“You can be no such thing!” Poe declared, appearing alongside our float in a top hat and vintage suit.

I slid down to the street and gripped Poe’s lapels. “This is amazing, and you did not get it in Iowa.”

“Special order from a costume shop in Hollywood.” He removed my hands from his fabric and pretended to brush off my dirt—or maybe he was brushing off actual glitter. “When it comes to Halloween, Poe doesn’t play.”

“But what are you supposed to be?” Sydney asked.

“Not what,” he corrected. “Who.”

He lifted up a large, ornate picture frame, entirely empty in the center and positioned it around his upper body.

I frowned. “You’re a painting?”

“I don’t get it,” Sydney said.

“He’s Dorian Gray.” Reg strolled into view around a passing group of parade preppers, startling Poe. The two of them had not spoken since their fight. I had tried to ask him about it, but he’d only told me to leave it alone, and, eventually, I did.

Poe lowered the frame. “Well, the portrait of Dorian Gray, but yes. That’s right.”

Reg smiled, but the rest of his face was stiff. “It’s really good.”

“Thanks.” Poe’s smile was warmer than Reg’s—more hopeful. “I knew you would get it. And you’re a—”

“Vampire,” I finished, treating my brother to one of my most withering looks.

Reg, to my total annoyance, had chosen to dress like so many of the masses . . . as the humans’ cartoonish idea of a vampire. He’d claimed it would be funny, except he wasn’t laughing, and it seemed to me that he was being deliberately disrespectful with his white plastic teeth and his black-and-red satin cape. I hoped he would de-accessorize before the night’s events.

“Charlie, can I talk to you?” Reg said, turning from Poe and gesturing for me to follow him to the end of the float.

I trailed him to a quiet spot between the cab pulling our float and the bed of a long tractor trailer covered in fake cobwebs with a sign that read, “Haunted Hayrides, Morgana Farms.”

“I’m skipping the parade,” he said. “It’s . . . too difficult.”

I hurt for Reg, for both of us. I just wished he could see that we would feel better when we shed our human emotions . . . or at least had them dulled by the desire to feed.

But who are you to decide for him? A little voice asked me.

I pushed that question down, and another one rose in its place, more pointed than the other.

If not for me, would Reg stay mortal?

The question was right there on my lips, but I couldn’t ask it. I was too afraid of the answer. Instead, I asked out loud, “Why don’t you just talk to Poe?”

“And tell him what? The next time you try to kiss me, I might bite you?”