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Duchess trots into the fray, climbs onto Kitty’s back as if she’s found herself a convenient set of stairs, then makes her way up to her shoulders and plops herself squarely on the back of her head.

Kitty lets out a muffled scream into the grass.

There, Duchess says, tucking her paws beneath herself. Now she’s not going anywhere.

Kitty bucks and growls just as footsteps hurry in this direction.

“EVERYBODY FREEZE!” Jasper’s voice cuts through the chaos.

I look up to see both Jasper and Leo running toward us, guns drawn, coming from the direction of the festival.

And just like that, it’s over.

Jasper helps me up as Leo quickly cuffs her.

“She confessed,” I say, breathing hard.

Leo pulls her close. “Miss Kitty Cadaver, you’re under arrest for the murder of Countess Clawdia Noir.”

“She deserved it,” Kitty pants as she says it. “She deserved exactly what she got.”

Leo hauls her away, and soon enough an entire row of patrol cars is zipping into the lot with their red and blue flashing lights cutting across the Halloween chaos.

Jasper pulls back and quickly inspects me for injuries. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He pulls me into his arms and kisses me, and I can feel the relief and adrenaline and fear draining out of both of us.

A crowd has gathered, spilling out from the rave in full costume, phones held high as Kitty’s arrest becomes the hottest show of the night.

Then a howl rises above the music.

“AOOOOOOO!”

And sure enough, Georgie stands at the edge of the crowd with her head tipped back, howling at the moon with enough enthusiasm to wake every corpse in Spider Cove.

A few people laugh. A few join in. And suddenly there’s a whole chorus of people howling at the Halloween moon while Leo leads Miss Kitty Cadaver away in handcuffs, past the glittering sign, past the dancing crowd, past the purple cocktail glinting on the ground like an amethyst in the twinkle lights.

The sweetest, bubbliest, pinkest suspect turned out to be the deadliest after all.

Funny how that works.

You spend all your time looking for the sharp edges, and sometimes the real danger comes sugarcoated.

Because poison doesn’t always come in a vial.

Sometimes it comes with a bright smile, a sugary voice, and a woman calling you “daughter” right up until the moment she decides you’re standing in her way.

Cyanide may have killed Clawdia.

But betrayal was the poison Kitty had been swallowing for years.

CHAPTER 20

Jasper and I head back to the Beyond the Grave Rave, and the party is still in full swing.

The big glittery sign that once sparkled above the entrance has come loose on one side and now hangs at a drunken angle, but nobody seems to care. Hundreds of people in costume are still dancing, drinking, and screaming with laughter beneath a full Halloween assault of jack-o’-lanterns, fake cobwebs, dangling skeletons, and enough orange and purple lights to make the whole place glow.