Sal had fed us a smorgasbord of meats and vegetables the night before, to give us a taste of everything and gauge what we liked. Judging by the way Reg had stuffed his face, he loved it all. Personally, I had only nibbled on a piece of chicken and an ear of corn, which tasted fine enough but didn’t seem worth the hour I spent afterward picking kernel skin out of my teeth.

I was much more enamored of my new sense of smell than taste. The aromas that had been dulled down to nothing by the powerful scent of blood were now assaulting my nostrils at every turn. I had spent my first full day of sunlight walking the meadows around Sal’s cottage, literally following my nose. I collected one of every flower I could find, amazed that the smell never waned from the petals, no matter how much I sniffed them. When I’d brought the bouquet back to the cottage, Sal had made a snide remark about half the flowers being weeds, but he’d given me a glass vase to put them in and showed me where to set the vase on the windowsill to catch the most light.

I didn’t want to follow any instructions the old man gave me, and I definitely didn’t trust a slayer, but I had to concede he probably knew more about keeping things alive than I did.

On this morning, the sunshine beckoned us outside once again, but we were doomed to spend the day indoors pretending to be high schoolers. Fortunately for me, I thought with some superiority, I watched every teen show on TV. I knew exactly how to talk, how to dress and how to rule a school. But Reg? Now that was just hopeless.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” I asked, eyeing the flannel shirt and jeans he had on now.

“Yeah. So?” he said through a mouth full of bacon.

“So . . . it’s plaid,” I said. The problem was self-evident.

“I borrowed it from Sal,” Reg answered. “I’m trying to blend in until we can go shopping.”

“Dressing like some old farmer is not how you blend in with students.”

“I’m not a farmer,” Sal spoke up from the end of the table. “But I’ll give you old.”

He pressed a hand over a wooden box next to his plate and slid it toward us.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Sal gestured for me to open it.

“Your future.”

Five

Meet the Smiths

The box had the same intricate carvings as the kitchen chairs. Sal obviously had skilled hands, but I also remembered him saying his hands had something to do with the fence that had ruined our lives, so I wasn’t about to open Pandora’s box. Reg did the honors instead, and I peered over his shoulder.

“Cell phones,” Sal said. “I assume you know—”