“So not very much politics?”

“Practically none. It’s like a ghost town,” he said quietly, his eyes scanning the low, red painted cottages with dark roofs. “There,” he said, “the one on the end.”

She gripped her seat as he parked along the curb, almost unwilling to step out of the car, afraid of what she might find. Giovanni hadn’t had any sign of her father for the last two years. He’d dropped off the radar when he finished giving the clues to his location. If they had been together two years before, she thought, she might have seen it sooner.

As if reading her thoughts, she heard him say, “If we’ve lost him because of my own stubbornness—”

“Can we save that for another time, please?” she murmured as she eyed the small house surrounded by low palms. The cottage was part of a larger resort, though some of the apartments and cottages were privately owned. The gardens surrounding it were well tended, but because it was part of the hotel property, there was no way of knowing who took care of them.

She took a deep breath and reached across the car to squeeze Giovanni’s hand. “I’m fine; let’s go see if anyone’s home.”

He pulled her toward him and laid a gentle kiss on her lips before giving her a small smile. His eyes were shuttered, and his shoulders were fixed. She knew he thought they would find nothing.

They walked toward the low cottage tucked into a quiet corner at the edge of the lake. Streams ran through the grounds, under small footbridges, and trickled over rocks through the lush gardens.

“Definitely a water vampire,” he muttered, taking her hand as they crossed a small bridge. “And a smart one.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He’s surrounded himself with his element. The lake, the streams. For him, this is an excellent defensive position.”

“Oh.”

They drew closer to the small house and she heard him drawing deep, testing breaths.

“Sense anything?”

His nose twitched. “I smell guava. Coffee. No vampires.”

She could feel the clench in her chest, but she continued to walk toward the house. They stopped in front of the green door, and Giovanni shot her a sad look as he took a fist and punched, splintering the frame near the lock and pushing it open.

Beatrice stepped into the dim cottage, immediately hit by the musty scent that clung to the room. She reached to flip on the lights but Giovanni’s hand stopped her.

“Not a good idea. Better not to draw attention to ourselves, even if it is a quiet location.”

“Okay.” She pulled out her mobile phone and turned on the small flashlight.

“I’m afraid no vampire has been here for many months, Beatrice.”

She sighed. “I was getting that feeling.”

They both walked around the small living area, and she noticed the lack of dust on the surfaces, and the quiet hum of the refrigerator and air conditioner.

“Appliances running.”

Giovanni sniffed again. “I do smell a human. Older. He smells sick. Cancer maybe.”

“A caretaker?”

“Possibly. If he planned on leaving, it’s something he might have arranged.” He lingered in front of the wall of bookcases that lined one side of the room. “And these books are not molded. In this climate, they would be unless the air conditioner was usually on.”

“So why the musty smell?”

“Just the perils of a closed house by the lake, I imagine.” He was already lost studying the texts in front of him.

Beatrice roamed through the small house. There was nothing in the modern kitchen, not even any canned food. A drip coffeemaker sat on the otherwise empty counter, and nothing was in the refrigerator. There were no indications of life anywhere.

She pushed open the door to the bedroom and was surprised to find traces of the man she remembered. A pair of shoes sat at the end of the bed where he would kick them off. A pile of books lay on the bedside table, and there was a note propped on top of it. Heavy curtains were pinned around the large French doors, and one window was covered with carefully cut plywood.

Picking up the note on the bedside table, she noticed it was written in Portuguese; the signature read, ‘Maria.’ She tucked it in the pocket of her jeans and went to the small desk on the other side of the room.

Under a sheet of glass were several pictures of her and her grandparents, along with blank spaces where some had been removed. There was a finger painting she remembered had been tucked into a childhood scrapbook, along with a poem she had written when she was ten, signed by a juvenile hand.

Beatrice sniffed and rubbed at the tears on her cheeks. She pulled open the single drawer and began to look through it. There were receipts and scraps of paper; most of the notes had been written in Portuguese. Spare change rattled around the bottom of the drawer. Occasionally, she would find something that looked more personal. A single cufflink. A disposable lighter. A rosary twisted into knots.

She heard Giovanni approach and relaxed a little as his arms encircled her waist. She turned and buried her face in his chest, breathing in the comforting smell of wood smoke and whiskey.

“He’s not here, tesoro.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He tilted her face up and she was struck by the anguish in his expression.

“I was wrong to stay away from you for so long. I didn’t know. And I hurt you. This is my fault.”

“We don’t know if we would have found him even if we had been together.” She ran her hand up his chest and into the hair at the nape of his neck. “We don’t know. He may have left before we could get here years ago. There’s no way of knowing.”