Ignoring this, Spike gave Jonathan an upward nod, the kind that cool guys used to give each other in the halls at school. Jonathan had never been on the receiving end of one before. He accidentally shook his head in return.

“If you live through recruitment, I’ll see you on the front lines,” Spike said. “Beers on me if we make it to the other side.”

“We’re underage,” Jonathan blurted out. Cursing himself, he tried to stand taller and did his best to imbue his voice with some resonance. “But we’ll, uh, definitely take you up on those beers. Brewskis. Cold ones.”

“But since we can’t get into bars, would you take the flyers into anywhere that’s twenty-one and over?” Andrew asked. “We definitely want some tough biker demons on our side. Cheers!”

Spike’s upper lip curled in irritation. Without another word, he strode off into the darkness.

“Cheers?” Jonathan asked Andrew.

Andrew tipped up his chin imperiously, starting to walk in the opposite direction of Spike. “It’s how British people say thank you.”

“They speak English. I’m pretty sure they say thank you,” Jonathan said. “And why were you asking him about your ear condition? Do you really still want to become a vampire? After everything we’ve seen today?”

“What do you mean?” Andrew asked. His strides doubled, forcing Jonathan to scramble to keep up.

“We watched Angelus murder Rayne right in front of us!” Jonathan said. “We freed all of those people in the blood farm! We watched the slayer dust, like, fifty fledglings! None of those things changed your mind?”

Andrew bristled. “I haven’t made up my mind. It’s not like I asked anyone to turn me. I was just asking questions.”

Jonathan wasn’t convinced. This whole year, Andrew had had one foot in the grave. Every video game, comic book, novel, or movie Andrew brought into the house was about the undead. When he thought no one was looking, he fished vampire advertisements out of the trash and kept them in his room. He’d even spoiled the Trio’s Dungeon & Dragons campaign by insisting on changing his character into a vampire, so now all of the party’s adventures had to happen at night and their elf cleric was suddenly a lawful-evil bloodsucker.

“I don’t understand,” Jonathan said faintly, “why you’d rather be one of them instead of one of us.”

“Us?” Andrew scoffed, throwing a sour look at their reflections in the darkened windows of an abandoned Hallmark store. Demons weren’t big on greeting cards. “Weak human dorks?”

“No!” Jonathan protested, waving a hand between them. “Us! The Trio! I mean, I guess we’re a duo now, but. . .You know. Friends. Best friends. The last humans in Demondale.”

Andrew frowned. “We could still be friends even if I did turn into a vampire.”