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“For research.” She bats her lashes, and we both share a laugh. “I needed to know which vendors were giving out the good stuff.”
“Sounds like important work,” I say with a wink.
“Exactly! And you should see the costumes. There’s an entire Addams Family running around here. They even have a Cousin Itt.” She leans in. “I followed him for three booths before I realized it was a golden retriever.”
I laugh. “Please tell me you got a picture.”
“Seventeen.”
Of course she did. Miss Kitty doesn’t do anything halfway. Especially Halloween.
We chat for a few minutes about the festival, about costumes, about how exhausting but rewarding the week has been.
“I have to run,” Miss Kitty says, checking her phone. “I’m hosting a thing in twenty minutes. But I’ll see you at the Beyond the Grave Rave later, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I say.
She waves and disappears back into the crowd.
“Bizzy Baker.” The voice is dry as autumn leaves, and I turn to see Ghoulia Grimm standing behind us. “Detective.” She nods to Jasper.
We exchange polite hellos, and Jasper offers her a chocolate bar, which she quickly declines.
She’s dressed in full Victorian mourning attire. Black lace from head to toe, a veil covering most of her face, long black gloves, and Bartholomew the rubber bat still pinned to her collar like a demented yet adorable brooch.
She looks like she’s attending a funeral. Or hosting one.
“Enjoying your last night of investigation, Miss Baker?” Ghoulia asks, and there’s something knowing in her pale eyes behind the veil.
“I’m working on it,” I say.
“Careful tonight.” She tilts her head slightly. “Halloween can be dangerous. The veil between worlds is thin. Secrets have a way of surfacing.”
She’s close, Ghoulia thinks. I can see it in her face.
Before I can respond, she glides away into the crowd, her black lace trailing behind her like she’s floating rather than walking.
Very theatrical, and very Ghoulia.
Jasper looks at me. “She’s unsettling.”
“That’s kind of her whole aesthetic.”
Ghoulia wasn’t wrong. By morning every Scream Queen will be boarding a plane. And the truth is, tonight is all I have.
I keep thinking about those videos from the bonfire. The lies. The grudges. The sheer number of women Clawdia managed to make miserable while smiling for the camera.
After a week of horror hostesses discussing murder methods and Victorian death rituals, I slept with a night-light on—which is embarrassing, given that my big strong husband was holding me tight all night. But horror-hostess content gets under my skin in ways actual murder investigations somehow don’t.
Vampyra is the one I can’t shake.
A dead husband. Mortuary training. A woman who knows her way around chemicals most people couldn’t pronounce, let alone use to kill somebody.
Add Clawdia to the mix, along with everything she knew, and Vampyra has climbed straight to the top of my list.
I just need something that puts her there.
Preferably before I accuse a professional horror hostess of murder and discover she’s simply creepy by trade.
