Prologue

The preparations had started weeks ago. The decorations had been going up since just after lunch. By six o’clock, the house looked like Halloween had taken possession of it.

Orange lights were strung from the second-floor balcony, sagging in uneven loops across the courtyard before disappearing beneath the overhang. Someone had wrapped fake cobwebs around the railings, the mailbox, even the little ornamental tree beside the front walk. A plastic skeleton hung upside down from the porch light, its skull turning slightly whenever the wind moved through the courtyard.

Two rented fog machines sat waiting beside the planters.

They had been tested already. The first test had filled half the courtyard before anyone figured out how to shut it off. The second had set off the neighbor’s motion-sensitive porch light. Nobody had bothered with a third.

Inside, the house was warmer, brighter, and considerably messier.

Music played softly through the living-room speakers while six different conversations overlapped from various corners of the open-plan first floor. A long table had been pushed against the wall and covered in a black plastic tablecloth. Bowls of candy, chips, and other snacks had begun filling its surface. Someone had arranged tiny plastic eyeballs around a tray of cupcakes. Someone else had decided that was “too subtle” and added a severed rubber hand beside them.

The kitchen island had become the bar.

A cheap plastic cauldron sat in the middle, packed with ice and bottles. Beside it were cups, mixers, a bowl of limes, and a handwritten sign that simply said: