All twelve of us stood in the entryway, huddled around the base of the stairs.

“As you can see, the butler was stabbed with through the neck with a sword taken from one of the suits of armor on the second floor.” Lyili pointed upward, making her perky breasts sway along with the motion of her arm.

Which was something I was obviously not paying much attention to. In fact, I didn’t even notice it. There was a murder to deal with. Why would I still be thinking about sex at a time like this?

Okay, so I might have noticed a little bit.

...Okay, so I might have noticed a lot bit.

“Oh! I have a good question.” Hadria slapped her open palm against her chest. Everyone turned their heads to her. “...Come on, you have to be like ‘Wow, a question? What is it?’. That’s what you’re supposed to do!” Glad Hadria was thinking about the important stuff.

“Wowaquestion!” Yaika blurted out, and then immediately broke out into a coughing fit.

“Are… you okay, dear?” Thorns asked, looking more confused than concerned.

Yaika continued hacking away while her aunt pat her on the back. Everyone else just stood around awkwardly in the meantime. I, being the genius detective that I pretended to be, used the opportunity to take a look at the suspects.

First there was Mera. She had to be a different species of slime than Brad, right? Body size, shape, and number of eyes aside, she didn’t even have a valley girl accent. Regardless, Brad seemed pretty focused on her. Like, really focused. The ‘is that a tentacle in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?’ kind of focused.

Anyway.

Next was the middle-aged horny folk. He had rosy red cheeks and a bowl full of jelly to match. He was just missing the beard and the hair. And he had horns and squiggly eyebrows, obviously. He was like a satan Santa Claus. Satan Claus.

The blue guy was probably in his thirties, and he had an angular face and sharp jawline. He was in a flowing black robe and his ghost-white hair seemed to sway back and forth in an invisible wind. I mean, I guess wind was always invisible, but yeah. You get the idea.

Last, I made eye contact with the pale… thing. He gave me a toothy smile that sent a chill down my spine. It was like peeking off the side of a boat only to be greeted by the face of a great white shark fused with a tarantula. Fuck.

Oh, Yaika stopped coughing.

“Wow, a question,” Yaika started again after letting out a small sigh. “What is it?” I guess we were back on script.

“What’s what?” Hadria looked up from her compact mirror. “Oh! That’s right, my question!” She snapped it shut. “Who found the body?”

I looked over at Violetta and everyone else followed suit. “Um, I did,” she said, raising her hand slightly. “After I changed clothes, I thought I’d come back downstairs to the dining room. That’s when I found Mr. Krow.”

“Hmm…” Hadria put her hands on her hips. “A likely story.” What the fuck was she doing now?

“S-Story?” Violetta frowned. “But that’s what happened…”

“Interesting you should say that…” Hadria narrowed her eye. “Because that’s exactly what a criminal would say!” Infallible logic. Except it was completely fallible. The only problem was that I couldn’t expect the rest of these weirdos to realize that.

“Is this one of those trials I’ve been hearing about?” Thorns smiled, looking back and forth between Yaika and Violetta. “I’d love to see Ryley defend this girl since I missed it the first time.”

Minzfel looked like his own ghost would come flying out of his mouth any moment. “This… this can’t be happening.”

“Trial time, whoo-hoo!” Yaika put her fist in the air. “I’m sure the lich has a guillotine around here somewhere.”

Alright, this was getting out of hand now. Time to put on the breaks.

“Sir Allard,” Lyili spoke up, looking at me with eyes so intense that I felt my heart skip a beat. “Leave this to me.” Leave… what to her?

Lyili made sure everyone was looking at her before she continued. “Madam Hadria, did you do it?” she asked. “Were you the one that killed the butler?”

“Oh my god, Lyili’s talking to me! She said my name and everything,” Hadria said. “God damn, I wish I had recorded that! I wanna listen to that every night before bed.” She probably should have kept that to herself.

Lyili stamped her foot. “Did you, or did you not, Madam?”

“O-Of course I didn’t.” Hadria’s shoulders jumped. “I was in the dining room.”

“So you deny it?”

“...Yeah?”

“Typical. Denying it is exactly what the killer would do.” Lyili tilted her head to one side and smiled. “Now do you see why your argument fails?”

“I totally get it!” Hadria nodded. “I guess that isn’t a very good reason to accuse someone, huh?” She was surprisingly receptive when it was Lyili doing the explaining.

I looked over at Lyili. “Thanks.”

“I have no need for your words of appreciation.” Lyili huffed. “I simply will not allow fallacies to stand unchecked while I am around.”

I had been wrong about her. As stubborn as she seemed, she really had been listening to everything that we talked about during our two trials together. This clearly wasn’t the same Lyili I had met just a week earlier.

The whole almost cutting my head off thing was still kind of a dick move though.

“I promise.” Violetta put her hand on her chest. “I came to Ryley’s room and told him and Ms. Lyili right after away.” Uh-oh.

“Wait a minute,” Hadria gasped. “Did you just say that Lyili was in Ryley’s room?” Everyone started talking at once.

Lyili’s face turned bright red. “M-Madam Violetta clearly just misspoke!”

“But you were there, remember?” Violetta pouted. “You said you two were testing out Ryley’s magic resistance. I thought you were just having...”

“You clearly misspoke!”

“I’m going to have the guys back home write so much fucking fanfiction.” Hadria moaned. “So. Much.” Please. Anything but that.

The middle-aged man laughed. “Well now, this party’s finally starting to get interesting!”

“The lawyer and the prosecutor in bed together!” Slimy green drool dripped from the side of Mera’s slimy green mouth. “I need details! Pictures! This is front page news!”

“Enough!” someone yelled. The entryway went silent. Except it wasn’t someone. It was me.

“Ryley?” Violetta tugged on my sleeve. “Are you okay?”

It took me a second to catch my breath. “Am I the only one that realizes that we have much bigger issues right now?” I asked. “Like how the one that’s supposed to throwing this party is nowhere to be found?”

“Ryley is right,” Thorns said. “We need to notify the Lich about what’s going on.”

“What about his office?” the blue guy’s voice was smooth and calm. “I’m sure he’s just getting something ready for this year’s announcement.”

“We should, like, check, don’t you think?” Brad asked.

“Look, I have some bad news,” I continued. “Krow’s keys are missing. And we already tried knocking on his door.”

“Maybe he’s just… you know, walking around somewhere?”

“If killer has the keys, then it means they could have had access to any of the rooms in the house,” I paused. “I think we need to start thinking about the... worst case scenario.”

“Worst case scenario?” Violetta asked. The conversation came to a grinding halt.

“Sir Allard.” Lyili suddenly grabbed me by the wrist. “Quickly. We need to get upstairs immediately.” She pulled me behind her without waiting for an answer. “The rest of you will stay down here. No one is allowed to leave this area while we’re gone, do you understand?”

“O-Okay!” Violetta stammered.

Yaika clicked her tongue. “Dang.”

“Do you think they’re gonna fuck?” Hadria whispered so loudly I could hear her as Lyili and I reached the top of the steps.

We hurried down the left hallway until we reached the door at the end. “It’s locked,” I reminded her. “How are we going to get inside?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, Lyili lifted her free hand and slammed it against the door. It burst into flames immediately, crumbling into a fiery heap. This wasn’t an appropriate time to be turned on, but that was... pretty hot.

It wasn’t an appropriate time for terrible puns either.

We stepped over the door remains and into the office. The first thing I noticed as some kind of pottery broken on the floor. The second thing was a charred corpse lying there next to it.

Yeah. I think it was safe to say that this was the worst case scenario.