Page 71 of Halloween Town

Ruby, seeing a couple on a blanket, hands under clothing, grinned at her friends. “In honor of our friend, Captain Blackwood,” she murmured, drifting over to the couple. Looking away from their enthusiastic, tongues-down-throats kissing, she pushed her fingers beneath their collars and tapped her fingers against their necks. Instantly, they sprang apart, eyes wide.

“Did you touch my neck?” the girl demanded.

“No, my hand was in your pants.” Ruby grimaced. Ew. “You touched my neck!”

The girl pulled her hands out from his pants—Ruby hadn’t noticed the down-below action, double ew—and lifted them “They weren’t. So who touched me with cold fingers?”

“Who touched me with cold hands?” the boy demanded, utterly confused and more than a little freaked out.

They both sprang to their feet and looked around, their eyes wild. Ruby grinned and gripped their necks, and they both shivered. Then, without further discussion, they grabbed the blanket and their backpacks, and the boy whipped the phone off the tripod. “Shit, it’s dead.”

The girl wrapped her arms around her waist and rocked on her heels. “I am so spooked, Tad.”

“It’s fine, Gina, let’s just go.”

Tad? Gina? Weren’t they Wren’s dance kids from the summer? Huh, so they were still together. Ruby wanted to remind them to use protection, but they were too freaked out to hear her. Oh, well, scaring them was also an effective method of contraception.

Dusting off her hands, she drifted back to her friends. “Good job, Ruby,” Naomi said. “It was time for them to get their butts home.”

Ruby linked, as much as she could, her arms with Lila’s and Naomi’s. “Let’s find a seat to watch the tree shenanigans. And I’ll update you about Cedric … the poor boy is losing his ever-lovin’ mind.”

Chapter Fifteen

Thom

After morning sex, and breakfast at the Night Owl Diner, Thom, with a sulking Fel on his leash, followed Poppy across the road to the square. He looked up, taking in the blue sky and the weak sun, thinking that it felt like winter was in the next room, waiting to make a dramatic entrance.

He glanced at Poppy; she was enthusiastically waving to Wren and Dane who were approaching the Gratitude Tree from the other direction.

“You see, everyone, even the skeptics, come to check out the tree,” Poppy told him, ridiculously excited. He might not believe, but he really hoped Poppy never lost her enthusiasm for the otherworldly, for the inexplicable. It enhanced her creativity and made her who she was. And he was crazy about who she was.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see that the Chairman of the Sheffield Security board was calling. Why? If he weren’t a shareholder and someone who held a fair chunk of said shares, Thom would’ve ignored the call. Telling Poppy to go on ahead of him, and handing her Fel’s leash, he swiped to answer.

“Mark.”

Mark Mulroney, one of his father’s closest confidants, cleared his throat. “I didn’t know if you would pick up, Thom,” he said, sounding embarrassed. Good, he should. He’d known him since he was a kid and hadn’t stood up for him when the board members threatened to oust him, the prick.

“I nearly didn’t,” he tersely replied. “What do you want, Mark?”

There was a silence, and then Mark cleared his throat again. Annoying. “I have been asked to sound you out about returning as CEO.”

He had to be fucking kidding. “After how the board shafted me? Are you insane?”

“Look, Thom, I know you are angry, and you have a right to be. We made a serious mistake.” Yeah, a mistake that cost them over ten million dollars. “But we heard that you landed the Yorkband account, that’s one we needed. If you go out on your own, it’s practically a death knell for Sheffield Security.”

“Why should I care?” Thom asked, ignoring the clanging pain in his chest.

“Because your dad set up this company, because it was his baby, his dream. And you loved it before⁠—”

“Before my brother, your useless shit of a CEO, screwed me over. And before the board lined up behind him, then fucked me over.”

Another sigh. “I knew you’d react like this. I told them that.”

“And what about Benji?” Thom asked, comprehensively pissed. “What would happen to him if I came back?”

He was just asking for fun, because he had no intention of ever returning to the company. Why would he want to work for a company when he could work for himself?

“Well, I know you’d want him gone, but we have no cause to do that. We’d demote him, but if we try to fire him, we’ll face another court case for unfair dismissal.”