Candles lit the butterfly birthday cake as
the kids and everyone else gathered around Coraline from at the table.
Once we were ready, we sang. "Happy Birthday to Coraline! Happy Birthday to you!" and Coraline bashfully blushed in the chair.
"Make a wish," Chester said before she blew out the candles as we all clapped.
"YAY!"
"Let's all have a seat. Coraline will open her gifts while everyone gets a slice of cake and ice cream." Zoey announced.
Kai and his friends surprisingly served the kids their cake and ice cream without a complaint. Jack handed Sharlene and me a slice of cake and ice cream, making us happy. Coraline opened up many lovely gifts from her classmates and friends. She got a small princess castle playset and a tea set that she seemed to favor.
As the hours ticked away, we had about twenty-six minutes left in the party. While Kai was helping his brother pack up the stuff with their advisors, I quickly ran to the restroom only to find that it was packed full with a line wrapped around it, which included the men's room too. Without being given a choice, I had to leave the building, and I entered the Plaza Mall that was attached to it. Wearing a party wristband, I could easily come and go as I pleased. Not too far down the Mall, I turned left and found the ladies' restroom in the corridor.
As I was washing my hands from being done, through the reflection of the long wall thin mirror, I saw the bathroom stall open when a familiar face stepped out as the metal door squeaked.
"Victoria! What are the odds of you being here!" Stella's chirpy voice boomed when she came out of the stall from behind my back.
She came next to the sink as I giggled. "It's nice to see you, Stella. Are you having a good weekend?"
"I am!" she chuckled. "I'm shopping with my new friends. Hey, since you are here, why don't you join us? I'd love for you to meet them!"
"I'd love to, but I'll have to do that another day. I'm busy with my niece's party," I declined, drying my hands with a paper towel.
"Oh, but it will only take a second," Stella insisted, drying her hands as well.
"La...La...come here, Victoria..." My jaw hung open to speak, but my words got
knotted in my vocals when I heard the song of the Siren get inside my head.
My body swayed as dizziness crept upon me. Stella stood there sneering from ear to ear as she threw out the paper towel.
"A-are y-you alright?" she asked me, yet her voice sounded far off in the distance while the eerie grin never vanished from her face.
"You... you are... not... Stella..." My broken voice stammered as I backed away from her.
"This way, my dear, Victoria."
I tried calling Kai in my head, but there was a block from a mellifluous voice that kept singing in my mind.
"Why would you say that?" Stella cocked her brow as a mockery chuckle seemed to tickle her amused mirth.
Not saying another word, I stumbled out of the swinging bathroom door. My feet staggered onward through the empty corridor until I stopped once Athena and her vampiresses blocked my escape from leaving any further. But they weren't the only ones here. A Wing vampiress with icy white straight hair with colored blue hair tips stood by Athena as her parted lips hummed the exact song in my head. Brandon stood next to the Wing vampiress, looking icier than a patch of black ice compared to when I had eaten lunch with him.
"I see you met my friends and my twin sister Bella, and you already met Brandon," Stella's voice reached my ears as her winter-heeled boots clanked loudly against the floor.
"Why don't you show her your true face, Roxy?" the Wing vampiress named Bella spoke as her song reduced from my head, but it was there enough that I couldn't summon anyone for help.
Whoever this Roxy was, she walked past my shoulder as her facial appearance changed from an adorable oval petal to a heart-shaped feature with dazzling long curly lashes and a short nose. Full heart lips perked on her mouth that any man would desire on a woman and any woman would kill to have. From having brown hair, identical icy white long, shiny hair strands cascaded along her back like the Wing vampiress, only she had purple hair tips. Between their hair and their facial appearance, the fraud who had pretended to be Stella looked nearly identical to the Wing vampiress.
"You're twins, but how can you be a Wing, yet the other one is a Chameleon?" I was baffled because the vampiress I knew to be Stella was a Chameleon while her sister was a Wing.
Hybrid species didn't exist. Twins or not, no vampire or vampiress was able to be half of two different species because it wasn't possible to be born that way.
The theory about Hybrids became the leading cause of the Second Vampiric War because a bunch of Headmasters didn't want the birth of Hybrids to be born when destined mates weren't the same species. At the time, their theory was wrong because offspring are born taking after one of their parents, not half of each. There was no way a Hybrid chameleon-wing existed.
"We aren't identical twins. Our mother was a Wing while our father was a Chameleon, and by the way, my real name is Roxy, not Stella. I only stole the real Stella's name, her features, voice, and her scent," the impostor Stella introduced herself as Roxy after she stood between her siblings.
"When did you take the real Stella's identity?" I glared, stalling them in the hope it would give Kai enough time to realize I needed help. I briefly told him outside on the sidewalk where I'd be before I entered the mall.
Roxy grinned. "Right after you hung up from your conversation to meet each other at the Plaza Mall. We broke into her apartment and kidnapped her, thus starting our little game."
"Where is the real Stella?" I dauntlessly snapped.
"She's dead as of today," Brandon replied, chuckling. "Kai was closing in on us, so there was no use in keeping things up any longer, especially after Mia confirmed his theory about Roxy to be correct."
"How are you going to tell her?" I remembered Mia's voice stirred me awake last night.
"I'm not sure, but I'll figure something out," was Kai's reply as their conversation from last night sparked my memory.
"Kai knew the truth about Stella..." My voice feathered away.
Bella shared with me after she giggled, "Awe, didn't he share that he had a hunch the first day he started to follow you at the University? Mia confirmed his theory when she came Friday while Kai and his advisors were investigating the real Stella's hometown and her empty apartment. I'm sure they found out rather quickly that her brother died two years ago in a car accident. Coincidentally, she had a younger brother named Brandon, like us. He figured out pretty quickly that she was missing."