They huddled inside the foyer, in the dark, for a few long minutes, listening to the creaks and pops of the big old house. There was no music playing. They knew the predator would be wary and somehow, to some extent, he could hear and smell them.

“Should we try upstairs first? If he’s up there, we can then look for a way for Kiara to get in down here.”

“It could be a trap, though. He’s as sly as the devil himself.”

“Maybe, but we might as well rule it out.”

“Do you recall seeing a stairway anywhere?”

As they spoke, they crept down the hallway. In every room, they encountered a night-light plugged into an outlet near the floor. That was enough to see most of a room, but anything could have been lurking in the deep shadows of the opposite corner. Owen’s stomach muscles trembled and the hairs on the back of his invisible neck were at attention. He was about to leap right up through three floors and out of the place. If he actually saw the painter come lunging out of the dark, growling, it would probably be startling enough to wake him into his body. If not, he’d certainly be finished. Melody, who led the way, was only a little braver than Owen, keeping her hands out in front of her like a kid playing Marco Polo.

They turned in a direction they’d not gone the previous night and discovered the stairs. “Let’s split up,” she said. “I’ll take the upper floors; you try the basement.”

“Underground?” said Owen.

“OK, I’ll take the basement.”

He shook his head and started up the stairs. She was moving toward the back of the house, and he called after her, “Psst. Where will we meet?”

“Outside, across the street. In a half hour.”

He ascended, mumbling to himself. On the second floor, there were rooms off the hallway. Again, paintings lined the wall. Owen found them enchanting, much like a fairy tale vision, and he admonished himself for doing so. The old man was a serial killer proffering romantic scenes of pale beauties in the moonlight. Tiptoeing along the thick carpet, although there was no reason to, he poked his head into each room. Nothing in the décor said vampire. Two were bedrooms and one was a study with wooden bookcases set into all the walls, save for a window and the door. Owen’s fear left him, and he wanted to go through the room and see what was on the shelves. Many of the volumes looked ancient and rare.