Jo never liked taking shortcuts through the cemetery. It wasn’t from fear. She’d mopped up demon goo and stared down espresso summoning rituals. It was the judgmental silence of the gravestones, like they knew she once microwaved instant coffee.

But today, the shortcut wasn’t silent.

It was humming.

Soft, melodic, and vaguely jazzy.

Gripping her thermos, Jo froze.

The hum grew louder and a baritone crooned from beneath a headstone marked Barry Blackthorn. Mostly Dead Since 1897.

She peered down just as a pale hand popped up holding a trumpet.

Within minutes, Cedar Grove Cemetery was alive with activity.

Ghosts played lawn darts, a skeleton in a bowler hat hosted a poker night, and Barry Blackthorn crooned Sinatra into the fog.

Slack-jawed, Jo stood in the middle of it all.

Clorvex, sipping from a thermos of soul warming cider, waved cheerfully. “Welcome to the Rest Club! The cemetery’s livelier than the HOA.”

“Why is this happening?” Jo asked no one in particular.

A ghostly woman replied, “Oh, we just needed some jazz to get going now. You left your Bluetooth speaker here last week and it looped for three days.”

Mira arrived with enchanted teabags and Matteo brewed coffee strong enough to wake the recently dead. Sev gave an impromptu poetry reading to the tombstones and even the Queen of the Hollow Moon showed up in an evening cloak and declared, “Well, at least it’s not bingo night.”

As the night went on, the graveyard gathering had turned into a full blown festival.

Exhausted, Jo sat on a mossy bench while a ghost tried to braid her hair. She muttered into her thermos, “I just wanted a shortcut.”

The ghost smiled. “You found the long way around, dear. It’s much more fun.”