“Yeah, maybe.” He shrugged and started carving again. “And I suppose we’re as unnatural as any immortal. Heck, we probably wouldn’t even exist without vampires.”

“Maybe neither would exist without the other,” I offered.

Until now, I’d never thought of it that way: vampire and slayer, two halves of the same coin. It made a strange kind of sense.

“Yin and yang,” Sal said.

“Black and white.”

“Or more like the murky gray space in the middle.”

“Yeah, I like that better.” I pointed to myself. “That’s kind of how it feels to be . . . this.”

“To be what?”

I searched for a way to explain it. “To be human, but only recently. Like I don’t fit in either the mortal or the immortal worlds, and I’m just stuck in some kind of purgatory. Is that what it’s like to be a slayer?”

Sal paused his whittling, the hilt of his knife pressed to his lips. “Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty accurate, especially for a retired slayer. Like you exist in both worlds but belong to neither.”

“Sun or shadow.”

“No twilight in between.”

We exchanged a silent look of understanding. Who knew I could have so much in common with a slayer?

“We’re very poetic,” I said with mock sincerity.

He grinned. “If only there were a market for slayer-vampire-semi-mortal collaborative poetry collections.”

“Not exactly the kind of thing you can pick up at the library,” I agreed.

“Maybe a specialty bookstore, then.”

“Hey, that’s what Lina can convert her coffee shop to after—”

I choked on the words, lassoing them just in time to pull them back from my lips.

“After what?”

“After . . . after she gets tired of running a coffee shop. She can’t do it forever, right? People would start to ask questions. She’s already been there, what? Ten years?”

“Fifteen,” Sal said, and his features arranged themselves in such a way that it was obvious the thought had not occurred to him—that Lina would have to close shop one day, would have to go away.

As much as he grumbled about her, it was clear he still had feelings for her. Maybe a part of him would be happy when the Blood Clan moved in and it meant Lina could stay.

Forever, if she wanted.

“So, what’s that you’re making?” I asked, changing the subject.

I reached for the wooden block, but he held it out of my reach.

“It’s not your concern,” he said.

His abrupt response surprised me a little, but I suppose a few minutes of bonding at the kitchen table didn’t exactly make us BFFs. I couldn’t blame him. I had my secrets too.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” I said. “But do me a favor and make something without pointy ends for once?”

Sal chuckled. “No promises.”

Thirty-One

Playing Dead

Kachunk. Kachunk. Kachunk.

There is something so satisfying about wielding a staple gun.