“Right,” I mutter. I’m glad it’s dark so he doesn’t see my cheeks flush. I guess he is flirting—it wasn’t just the zing of magic.

“It’s true.” I jump at Aristelle’s voice behind me. I didn’t hear a single step of her approach. “There’s not enough money in the world to make me hold his hand,” she continues, “but I’ll do it for a single dead vampire.”

Her face hardens, and I know she’s like Xander. She’s not in this for the magic. She’s in this for the blood.

“What happened to you?” I ask. It’s a horrible way to say it, but it’s what pops out. What happened to make you as hard as me?

Her cold eyes meet mine, and she’s silent for so long I don’t think she’ll answer, but she does.

“It was 1969.” She pauses and watches me.

I try not to give a reaction.

She seems satisfied when I don’t. “I went to Woodstock. I was all peace and love back then.” She scowls like she wishes she could reach out and smack her past self. “It was crowded. It was so packed that a vampire came up behind me and drained me to the point of unconsciousness, and nobody noticed until I was left on the ground. I woke up in the hospital, but I remembered what happened to me. I remembered the fangs. I started hunting vampires before I ever tapped into my magic. That’s how a troupe found me.”

I don’t tell her I’m sorry or anything. I have a feeling she’d hate that.

Instead I say, “So you’re like, what? Seventy years old?”

She gives me a hard smile. “I wish.” She looks uncomfortable, like she didn’t mean to say it out loud.

“You wish you weren’t immortal?”

She shifts like she’ll turn away from me and shares a look with Xander before answering. “The spell doesn’t just freeze our bodies—it freezes our minds too. In most ways, I feel like I did the day I became immortal. I still feel those little hopes and dreams I had before, and I still feel all the anger and pain of what happened like it was yesterday, but then I also have a bunch of memories that don’t fit from the past fifty-three years—it’s almost like I’m two people that shouldn’t exist in this world.”

I can tell she’s being more vulnerable than she likes, but she holds my stare as she talks, and then after, waiting for my reaction. “How do you live like that?”

She shrugs. “It’s a struggle every day. A lot of us just sort of shut down… give up on feeling human.” She hesitates. “Some of us become like vampires in that way.”

I glance between them. “But not you.”