The housekeeper gave him a curious look, probably thinking that she’d signed on with a reprobate. “Are you all right, Mr. Prescott?”

He thought of Shay and how badly he needed her to hold him in her arms and remind him of all the things that made life good and wholesome and right. “No,” he answered, refilling his glass and starting toward the doorway. He paused. “The world can be a very ugly place, Mrs. Carraway. You see, for some people, every day is Halloween.” He lifted the glass and took a burning gulp of Scotch. “The trouble is, they’re bona fide ghouls and they don’t wear costumes so that you can recognize them.”

Mrs. Carraway looked really worried. “Won’t you have something to eat, Mr. Prescott? It’s almost suppertime.”

“I may never eat again,” Mitch answered, thinking of the things Alan Roget had confessed to him. He shook his head as he climbed the stairs, drink in hand. The tough journalist. He had walked out of that interview feeling as though he’d been exposed to some plague of the spirit and he’d been back in his hotel room all of five seconds before being violently ill.

Mitch entered his massive bedroom and it was empty, though specters of Shay were everywhere: lounging in the hot tub, kneeling on the bed, counting the extra toothbrushes he kept in the bathroom cabinet.

He drained the glass of Scotch and rubbed his eyes, tired to the very core of his being. “Shay,” he said. “Shay.”

Shay felt an intuitive pull toward Mitch’s house; the sensation was so strong that it distracted her from the food she’d prepared for the Reeses’ Halloween party. She hurried to finish packing the cheeseballs and puff pastries and then went into her office to dial the familiar number.

This is silly, she told herself as Mitch’s phone began to ring.

“Prescott residence,” Mrs. Carraway answered briskly.

Shay bit her lower lip. She should hang up. Calling Mitch was asking for rejection; he’d made his feelings perfectly clear that day when Shay had gone to him to apologize. “Th-this is Shay Kendall, Mrs. Carraway.”

“Thank heaven,” the housekeeper whispered, with a note of alarm in her voice that made Shay’s backbone go rigid. “Oh, Mrs. Kendall, I have no right interfering like this—I’ll probably be fired—but Mr. Prescott is in a terrible way.”

“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“He’s been away on business for several days, and he just got home an hour or so ago. He said some very strange things, Mrs. Kendall, about every day being Halloween for some people.”

Shay closed her eyes, thinking of the monsters that had populated Mitch’s books. “Is he there now?”

Mrs. Carraway suddenly burst into tears. “Please come, Mrs. Kendall. Please. I don’t know what to do!”

Shay looked down at her watch and bit her lower lip. She had to deliver the food to Jeannie and Marvin’s town house, but after that the evening would be free. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she promised. “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”