Cadence looked at Eliza and Jamie in disbelief. “I thought he was, like, a shift manager or something, not like, the CEO.”

Eliza burst out laughing, and Jamie did his best to stifle a chuckle. “That’s hilarious!” Eliza said, though once she saw Cadence’s face, she attempted to control herself a little more.

“Oh, my gosh!” Cadence exclaimed. “And he just heard me say that, too? Didn’t he?”

“Yes, but it’s okay,” Eliza said, regaining control of herself. “He’s actually laughing, too. Which is rare. You should be proud.”

Cadence wasn’t proud. She was mortified. And then she started thinking back to the night before when she had called him “creepy” and practically blew her nose on his jacket. “Wonderful,” she mumbled. “I sure hope he never has to save my ass again. He’s liable to let the Vampires have me.”

As if she’d completely missed the point of Cadence’s humiliation, Janette went back to the original question. “Being the Guardian Leader is a lot of responsibility; that is certain,” She shook her head sympathetically. “Especially now, since there’s no Hunter Leader.”

Finally letting the situation with Aaron go for now, Cadence refocused on her grandmother’s words. “I’m sorry—what? Wait. Did you say there is no Hunter Leader?”

Again, the three veterans exchanged glances. “That’s right. There hasn’t been one for quite some time. Which has left the Guardian Leader to do the job of both.” Grandma let out a sigh after she finished, as if the situation was somehow tragic.

“But, why?” Cadence asked. “What happened to the Hunter Leader?”

The eyes shifted around the room, and Janette finally picked up the old photo album that had been sitting next to her on the couch. “This is a difficult story for me to tell, darling,” she said, “but I do believe you have the right to know.”

Cadence felt her heart fluttering a bit as she anticipated what her grandmother might say next. She watched as she slowly opened the album to the very first page.

Attached to the page of the photo album was a daguerreotype of her Grandma Janette and her Grandpa Jordan dressed in wedding clothes, which seemed to look as early as the mid-19th century. “This is you? And Grandpa?” she asked, waiting for an explanation.

“Yes,” Janette confirmed. “This is our original wedding photograph, taken in 1858. Since that time, we’ve had several others made. Otherwise, well, people would have quickly figured out we weren’t quite the ages we claimed to be.”

Realization began to dawn on her, and Cadence stared at the picture for a long time before she quietly asked, “So, both of you were also members of a Passel?” The pieces were starting to come together, even if the puzzle was hard to accept. “You still look so young, though. I’ve heard that Vampires don’t age. Is that true for Guardians and Hunters, too?”

“Not quite,” Janette began. “It’s true some Vampires don’t age. There are some that look the same age they were when they were created until they are destroyed. The original Vampires were in their mid-twenties, and though none of them have lasted these tens of thousands of years, they never looked a day older than the day they were created. Other Vampires, do age. We aren’t sure why. Hunters age, just not as quickly as humans. They age just like a regular person until they are Transformed. Once they go through the Transformation process, they age much more slowly, but eventually, they will look the same as an elderly human and can die of very old age. When I was Transformed at 17 in 1855, I looked practically the same for many decades.”

Cadence interrupted yet again, “So, Grandma, you’re a Hunter?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, I was,” Janette confirmed. “For a very long time. But, well, after your grandfather died, I was converted back into a human.”

“You can do that?” Cadence asked, once again bewildered and trying to keep up. Now that she was getting some information, it was becoming overwhelming.

“Yes, in certain circumstances,” Janette explained. “But it's rare, and it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the individual stays a Hunter, and sometimes the conversion kills him or her. I do not recommend it.”

“And you said you were Transformed into a Hunter?”

“We will definitely talk about that later,” Janette said, looking directly at Jamie, who just nodded.

“Guardians age even more slowly than Hunters, and eventually all appearance of aging will stop. This is different for all Guardians, and no one knows for sure why that might be. Some Guardians look rather young while some appear to be much older.

“Once a Guardian is Transformed, there’s no going back. And there’s no way to die either, unless, of course, a Hunter kills them.” The end of her sentence trailed off, and Cadence felt her heart breaking for her poor grandma, unsure of why this was such a sensitive topic but aware of how it was affecting her nonetheless.

“Now, let me show you another picture,” Janette said, flipping further into the book. She paused on a picture of her Grandpa Jordan. By the looks of it, it must have been taken much more recently than the other. “This was taken just a few days before your grandfather was killed.”

Cadence paused to absorb that information before responding. If what her grandmother said was true, there was no way what she’d always accepted about her grandfather’s death could possibly be true. “We were always told that Grandpa died in a plane crash,” she said. “As long as I can remember, that’s what Mom and Dad said. That can’t be true, though.” She wondered now if her dad even knew the truth.

“Yes, I know that’s what you were told, darling,” Janette said, patting her gently on the knee. “It was much simpler to tell everyone that Jordan had died in a plane crash while traveling for business than it was to tell them the truth.”

“And what is the truth?” Cadence asked timidly.

“Your grandfather was the Guardian Leader prior to Aaron taking over that station, and he was killed by a Hunter.”