“Shit.” Jen tried to do a U-turn and had to wait for another group of costume-clad pedestrians.
I called Cody. He picked up immediately, his voice tense. “Daisy. What is it?”
“No ghosts yet,” I said. “Easties on bikes are on the move for home turf, Townies behind them. Can you head them off at the bridge? Brandon Cassopolis is with them.”
“On it.” He hung up.
At a bend in the road, over the river we caught one last glimpse of the Easties posse silhouetted in the lowering twilight as they pedaled furiously across the bridge, bent low over their handlebars, legs pumping. The Easties made it across and scattered into their own territory seconds before Cody arrived to pull the cruiser sideways across the street, strobe lights flashing red and blue.
Jen swore again, pounding the steering wheel with both hands. I winced. “I’m so sorry! I really thought they were headed back into town.”
She glanced at me, water and red dye still dripping from her hair in an unnerving Carrie-at-the-prom manner. “It’s not your fault, Daise. He shouldn’t be out here in the first place.”
The convertible top was down and the backwash of evening air over my skin made the fine hairs on my arms prickle, which in turn made me shiver. Everything felt wrong. It shouldn’t be this warm in October. It should be cool and crisp, the scent of wood smoke and autumn leaves hanging in the air. Not this. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that something very, very bad was coming.
“No one should,” I said to Jen. “Not tonight.”
Forty-six
C
ody had succeeded in rounding up four Townies. Two had gotten away, as well as all of the Easties. The only information the Townies could give us was their next rendezvous point in East Pemkowet.
“Sorry about your brother,” Cody said to Jen. “I came as quickly as I could.”
“I know.”
While Cody dealt with the Townies, we cruised around East Pemkowet looking for Brandon and the other tween-aged bike hooligans. No dice. Even the Townies’ rendezvous point behind the storage shed at Tanner’s Landing was deserted, abandoned after their friends were caught. No one knows hiding places like twelve-year-old boys do. After half an hour, we gave up and drove back across the bridge to rejoin the others, eating cold pizza and watching the number of trick-or-treaters dwindle.
Ten minutes or so after full nightfall, Bethany called her sister back and promised to look out for Brandon. That was considerably more reassuring than I ever would have imagined just a few short weeks ago.
Otherwise, nothing continued to happen.
By nine o’clock, it was quiet on the hill. If the dead were waiting for an audience to make an appearance, it was obvious that it was going to happen elsewhere. Technically, that could mean any bar in town, but my money was on the adult parade in East Pemkowet, and everyone else agreed. Like I said, this community goes all-in for the holiday. It makes sense in a way. As far as tourism goes, for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, ordinary mundane mortals play second fiddle to the eldritch. On Halloween, they set out to join them, which is why the adult parade has become such a massive spectacle. And this year, it seemed the parade participants were determined to pit themselves against whatever spectacle the dead might offer.
Back in East Pemkowet, we staked out a position on the front stoop of the State Farm Insurance building, which gave us a good vantage point to see over the crowds already beginning to throng the sidewalk. The other members of the coven joined us, and, to my considerable relief, Cody and Lurine also showed up: the former in uniform, the latter wearing a fabulous mask of feathers and an embroidered velvet robe that made her look like something out of a Venetian masquerade.
“I thought you weren’t worried about being recognized,” I whispered to Lurine.
She ruffled my hair. “Just a precaution, cupcake. I trust your little coven here, but if I should have to shift for any reason . . . well, better to be safe.”
“Good thinking.”
Stefan came to take up a post at the foot of the stoop, pale and somber, his broadsword strapped to his back. Jen elbowed me in the ribs when he and Cody exchanged curt greetings. “Hel’s liaison.” Stefan inclined his head to me. “One of the Outcast is in place on every corner. In the event of trouble, I’ve bidden them do what they may and hold their positions as long as discipline allows.”
“Thank you.” It was hard not to think about the fact that he’d kissed me. Yes, even now. I pushed the thought away. “I appreciate it.”
He inclined his head again, then turned to survey the crowd.
I’m not good at estimating numbers and the tally probably wouldn’t sound that impressive if I was. After all, the entire length of the parade route is a few short blocks. But if you cram, say, several thousand people into that space, it’s a lot. And I’m guessing there were at least three thousand spectators lined five- or six-deep along the route on both sides of the streets, some in costume, many in ordinary clothes. Police tape cordoned off the street, Ken Levitt and Bart Mallick were stationed next to their squad cars at either end of the route, Chief Bryant was observing on foot, and there were a dozen volunteers in
SECURITY
T-shirts doing their best to keep visitors in line, but it was still a recipe for mayhem. A lot of spectators were already drunk and raucous, getting amped up further by the Halloween spooktacular sound track blasting from the speakers that the owners of one of the boutiques had set up across the street.
A block and a half from our post, the parade participants were amassing in front of Boo Radley’s house. Stacey Brooks was flitting around filming or taking photos. She wasn’t exactly in costume, but it looked as though she had on a headband with a set of plush cat ears. Gah, it figures.
At a quarter after ten, the parade still hadn’t started and I was getting jittery. In less than two hours, Pemkowet gained permanently haunted status, and I officially failed utterly and completely in my duties as an agent of Hel. “C’mon, Grandpa Morgan,” I muttered. “Where are you? You’re never going to have a bigger audience than this one.”
Sinclair, holding the empty pickle jar, shot me a miserable look. Cody laid a hand on my shoulder and gave it a surreptitious squeeze. “Hang in there, Pixy Stix.”
“You should take up knitting, dear,” Mrs. Meyers said calmly, needles clicking away. “It calms the nerves.”
“I’m considering it myself,” Sandra Sweddon murmured, fingering a set of crystal worry beads.
“Dahling, I think we should
all
take up knitting when this is over,” Casimir said, his voice strained.
“I just wish I knew where my goddamn brother was,” Jen said. “Or my goddamn sister, for that matter.”
“You don’t have to stay,” I said to her. “We’ve got enough backup.”
She gritted her teeth. “Oh, I’m staying.”
“Well, I think it’s quite exciting,” Lurine said idly. “But I do wish they’d get the damned thing under way.”
At approximately ten thirty, half an hour late, the parade finally began.
Unlike the children’s parade, there was nothing quaint about the adult parade. There were mad scientists in goggles and blood-splattered lab coats, rotting zombies with latex eyeballs falling down their cheeks. There were ugly witches and sexy witches. There was a guy in a skeleton suit walking expertly on stilts and brandishing a plastic axe who was clearly meant to be Talman Brannigan back from beyond the grave.
That got a big round of applause.
There was a middle-aged heavyset guy in a corset, fishnet stockings, and pumps, with a placard around his neck and a whip-wielding dominatrix beside him, representing some political scandal I’d missed out on. Actually, there were several of those. I really needed to pay more attention to the national news. There was a twelve-foot-tall Pumpkinhead puppet operated by a local theater troupe. Like the Headless Horseman, it was a regular feature. Even though you could see the puppeteers working the poles that supported it, the effect as it bobbed and swayed above the crowd, an evil grin fixed on its ginormous orange head as it turned this way and that, skeletal hands outstretched, was pretty uncanny.
There were nuns and priests and pirates and mummies, and there was a group dressed as the cast of
The Wizard of Oz
. There was always a
Wizard of Oz
group. It wasn’t a regularly planned appearance, it just happened that way.
And of course, there was the squadron of Lurine Hollisters from Rainbow’s End. Drag versions of Lurine paraded down the street in a bloodstained lace slip and stiletto heels from her B-movie horror classic
Revulsion Asylum
and the bloodstained wedding dress and deranged streaks of mascara from the sequel,
Return to Revulsion Asylum
. There was the famous scarlet suit, pillbox hat, and veil that she’d worn during the trial regarding the challenge to her late husband’s will. There was the figure-hugging, sparkling Dolce & Gabbana gold gown—well, a decent approximation of it, anyway—that Lurine had worn after the verdict was announced in her favor.
Okay, I admit it, I got caught up in the moment enough to cheer.
There was even a Drag Lurine in the dowdy gingham dress she’d worn in one of the few serious movies she’d done, an indie film called
Lindy’s Crossing
.
The real Lurine smiled beneath the edge of her feathered mask. “Well done, boys. I wasn’t expecting to see that one.”
“You know, that was actually a really good—” I stopped when Cody grabbed my shoulder again. “What is it?”
“He’s here.” Cody’s fingers tightened on my shoulder. His head was up, nostrils twitching, and there was a feral sheen in his eyes. “The Tall Man, or at least his remains. Come on!”
Without waiting for a response, Cody vaulted off the stoop and began pushing his way through the crowd, ignoring complaints. I followed in his wake, stepping awkwardly over the police tape.
“Daisy!” Sinclair shouted after me. “Should we . . . ?”
“I don’t know!” I called over my shoulder as I hurried to catch up with Cody.
My first thought when I saw the apparition shambling toward the rear of the parade was that it was one hell of a costume, or maybe a larger-than-life puppet like the Pumpkinhead. What else would you think if you saw a seven-foot-tall skeleton clad in steel-plate armor, wreathed in crackling blue lightning, holding a wicked-looking axe in one hand? As it drew near, spectators were craning to get a better look at it and already beginning to cheer.
But then Cody stopped dead in the intersection, so quickly I nearly ran into him from behind.
It wasn’t a costume, and there were no clever puppeteers controlling it with poles. Those discolored bones were real, and a foul, acrid scent mingled with the odor of rot and decay hung in the air around the figure. That axe wasn’t plastic; it was a serious and deadly sharp-looking tool for splitting wood. Whatever was causing the lightning, it wasn’t some clever use of LED lights. And the armor . . . I don’t know what the hell the armor was about, but it definitely wasn’t decorative.
The Tall Man’s grinning jaw gaped and blue flames flickered in his hollow eye sockets as he released a booming laugh that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, reverberating against the walls of the buildings.
The pit of my stomach dropped and my blood felt like it was turning to ice water in my veins.
“What the hell?” It was Chief Bryant, sounding angry and bewildered. “What the hell
is
it?”
“Talman Brannigan, sir,” Cody said flatly.
Sinclair arrived at a run, breathing hard. “And my grandfather’s duppy.”
Chief Bryant stared at all three of us, at the members of the coven, the Scooby Gang, and the ghoul squad converging behind us. The Tall Man stood motionless, axe raised. Several yards away, Stacey Brooks stood frozen in terror, the camera forgotten in her hands.
The noisy crowd had fallen silent and uncertain, and the parade participants were retreating into an uncertain cluster.
Behind the figure of the Tall Man, an elderly man in a leisure suit capered and cackled. There was something familiar about the tenor of that voice. I’d heard it over an intercom, although it hadn’t been cackling at the time. The Tall Man’s jaw gaped again, one bony hand rising to point at Stacey Brooks as he uttered a single word.
“CAVANNAUGH!”
Stacey let out an earsplitting scream.
Oh, shit.
It had been right in front of us the whole time. It wasn’t a descendant of the Cavannaughs that had stolen the Tall Man’s remains. That capering man in the leisure suit was Clancy Brannigan. It was the Tall Man’s sole living descendant that Grandpa Morgan’s duppy had possessed in order to work death magic. Unless I was mistaken, it looked very much as though Clancy Brannigan, former inventor and self-proclaimed man of science, hadn’t been building a spaceship or a new and improved widget in his basement. He’d been welding armor onto the stolen bones of his dead ancestor, now inhabited by the duppy and hell-bent on carrying out the Tall Man’s dying curse.
And not only had we conveniently assembled the parade outside the decrepit old Tudor house, but we’d provided a scion of the Cavannaugh bloodline as a handy target.
“Do something!” the chief shouted at us, then turned toward the crowds and the huddled parade participants, waving his arms. “Clear the street!
Get off the street!
”
After that, things got chaotic.
The Tall Man lunged toward Stacey Brooks, swinging his axe, and I reacted without thinking, summoning my mental energies the way I’d been drilling for hours. Stefan had made me promise not to attempt using them as a weapon, but I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even know if I
could
do it, but as much as I disliked Stacey, I couldn’t just stand there while the resurrected corpse of Pemkowet’s infamous axe murder hacked her to bits. And so instead of kindling a shield as I’d been taught, I visualized a bullwhip of blinding light and cracked it in my mind, wrapping it around the Tall Man’s right arm and yanking on it.