I took out my phone and called Ponce de Leon. If anyone would know about operating under the Porters’ radar, it was him. He might also have an idea how someone could suddenly develop magical abilities. His phone went to voice mail. I left a brief message, then turned back to Smudge. When he wasn’t setting things on fire or running laps, the fire-spider was a pretty good listener.

“Two years ago, Margie was there to meet her son when he came home from Afghanistan. Between then and now, someone wrote him out of her memories.” Possibly Charles himself, building another roadblock to anyone who might try to find him. “And then he started killing Porters.”

No, first he had written V-Day. I picked up the book and began to read more closely, losing myself in the story.

Lena emerged from the house an hour later and handed me a withered, blackened flower. “She’s back to the way she was. As far as Margie remembers, she had only one son. She’s pissed as hell at you, but doesn’t know exactly why.”

“I think I know what happened to her other son.” I folded the corner of the page I was reading and flipped back to an earlier chapter. “Listen to this. It’s immediately after Jakob Hoffman’s first encounter with a vampire. He’s being debriefed and still doesn’t understand what it was he saw.”

The captain’s words were like flies buzzing in the stables back home. Discipline and training compelled Jakob to respond. “Yes, sir!” “No, I didn’t see anything, sir.” “I don’t know, sir.”

But he had seen something. He simply didn’t understand what it was he had seen. Not yet.

The first to die had been Private Sterling, a young-faced kid fresh from the States. Bright-eyed and bare-chinned, he made Jakob feel like an old man. Jakob remembered Sterling calling out a challenge, though he hadn’t seen anyone.

“You’re jumping at ghosts, Mikey,” Jakob teased. But Mikey insisted someone was out there. He slid his rifle from his shoulder and stepped away to investigate.

Jakob closed his eyes. Mikey was just a kid. The older soldiers were supposed to keep an eye on the new ones, to keep them out of trouble. It was his duty, and he had failed.

He remembered seeing movement behind the fence that marked the edge of their temporary base. Barbed wire snapping like guitar strings. Mikey’s shout, choked off as quickly as it began. Jakob raised his weapon, but by the time he had taken a single step, Mikey was gone, along with whoever . . . with whatever had taken him.

And then all hell had broken loose.

“You think vampires killed Hubert’s brother?” asked Lena.

“There’s more.” I skipped ahead. “Sixty pages later, Jakob goes back to confront his captain.