I think I was the first to let a snicker escape, followed by a snort from the old man and an outright laugh from Reg. For the second time that evening, the kitchen was ringing with our laughter, each of us busting up until our bellies full of slayer soup ached with the effort. I never would have guessed that laughing so much it hurt . . . actually felt kind of good.

Fourteen

Life Goes On

Once upon a time, an assassin and two former immortals lived together in a tiny cottage and managed not to kill each other.

Sal became more tolerable as the days went on, and after a week or so, I stopped minding the way he hovered at the front door, watching us come and go—or at least, I managed to ignore it. He made up for a lack of charm by sending us to school every day stuffed with eggs and sausage and pancakes and other things that were probably going to give me acne, according to Sydney and Sophia.

The twins were keeping me busy with more than just human skin-care tips. By Friday afternoon, I was already in my third Halloween Hoopla planning meeting of the week. Sydney and Sophia sat at either end of a long table in the Hope High library, with me and a dozen other students stretched between them.

“So, we are down to ‘A Full Moon’ and ‘A Night of Immortality,’” Sophia said, consulting a clipboard.

One of the committee’s responsibilities was the Hope High parade float, and the group had been debating a theme for the float all week, though I wasn’t sure why we were even going through the charade of a discussion. It had become obvious to me in a matter of just days that Sydney and Sophia Carlone always got exactly what they wanted. Reg and I had clearly stumbled into the right group of friends.

The committee had already settled on an overall event motto for the 50th Annual Halloween Hoopla: No more, no less than horrifically fun!

But the fight over the Hope High parade float theme was dragging on. The freshman and sophomore committee members didn’t seem to care much, probably because their task was just to build the thing. Juniors and seniors got to ride on it.

“I still say those are both boring,” a boy across from me complained. “We need a cinematic theme, like The Purge.”

Sophia gave him a withering look. “Mark, we are not theming the official Hope High float after a mass murder movie.”

“‘A Full Moon’ would be the easiest for decorating,” a girl to my left suggested. “There are still a bunch of props and set pieces stashed in the theater closets from the ‘Howl at the Moon’ theme a few years ago.”

“Exactly,” Purge boy, Mark, said. “It’s already been done.”