He shook his unruly lock of hair out of his face. “Nah, but I’ll be at the party. I’m hoping a nice girl will ask me to dance.”

“Oh, a nice girl?” I said, lifting my coffee to my lips. “That’s a shame.”

Sydney and Sophia giggled in appreciation, and I rewarded them with a wink. Maybe I could teach these girls a few things before I left them in the sunlight.

Dexter still wore a confident, lazy smile, but I noticed a blush had crept into his cheeks. My little flirt had knocked him off-balance. The poor guy. I’d had a century to master this skill. He’d had, what? A few years? It really wasn’t a fair fight.

“It’s okay, Dex,” Poe said. “I’m not that into nice girls either.”

Reg set his empty cup on the barrel table and leaned, almost imperceptibly, closer to Poe.

“Nor am I,” he said.

Sydney and Sophia exchanged a look, eyebrows arching high into their foreheads. Realization had dawned. Their eyes flitted from Poe to Reg and back again. They both smiled.

“So, you’re a junior?” Dexter asked me, his blush quickly fading. “You look younger. How old are you?”

“I’m a hundr—uh, sixteen?”

He laughed. “You’re not sure?”

I opened my mouth a couple of times like a hungry koi fish, until I caught sight of Reg imitating me from across the table. I snapped my jaw closed.

“I’m sure,” I said to Dexter.

Now I was the one off-balance.

“I’m a junior too,” he said. “Too bad we don’t have any classes together. But at least we’re in the same wing.”

“I guess I’ll be seeing you around, then.”

He smiled, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth in a delicious way. “I know I’ll be seeing you.”

Maybe it was a fair fight after all.

“Looks like somebody’s already lining up their date for the dance,” Sydney said to Sophia, loud enough for all of us to hear.

I didn’t know if Dexter was destined to be my date to this Halloween sock hop or whatever it was called, or if we would even still be human by then, but one thing was for certain. If I did go to the party, I would be wearing Prada.

Thirteen

Pretty Ugly

“I’ll thank you to keep me informed of your general whereabouts,” Sal greeted us when we returned to the cottage.

He was hulking in the doorway again, for who knows what reason. Maybe he was watching the corn grow.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than creep around on the porch waiting for us?” I retorted.

“It’s my house, and I’ll creep around wherever I damn well please.”

I smirked.

“Stand around. You know what I meant.” The flustered look on his face was a prize. “So, where were you?”