Lina gestured to a table, and we sat in opposite chairs. She leaned forward, eyes alight with both curiosity and invitation. I sensed in that moment that I could ask her anything, but a million questions were competing to get out, causing a bottleneck in my throat so that not one could squeak through.

“Coffee?” Lina asked, and no sooner had she said the word than she was behind the counter, her hands already working the brewer. Once the coffee was poured, I blinked, and two steaming mugs were on the table between us, not a drop spilled. I wondered if I’d have been able to see her move even with my old immortal eyes.

But then she lifted her coffee to her lips, and I could see only a human, because what vamp would drink anything other than blood?

The thought that I might lose my taste for coffee when I returned to immortality gave me a fleeting moment of sadness.

“How do you do that?” I asked, nodding at her cup. “Doesn’t everything just taste like ashes?”

“A little. But after a time, you can sort of taste through that. Same with smells.”

“And do you still drink—?”

“No.”

“But how . . .”

“It’s no longer necessary.”

“And sunlight?”

“Glorious.”

“Stakes?”

“Those still sting.”

I grinned. “As if any mortal could get close enough to try, at your speed.”

“You underestimate humans,” she said. “Even now.”

“I don’t hold them in any estimation at all,” I said, doing my best to channel Reg and sound a little more formal. I needed Lina to think we were mature enough for immortality.

“Doesn’t look that way from where I’m sitting,” Lina said with a deliberate glance to my crew’s usual table.

My crew.

My new clan.

I shook off the thought. Mortal friends were not forever. That was the whole big thing about mortality . . . the un-foreverness of it.

“So, you and Sal,” I said, changing the subject.

Lina sniffed, frowning for the first time. “What about me and Sal?”

“He told us about your history . . . together.”

“He told you his version of history. I’m sure it was spotty. Age addles the brain, you know. The mortal brain, anyway.”

“Now who’s underestimating humans?”

“Touché.” Her smile returned.

“Did you love him?” I blurted out the question, partly out of curiosity and partly to buy time while I worked up the courage to ask the question I’d really come here to ask.

Lina took another slow sip of her coffee. “I’ll never love anything more than I love . . . loved . . . that man. Undeserving of my affection though he may be.”

“I didn’t know we could do that,” I said.

“What?”

“Love.”

Her smile was warm. “Sure we can. It’s like all things with vampires—there, but quiet, buried under the deeper desire—under the thirst.”