I pulled my fingernails closer to inspect them. “Looks like I’ll have to start getting manicures,” I said.

“Manicures cost money.”

“Fine. If Sal wants to be our personal ATM, then—”

“Hey, new kids!”

Reg and I both stopped in unison, pulling up straight as if we’d walked into an invisible wall.

We’d reached the end of the tree-lined street, and the brick school building had come into view. We were earlier than yesterday, and the doors must not have been open yet, because a few hundred kids were milling around outside. One of them was waving at us from the opposite sidewalk.

Reg and I looked at each other, then behind us, then back to the boy. Yep, definitely at us.

Something in our expressions caused his arm to droop.

“Uh . . . you are the new kids, right?” he called.

Slowly, slowly, as if on the hunt, Reg and I crept forward toward the boy. He met us halfway across the road with his formerly waving hand now outstretched in a greeting.

Reg took it, and they shook. A perfectly normal human interaction. Well done, Reg.

I gave myself a few points as well, for not going catatonic this time.

“I’m Charlie.”

“I know,” the boy said, pushing a pair of chunky black glasses up the bridge of his nose. The glasses were expensive and perfectly on trend.

I decided I liked this human and would have to ask him where he shopped.

“You’re Charlotte and Reginald Smith. I was supposed to find you two yesterday, but I guess you got here a little late. I’m in student government—on the Hope High welcoming committee. So, it’s my job to say . . . welcome!”

“Thank you,” Reg said. “And you are?”

He stood nearly a foot taller than the boy, which would intimidate most humans, but not this one, who seemed to have a big presence despite his short stature.

“I’m Poe,” the boy said. “As in Edgar Allan.”

I stiffened, and next to me, Reg covered up his shock with a fake cough.

Was this some kind of test? Edgar Allan Poe’s death was no secret in the vampire world, but the Elders had managed to keep humans thoroughly in the dark for over a century. Could this mortal boy possibly know the truth?

A vampire by the name of Reynolds had tried to turn Poe but accidentally overfed instead. A shame, really. By all accounts, Poe would have made a fabulous immortal. Reynolds was famously banished for the crime—never to be heard from again, other than as a cautionary tale for new vampires.

Now that I thought of it, the circumstances were disturbingly similar to our own crimes. Maybe Reynolds had been exiled to Iowa too.

This new Poe looked nonplussed by our silence.

“The poet,” he said. “You know him?”

“No,” Reg said too quickly. “Never met him.”

“He died before our time,” I added.