Seeing the words sent a wave of sadness through me. A tear trickled down my cheek, falling onto the page, turning Blythe’s note into a swirl of ink. It broke my heart that Vera felt the need to hide this from me. What else had she been hiding? And what was you-know-what referring to? What was Vera trying to “survive”? I couldn’t stomach the thought that my daughter kept secrets—monstrous ones she needed to survive—from me. Sure, every kid keeps certain things from their parents. Like a phone call snuck in after bed on a school night. Or the money missing from Mom’s wallet to buy that cropped top she forbid you from wearing. Or a secret belly button piercing. But this sounded so much more ominous than smoking a joint at a party she snuck out to attend.

I had the prickly sensation that something was watching me. Eliot would say it was my Spider-Sense tingling, warning me of danger. Go! Leave! Never come back! Slowly I got to my feet and turned around, scanning the room until my eyes lit on the rolling ladder. My gaze traveled up the steps to the top rung, bathed in shadow at the bookcase’s summit. All at once the ladder zipped along the shelves with a terrible racket, just as a vague shape, yowling like a demon, leapt down and skidded across a reading table, scattering books on the floor.

“Meowzebub!” I yelled. “You scared the life out of me!” Which is probably what you intended, you hell-spawn, I thought.

The cat regarded me with contempt for a second, then took off, bunching up the floor rug before sailing through the door with another blood-curdling wail.

I was done with the murder room. Taking the yearbook with me, I scuttled downstairs as fast as my feet would take me without tripping and breaking my fool neck, as if hands were about to reach up through the floorboards and grab my ankles. I headed for Oliver’s office and fell into his leather desk chair, letting the tension dissolve into the lambskin. His laptop was open, and a touch of my fingertip brought it back to pixelated life. Opening up Google, I searched for Blythe Sampson. Nothing. Of course an underage girl wouldn’t be listed on Google, unless it was for making the news for a major athletic or academic accomplishment—or for murder. Blythe looked more capable of the latter, but I was relieved to see her name wasn’t coming up for dismembering and eating her mother. Here I was, stuck at an informational impasse.

Searching the public records for county property taxes under her last name was easy enough, but there were at least a dozen families with the Sampson surname. There was no way to tell which was Blythe’s family. I’d need to find another way. But how?

I was screwed.

Unless…