“But she couldn’t leave me in peace! She opened that damn coffee shop right in the village, just minutes away. I gave up slaying for her—became a traitor to my own kind to better serve her kind, and she couldn’t just let me be. She stuck around just to torture me.”

“Damn,” I said, impressed.

“Can’t really say I blame her,” Reg said. “Woman scorned and all that.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to turn tail and run,” Sal said. “So I built my fence to make sure she could never come back.”

“You built it for her?” I marveled. No wonder the pickets looked more like stakes.

Reg let out a low whistle.

“Fat lot of good it’d do me anyway,” Sal said. “If the woman can walk on water, she can probably walk through my damn fence.”

He looked toward the window, glowering at the fence outside. “She just doesn’t want to.”

I wondered if an Ancient really would be invincible to slayer powers. It was beginning to seem as though there was nothing an Ancient could not do—except sit on the Elder Seat, but even in that case, the Elders still consulted with Ancients, still afforded them certain privileges, still . . .

“Of course.”

It came out as a whisper, my lips forming around the words, but with barely enough breath to make a sound.

“She can sponsor us.”

I looked at Reg as I said it, hope blooming in my chest. But the light that had just turned on for me seemed dimmer in him. He blinked, as if to hide it from me, and bobbed his head in an overenthusiastic way that was just so not Reg.

“Yeah. Yes! Sure, she can. Great. Great thinking, Charlie.” His words were right, and he even sounded right, but . . .

I pictured the way Reg lit up when he texted Poe or took the stage at school or enjoyed a sunset on the hills behind the cottage. He had none of that glow now, and I felt a pinch of guilt. Maybe it was selfish of me to hurry us home. But the further we got from our vampire lives, the less likely it seemed that we would ever reclaim them, so I hoped he would forgive me if I cut his human vacation a little short.

It was unlike me to spend so much time worrying about someone else’s feelings—even my brother’s. I never used to care what was good for anyone but myself. I didn’t know if that was an immortal thing or just a Charlie thing, and with an inner squirm, I realized that I wasn’t sure which “me” I liked better.