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The two of them hurry toward the bar to build Macy’s Halloween candle empire.

I give it twenty minutes before someone buys something called Graveyard Ghoul and sets a tablecloth on fire.

I keep moving.

And then I see her.

Miss Kitty.

Standing near the edge of the dance floor, laughing at something someone said, completely at ease in her sexy pink witch costume. The cape is off now, and the hat too, leaving just the corset showing with her short skirt and fishnet stockings and pink sparkly stiletto heels. Her hair is down, flowing and bouncy with pink streaks catching the strobe lights.

She looks like she’s having the time of her life.

Clawdia’s daughter.

Working on a film.

Some protégé she was obsessed with.

The documentary.

The pieces are clicking into place, falling together in a pattern that makes terrible, perfect sense. This wasn’t just a mentor betraying a student, and it wasn’t just a professional relationship gone wrong.

This was something deeper, something far more twisted, and something that would drive someone to murder.

And it indeed has a shiny pink bow on it.

Clawdia didn’t just betray Miss Kitty professionally.

She betrayed her as a mother.

I watch as Miss Kitty moves toward the bar, and she selects a drink from the glowing display. A purple cocktail, and I recognize it immediately.

Countess Clawdia Noir’s signature drink.

Kitty looks at it for a moment, then laughs as she raises the glass toward the sky in a toast.

“To Clawdia!” she shouts, loud enough that people nearby turn to look and smile.

She takes a sip and grins.

Kitty lifts the cocktail toward the light, frowns at the garnish, and gives it a tiny turn, then another. Only when the orange peel lands exactly where she wants it does she lower the glass.

Something in my memory clicks.

Opening night.

The queens waiting to go onstage. The cocktails were lined up and ready, or at least all but one. That’s when someone in a hood placed a drink on the table that looked nothing like the rest. It was a taller glass with black sugar around the rim and a scorched curl of orange peel.

If I remember correctly, the hooded figure had fussed with that peel too.

They turned it once, and then again. I’d noticed because it seemed strangely meticulous at the time.

My stomach gives a hard drop.

I wasn’t watching someone deliver Clawdia’s drink that night. I was watching someone finish making it.

Kitty didn’t have to sneak poison into a cocktail after the fact. She didn’t have to wait for Clawdia to look away or gamble on grabbing the right glass.