And I think I’m just a few steps away from making another head roll, straight for prison.
Chapter 11
“Big hair don’t care?” My sister, Macy, snickers as we stand just outside of the Country Cottage Inn.
It’s dark out earlier than usual tonight. It seems that October’s magic isn’t just relegated to a harvest moon or two, but it has the capability to cut the day in half with an early nightfall as well. Not that I’m complaining. The more time I get to spend with Jasper, snuggled up next to a fire, the better, and in a way we’ll be doing just that tonight.
“Very funny,” I say as the revelry from the Fall-oween Festival blooms around us. That moody creepy music streams through the air as men, women, and children alike surge through the grounds.
The frightmare attraction doesn’t begin for another few hours, so there are still plenty of little kids enjoying the games and rides set out in the meadow.
“So what brings you to this haunted neck of the woods?” I ask Macy while cinching a headless Annabeth onto my hip. I’ve got her head in hand and was headed to see Jordy about reattaching it somehow. If anyone can restore this haunted apex where it belongs, it’s him. I would have done it earlier, but we had a rush of tourists all clamoring for a room.
I nod her way. “What gives? Are you here to add to your collection of stuffed teddy bears and unicorns? We’ve only got stuffed vampires and ghosts to choose from, but I bet they’ll keep you warm on a cool autumn night.”
“Now look who’s the comedian?” She cinches a short-lived smile on her face. “Actually, I’m here to find something much more creative in keeping me warm at night.” Her brows lift a notch as she takes in the crowd to our left. “A real vampire. I’ve heard stories about the way they entertain themselves well into the night, and I want to see firsthand if they’re true.” This wouldn’t be my first go-around with a neck biter. And I seem well able to attract them in and out of this haunted season. Mostly because I’m lucky.
“Try a werewolf. With all that fur, at least you’ll be warm.” I join her in craning my neck out at the crowd as the twinkle lights strung up above illuminate the area. A man entering the gates to the meadow has me doing a double take and I gasp. “On second thought, never mind the werewolf. I see a man in a trench coat I’m far more interested in.”
I start to take off and she pulls me back.
“Bizzy Baker Wilder, you are a married woman. The man in the trench coat is mine.” Especially since half the men I’ve dated in trench coats had nothing on underneath.
“No way,” I hiss as I rattle Annabeth’s head at her and she takes a full step back. “The man in the trench coat is a suspect who I happen to know very little about. If I can get close enough, I might actually be able to hear what he’s thinking.”
She balks, “And how would you do that? Are you a mind reader now?”
A breath hitches in my throat. With all the light, sounds, screams, thrills, and chills, not to mention Annabeth’s decapitated head in my hand, I’ve momentarily forgotten that my spicy sister has no clue about my ability to pry into other people’s headspace.
“More like read his face,” I say as I speed in that direction, and soon both Macy and I are walking through the midway, but it seems the man in the trench coat—who just might be this mysterious Billy the unhappily married professor—has done a disappearing act. “Shoot, we lost him. I guess my trench coat radar is off.”
“Mine isn’t.” She swats me blindly as if to garner my attention at whatever she’s looking at and gasps as she smacks Annabeth’s head in my hand instead. “That thing just bit me!” Macy brings her hand up, and sure enough, a thin seam of blood erupts over her finger.
“How about that,” I muse. “It looks as if I’ve got a biter on my hands.” Or in them, as it were. “Sorry, Mace. But could you blame the girl? You did smack her on the head.”
“Because I was trying to get your attention.” She cranes her neck once again. “I see him! He’s headed toward the edge of the field. He’s got something in his hands.”
I jump up in an effort to see over the crowd, and there he is headed toward the left end of the meadow that’s still cordoned off.
The Montgomerys thought it would be in bad taste to reopen the area where Blair Bates was slain, so the caution tape is still up and Jordy put in a temporary barrier of chicken wire fencing just outside of the caution tape in hopes to stave off the lookie-loos. Nonetheless, mobs of people magnetize in that direction each and every night, and some have been tossing bouquets of flowers and the stuffed animals they’ve won at the game booths onto the spot where she was slain.
“He’s holding flowers,” Macy grunts.
We head in that direction ourselves but stop shy of entering the sparsely populated clearing. There he is, in the same tan trench coat as he walks that way with a surefooted gait. A woman stands near the impromptu memorial, and it looks as if he’s meeting up with her, or exchanging a few words in the least.
“Drats,” Macy hisses. “Looks as if someone beat me to him.”
“Never mind him. You’re here for the vampires, remember? Not potential killers.”
The woman turns our way, and I get a clear shot of her front side. She has dark hair and is wearing some sort of a skimpy costume, but it’s those heavily decorated arms that glow green and blue even in this dim light that alert me to who she might be.
“I
