Page 9 of Halloween Town

Hell, this morning he needed an intravenous drip of caffeine and sugar.

“Yahoo, Thomas!”

Tom heard the strident female voice and tipped his head back to look up at the ceiling. It had, strangely, molded roses in the center and in the corners. A bit over the top for a Victorian kitchen, but over-the-top was every True Believer’s default setting.

And now the current leader of the True Believers, and a descendant of the original settlers, was making her way through his house and would appear in his kitchen in…

Five, four, three, two, one⁠—

“Thomas!” He rolled his eyes; Luna never called him Thom. She appeared in the doorway and immediately crossed the kitchen to stand in front of him. She wore khaki cargo shorts and a lumo-pink T-shirt declaring that she was “A Witch 365 Days a Year—Not Just at Halloween.”

False advertising?

Luna was, apparently, part of H-Town’s coven, but her attendance was a bit hit and miss. What she was, everyone agreed, was a fantastic mayor. It was her foresight, badgering, and threatening to hex anyone who got in her way, that had transformed H-Town from being another pretty, western Massachusetts town into a thriving, Halloween-obsessed, tourism hotspot. The shopkeepers, either enthused or ultimately exhausted by Luna’s haranguing, adopted the Halloween-all-year-around ethos and branding, and the town hummed with tourists.

“Luna, come on in,” Thom said sarcastically. He lifted his small cup. “Do you want coffee?” Now that he’d offered, he didn’t know if he had the energy to get up and make it.

“No, I picked up a Coven Cream from Spirited Grounds. Effie says hi and wants to know why you haven’t been in lately.”

Thom closed his eyes and shook his head. Now, if Luna had sent greetings from Earl or Marigold, the owners of Spirited Grounds, he wouldn’t think twice. But no, Luna was passing on a message from Effie, the ghost said to haunt the coffee shop. Her favorite party trick was to routinely trip the power to the shop, always at 3.33 p.m. Thom believed the power tripping was deliberate, and a gimmick, and suspected that Earl, Marigold’s husband, had installed a timer on the breaker switch.

Thom shook his head, too tired to state his “I don’t believe in ghosts or the paranormal” position. “Tell Effie I say hey.”

Luna frowned at his sarcasm. “I know you don’t believe in ghosts.” Not even a little bit. “Just so you know, Cedric has gone upstairs to say hello to the inn’s ghosts,” she added.

He squinted at her. “Remind me, who is Cedric again?” Then he gave himself a mental punch to the throat. Why was he even asking? He didn’t believe and didn’t care.

“He’s the Senior Spectral Historian to the Township of Solstice Springs,” Luna explained, then frowned. “I am a bit concerned about him, he’s very clingy at the moment.”

A clingy ghost, excellent. His headache intensified. But it was his fault for asking.

Luna rested her ample butt on the edge of his dining table and pushed her hand through her hair. It looked fairly normal today—mostly white—but tomorrow it could be ash-blonde or acid-green or solidly black. With Luna, you never knew.

“Last night, I got word that a bride was stomping through town and made her way here. It’s Poppy, right?”

He nodded and crossed one ankle over the other.

“So where is she and what the hell happened?”

“Upstairs and still sleeping, I presume.”

Luna’s gaze skittered off him and onto Poppy’s wedding dress, now hanging over the back of the other chair. “I’ve had numerous reports that she was barefoot and was only carrying her phone.”

Ah, H-Town’s gossip line was fire, and unusually accurate. “True.”

Luna picked up the jar full of pearls and shook it. “Miss Millie’s pearls.” She stroked the bodice of Poppy’s godawful wedding dress. “How did she and the dress get separated, Thomas?”

Thom held her direct stare. “Felony peed on it. Poppy decided she wanted to get out of it, but as she was taking it off, the string on her necklace broke.” He rubbed his right knee and scowled. “I spent an hour on my knees collecting damn pearls while she sobbed. Then I took her upstairs and put her in my bed, the only bed in this house. She fell asleep immediately and is, as far as I know, still asleep.”

“Oh.”

Yeah, oh. “And why are you only here now?” Thom demanded. “I expected you to come as soon as you heard. Which I’m pretty sure was about five minutes after she stepped off the bus.”

Luna nodded. “I was away yesterday and only got in late last night. I figured she was safe with you, and that you’d take care of her.” Luna pushed herself up to sit on the table and swung her legs. “So, what happened? Why did she run away?”

“Didn’t ask. She didn’t tell.”

“Huh. I mean, we all knew that marrying Benji was a bad idea, but Wren and I hoped she’d come to her senses long before this. Maybe she ran because something happened with Benji’s family.”