Page 69 of Halloween Town

“You?” she asked.

“Pops, I didn’t know what this event was until you explained it to me, so no. No card,” he said. Besides, he wasn’t big on writing things down for the world to see. And he believed you made your own luck. Choices resulted in consequences, and you were responsible for your own circumstance, good or bad.

He was the master of his own destiny.

“You never came to one when you were a kid?”

He shook his head. “Summer was my time in H-Town,” he reminded her. “I never came here over Halloween.”

Poppy nodded, then gestured to a table, behind which Hadley sat. “You can buy a card, or two or three or four, for five dollars each.”

He shook his head. If you came unprepared, Luna was there to make you pay.

Gesturing to a tent advertising hot chocolate, he asked Poppy if she wanted one. She nodded. “But only after I hang my tags,” she told him. “And I want one with a shot of whiskey in it.”

He looked at the board and didn’t see an alcoholic option. “I think you are out of luck, sweetheart.”

Poppy shook her head and sent him a you-know-nothing look, before reaching into the inside pocket of her puffer jacket and pulling out a hip flask. She waggled it and grinned. “Unlike you, this isn’t my first time, Sheffield,” she told him. He laughed; she was always full of surprises.

Poppy, still clutching her cards, tucked her hand in his arm and tugged him over to the tree. Walking around it, she found a free spot and looked up, giving the tree and its branches her full attention. She stood on her tiptoes and lifted her hand, her fingers just brushing the lowest branch. “I hate being short,” she muttered, pouting.

He held out his hands for her cards. “I’ll hang them for you,” he offered. “Tell me where you want them.”

She shook her head. “I need to hang them myself; that’s part of the deal,” she said. “You hang them, and you say a little prayer of thanks.” She looked around, her hands on her hips. “They usually have some small ladders available.”

“I saw them on the other side of the tree, and there seemed to be a queue for them.” Thom blew into his hands, thinking that the temperature was dropping. She looked up and saw the clouds covering the moon. “It’s going to rain later.”

Poppy pulled a face. “That’ll stop the ghostbusters from keeping watch.”

Sometimes Poppy used English words but spoke Greek. “What are you talking about?”

She grinned at him. “So, there have been many instances of reports of ghosts tampering with these cards.”

Oh, great, more ghost bullshit. But because H-Town’s ghost stories were always entertaining, he cocked an eyebrow, silently asking Poppy to explain. “The ghosts move tags from one branch to another, sometimes they scribble on the cards, sometimes they even manage to write whole words. Sometimes, cards are found on the floor.”

He could think of, off the top of his head, at least ten reasonable scenarios explaining how that could happen, the most obvious being that someone returned later to mess with the tree. He told Poppy this, and she shook her head.

“Every year, someone always stays awake to catch someone in the act. Mostly it’s teenagers—” She grinned at his scornful look, and continued. “But there have been teams of skeptics who’ve stayed up to watch for ghostly shenanigans. They heard and saw nothing, but the next morning they found the tree had been messed with.”

Come on…

“One year, a team of paranormal investigators set up cameras and voice recorders and filmed the tree before and after. They watched the tree all night but picked up nothing, but the next morning, cards had been moved and scribbled on.”

All that told him was that humans managed to circumvent the process. Only people, for whatever reason—YouTube ratings, town promotion, pranking—would go to so much effort. As for the ghostbusters, they’d go out of business if they ever caught the perps and exposed them…

He explained this to Poppy, who rolled her eyes and tapped her foot. “Besides,” he added, “if there are ghosts, surely they have better shit to do than mess with a tree?

“As I said, spiritually constipated,” she muttered. Then she looked up at him the way she always did when she wanted something, and his heart rolled over. There was also a good chance he’d capture the moon if she asked him to. “Do you want to test that theory and stay up tonight and watch for ghosts with me?”

Except that. He bent down so that he looked straight into her pleading eyes and shook his head. “No.”

She wrinkled her nose and pulled her tongue at him. “Spoilsport.” Turning away from him, she looked toward the crowds at the front of the tree. “I’m going to go stand in the queue for a ladder.”

He frowned at her. “Why?” Without giving her a chance to answer, he bent his knees, placed his arm around her butt, and lifted her.

“Huh, you do come in handy now and again.”

He jiggled her, and she squealed. “I’m very handy, as you well know.”