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dead end.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Two doctors and a nurse carpooled on the way home that night and got into a car wreck. They all died.”
    “That’s horrible!”
    “The bigwigs at the hospital admitted that they had each worked thirty-six hours straight, and the judge ruled that the doctor who was driving had nodded off while driving.” She shrugged. “But who knows what really happened.”
    Her uncertainty sent a chill through me. “You don’t believe them?”
    “Not for a second.”
    “It seems like you conducted your own investigation. What did you find out?”
    “Daughter?” said Delphine to Alexis with a stern expression. “Come along now, child.”
    I ignored my mother and looked after my niece. But we just met , I thought. Sound wave. Pluck!
    My sister chuckled, spun around, and headed toward Delphine. Based on what little I knew about my sister, she treated me as an adversary, most likely because she hadn’t determined the firstborn female in our family’s line. Then again, when matters centered on our mutual affection for Celestina, she immediately set aside her personal feelings about me. Which reminded me: she seemed to know a great deal about me. The disadvantage was infuriating.
    “Hey,” I shouted to her. When she turned around, I said, “Stay out of my head!” I wanted her to know that, even without any known powers, I wouldn’t back down from a confrontation.
    She hit me with a devious stare. “Good luck with that.”

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
     
     
    “I suspect you have many questions,” Grams said, sighing with impatience.
    She had never looked at me with such…repugnance. Yet, she appeared coherent: she showed no trace of panic. So where did her distaste spring from? I tried to overlook her current state, figuring that perhaps she had a very good reason for lying to me about my mother, sister, and niece, or paranormal creatures, or that I supposedly had supernatural abilities.
    On second thought, she didn’t attempt to explain her motives for keeping the truth from me for over two decades. Anger burned through my chest, making it difficult to maintain my composure.
    Grams cracked a smile at my frustration. “You appear quite frazzled, darling.”
    “Why do you keep calling me ‘darling’?”
    “Would you prefer that I substitute that term of affection for another?” she asked, circling me slowly.
    The smile on Grams’s face, the way her creepy grin kicked up at my discomfort looked…threatening. A sliver of fear passed through me, clamping my gut tight, locking the feeling in place. It forced me to recognize that something was not right with Grams. That knowledge sent a distress signal through me.
    “Is everything okay, Grams?”
    “I am quite fine,” she said, stopping behind me.
    Her breath tapped my right earlobe, and I hitched my shoulders at the slight transmission.
    “You look nervous, darling. Shall I call upon a physician?”
    I had asked Grams that same question out of concern, but her use of that phrase left behind a disturbing quality that made me tense my muscles, a reaction that, in the past, had always precipitated battle on the mat at martial arts competitions. To have that response toward Grams confused me.
    But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Her Alzheimer’s left her oblivious one moment, clear-headed the next several times a day over the past few years. The last ten months, however, had seen an uptick in both the frequency and the length of each episode, so that she either sat silent with a frown, asked (or demanded) to speak to friends who had passed away years earlier, or talked about people or events that occurred up to seventy years in the past…as if they occurred the day before.
    Although her deterioration sometimes pained me so deeply that I needed to leave her side to release my tears in private, I only now realized that caring for her had drained me physically, mentally, and emotionally. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed if the