We’d been mortal nearly a month already and still no word from the Shadow Clan. How many more months would pass before we could file our appeal with the Elders? How many years? It was shocking how fast time moved when you had limited quantities of it.

Reg must have seen something in my face, because he closed a hand over mine. “It’s just a beard.”

His tone was brighter as he said to Sydney and Sophia, “Charlie has a hard time with change.”

“Tell me about it,” Sydney said, popping a fresh stick of gum in her mouth and working it down to a ball. “It took us weeks to convince her to buy a pair of flats. I thought we were going to have to teach her to walk in them!”

I tried to mimic Reg’s breezy air. “I accept change just fine, if the color and fabric are decent.” I propped my pink ballet-slippered feet up on the barrel table as evidence and stuck my tongue out at everyone.

“Where are Dex and Poe?” Sophia asked.

“Poe is still at rehearsal,” Reg said. “Not sure about Dex. Maybe he decided not to come.”

I took a sip of my latte to help swallow my disappointment.

While Reg and Poe had spent the last few weeks joined at the lips, I hadn’t seen Dexter much at all. Our paths only crossed at Poe’s locker and the occasional co-ed outing at All Hours, where I struggled to get him in a private conversation. Our exchanges were still flirty, but we never seemed to be alone. It could be the only explanation for why he hadn’t asked me out.

Sophia gave me pathetic pity eyes, and I scowled in response. I’d made the mistake of asking one too many questions about Dexter, and the twins had picked up on the fact that I had a “crush.” Their words, not mine. Crush implied some kind of defeat, and I was merely delayed, not defeated.

“His loss,” I said, with a flip of my hair.

But a second later, Reg’s phone lit up with a text message, and I was quick to ask, “Is it Dex?”

Reg smirked. “It’s Sal.”

“He texts? Who knew?”

I didn’t add that as recently as last month, Reg wasn’t much of a texter either.

Reg’s face changed as he read the message, then he quietly passed me his phone with a warning look—the one he used when he wanted me to stop making a scene. I rolled my eyes. As if Sal could possibly text something scene-worthy. And anyway, when is the last time I made a—

“What?!”

As soon as I read the text, I stood up so abruptly that my drink spilled all over the floor, soaking my pretty pink shoes.

“We have to go,” I said.