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the far recesses of my brain in the “never pull those up again” section, I got back to the more important issue.
    “There’s Juju pizza in this house and you didn’t tell me?”
    “I was a little busy kicking your dead friend’s ass,” Granny said. “Go help yourself.”
    “I will,” I muttered and hauled tail to the kitchen. It had been a full year since I’d eaten Juju’s pizza and my mouth watered at the prospect.
    “Junior came by and left you a stack of files,” Granny said as she snagged a slice. “He gave your buddy the evil eye till Dwayne asked him if he’d had butt implants and wanted to touch them to make sure they were real.”
    I choked on my pizza and asked myself yet again why I’d let Dwayne come with me.
    “I really wish I’d known he was Hank’s older brother. I would have mentioned impaling you on a regular basis,” Dwayne said earnestly.
    Again, I choked.
    “Looks like Hank the Hickey Maker struck again,” Granny stated gleefully with a mouthful of double pepperoni.
    “What are you talking about?” I demanded. Juju’s pizza suddenly tasted like cardboard in my mouth as the reality hit. I had thought they were joking. “Did that hairy dork leave a mark?”
    “A big one,” Dwayne gushed. “You so banged him.”
    “I did not bang him. I racked him.”
    “Whoa,” he said, bending at the waist in sympathy. “You’re really mean.”
    “You know what?” I shouted. “I’m not mean. He’s mean. Mean and stupid and full of himself and wanky and fat and ugly and mean and dumb and…”
    “And you want to bang him?” Dwayne added unhelpfully.
    I dropped to the floor in defeat. Pizza wasn’t going to help. The only thing that would help at this point was running again, but that was out of the question. I had a job. Maybe I got it under false pretenses, but I was a good agent and I knew it. I would find out what was happening here, end it and then I was gone. I had to leave or I would fall back into a trap that would tear my heart to shreds from the inside out. “Yes. Yes, I want to bang him, but I won’t. I have a small amount of self-respect left and I plan to hang onto it for dear life.”
    “Honey child, what happened?” Granny asked as she slid down the wall and plopped down on the floor next to me. “What could have been so awful?”
    Dwayne got comfortable on the other side of me. Usually being sandwiched by people made me itch, but these people loved me…warts and all.
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled.
    “Sometimes talking about painful things helps, Essie,” Dwayne said gently. “I’ll go first. About two hundred and fifty years ago during a great famine there wasn’t enough food for the humans and they got really skinny and tasted like burnt peas and rancid hummus—it was harder than hell for a Vampyre to eat. I accidentally killed a lovely fellow from my glee club and I just felt awful about it, so I started drinking pig’s blood and let me tell you—that was gross. Pigs are cute—well, piglets are and all I could find were damn piglets. They would stare at me with those little piglet eyes…I love Charlotte’s Web . The book is waaay better than the movie. Don’t you think? Anyhoo, I got so upset, I moved on to sheep. Several Vamps I knew were even…wait, what were we talking about?” Dwayne asked.
    “I honestly don’t remember,” I whispered fearfully as I prayed he wouldn’t continue his bizarre confession.
    Granny was quiet. She was either contemplating Dwayne’s story or trying to come up with one that would top his. I shivered as I realized she would go to her standard fare and regale us with anecdotes from her stripping days, which could easily morph into a demonstration…I had to stop the madness before it began.
    “I have to read files tonight,” I explained as I un-wedged myself. “You should take Dwayne out and show him the town—maybe go to the beach or stroll down Main Street.”
    “She’s got that