There's a reason that mortals feel safe making mischief on Halloween: once a year, vampires meet in conclaves to play politics, plant rumors, and plot each other's downfall.

This year, one of the vampires, Thurston Price, is being questioned by his peers about his dealings with mortals: he has sworn off human blood and has taken a mortal woman as his lover. Some whisper that Thurston has been seeking a way to renounce his immortality. Some whisper that he's already found it. Some even say that Thurston has revealed his true nature to the mortal investigators that try to discover why people have been disappearing.

The questioning is a failure. The eldest of the vampires, Anstice Vadimov, asks questions, but Thurston refuses to answer. Jokull bullies him, Rocio the Witch drugs him with truth serum, but no answers are revealed.

The vampires partake of a shared victim--all except Thurston, who drinks from a plastic flask. At dawn they seal themselves in their rooms.

At sunset, the vampires awaken. Upon opening Thurston's coffin, they find his body has turned to dust. It would be a perfect solution, except for one thing: killing your fellow monster is just as serious a crime as revealing your nature to the mortals, and the murderer will be killed…