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She held up her phone screen, presenting me with a staged family photo that contained children in ridiculous outfits, the bow on the baby’s head bigger than its torso. Dave looked older. Fatter. Balding. Life had run over him then reversed, just to be sure. Their cheerfulness looked synthetic. In fact, they all looked like hostages in their own lives, Sarah included.

“Cute.” I forced the word out. I didn’t want to have to, but this interaction truly needed to end. My ribs were throbbing, my eye hot and swollen. I needed to scarf down three more painkillers and get back to work.

“Yeah, I’m lucky.” She squeezed my arm. I didn’t wince, but fuck, she had a grip on her. That one might’ve actually bruised. “You’ll get there.”

“Here’s hoping.” I crossed my fingers in front of her, overtly sarcastic.

Her brows knitted together. Or attempted to before she looked down at her fake Rolex. No way was Dave earning enough from small-town car dealerships to afford that. “I’ve got to go, darling. I’ve got Pilates. It was so nice to catch up, though. Let’s do lunch. I’d love to hear more about this … colorful life you’ve obviously lived since leaving.” She looked me up and down again.

“I’m sure,” I muttered.

She smacked her lips together to make a disgusting wet sound. “Kisses.” She turned on her toned, undernourished ass, traipsing to the Pilates studio I hadn’t previously noticed.

I hadn’t really noticed a whole lot the day before, focused on coffee and not much else. Main Street—or Memory fucking Lane, as it was now called—had always been charming to the point of looking Stepford with the flower boxes, the neatly painted shopfronts, all owned by families who hailed from the town’s founders.

The stores were not the same as they’d been when I lived here, though. No hardware store—that was a Pilates studio now. A new coffee shop. Some pretentious wine bar where the secondhand bookstore used to be.

I sighed, crossing the street. The sooner I was out of there and back on the road, the better. The goals for the day were coffee, research, survive without bumping into any “friends” or more old boyfriends.

Oh, and Dante.

But maybe I’d been lucky, and the wight consumed his soul before he could burn the heart root.

If God existed, I was hoping she’d do me a favor and smite that motherfucker.

But what was the saying? God helps those who help themselves.

I’d help myself by doing the devil’s work: killing.

My to-do list was shot to shit before I even finished my coffee. I’d made it through the ordering process without a hitch, even if the barista looked like he was about to drop dead, like a startled rabbit, the entire time. He obviously hadn’t forgotten me brandishing a knife a couple of days ago. He made me a great coffee, though.

No more run-ins with high school friends. Though I bet Sarah had already blown up a group chat with her less-than-flattering description of me. The amount of fucks I gave about that could fit on the head of a pin.

Leaning against my car, I scanned the street, wondering if I’d ever be attending a Pilates class in ultra expensive leggings, perpetually hungry, Botoxed within an inch of my life, and still indulging in petty high school grievances.

I stared at the woman posing in front of the coffee shop, her hip cocked, head tilted, firing directions at the friend taking the photo.

This was the generation of humans I was protecting? People who didn’t give a fuck about anything beyond the amount of likes they got on a photo, a video, obsessed with the way they were perceived online. Attention-seeking narcissists who pretended to give a fuck about a whole bunch of shit when, in reality, they were performing for whatever social cache it afforded them. They were looking to distract themselves from having to confront their demons, their self-hatred, and the fact that the planet was burning while billionaires reigned.

Then again, I was escaping my demons by hunting real ones, so who was I to judge?

“Oh my god, I look so fucking fat!” the woman whined from across the street, her high-pitched, whiny voice carrying.

I grimaced, sipping at my coffee. For all the bad shit I thought about them, these fucking hipsters could make a damn fine cup of coffee.

They had time to perfect latte art, to pose outside coffee shops because they had no idea that there were mutants trying to wipe them out, eat, or enslave the human race.

“Sometimes I wonder why in the fuck I don’t just let the werewolves, vampires, and everything in between tear them limb from limb,” a weary voice observed from beside me.

I didn’t look. Didn’t need to look. Of course it was him. “You’re still here,” I groaned. “I’d really hoped that wight had perked up before you had time to kill it.”

He showed off a row of white teeth, perfectly straight except for one in the bottom row which sat at an angle. It somehow made him even more attractive. If you were into that kind of thing.

“Oh, come on, you’d miss me, Hadley.” His smile disappeared as he ran his eyes over me with a leer I’d never thought I’d miss. He pushed up his sunglasses as his penetrative gaze zeroed in on the purpling bruise spreading from underneath my glasses. Then his eyes went to my ribs, that ached like a son of a bitch despite the Oxy I’d taken this morning.

“You didn’t die overnight,” he observed tightly.

“You wouldn’t get so lucky,” I snapped.