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Meanwhile, Candy and Cane begin whimpering and licking one another’s furry little faces and the entire room breaks out in coos. They really are the cutest little things.

They’re nauseating, Fish says, watching Candy and Cane share their own pumpkin snickerdoodle in the corner.

Young love is beautiful, Duchess observes.

I want what they have, Sherlock sighs.

Nobody wants what they have, Skittles barks from under the table. I’ve seen them share a single noodle. It took twenty minutes.

I meant the cookie, Sherlock is quick to clarify his culinary blunder. I want the pumpkin snickerdoodle!

Why are there glowing cocktails at book club? Cinnamon asks with a soft woof.

Because chaos is just as important as steamy reads in this place, Gatsby answers.

Buffy catches my eye across the room and frowns. Even the dogs are heckling me, she thinks, deadpan. The dogs, Bizzy.

Buffy happens to share my supernatural quirk, so she caught that canine-shaped commentary.

I swallow a laugh along with my cider. When your book club is bombing on two frequencies at once, there’s really nothing left to do but have another cookie.

Georgie is still showing the video to anyone who will watch, which at this point is everyone except Buffy, who has given up and is pouring herself more cider.

“His lips were cold but firm,” Georgie says, narrating the kiss for the third time. “Very firm. He tasted like longing and ectoplasm. It was very romantic.”

Emmie sets down her cookie, and so does Macy.

“Georgie, please,” Mom says.

“What?” Georgie balks. “We’re in a romance book club. This is romance!”

“This is a book club,” Buffy corrects. “Not a ghost-kissing support group.”

“It could be both.”

Somewhere Buffy’s five-year plan for this book club quietly dies.

Mackenzie is taking notes on her phone, and her thoughts are spinning my way at a record pace. If Bizzy solves this murder without finding another body, I’ll be shocked. She’s like a corpse-divining rod.

I grab a mug of caramel apple cider and a pumpkin cheesecake bite and try to look innocent.

“I want to go back to Ravenswood Manor,” Georgie announces. “I think it’s time I researched the ghost’s identity. There has to be historical records. Cemetery records. Something that leads me back to my Mister Right.”

“More like Mister Fright,” Mom finishes.

“Actually,” Buffy says, perking up slightly, “I might have books about Ravenswood Manor history at the shop. In the local history section.”

“See?” Georgie points at Buffy triumphantly. “This is book club related!”

Buffy looks torn between encouraging Georgie’s interest in reading and enabling her obsession with a dead Victorian hottie who may or may not have paranormal kissing abilities.

“Fine,” Buffy says. “But first, can we please discuss the actual book we’re supposed to be reading? Grave Expectations?”

“Okay, seriously,” Mackenzie says, ignoring Buffy completely. “Who killed Clawdia?”

I give them the rundown. Vampyra and her rivalry with Clawdia. Miss Kitty and whatever complicated mentor situation they had going on. And Ghoulia Grimm, who apparently had her entire career destroyed by Clawdia and was seen screaming at her backstage.

“I met Ghoulia once,” Mackenzie says. “She’s intense. Too intense. I hired her to do a horror hosting segment for a city event last year, and she showed up with actual Victorian poison bottles as props. Real ones. From the 1800s. I thought we were all going to drop dead. And then who would run the city?”