I was tucked securely under Dexter’s arm, Poe wedged in close on my other side. Across the table, Sydney and Sophia hammered Sal and Lina with questions. Why do vampires turn to smoke? How does slayer magic work? Can vampires have kids? Do they go to the bathroom? Why do they all have black hair? And why doesn’t Lina?

I almost wished the Elders had wiped their memories.

They’d already performed the memory fade on nearly everyone else in town. The council had agreed not to attempt another takeover, but they couldn’t have all these humans running around sharing wild stories about Halloween and turning us into the paranormal version of Roswell, New Mexico. The Elders had dispatched teams to the village over the last few weeks, performing as much memory work as possible, in the quiet of night, while people were sleeping. But some folks were on their guard, sleeping only in shifts, and a few more vampires had met their end in Nowhere.

The Elders caught up to most everyone, but in the meantime, it had apparently made for some interesting arguments around town between those with total recall and those with imposed amnesia. Eventually, only our small crew would be spared the memory fade. Or so Lina told me. The Elder Seat did not communicate with lowly humans like me.

Lina answered the twins’ questions patiently, but Sal got grumpy after a few minutes and futzed with a small wooden box in his hands instead.

“Hey, I recognize that,” I said.

His mustache twitched. “Told you it wasn’t a stake.”

He tried to hand it to me, but I refused to take it. “Last time you gave me a box, it had my whole future inside.”

“And that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“You named me Smith.”

He chuckled and set the box down in front of me. “Take a peek.”

Gingerly, I set down my coffee and picked up the box. It was amazing to see how it had transformed from a raw hunk of wood to the ornately carved piece of art I now held in my hands. Sal had certainly been busy while I’d been mourning.

Dexter’s arm, still slung over my shoulders, gave me a little squeeze.

“That’s cool,” he said. “What is it?”

“Probably a trick,” I said, sticking my tongue out at Sal as I lifted the lid.

Inside, a small stack of photos lay flat on the bottom of the box.

“Hey, it’s me!” Dex said, reaching a hand in to pick up the first photo.

And it was him, inside his Jeep, parked outside of Sal’s front gate, wearing . . .

“It’s our first date,” I said. I shot Sal a look. “You took a picture of Dex when he picked me up? Creepy, much?”

Sal feigned a serious expression. Or maybe it was an actual serious expression. It was still hard to tell with the old guy sometimes.