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