“Out of obligation. It’s partly my fault the old coot went soft on vampires, and a soft slayer is an easy target. I thought he might need my protection. But clearly, I was wrong. He got right to business with his little halfway house for transitioning immortals.”

She sneered as she said the last part, and I felt a touch defensive. Sure, I was on the side of immortality, all the way, but there had to be somewhere to go when mortality was unfairly flung upon a person. Where would Reg and I have been without Sal and his cottage?

“Are there many?” I asked. “Many like me and Reg?”

Lina seemed to finally notice the broken cup floating in a lake of coffee, and she pulled out a rag to mop up the mess. “Many like you and many not like you. Immortals of all stripes come and go through the revolving door of Salvador Sicarius.”

“Why him?” I asked. “Why here? In the middle of, literally, Nowhere.”

The rag that had been in Lina’s hand was suddenly on the counter far behind her, the table between us spotless. Even the fastest vampires I knew would have created a blur while wiping down the table, a glimpse of something in the corner of the eye. But with Lina—there was nothing at all. The ability to manage fine-motor skills at top speed had to be a gift bestowed only on the Ancients. It was disorienting, and a part of me wished she’d go back to being slow and careful.

“Why him?” she said. “Because there aren’t many in the business of rehabilitating the formerly immortal. And why here? Well, that’s a longer tale, but there’s history here for both vampires and slayers.”

“Here?” I raised a doubtful eyebrow. “In Iowa?”

“Both our kind and theirs settled in the area when America was still young, back in the 1800s. But even before that, around the age of—”

“Fascinating,” I interrupted. “But I’m getting all the history lessons I can handle in third period Monday through Friday. Can you skip to the present?”

“Let’s just say, it’s neutral territory. And it has been for quite a long time. Sal’s had that cottage fifteen years, but it was home to generations of slayers before him, and you and your brother are far from the first immortals to pass through Nowhere. People here have grown accustomed to strangers and strange events. Even the humans who live here are a little abnormal, if you ask me.”

“Truth,” I said, and we both laughed.

A quiet moment followed, and in that quiet, I summoned up the courage to make my case.

“Reg and I didn’t ask to be mortal,” I said. “We’re being punished for a mistake.”

“A mistake,” Lina repeated.