I had managed to find a pair of non-designer jeans, but it was harder to find a casual top. Reg ended up loaning me one of his T-shirts, and I had accepted, only because the baby blue matched the hue of my new eyes. Or my old eyes, I guess, since I probably had them before I was vampire. It was getting tricky to say what was old and what was new. The immortal version of “the chicken or the egg.”

In any case, I still didn’t feel like the girl in the mirror was me, but I noticed her hair was fading to a nice chestnut color, and I had decided it wouldn’t be entirely awful to live in her skin for a while. I might even buy her some more blue clothes to go with those eyes, if I could find a decent place to shop within a hundred miles of Nowhere.

At the thought of shopping, I turned to my brother. “Reg, where is our money? Not the cash from House Drake that we stashed in the suitcases, but the rest of it. You said it’s in a trust. Is that like a bank account? Do I need a new credit card?”

“You need a trustee,” Reg said.

“What’s a trustee?”

“Not ‘what.’ Who.”

I groaned. “Sal.”

We reached the spot where dirt became pavement, and the beating sun and blue sky turned to a leafy canopy punctuated by steepled rooftops. I sneered at the welcome sign and its inexplicable No more, no less! slogan.

“So . . . what?” I asked as we moved down the shaded street. “I’m supposed to ask the old guy for permission every time I want to buy something?”

“I imagine it will be more like an allowance. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to ask. I anticipated shopping withdrawal symptoms to set in sooner.”

“Very funny,” I said, tugging on the itchy shirt again. Who knew cotton could be so uncomfortable? “But I am not begging at the bank of Sal every week.”

I have my pride.

Reg shrugged. “It’s either that or get a job.”

Pride is overrated.

I made a choking noise. “A job? These hands have never worked a day!”

As I held out my hands, I noticed they looked a little rough around the nails, and I wondered if I had worked in my former life. Few vampires knew their human origins. In addition to the memory fade, vampires were given new last names and typically relocated immediately. Modern technology made it trickier to shield new vampires from their past, but most were so focused on their thirst, they had little curiosity about their human lives. It was funny that I should wonder about it now. Here I was mortal once again, and my first human history still felt so far out of reach.