“You know where he is?” Tad peeked at me, then relaxed as he realized there were no naked old ladies near to us. He mumbled something about grabby hands and sugar mamas not happening.

“Kind of.”

“That’s not what I want to hear.” He groaned and slid into the passenger side of the Charger. Narcissus smiled at us, waving as we left. Funny how I’d found him so attractive the first time I’d met him, blindingly so. And this time it was like he didn’t even register on my radar. Maybe the libido of a siren wasn’t all that bad.

You will be drawn to men of power, and Narcissus is anything but, the Drakaina said inside my head. He is nothing more than a pretty face. It’s what got him in trouble in the first place. Pretty. But dumb as a rock.

“Great,” I mumbled to myself.

I drove back into the city proper and to the old house that had belonged to my grandparents on my dad’s side before I’d inherited it. Tad and Sandy chatted back and forth, and I listened with only half an ear. My mind was too busy trying to make sense of things.

The side where we got our Super Duper blood from, by all accounts. “Tad, do you think Grandma and Gramps might have left some sort of hint in their house about their past? I mean, one of them was a Super Duper. Maybe both.”

Sandy took her bag and slung it over her shoulder as she stepped out of the car. “But you said that there didn’t actually have to be that much Super Duper blood involved for someone to be susceptible to infection. What was it, like a sixteenth?”

I nodded. She was right; that was what Ernie had said. Call it a gut instinct, but I had a funny feeling our family had done more than just dip their toes into the edges of the pool of Super Duper blood out there.

“Maybe we can look after a few hours of sleep?” Tad asked, almost begging. “I’m totally bagged.”

I yawned, my jaw cracking, it went so wide. “Yeah, okay.”

I let us into the two-story house. I’d had a renovation company come in and repair the hole in the stairs, change out the decor, and give the whole place a complete and deep cleaning. The last thing I wanted was to smell Barbie or Roger in my home.

Which was all I could smell the first time I’d come and checked on the building with the contractor the week before. I took a deep breath. Nothing but the heavy smell of sharp lemon cleaner and the odd wisp of a person from the renovation company. Good enough for me. Tad went straight for the back bedroom. That was where he’d always slept when we stayed overnight with our grandparents.

I beckoned to Sandy. “Come on, you can sleep upstairs with me in the master.”

She followed me up the stairs to the second-floor bedroom, where I’d put two queen beds.

“Why did you do that? Didn’t you think you would be here with Remo?” Sandy threw her stuff onto the bed against the far wall.

I blushed and turned away. “I don’t know. I . . . I think maybe I knew it wasn’t going to turn out the way I wanted.” Lies, lies. But I didn’t know what to say. I’d decided to put the two beds in on a whim when the contractor asked me. Maybe I had known something was going to happen underneath it all.

Sandy just nodded at my explanation before stripping down and climbing into bed. “You going to try and sleep?”

Though I’d been yawning only moments before, I knew there would be no sleep for me. I shook my head. The idea of finding something—maybe a clue to what kind of blood ran through my veins—in my grandparents’ house tugged at me, and I knew there was no point in trying to deny it. “In a bit, maybe. I’ll try to be quiet.”

She didn’t answer, and I cocked my head to one side. Her heart rate had already slowed into a flutter that barely moved. She was asleep, passed out in a matter of seconds. If only I could fall asleep so quickly and so soundly.

I shook my head and went back downstairs, thinking about the possibilities of where something might be hidden—a clue, a note, anything.

The kitchen was my favorite place—no surprise there—and we’d had it completely renovated when Roger and I had first moved in.

Of course there hadn’t been much question about that, as it had been old and totally outdated, but I’d left a few things that had reminded me of my grandparents—family pieces that had been around as long as the house had stood.

The kitchen had been the place my grandfather loved best too. He wasn’t a cook or a baker; he just said he’d liked the ambiance of the room, the way the light fell in through the window onto the table. I could almost see him sitting on his straight-backed chair, leaning over a cup of tea as he read one of his handwritten journals.

It made sense to me that the kitchen was as good a place as any to start searching for clues. During the renovation we’d not found anything in the walls or under the floors, but like I said, we hadn’t changed everything.

I ran my hands over countertops, the cool granite soothing me, showing me just how frazzled I was really feeling. The few things I’d left unrenovated were staples in the big old house. A dumbwaiter that we’d made to look like part of the kitchen cabinets, a cool pantry off to one side that still had the original walls, and one tall cupboard that wasn’t really attached to the wall. More like an old armoire than a kitchen cupboard, but I loved the way it looked.

I checked the dumbwaiter first and peered in, breathing deeply. The smell of aged wood and musky earthy things rolled up through my nose. I rubbed at it, trying to pinpoint the smells. There was nothing that I could discern, though. I pulled the dumbwaiter up and then lowered it back down a couple of times. Nothing different came about, and there was no way I was climbing in. Even if I could have fit.