Elder Adante tugged on the ends of his shirtsleeves, making tiny adjustments to his cuff links. He could not have looked more bored.

“The transition is complete,” he said. “I trust you’ll have all you need here.”

I scrambled to my feet, a sudden rage eclipsing all my pain and fear. “That’s it?! You’re just going to drop us here without telling us where to go or what to do?”

Adante indicated the cottage behind us. “You go there. What you do is up to you.”

“As if any of this is up to us,” I snapped.

“Charlie,” Reg warned. “Be calm.”

“Don’t tell me what to—”

“They bicker like children,” the second Elder muttered as if we weren’t there.

“They are children,” Adante replied. “It is precisely the problem. Of all the things we shed when we turn—our memories, our illnesses, our physical imperfections—we cannot lose the essence of who we are. If we are children, we are doomed to remain children.”

“Excuse me, we”—I pointed back and forth between myself and Reg—“are standing right here. And we’re not children.”

Adante’s answer was a cold stare. “You are now.”

The other Elder attempted something like a smile. “It’s for your own good.”

Her patronizing tone set my skin on fire. I felt my face burning from my cheeks all the way up into my hair. I forgot for a moment how powerless I must be—forgot how slow and weak and practically blind I was, and in that moment of amnesia, I rushed toward the Elders, opening my mouth to show them my fangs.

Except I had no fangs, and “rushing” felt like wading through thick honey compared to how fast I could move only minutes ago. I had to pass through the gate to get to the Elders, and for one irrational moment, I wondered if that would restore my powers. But as I crossed the white picket threshold, I felt no change. My heart was still beating, my lungs still pulling in air. Disappointment caused me to stumble. Either that or my toe catching on the edge of the sidewalk.

I tripped and fell, my knees skidding a few inches on the concrete before I landed ungracefully in a tangle at the Elders’ feet. How humiliating. I had never had a clumsy moment in my whole long life.

Adante gave the slightest shake of his head. “A pity.”

“For your own good,” the other Elder repeated.

Then they were gone. Just like that. One moment they were standing above me, and the next, they vanished.