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Well, not the romantic problems, anyway The actual problems--those werelimpse of my reflection in the birch-bark-framed er to myself--bone-weary, yet sexually satiated Deters that didn’t add up to a coherent whole

Which was pretty ht to myself If I’d had a fedora, I would have tipped the brim in salute

On the bed, Cody lay sprawled, loose-limbed in the abandon of sleep, dark circles of exhaustion under his eyes There was no trace of the wolf in hiht of the larew faster than a ht to know--I had the beard rash to prove it

"Sleep tight, partner," I h-bristled cheek "But when this is over, assu to talk"

There was no answer, not even a snore

Turning off the laether, Cody and I laid thirty-seven spirits to rest during the days and nights leading up to Halloween, and as far as I was concerned, that was reason enough to ensure that the gate between the real, draining, and downright soul-wearying

Soot inured to the ones who had died quickly or unexpectedly without --the bar patron shot in a lovers’ quarrel, the drunk settler who froze to death in a blizzard, the victims of a head-on collision who died instantaneously, the elderly cat lady who died of carbonin her sleep

Others were harder

Children were harder, just because Any cop who’s ever worked homicide will tell you Children just are

Sometihost of a Potawatomi Indian woman who , clad in a buckskin dress adorned with elaborate quillwork She carried the fur-wrapped bundle of a stillborn baby in her arms and pleaded softly with the horrified council ue none of theaunt face

I don’t know her story I’ she died in childbirth, but it wasn’t recorded in Bloody Pemkowet Somehow it felt unfair to silence her voice forever

In terms of sheer volume, the worst day was the one when the dead of the old hospital rose, haunting its empty corridors Cody and I laid the spirits of almost a dozenthe wandering dead with the blaze of the spirit lantern, throwing their shadows behind therimly pounded nail after nail into those same shadows in the worn linoleu, yes, it was after that incident that we hooked up for a second tied every encounter into find a pattern Other than the fact that the dead appeared to like an audience, I couldn’t find one And they certainly did seehoul squad I was judicious about calling on him for assistance, but without them, I don’t doubt there would have been a lot iddiness

Three days before Halloween, it stopped Justnothing An o

And in three days, Peest crowds of the season

Just the thought of it made my skin itch Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, and between that and our new notoriety, the PVB wasthe most of it Corn-shocks and stacks of pumpkins donated by a local farm decorated every street corner An all-day celebration was planned for don Pe for apples, and a pie-eating contest in the park for the kids, and live music and a beer tent for the adults, followed by a children’s costu of "The Legend of Sleepy Holloould be staged, including an unannounced appearance by the Headless Horseman

Which, by the way, is a badass costuht hours By dusk, the younger kids would be all over the place trick-or-treating Older kids like Jen’s brother, Brandon, and his friends would be lying in wait in alleys and on rooftops to auns and water balloons in the annual battle of Easties vs Townies Cohtfall, it was the adults’ turn Every bar in town--and I don’t know the actual total, but for a s a costume contest At ten o’clock, the adult costume parade would take place on theto be mayhem

Which is why on the second day of ominous supernatural silence, Cody and I called for a jointwith Chief Bryant and Amanda Brooks to ask theo over well

Amanda Brooks was apoplectic--another of Mr Leary’s vocabulary words and a fitting one--and ranted for a solid tenthe lifeblood of Pean to have weathered the econoenerated revenues that allowed us to have an excellent school district that sent a high percentage of its students to college, which in turn enerating s like, for example, the Pemkowet Police Department