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The fire was put out—thankfully. And the rest of the festival went off without a hitch. Although the fire department was kind enough to stick around, just in case.

My mother hauled Georgie off to her cottage and threatened to tie her to the bed. Of course, Georgie said don’t threaten me with a good time, then begged one of the firemen to do the honors.

It’s been a long night.

The sky is full of clouds racing across a bright moon that keeps appearing and disappearing like it’s playing peekaboo with the ocean.

There’s hardly anyone on the grounds, just a few festival staff members wrapping things up, and a couple of stragglers roasting marshmallows on the cove, but mostly it’s just us. Jasper and me, Emmie and Leo, and a peace that only comes when your kids are safely with your mothers and you have an entire evening stretching ahead with no immediate disasters requiring attention.

A fire built from driftwood casts wild and spastic shadows across the sand. The air is thick with salt and smoke, and somewhere in the distance the spooky music from the festival is finally winding down for the night.

Tomorrow the spookiest night of the year will be upon us—Halloween.

It will be the final night of the festival, and I still haven’t solved this murder.

The last few days dissolved into a blur of Halloween-themed dessert buffets and Scream Queen headline events. A gothic fashion show where we served four hundred spiderweb petits fours. A costume contest where Emmie built a seven-tier graveyard cake and Georgie tried to enter herself as “sexy ghost bait.”

Every night a new Scream Queen took the stage, every night I did my best to listen to the minds of those in the crowd, and every night I came up empty.

And let’s not forget Vampyra, Miss Kitty, and Ghoulia. They all put on a professional performance. They all smiled at the crowd, and they all kept their secrets locked up tight. Well, they did spill a few. Okay, fine, they spilled more than a few. And I more than appreciated it.

We’re settled into two Adirondack chairs positioned in the sand facing the ocean, one couple per chair because that’s the only way these things work when you’re trying to be cozy. Wool blankets are piled on top of us, tucked around our legs and shoulders, and there are thermoses of hot cocoa within reach along with an absolutely absurd amount of supplies to make s’mores.

The absurd amount of chocolate is my doing.

Fish, Sherlock, and Duchess appeared with us when we first arrived, took one look at Emmie’s dogs Gatsby and Cinnamon lounging near the fire, and they all immediately took off running down the beach in a pack.

Freedom! Sherlock barked before disappearing down to the waterline. I warned them not to eat anything that washed up on shore. And judging by the way they’re racing from one end of the cove to the other, there’s no time to stop and eat anything.

Now it’s just the four of us, the fire, the ocean, and a comfortable silence that comes from years of friendship.

“I want an outfit exactly like that for Christmas,” Emmie says, gesturing at my purple velvet corset that Macy and Georgie forced me into approximately eight hours ago.

Leo doesn’t even hesitate. “Your wish is my command.”

“You two are ridiculous,” I say, trying to adjust the neckline for the hundredth time tonight. “And adorable. Emmie, if you’re good, you might just find this exact corset in your stocking,” I say with a wink.

“Keep it,” Emmie says. “It’s clearly already doing the Lord’s work. Jasper hasn’t looked north of your collarbone all evening.”

“Who, me?” Jasper puts on his best innocent face, which would be more convincing if his eyebrows weren’t currently misbehaving. “I didn’t notice her chest. I was too busy staring into her beautiful eyes.” He blows me a kiss.

“Oh, that was smooth, Detective,” I say, giving his foot a light tap. “Almost believable, too.”

He catches my ankle with his. “I stand by my statement.”

“Your statement is under investigation.”

That grin of his says he’s willing to take his chances.

“Don’t listen to him, Bizzy. He’s lying through his teeth,” Leo says. “I caught him checking you out at least three times during the poison presentation.”

“I was watching for suspects.” Jasper slips an arm around my shoulders, and I tuck myself against him.

“Sure, you were,” Emmie muses.

I’m roasting a marshmallow over the fire with an extra-long stick, and the marshmallow is turning the perfect shade of gold before catching on fire, and I pull it back and blow out the flame before it becomes completely charred.

“So,” Leo says, carefully rotating his marshmallow over the fire while mine goes up in flames for the second time. “How did our lead homicide detective do tonight?”