I was struck by sudden indignance. “But the Elders must at least know that the humans here are, like, the great-great-great-grandkids of former immortals. And they still tried to take their homes?”

Lina sighed. “To the council, a vampire twice removed is no vampire at all.”

But that was the whole problem, wasn’t it?

The truth was unfolding before me. I thought of the furious way Adante had spoken of the human “invaders,” when he knew their history all along. It was an unreasonable amount of hate for a species that posed no threat. But I could see now that their very existence posed a different kind of threat, the kind that called into question the one thing vampires prized most—their immortality.

It must have been painful for the Elder Seat to see vampires who were “punished” with mortality . . . go on to live and thrive and, worst of all, have children. Because if former vampires lived on through generation after generation of their descendants, it proved there was more than one way to be immortal.

“Shh,” Lina said suddenly.

I looked around. “Uh, nobody’s talking—”

“Shh!”

She tipped her head, listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear, then she leveled her gaze at me and Reg.

“There’s someone outside.”

Thirty-Nine

The Worst Part of Being Human

Adante waited on the sidewalk, in the same spot where he’d first left us to our mortal fate, as if still standing outside a fence. Only now the fence was splintered all over the yard and nothing at all stood between us—nothing to stop him from tearing our fragile human bodies to pieces. And maybe that’s what he wanted to do, but he kept looking over our shoulders to the cottage, where he knew both a slayer and an Ancient waited inside.

“Well, that was certainly unexpected,” he quipped.

“Sir, if we could explain—” Reg began, but Adante held up a hand to silence him.

“Tonight was full of surprises. And your betrayal was only one of them.”

I kept my breathing steady and my expression unmoved. If Reg and I made it back into the cottage alive, I would consider that the biggest victory of the night.

“I’d like to tell you a story.”

Oh, goody, story time. I stifled a sigh.

“Once upon a time, there was a little town, and this town’s purpose was to be a way station for immortals returning to humanity. But some of the humans made the way station their home. They tended the land and built themselves little shops and had . . .” His mouth twitched. “Families.”