Read Online Monster High 4: Back and Deader Than Ever by Lisi Harrison - Free Book Online Page B

(as Lala and Vlad secretly called him) nodded in reply.
    “What’s going on?” she asked Vlad, who was seated at the table. The Belgian waffles were covered with documents. The muffin basket had been shoved aside to make room for a portable fax machine. And three international cell phones rested on Lala’s empty plate.
    “Whatever could you mean?” asked her uncle in mock shock, obviously annoyed. “We always toss office equipment onto our breakfast.” He scraped almond butter onto Lala’s cinnamon raisin bagel as if trying to spark a flame.
    “Not so hard, it’s gonna—” Just then the bagel slipped from his angry grip and landed facedown on a black marble square.
    “Looks like you’re Os,” Lala joked, trying to lighten the mood. “My turn.” She made an X out of two tofu sausages and placed them on a white floor tile.
    Vlad threw his hands in the air. “Fabulous! Just fabulous!”
    The Count, thinking he had been summoned for a meal, swooped in, scooped up the bagel, and flew back upstairs. Vlad knocked his head against the juicer while Lala tried her hardest not to laugh.
    “It’s okay,” she said, reaching past her uncle for her white mug. “A soy latte is all I wanted, anyway.”
    “I hope you like it cold,” Vlad mumbled from the side of his mouth. “Thanks to my brother—the tan-pire—there is a state-of-the-art tanning bed in my meditation room, and it blew half the fuses in this house.” He handed Lala a twenty-dollar bill. “Hit the drive-through Starbucks.”
    Lala tucked the money in the side of her boot as her father paced the kitchen, his guttural Romanian becoming louder and angrier. “Isn’t this great?”
    Vlad pressed a finger on his twitching eyelid. “What?”
    “We’re like a real family.”
    “Gresit!”
Mr. D charged out of the kitchen. His voice boomed down the hallway toward the foyer. Muscles slipped out behind him.
    Vlad rolled his eyes. “Would it kill them to clear their plates?” Pushing the laptop to the far end of the table, he jabbed at the power button on the remote, muted the flat screen, and then pulled the plastic off a brand-new issue of
Architectural Digest
. He flipped through the first few pages of furniture ads and then looked up. “The tanning bed. The moisturizers. The staff. The luggage. The heat lamps… He hung a satin robe over the Whitmore!”
    Lala gasped. She knew what that mirror meant to him. According to the book he’d written—
Fang Shui: Decorating Tips for Vampires in Need of Positive Qi
—the mirror was located where the heart corner and the wealth corner merged. Meaning it was supposed to help Uncle Vlad attract a wealthy lover. Unless it was covered. Which meant he would die poor and alone.
    “He’s probably not going to stay very long, anyway. He never does,” Lala offered. The realization brought a hopeful grin to Vlad’s face. And turned Lala’s blood to stone. Would she ever be good enough to stay put for?
    “I’d better go,” she said, desperate to hit Starbucks before first period.
    A chirping sound came from her microfiber bag. Lala and Vlad exchanged a glance. “Probably someone needing a ride.” She shrugged.
    Blocked.
    Vlad sighed and then returned to his magazine.
    She blew a good-bye kiss to Vlad and answered her phone. “Hullo?”
    “Ahhhh.
Oui
. Ehhh, Lala?” It was a heavily accented female voice. Probably another one of her father’s foreign girlfriends trying to get in good with the daughter, a story older than she was.
    Lala pushed through the saloon doors. “Um-hmm?” Whoever it was would have to talk to her on her way to school.
    “
Je m’appelle
Brigitte T’eau from—”
    “And Dickie Dally here. Dally Sports Apparel.”
    Clawd?
Lala stopped, wondering who could be punking her.
He doesn’t even know about the T’eau Dally—
    The woman with the accent cut back in.
    “Votre
e-mail
était rempli de passion et
—
”
    “A real home run, Slugger. You’re one of our three T’eau