We sat in silence beneath the pictures. We had an understanding.

"You have another brother?" I asked, pointing at the last picture. He looked more like Julie.

"Nate," she laughed. "He wants to kill monsters so bad he can taste it."

"Where's he at now?"

"Seattle. He went through the last class of Newbies. He's doing okay from what I hear. I made sure that he's with a great team who'll keep him alive long enough that his enthusiasm gets tempered with experience. He's nineteen. You'll like him. He's just insane enough to be entertaining…" She put her hand on my knee. I could not tell if she had done it on purpose or if she had done it without thinking. Either one was fine with me. "Well, that's pretty much the tour. Sorry I got all blubbery and emotional on you."

"Julie. If you didn't get emotional about that, then you wouldn't be human. Thanks for the tour. I can tell you love this house."

"I can't say why, but I do. One of these days I'm going to get it all fixed up. I could probably hire professionals to do it and just get it over with, but that doesn't seem right. There are a lot of memories here…" She suddenly snapped her fingers. "Wait a second, I've got something for you." She jumped up, and walked quickly to the door. "I'll be back in a minute, I've just got to find it."

I sat on the plastic covered couch and waited. After a few minutes I grew restless and decided to check out the portraits more closely. The Shacklefords were one interesting group-heroes, villains and everything in between. I stood close to the wall and examined the intricate paintings. Julie's grandfather had been a handsome man before he had lost his eye and been so disfigured. I could see the resemblance to his son, and they both looked slightly like Earl Harbinger. I was not exactly sure how he was related, but there was no picture of him on the wall, and there were no Harbingers listed at all. Looking at the other pictures, I decided that Julie was very lucky that she took after her mother. Besides the lack of glasses and the slightly outdated hairstyle, they could have been the same person. I would imagine that a historian would be able to compile quite the entertaining book about this family. Of course the government would probably end up sending somebody like Agent Franks to the author's home to shoot him in the brain.

The one blank spot on the wall was interesting, but I did not dwell on it for long. Even an auditor's curiosity only runs so deep when there are other matters at hand.