“Hello,” I say as cordially as I can. I sit up. “I’ve gotten a job. I should be able to help with your rent this month.”

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh yeah?” He catches a glimpse of the apron I set out on the back of the sofa. “Serving ice cream?”

I nod.

He breaks into laughter.

“Is something funny?”

“You used to spend the night in the bedrooms of beautiful women. That was your job. Dishing out rocky road for snot-nosed kids is a real step up.”

“It’s a human job,” I counter.

“And what about being human is so great?” he asks, shaking his head. “Look around you. Everyone you loved, everyone who ever loved you … they’re fertilizer.”

I’m not interested in listening to this drunk fool’s rantings. It’s true that Julia regarded me with caution during most of our time together this afternoon, but eventually, she … and others … will warm to me. Eventually, I will become one of them. “Yes, but in time …”

He laughs again. “You go back upstairs and ask an Original how many of us humans actually make it once we return to earth. How many go on to be happy, have good lives.”

“Why don’t you just tell me?” I say, prompting him, since it is obvious he is itching to.

He shrugs. “Okay. Nobody. We all end up either killing ourselves or drinking ourselves to oblivion or spending the rest of our days wanting death. That’s a little secret the Originals don’t let you in on when they ask you to join them. If humans knew the odds, trust me, they’d rather die.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say, though as I sit here, I realize I don’t have any facts to base that opinion on. “We’re all put here to complete our unfinished business.”

He howls again with laughter. “Unfinished business? Oh, right. They’re still feeding Sandmen that line of bull?”

I don’t know how to answer. I don’t know any other former Sandmen. I feel a twinge in the muscles of my back.

He takes another swig from his bottle; his dirty bathrobe falls open. “You’re fading again.”

I inspect my hands. So I am. At that moment, I remember I’m clad only in shorts. As I’m trying to slide my undershirt over my head—it’s still quite damp—it slips through my fingers and I know I am once again a Sandman. I see Harmon speaking to the air—“Have a nice trip”—but I know he can no longer see me. I pass through the door, out to the street. Red and blue lights are flashing across the street, and a crowd is gathering there, but I don’t stop. I am too busy regarding with disdain my bare chest and legs in the moonlight. I didn’t expect this. How shameful it will be to confront Chimere half naked like this. But I must. She will say that Harmon is a fool, and I will have no choice but to believe her, but I must confront her.

I’ve never climbed the tree outside Julia’s house barefoot. The branches scrape my legs as I climb to where Mr. Colburn is resting. “Where is Chimere?” I ask him.

He turns and grins at me. “Forgetting something?”

“I changed back into a Sandman while I was in the middle of dressing,” I grumble. “Where is Chimere?”

He shrugs. “She was looking for you, too.”

“She was?” Frustrated, I wave him off. No doubt she’s upset about how I interfered with Mr. Anderson. I press my bare back against the trunk of the tree and turn to the open window. It’s dark; Julia has not yet returned home.

“So you gave Bret what he had coming to him?”

I nod and whisper, “Indeed I did.”

I’m watching the darkened window, wondering what Chimere’s punishment will be for me. Wondering if what Harmon said is the truth. Wondering when the inevitable question will escape Mr. Colburn’s lips. It comes not a moment later: “So he’s dead?”

I shake my head. “He is very much alive.”

His face falls. “But you said—”

“I said I would take care of it. Bret Anderson is not the monster you make him out to be. Nothing about him even comes close to that creature that nearly murdered Julia when she was a child. Yes, his dreams may be somewhat inappropriate, but he’s just a normal, hot-blooded boy, who loves her.” I clench my fists. “It is not criminal to want her, but it is criminal for you to stand in the way by ending his life.”

I can see the heat simmering under his white collar. “You want me to tell the elders—”

“I do not, but would you really hurt Chimere that way? Your mentor? You are not so cold.”

He chews on his bottom lip. “If Bret so much as—”

“He will not. I assure you.”

He sighs, opens his mouth, but closes it a moment later. For the first time since I met him, he has been silenced.

I walk away then, without another word. Triumphant. Perhaps my student can be taught after all.

CHAPTER 21

Julia

Hart Avenue isn’t exactly the kind of place where you’d want to hang out after hours. Actually, I don’t think I’d want to hang out here before or during hours, either.

But then again, I’m not really sure what I’m thinking.

“Hon,” my mom says as we pass a bag lady meandering down the street with a shopping cart filled with trash bags for the fifteenth time. “What are we doing?”

“Uh,” I say, trying to remember the excuse I came up with during my Sweetie Pi’s shift. “This is a good street to practice parallel parking on.”

And really, it is. It’s one of the few streets in town with parallel parking and meters; plus there are so many cars and people and garbage cans and other obstacles everywhere that I imagine if I can park my mom’s RAV4 here, I’ll be able to park anywhere.

“Oh,” she says. I make a turn and head down the next street, preparing to go around the block and cruise down Hart again. Just as I’m beginning to think she bought the excuse, she says, “But why do I feel like we’re casing the joint?”

I wonder what mobster movie my lily-white mom got that saying from and shrug. “I’m looking for a parking space.”

“We passed a bunch.” We turn onto Hart again, and she points out the window. “What about that one?”

“Um, too narrow.”

We pass another. “And that one?”

“Those cars I’d be parking between are black! It’s too hard to see them in the dark.”

“Hon, are you nervous? Don’t be. Parallel parking is simple.”

I’m not, really—about that, anyway. My dad has put the cones on the street outside our house so often that I could probably park anywhere in my sleep. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be for my driver’s test in a couple of days. But I wanted to find out more about Mr. Geronimo DeMarchelle. Even though I’m positive I would remember a guy like him if I’d ever met him before, I still have the strangest sense of déjà vu around him, like we not only knew each other once before … but we knew each other well. And there were things that didn’t add up. How did he know where to find Bret and me that night at the party? How did he know that Griffin was my boyfriend? That’s why I performed a dozen games of twenty questions on him, trying to knock something loose from his past, some common bond. But there was nothing. Our lives are so different that he might as well have arrived in a time machine. So when he walked me to my mother’s car at the end of our shift, I couldn’t help wanting to know more.

The kicker came right before we parted, when he kissed my hand. After that, he nodded respectfully to my mother, placed his hat on his head, and sauntered away, whistling. He put the hat on like it was something he’d done every day of his life. Griffin would have done something like that as a joke, as part of an act, and would have looked utterly ridiculous. But Eron seemed comfortable with it, and when he kissed my hand, his eyes bored into me so that immediately my wrist went limp. Then shivers traveled up my arm, down my body to my knees, so I had to grab on to the car door to stop from toppling over on the curb.