“That dress looks really good on you, Violetta,” Minzfel said as we walked back down the hallway. “It’s kind of like the one you wore in Succy Girls Photobook #15: Princesses in Succy Land.” I wasn’t even going to touch that.

“Oh.” Violetta looked down at her frilly pink dress. “Thank you, Prince. You look very nice in your robe.” Riveting conversation.

I started back down the stairs, making sure to stay to one side so that I wouldn’t disturb Krow’s body.

Ugh. The wound looked terrible. Out of all the ways you could go, a sword through the neck followed by a fall down the stairs wasn’t the greatest. I should have probably felt bad about the loss of life and all that too. But then again, I was the head of the law squad, not the good person squad.

And being the head of the law squad meant I had a job to do, I guess.

“Wow, he really is dead,” Minzfel said with a hint of disgust in his annoying voice. “Ugh. Who’s going to make dinner now?” Not the most pressing issue at the moment. The prince obviously wasn’t a member of the good person squad either. Good... demon squad? Was that an oxymoron?

Violetta sighed. “It’s so sad…”

“S-Sad?” Minzfel stuttered like a socially inept trash heap. “Yeah… Uh, it is sad, huh?”

“Krow did so much work around here for so long…” Violetta continued. “But I really can’t help feeling that he wouldn’t have wanted this.”

“Uh, yeah.” I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned back around. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be turned into a kebab either.” Krow-kabob.

Violetta narrowed her eyes. “What’s a kebab?”

Oh yeah. Earth stuff. “Forget about it. I’m just saying that no one wants to go like this.”

“Oh, Ryley!” Violetta huffed, stopping just a few steps up. “That’s not what I mean!”

“Uh, yeah!” Minzfel pointed his grubby little finger at me. “Don’t... um, twist her words like that.” I was about ready to twist this little fuck’s head off.

Violetta’s green eyes were wet with tears, making them shine in the light of the entryway. “I just meant that even if he worked in this house for a long time, it doesn’t mean he wanted to spend the rest of his life here.” She grabbed her horns. “That’s why I just can’t help feeling bad. Thinking about him cooking, cleaning all the rooms… He did so much around here and now he’s just… gone.”

Huh. That actually made sense. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to die picking up after someone as seemingly useless as the lich. He didn’t even have the common sense to hire more people. With all those keys on his belt, I wouldn’t be surprised if Krow had been responsible for taking care of every single issue on this island.

Wait a minute. I looked back up at the body.

“Keys!” I said. “Where are the keys?”

“Keys...” Violetta repeated. Then she grabbed her dress by the frills and squeezed. “Ryley, no! You shouldn’t open the Lich’s office without permission.”

“That sounds…. pretty shady, Allard,” Minzfel said, kissing Violetta’s ass as usual. “Don’t you have any respect for a man’s privacy?”

Oh my god. It would just be easier to show them. I hurried back up, pointing toward the impaled butler’s waist. “Look.” Krow’s belt loop was ripped like someone had… I don’t know, ripped it. This resulted in a distinct lack of keys. Why hadn’t I noticed it before?

Oh right, the whole hole in the neck thing. Just a tad distracting.

“Keys…” Violetta stared at me, eyes wide. “Yeah, that’s how he opened the rooms to clean them, silly. What about them?” Seriously?

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“They’re gone,” I said between gritted teeth. “His keys, which he used to open the rooms, are gone.”

Violetta moved her hands to her cover her mouth so intensely, I was surprised she didn’t slap herself in the face. “Oh my gosh! Someone stole the keys!” Took her long enough.

“No, not just someone.” I paused, giving the two of them the staredown. “The killer. They are the one… that have the keys.” That was… significantly less badass than I wanted it to be. On the bright side, demons seemed to enjoy terrible line delivery, so I was probably still in the green.

“The k-killer?” Minzfel apparently was only just realizing that a murder involved a murderer. Go figure.

“The killer has the keys then?” Violetta asked.

“That’s right,” I continued. “That means they could have access to any of the rooms in the house.”

“Prince,” a bro voice came from behind us. “I was, uh, looking for you everywhere.”

“Stop treating me like a little kid, Brad!” Minzfel snarled. “Jeez, I can’t walk around by myself?”

I turned to look. The six-foot-tall blue blob was standing in the entryway, just next to the hallway opposite from the one that led to the dining room.

“You gotta let me know, Prince,” Brad said, surprisingly calm for how he had run out of the room earlier. “Not cool. You know how your dad is.”

That’s when I noticed that he wasn’t alone in his blobbiness.

There was a semi-transparent green slime standing right next to him. And when I say standing, I mean actually standing on two legs. Human legs. Well, not human exactly. They were just human shaped. Because this slime was in the shape of a woman.

A slimy, naked woman.

The slime girl put her goopy hands together in front of her, a big smile on her equally goopy face. “Mr. Allard, it’s so good to see you again!”

The parts where her skin would be were a light green, while her ‘hair’ was darker. I wasn’t exactly sure why a blob needed to form hair, but I wasn’t sure why a blob would be in the shape of a person either.

Did she say ‘see me again’?

“Have we... met before?” Something told me I would have remembered meeting another nipple-less nudist other than Lyili.

“It’s me! Mera.” She pressed her lips together like she was enduring the pain of getting a tattoo on her lower back. “From the trial… remember?”

“Oh. Of… course,” I started. “Uhh… Which trial was that again?” Seriously, who the fuck was this?

“You… you don’t remember me, do you?” Her shoulders slumped. “T-That’s okay.” Uh-oh. The chunky tears.

“Ah, dude… Bro, this is Mera,” Brad said. “You know, Mera. She was one of the photographers there at Violetta’s trial.” His hundreds of eyes stared at me with the intensity of someone that needed me to bullshit for them. Lucky for him, that was one of my specialties. Even if I wasn’t entirely sure why it mattered so much.

Yeah. This was me officially paying him back for that ice cream thing.

“Oh. Ohh, yeah of course,” I said. “Sorry. I… didn’t recognize you at first. It must be the, uh… lighting or something.”

Mera’s slimy tears shot back into her body like she was a sponge. “That’s okay! I’m just glad you remembered at all.” She smiled. “And hello, Prince. Hi Ms. Violetta. Glad you’re still alive!”

“Thank you so much for being there at the trial, Ms. Mera.” Violetta popped up next to me. “I really needed all the support I could get.” She talked about her execution like it was a little league baseball game.

“So you’re a photographer…” I said. “I guess you didn’t get to take any pictures. Sorry, courtroom rules and all that.”

“It’s fine.” Mera put her hand up next to her mouth. “I took a bunch without permission.” Okay.

“Bro!” Brad suddenly gasped. “Don’t look now but… T-There’s a dead body behind you!”

“Huh?” I glanced back up the stairs. Oh. Right. That.

“Dude, I said not to look!”

I sighed. “We already know about it. Someone killed Krow. We were just about to call everyone together.”

Just then, voices echoed from the hallway to our right. A few seconds later, Lyili appeared followed by Yaika. Thorns, Hadria, and… a fucking nightmare.

He was tall and lanky, bald, and his skin was grey and sickly. His teeth were so big and sharp, he couldn’t even close his mouth all the way. He was in a black suit, and it was obvious he was a party guest but… this was the most ‘demon’ looking demon I had seen so far.

I didn’t even have a chance to be properly terrified because another set of voices made my head snap back.

“W-What’s going on?”

“Well. This is certainly a first.”

Seriously, how many more people were going to pop up in this god damn entryway?

Two more figures were standing upstairs toward the guest room hall. A handsome man with blue skin and flowing white hair along with a balding middle-aged horny folk with the physique of a barrel that had been slacking on its workout routine.

Not quite as immediately shit inducing, but the other guy was a tough act to follow.

“It would appear we’re all here,” Lyili said.

This was everyone? I did a quick count in my head. Twelve, including myself. Four I was just now seeing. In other words, four suspects. Two upstairs and two down.

“Now…” Lyili exchanged a glance with me. “Sir Allard and I will explain the situation.”

“Situation?” The rosy cheeked man from upstairs shouted. “There’s a dead man right there! What’s there to explain?”

Everyone started talking at once, resulting in an aural assault of expletives, sentences fragments, and Hadria screaming something about how excited she was.

The dinner party was off to a good start.