"I think I would have rather had a riot..." Neal muttered under his breath as the familiar ongoing whine of Vegan Lady continued to discuss the merits (or lack there of) of the creepy drawing they had found.

With Dan's admittance of wanting to still take a look at the fuse box, Decker gave a slight shrug and walked towards the basement door. "Follow me, then..." he added with a gesture to Dan before taking out his lighter for the journey below.

Anything to get away from Cynthia at this moment.

"Just be glad that I only criticized the art and not your attire, Miss Death," said Cynthia, resting a pair of stern eyes on Delia.

She then turned to the least scruffy-looking member of the party, a man with a name tag that read DAN BAXTER. "I would be most pleased if you would take a look, Mr. Baxter. The darkness is making me quite concerned about bats."

Cynthia slipped a bejeweled and bangled hand through Mr. Decker's arm, saying with a nod, "Please lead on, my good sir."

"I would be most pleased if you would take a look, Mr. Baxter. The darkness is making me quite concerned about bats."

"If only we'd be so lucky..." Neal sighed before suddenly feeling an arm slipped through his. Expecting Delia, the Darkling glanced down to see... her. This was not going as well as he had hoped it would.

With gritted teeth Decker led the way down into the basement. After some shrill shrieks regarding cobwebs and furniture stacked to possibly resemble animals, the trio finally made it to where the power box was.

"Here you are, Mr. Baxter."

Their little promenade was going perfectly swimmingly until Cynthia bumped into something... furry... standing near the power box. She slowly looked up and found herself staring into a pair of glassy eyes. It was a taxidermized llama, but Cynthia may or may not have realized it was dead and stuffed.

Reeling back with a shriek that could shatter glass, Cynthia threw her pale arm over her eyes, crying, "No... it's all coming back to me... the petting zoo... the horror!"

"LISETTE!" Cynthia cried, taking the steps to the next level by twos. "They have a LLAMA FARM in the basement! This is surely against code!"

Mr. Quigley Earnest Dint followed the others downstairs. "I'm afraid my companion has run off. She can see well enough in the dark, but I can't, and neither of us know this place well."

"Poor old thing." Mr. Quigley Earnest Dint patted the llama, releasing a cloud of dust and llama hair.

"Ooookay, people are spreading out just a bit too much for my tastes," Delia said, moving to block the passage down the the basement. She stepped down the first few steps to grab Mr. QED and forcefully guide him back up into the entry way with everyone else. "Let's head back into the dining hall, shall we? Come away from the doors and windows, watch for the glass, and find yourself a seat. And be careful not to drop any candles!"

With all the commotion being caused by a "llama", Neal told Dan if he needed anything just to ask before meandering over to the other side of the basement to check out the llama.

The "llama", as it turned out, was nothing more than two chairs with a small desk on top with a deteriorated moose or possibly horse head resting atop. In the dark and with the battered condition of the head, it could possibly be misconstrued as a llama. Still, Decker got a good chuckle out the confusion.

Dan thanked Neal and turned his attention to the fuse box. Even in the dim light of his candle he could tell it was empty. Curiouser and curiouser. He held out his candle to confirm this, then MacGyvered™ a candle holder in a small alcove next to the fuse box.

His safety training kicked in and he made a point of confirming the main power switch was in the OFF position. Power grid questions or no, it certainly wouldn’t do to have the power come on when he was poking around in there.

“Weird,” was his professional opinion. “It’s entirely empty.” He looked again, still having a hard time accepting this. “Wait, there’s something down at the bottom,” he said more to himself than anything.

Glancing once more at the main power switch, he reached down into the empty box. His hand wrapped around some sort of cylinder, but just then the hair on his arms and even his head tried to stand on end, and he felt the tingling that meant only one thing.

How can there be power? was his thought as he was thrown back from the fuse box and fell hard to the floor, cylinder still in hand.

But in the end, his thoughts turned to family. “Tell Angie and Grace…I love them.”

Neal had begun making his way back to Dan when he heard the man saying something about finding something in the empty fuse box. He had just cleared a stack of old books when Mr. Baxter's body came flying backwards, landing only a few feet away from the Darkling.

"Dan! Dan! Can you hear me?" Neal tried feeling for a pulse but was shocked with residue electricity instead. This is not good. At all. Tentatively feeling for a pulse a second time... nothing. "Well, you gave it your best, Baxter. Thanks..."

Neal was about to leave and inform Delia of the death when he noticed something in Dan's right hand. Carefully moving the fingers away from the object, it turned out to be a smallish cylinder. About the size of a cigar case. Upon opening it, Decker quickly viewed its contents before putting the object in his duster pocket and then vanishing into the darkness.

A few seconds later, Neal emerged from the darkness behind Delia and whispered in the Ghost Wrangler's ear. "We have a casualty in the basement. Mr. Baxter. You better come have a look."

"What do you mean, a casualty?" Delia hissed back, quickly following Neal out of the room and down to the basement. She stopped. "Oh."

Delia studied him for a moment, then nudged him with her foot.

"Really and sincerely dead?" she asked. Neal nodded. Delia sighed.

"I guess that means we get to inform Mrs. Baxter...."

"... and tell her what? Her husband died from getting electrocuted by a fuse box without any electricity?" Neal examined the fuse box one last time before heading back towards the staircase.

"We might just get that riot we wanted earlier."

"Well, please enlighten me if you have a better idea," Delia replied. "It's better than hiding the body and pretending nothing happened. 'Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I haven't seen your husband all evening! Are you sure you didn't leave him at home by accident?'"

"Of course not. Just... it would be easier if he had died from a spider bite or falling in the well or something more explainable." Neal sighed and pulled the brim of his fedora down over his eyes. "Might as well get this over with."

Jeff had spotted Delia's hurried exit and decided that an investigation was in order. Now he wished that he hadn't.

"I'm sure she'll be ecstatic," he said as he came up behind the two freaks.

"I'm sure it's just as well he died doing his duty," Mr. Quigley Earnest Dint said quietly from the top of the stairs. "And it's certainly not the cruelest or most unusual way to die."