“I’ve been around long enough to know that if the Elders want this town, they’ll take this town. Without your help, they might send the Bloods in to take it themselves.”

“That would be . . .”

Awful.

“Messy.”

Lina agreed. “The alternatives certainly make the current operation look downright friendly.”

“Will you stay?” I asked.

“And what? Turn the coffee shop into a blood bank?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Point taken.”

“I honestly don’t know what I’ll do next,” she said. “I never think that far ahead.”

“Why not?”

“An endless road is an overwhelming prospect. When you’ve got eternity in front of you, the present becomes a lot more interesting.”

“Well, I hope you don’t stick around,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah? Why not?”

“Because I don’t want Sal stuck here with a bunch of Bloods, and I think if you stay, he will too. To be close to you.”

Lina said nothing, but if she were human, she looked like she might cry.

I set my coffee cup down and tried to be gentle with my words.

“You know that thing people say about the thin line between love and hate? In a hundred years, I’ve never understood it until now.”

Lina didn’t answer, but a puff of air caused me to blink, and when I opened my eyes again, she was cradling a picture frame in her hands. It was the photo of her and Sal in front of the pyramids, under the bright Egyptian sun. She ran two fingers over the image.

“I wanted to turn him, so this could be us forever. But it would have taken millennia before he could walk in the sunlight with me, and it was against everything in his being.”

“Really? He seems kinda dark, if you ask me.”

Lina smiled. “Don’t let the rough exterior fool you. That man is made of pure light.”

I thought of Dexter’s bright eyes and golden hair and skin, as if the sunshine was burning right out from his core. Now, that was a guy made of pure light. Sal? Not so much.

“You know, it’s funny really,” Lina said, moving to hang the picture back on the wall—this time at a speed I could see.

“What’s funny?”

“He didn’t want to be vampire, and I didn’t want to be human, and yet we both turned against our nature anyway. He no longer slays, and I no longer feed.” She adjusted the frame until it was perfectly straight. “And yet somehow, we still can’t find a way to be together.”