Hey, thank you everyone for your very kind reviews. I'm going to do my best to do Hauntober again this year, since I had so much fun with these. Really glad you all have enjoyed them as well.

This one is set between Fool Moon and Grave Peril

"You're out awful early, Harry," called the old man who runs the newsstand. He waved me over as he shelved an armful of fashion magazines.

I paused my zombie shuffle back to my office to peel the foil from my breakfast. "Awful late," I said around a mouthful of much-needed bacon, egg and cheese burrito from the nearest food truck. "Haven't pulled an all-nighter in a while."

"Arcane, this morning?"

I nodded. The change left from breakfast was usually just enough to cover a paper and a tip.

"You see that commotion going on around the corner?" he asked as he rolled the paper up for me. "Some kinda crime scene or something."

I shook my head and shoved the paper in a coat pocket, juggling staff and burrito.

He hooked a thumb toward the corner. "You find out, you let me know."

I nodded, heading for the side street. There weren't any flashing lights, just some police cruisers blocking off an alley between a drugstore and a laundromat.

I took a detour for a closer look.

… Hey, it's my neighborhood, I'm allowed to rubberneck.

As I did, I spotted a familiar figure near the alley's dead end. I waved my consultant badge at a patrol officer, who recognized me and ushered me back toward the scene. I ducked beneath the yellow tape and made my way through the little crowd of cops and forensics techs toward the short, blonde-ponytailed woman in a blue CPD baseball cap.

"Dresden," she said without turning around. "Late night or early morning?"

"Late night." I joined her, not far from a body on the pavement. A white sheet had been draped over it, a dark bloodstain spread over the abdomen. "Ran out of leads on a case and couldn't hear myself think over the sound of my stomach growling."

Murphy glanced up at me, eyeing the burrito. "Next time bring enough for the whole class."

"Something spooky?" I nodded at the stiff.

"Nah. Just a regular old stabbing," said Murph, taking a sip of coffee from a paper cup. "Violent Crimes is overrun after yesterday's drive-by, so they turfed it to us. One of the laundry employees found him, she tossed a sheet over him. You should probably put that away, Rudolph," she said to the detective bent over the body, peering beneath the sheet. "You know how tech gets."

"'Sup, Rudy."

He narrowed his eyes at me and continued muttering his notes into a digital voice recorder.

"Victim is male, six foot two, approximately thirty years old," I said gravely, in my best William Shatner impression, speaking into my burrito. "Seems to have… already turned into a ghost."

The detective shot me a withering stare and pointedly clicked the recorder's off button, then turned and stomped away as I grinned. Karrin is a true professional, though; she didn't even snicker until he was out of earshot.

"You've got to stop making me laugh while we're at murder scenes, Dresden, or we're both going to get shitcanned."

"... I thought that's why you hired me."

Next up: Cryptid