Read All Hallows Eve: A Krewe of Hunters Novella (1001 Dark Nights) for Free Online

“Care to join me?”
    “And where are you going, and what do you think you can discover at this time of night?” Uncle Jamie asked.
    “Angela and the home office are online, seeing what they can find out. Thankfully, everyone has a blog or is on Facebook these days. They like to bitch, so we may find something out through their posts. So where else does one get the skinny on what’s happening? The best local bar in the center of the action. Except, what would that be now? Hard to say. So I’ll just hop from one bar to another and see what’s there.”
     

Chapter 3
    “There,” Jenna said, motioning with her head.
    “Where, what?” Sam asked.
    They’d entered a relatively new place on Essex Street called The Sorcerer’s Brew. Nicely adorned with lots of carved wood and old kegs and trunks for tables and seats. The menu was full of old standards like clam chowder, scrod, fish, meat and chicken, many done up blackened, with cilantro or sriracha sauce. The signature cocktail was also called The Sorcerer’s Brew, and they had taps for twenty different beers on draft.
    Definitely a tourist stop.
    The Peabody Essex museum was just down the street along with a number of the historic houses open to the public. Ghost tours left from the front of nearby shops and a number of store windows offered haunted mazes, 3-D haunted experiences, and slightly twisted versions of the ghosts of Salem, all which utilized various scenes of the condemned coming back to life to curse those who’d accused them. Like most new places that sprang up, the locals checked in now and then. Especially at Halloween, when they were working late and craved a quick bite, a drink, or a cup of tea after work.
    Sam followed Jenna’s pointed finger and saw a pair of young women seated in a carved wooden booth toward the windows at the front of the restaurant. He followed her as she moved through the crowd.
    “Who are they?” he asked.
    “Old friends,” she told him, and then she grinned. “Actually, you know them. You chaperoned all of us one day years ago.”
    And he remembered. Part of the teenage wild gang.
    “Stephanie,” Jenna said. “Audra.”
    The two women turned, then both sprang to their feet. There was a lot of gushing and hugs. Sam stood by and waited, then he was introduced. Stephanie had long dark hair and was dressed in black jeans and a black sweater. Audra too had long hair, dressed in a black-tailored shirt and long skirt. Stephanie still looked like a girl with big brown eyes and a gamine-like face. Audra cast a more sophisticated appearance.
    “My God,” Stephanie said, giving him a hug. “I’d heard you two were together now. I didn’t get to see either of you when you were here on that awful Lexington House case. But, oh, a big-time lawyer, eh? Do you remember us? Audra and I were the other kids you had to watch that day. We tormented you, didn’t we? But we all had these massive crushes on you. It’s great to see you. Are you moving back?”
    “Of course, I remember both of you,” Sam said, lying. Actually, he didn’t remember either of them, only Jenna. “It’s great to see you. And no, we’re not moving back. We’re just here to visit.”
    “Sit down, join us, can you?” Audra asked.
    Sam took a seat on the wooden bench next to Stephanie. Jenna slid beside Audra.
    “We know why you’re here,” Audra said.
    “We do?” Stephanie said. “I actually don’t. What’s going on?”
    Audra drew an elegantly polished purple nail along the sweat on her beer mug. “The death at the mortuary. Elyssa Adair found the body.”
    “That’s true,” Sam said.
    Jenna looked at him, shrugged, and went with his direction. “She was upset and called me. So that’s why we’re here.”
    “The whole thing is a little strange, isn’t it?” Sam said.
    Audra agreed with a shrug. “If that’s what I did for a living, manage haunted houses, and I decided to do it all in, I would think that doing something like that