Footsteps behind me, and then Tad was at my shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

“No. I think . . . I think that whatever Dad is, it’s important somehow, you know? Or maybe I just want it to be. Like we could understand things better if we knew,” I said.

“I got the same feeling. Why would he keep hiding? We know he’s a Supe, and Mom has to know he’s a Supe, even if she’s pretending otherwise. What’s he got going on?” Tad rubbed a hand on his forehead.

I nodded. “Sandy is asleep. Let’s pull this place apart.”

He grunted. “A bit extreme?”

“What if it’s life or death? We have no idea. Maybe something of Dad comes through with us? Maybe it could help us?” Or maybe I really just wanted to understand my family better, and this was one way to do it.

He sighed. “I think you’re letting your imagination get away with you, but at the same time, I have to agree. It could be important.”

We headed to the cool pantry. It would seem like the most obvious place with all the walls still intact. We knocked on the sides of the pantry, tapped on the floorboards. I smelled for all I was worth, hoping I would pick up the scent of something, anything. Nothing there, though, or at least, nothing that I could see or sense. Nothing that I could pick up on. We even pulled a few slats off the pantry walls and peered behind them. Empty except for dust and spiders.

“Snickerdoodles, this stinks.” I put my hands on my hips, irritated that we hadn’t found anything yet.

Without another word of complaint, we went to the tall detached cupboard next, pulling it open, knocking on the wood. I smacked the side of it. “There isn’t much left in the way of things from before the renovations, and the company we used showed us anything that they found.”

“What do you mean?” Tad frowned at me and leaned on the cupboard. Which shifted a little. I stared at it.

“Wait, it moved; I know it’s detached, but I thought it was too heavy . . .”

We grabbed the sides of the cupboard and heaved it together, the wood scraping along the floorboards, screeching like a surprised blue jay as it went. I hoped it didn’t wake up Sandy, but even if it did, I knew we were onto something. A waft of smells rolled out from behind the cupboard as air touched it for the first time in years.

“What the hell is that?” Tad breathed out.

I drew in a big breath and held it, trying to decipher just what it was I was smelling. The first image was that of my Gramps, his smiling face, the twinkle in his eye, the shape of his nose . . . the shape of his . . . nose was just like . . . I could see the picture in front of me. The picture in a hallway that I’d walked down only three times, but still the resemblance was undeniable.

“Holy shit, you aren’t going to believe this.”

Yes, that came out of my mouth. The S word. But in this instance I felt that I was warranted a cuss word or two. Or three. Because . . . because I had to be wrong. I just had to be.

CHAPTER 7

Tad grabbed at me as I grabbed at the papers buried in the wall in a tiny alcove that was dusty with spiderwebs and age. “What is it? What did you smell?”

I tore at the papers, yanking them to my face, the man I’d known as Gramps blurring and making me question everything I’d ever known. Because it couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. Tad shook me, and I snapped my eyes up to him. “I think . . . I have to think about this. I could be wrong.”

“Spit it the hell out, you’re scaring me.” His eyes were wide as they searched my face.

“His nose, his nose is just like that of every person I saw in pictures, on the wall, and I can’t believe it, but it makes a twisted sort of sense about how strong I am and why he would help me, and I can’t believe it.”

Tad hauled off and slapped me, hard enough to stop my rambling. “Spit it out.”

I blinked up at him as I held a hand to my cheek. “Merlin. The portraits in Merlin’s house. I think Merlin is Gramps.”

Tad reeled back. “No. Shit no. Hell no. That can’t be right. Gramps wouldn’t have treated us like this. And Merlin is way too young; he can’t be Gramps.” He paused.

“What about Yaya? She doesn’t look old enough to be our grandmother anymore, yet she is.”

I held up the papers, and the scrawled words on them.

“Are you sure?” Tad stared at the papers in my hand.

The words looked like a diabolical recipe, and Gramps’s love for the kitchen took on a new light. He’d been a cook of a different kind.

A grain of brains, an ounce of blood of troll, fire from a green-bellied lizard. I flipped through the papers, fanning them out in front of me. The script was all Gramps; I recognized his handwriting. But over and over, all I could think was why the hell hadn’t Merlin—Gramps—said anything? And why would he try and get me killed? Why hadn’t he helped us more? My heart clenched at the betrayal.

Yet again, someone in my life had turned on me.

“I don’t think they are the same person,” Tad said, flipping through a few of the sheets.

“How?”

“I’ve seen Merlin’s handwriting. It’s huge and loopy, not this tight-knit scrawl of Gramps’s. But maybe . . . could they just be related?”

I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. No, it was better. Better that I didn’t have to think ill of Gramps, that he could possibly do something as diabolical as Merlin, in making me into a monster just to be killed. But then why would Merlin use us at all?