“The first undoing,” I said.

“And the birth of the slayer, so far as we know. Slayers—healers, back then—started popping up all over the world after that. Hard to say if the powers were always there, or if it was some kind of global awakening, but suddenly, we were everywhere.”

“Fascinating,” Reg breathed. “And it all started here, in this sleepy place.”

“Sleepy by design,” Sal said.

“What do you mean?”

“This place became sacred to both vampires and slayers. For more than a thousand years, it remained remote and mostly uninhabited, occasionally visited by healers and killers alike, who made the pilgrimage.”

“And then America was colonized,” Reg filled in. “I believe the French first settled in this area in the 1700s.”

I nodded along, pretending that I, too, remembered that from our history books, though in truth, I’d never found history older than my own very interesting.

Sal finished eating and sat back in his chair, hands folded over his stomach.

“Vamps worried that sacred ground would be desecrated by development, so they laid claim to a bunch of land, thanks mainly to your Bone Clan’s wealth.”

The Bone Clan invested in all kinds of property—penthouses, estates, villas, even a few private islands—so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn they owned some fields in Iowa too.

I flashed on an image from earlier in the day: a sign, mounted on the side of a barn.

“Morgana Farms,” I said. “They own the orchard. And Dex’s old farm too.”

“That’s the one,” Sal said. “Morgana. Vampire shell corp. No business except buying up land around town. And sometimes in town too. Keeping Nowhere small. Back when the land grab started, my kind didn’t have the same loot, so all they could do was claim one of the small patches of land that vamps hadn’t already peed all over to mark their territory. They built this cottage and vowed that it would always be home to a slayer.”

Looking around the stone walls of the kitchen, I saw them now in a different light—built by hands made for healing, to keep an eye on creatures made for killing.

“Neither side wanted to draw too much attention to this place,” Sal went on. “So this became neutral ground. No hunting from either side.”

“It’s impossible that we’ve never heard of this,” Reg said.

Sal lifted one side of his mouth in a half smile. “Not everyone understands neutral ground. This history, this place, is kept quiet on both sides, to prevent all-out war.”

It seemed unfair to keep such a special place a secret, but I couldn’t disagree that a place that drew both vampire and slayer would inevitably become a battleground.

“There are a few who know,” Sal said. “The members of the Elder Seat, though sworn to secrecy, and a good deal of slayers who identify as healers, like myself.”