“I can’t do this for two more days, let alone two more years,” I complained. “Reg, the way those kids looked at me—I just wanted to climb into a dark hole, curl up, and die.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, their meaning became something literal.

“I’m serious, Reg,” I said. “Darkness. Death. That’s what I want. I want to be vampire again.”

“Well, you can want that all night long, Charlie . . . and, come to think of it, all day long now . . . but that won’t make it happen.”

A quiet rage boiled up inside me. I’d already been told no too many times in the last few days—no to immortality, no to skipping high school, no to anything resembling fashion. After one hundred years of yes, I wasn’t accustomed to hearing no.

“This is the worst part of being human. This—this—negativity!” I shouted, breathing heavily. I pulled at the damp neckline of my sweater. “That and all the stupid sweating!”

“Well, what do you suggest we do about it?” Reg said.

The cottage was in view now, its sun-drenched stone walls twinkling at us. I scowled in return.

“I suggest we take back our lives,” I said. “Our immortal lives.”

“And how do we do that?”

I set my jaw. “Together. And at any cost.”

“Sounds diabolical.” Reg smiled for the first time since we’d left school and nudged my shoulder. “But until we’re all-powerful immortals again, maybe put away the Prada.”

Seven

The Slayer’s Secret

Sal was hulking in the doorway, leaning on the frame and smoking a pipe, when we got home, like he’d been waiting for us. I hesitated when we reached the gate, my hand hovering just above the white wood. Not flat and wide like other fence slats but thick and narrow. If the posts had been rounded like poles instead of squared off, they would be indistinguishable from stakes—clearly a slayer’s version of a picket fence.

Had it really been only days since we’d first passed through this awful gate? If I’d known then what I knew now—if I’d known pain, known fear, known shame—would I have walked into my doom so easily? I thought I had put up a fight, but that was nothing compared to the fit I should have thrown.

“We should have run,” Reg said, his eyes also on the gate.

“We couldn’t have outrun the Elders.”

Sal called out from the porch, “Come on, that fence don’t bite.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” I shouted back.

Sal’s laugh turned into a hacking cough as he puffed on his pipe.

I refused to be a source of amusement for a slayer—retired or not—and stormed through the gate before Reg could open it for me.