending

  Chapter 59 Opportunity knocks

  Chapter 60 Change: The only constant

  Biography

  OTHER

  PROLOGUE

  July 30

  There were five people in Alana's living room. Only four were alive.

  Yes. There was a dead body in the Oakley house. How could you tell which one? It was the only one not saying a word.

  The living room was like a cavernous canyon with its very own echo.

  CrudCrudCrud

  Omigodomigodomigod

  Wearesodeadsodeadsodead

  To find out why there was a dead body in the house we need to journey back through time. Back to the day when Alana's new neighbors moved in.

  The ones she thought were vampires.

  SHUT. UP. AND. LET. ME. THINK.

  ... You heard her. Let's go... We'll come back and have a look at the body later.

  CHAPTER 1

  A spooky dump

  February 6

  There are always empty plots of land, condemned buildings, or abandoned construction sites that raise the hair on your neck and make you walk twice the speed as you go past. There was a house like this on the corner of the street where Alana lived. It sat across the road from hers with broken windows like baleful eyes covering a lesioned body. In contrast, Alana’s home was an unremarkable double-story, semi-detached house in red brick. From the outside, you would never know it had a dozen botched-up D.I.Y.-jobs, or a Christmas tree permanently set up in her mom’s office. It looked ... normal.

  Alana lived there with her mom, Emma Oakley - freelance journalist, organizer of disastrous birthday extravaganzas and a self-confessed danger magnet. It was just the two of them now. Alana’s dad, Hugo, passed away five years ago.

  To the left of them was Mr. Peyton, with whom they shared a wall. Peyton was a grumpy retiree with a face like a walnut. He was obsessed with his leaf blower and kept to himself. “Harrumph,” he would say by manner of greeting every morning before disappearing indoors. Alana never knew if it was from the effort of bending down to retrieve the daily paper because of rickety knees, gout, and a beer belly, or because he didn’t like to talk. To their right was the polar opposite: new neighbor, Mrs. Whetu, hair in rollers and beady blue eyes peeled for gossip to dole out to “the gels” at the local R.S.L. And didn’t Emma’s friends, Katriona and Ling Ling, provide topics by the truckload! Forget their midnight raids of Sydney’s Zoo to kidnap a penguin or their trip to liberate chickens ... just visiting was enough!

  “What did they wear this time, Ma?” the gels would ask, falling forward in expectation, mouths half full of Today’s Special. Her audience’s eyes would roll in lascivious glee as Mrs. Marama Whetu described every bizarre deed in intimate detail. They could never get enough. Although none of them had ever seen the women in person, they were confident they would know them in an instant...

  ...Emma Oakley — a petite Filipino woman with uncontrollable brown hair and dark eyes. She carried a large, patchwork bag with her everywhere and tended to walk around in a dream or scribble words on random surfaces (sometimes even the car!).

  ...Ling Ling Shu - a taller, slimly built Asian woman from Singapore who loved over-the-top accessories. Only her skin was a constant color (as pale as milk), while her eyes, nails, and hair changed more frequently than a chameleon.

  ...Katriona Karovsky - a blonde, statuesque woman from Russia, whose wardrobe from the 1970s showed off her classic pear-shaped figure when it wasn’t in figure-hugging pelts and prints.

  Yes, the gels would recognize them anywhere.

  The houses on Alana’s street stood in uniform attention like a row of soldiers, ready for duty. The derelict house stood out like a deserter. Alana Oakley, aged fourteen and five months, cycled past it every day to get to school. Today she slowed and sat on her bike, one
foot on the curb and stared.

  Someone was moving in.

  The house had been empty for as long as she could remember. It wasn’t hard to imagine why. It was huge and spooky in the way only old houses could be. The building had lost its fight against weeds and creepers that bullied their way through windows and cracks in the walls. The garden all but obscured the towering structure.

  The house had its very own turret.

  Not exactly a popular architectural feature in the Marrickville neighborhood. Or anywhere else in Australia for that matter.

  The real estate listing in the agent’s window had been up for so long it had faded to a whisper of blue:

  This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a substantial property in the coveted inner west city. This character-filled abode presents generous living spaces and elegant period details. Located only a stone’s throw to vibrant Newtown, this is a haven of space and charm, possessing all the appeal of its original features. Whether you are looking for your first step on the property ladder, or an ideal investment, this is perfect for D.I.Y.-ers who enjoy the challenge of transforming a blank canvas into a dream home. Update or renovate this unpolished gem.

  In other words, it was a dump. A creepy, old dump. Even in house-deprived Sydney where decent real estate sold at indecent prices, the house had refused to sell. And now it had. Alana was nonplussed. The new tenants must be desperate, insane, or blind.

  Alana pushed off to restart her journey when something caught her eye. Alana was used to Goths - wasn’t Newtown full of them? - with their pallid skin, dark eye makeup, and gloomy daywear, but somehow the two youths in front of the old house looked almost too Gothic. Their sunken eyes were a little too bright and skin just a little too pale. They lounged against random bits of unpacked furniture scattered in the overgrown yard like a dazzling photoshoot for edgy urban-wear. The girl was perched on an ornate chair. She was younger than Alana, shorter (although not by much), and favored heavy eye makeup in a bruised blue to match her nail color. The boy looked older. He was leaning against an oak sideboard. Early Victorian, if the shapes of the legs are any indication, Alana thought to herself. She knew a lot about antiques. When you lived so close to King Street and its eclectic, vintage shops, it was hard not to. The boy had short, dark, spiky hair that hinted at a shade of burgundy. The style showed off his high cheekbones and light-colored, deep-set eyes. His severe expression stopped him from being handsome in the conventional sense, but he was striking in the way a cobra is and, Alana suspected irrationally, just as dangerous.

  The new neighbors stared back, not moving. Alana was reminded of mannequins. An adult voice full of impatience, called from behind a teak wardrobe: “A little help here?” This galvanized the pair into action, but not before Alana felt she’d been weighed, measured, categorized, and discarded. What did the new neighbors see when they looked at her, Alana wondered. Was it her “average-ness” that put them off? She didn’t have her friend, Sofia’s, proud, aquiline nose or wild mane of dreadlocks. Nor did she have Maddie’s mesmerizing eyes, the same shade of turquoise as the Coral Sea. And even though her friend, Khalilah, had dark brown hair like she did (minus Alana’s magenta streak), Khalilah had a presence about her that demanded your attention, a charismatic air that drew you to her ... no matter what wacky scheme she was hatching. Up until that moment, Alana had been content with her nondescript nose, hazel eyes, skin the color of lightly warmed toast, and dimples which she’d inherited from her father, but now she felt ordinary. Ordinary and boring. Alana clutched her jacket a little closer, regretting the heavy book inside her school bag. Why did Sofia have to lend her a book on vampires? And why did the neighbors have to remind her of them?

  Alana risked one last glance before she took off, just as the boy bared his fangs in a smile.

  Fangs?!

  Alana turned and pedaled faster than she normally would have because she didn’t want to be late for the first day of school. Not because she heard a peal of laughter like fingernails against a chalkboard, followed by a derisory drawl: “You are so immature, Will.”

  No, definitely not because of that.

  CHAPTER 2

  Wishful thinking

  Do you believe in vampires? Alana didn't. Not until that morning. The uncertainty snuck into her body like an ill-placed itch. It niggled and gnawed. She tried to ignore it - like she had the creepy home - but when least expected, the suspicion flashed in front of her like a cat pouncing on a darting shadow.

  It was ... unsettling.

  Shall we take another look at the body? Just a quick one? You can avert your eyes if you like while I describe it.

  The body is thickset. It is heavier than it looks. (That had been a surprise.) It is dressed in conservative blue, arms by its side. A plain band of white marks the ring finger of the left hand. Hands that are the gnarled, knotted results of a battle with arthritis lost.

  Magazines, a mug that reads "Instant human: Just add coffee," and a Pink Floyd CD have been shoved onto the floor to make room on the coffee table for the body. It doesn't fit. Or it does, but in the way a boy's shorts feel when he is ready for long pants.

  The body is doing a very good impression of planking.

  It is a stiff, after all.

  "When I said I wished she were out of my life and could drop dead, I didn't think she would do this," somebody cries. The accusation is like a pigeon with a broken wing let loose among cats. It scrambles up the walls and down the curtains, now drawn to hide the spectacle from prying eyes. It limps across the wooden floors without gaining any real traction and spins like an ungainly ice dancer. And in its wake it loosens the lips of the spectators so the echoes resound again.

  CrudCrudCrud

  Omigodomigodomigod

  Wearesodeadsodeadsodead

  Be careful what you wish for.

  CHAPTER 3

  Bedridden blues

  “I wish I were dead!”

  While Alana was rushing away from her new neighbors, her mom, Emma, was in an apartment around the corner from her school to visit Ling Ling and Katriona. Although the melodramatic declaration ended on a very real-sounding sob, Ling Ling knew better than to be concerned. She took one look at the lump in the bed that was her roommate and business partner and threw back a pair of heavy, gold retroprint curtains. Ling Ling could easily survey King Street’s traffic jam from here. The flat sat above their makeover salon, The Beauty Bar, which had unbeatable street frontage on Newtown’s main road.

  Down below, a semitrailer wheezed to a stop with an accordion’s gasp and squeak. The driver waved his early morning coffee-to-go at Ling Ling in greeting. Ling Ling never outgrew the childhood habit of waving at strangers and now an odd collection of people waved every morning at the-woman-in-the-window whom they had never met.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Ling Ling said. The day was, in fact, grimy and dull. Even the marigolds in the window flower box looked depressed in sympathy.

  The sudden show of light, however anemic, was too much for Katriona’s pet cat, Jinx. He gave a yowl of protest from the foot of the bed, and took off down the stairs. He was surprisingly fast considering he only had three legs.

  Katriona instinctively squinted under the covers against the glare of Ling Ling’s outfit which was bound to be unbearably cheerful. Even with her eyes shut, Katriona was right. Ling Ling was two shades of lime green (hair), buttercup yellow (mini-overalls), and sparkly (hat). She was the very picture of Australian patriotism ... had it not been for the candy-striped thigh-highs in red and white. She looked like an Asian outback Christmas elf.

  The lump in the bed did not move.

  “Looks like Arnie is doing his chin-ups,” Ling Ling said temptingly.

  Katriona’s thin nose edged out from under the covers. “With shirt, or without?” came the muffled response.

  They had given the bodybuilder next door the nickname, “Arnie,” after their favorite “tough-guy” actor. And he had no idea he was part of the vista
from Katriona’s bedroom. His apartment was half a story lower than Katriona and Ling Ling’s. He was so close they could change his TV channels with their remote, which was a lot of fun on a quiet Saturday night. The windows were angled so Katriona could only see random bits of his body jump in and out of frame. From what she could see he was very fit. The beginnings of a tattoo in red, blue, and yellow sat above the top of his gym shorts but it was too hard to make out what it was. Was it a flag? A Celtic symbol? Fake underwear? Katriona wasn’t sure. Had she written the real estate listing for her own home it would have sounded something like this:

  Café lifestyle — Located at the northern end of King Street, this unusually generous two-bedroom apartment offers New York-style city living plus an opportunity to work from home with a shop below. Cafés, restaurants, and bars at the door, easy walk to Sydney University and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital with unbeatable views of King Street and hunk next door. The ultimate Newtown address for ambitious, glamorous young urbanites.

  In fact, Katriona had no idea if “Arnie” was Hunk or Hulk. From the look of his back hair Ling Ling guessed part-gorilla. But Katriona had seen enough of Arnie’s muscled torso, arms, and thighs to believe it was nothing a good body wax in their salon couldn’t fix. Who cared about his head?

  Headless Arnie exercised every day to an audience ofone, but for the first time since Katriona and Ling Ling had moved into the apartment eight years ago, Katriona did not scurry to the window to watch. Arnie, mindlessly counting the repetitions of his leg squats, had no idea today was Katriona’s special day. Or that because of it, she was upset.