Clutching her hands under her chin, she begged, “Can Clay take me?”
A moth hair accessory didn’t look odd on me, but on Clay, folks might stare. “I don’t know…”
“Come in costume,” Asa suggested to me. “That way, no one will recognize you.”
“That’s not a terrible idea.” I mulled it over. “That would solve a lot of our problems.”
Namely that if I wore an actual costume, but kept my present company, everyone would recognize me.
But a glamour could reshape us enough to enjoy a stress-free night out incognito.
“I vote we go as Marie Antoinette,” Colby chimed in. “I would look awesome in silver and diamonds.”
We shared a costume every year to make blending in easier for her and to keep her close to me.
The Downtown Samford Halloween Spooktacular, which everyone called the ghost walk for short, was a lot more fun when you showed up and stuffed your face with free goodies versus having to provide free goodies for others to stuff into their faces.
“Done.” I flicked a wrist. “What about you, Clay?”
“Julia Child.”
“Always a classic.” I skipped to Asa. “Well?”
“The devil.”
“Okay.” I didn’t imagine the twitch in his cheek. “Like red-jumpsuit devil?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of this.” The transformation gripped him, and his daemon appeared. “Trick-or-treat.”
A snort blasted out my nose. “You want to trick-or-treat?”
The daemon ducked his head but nodded once before giving himself back over to Asa.
“How about I glamour the daemon into pajama Satan?” I pursed my lips. “Just to take the edge off.”
Plenty of supernaturals let it all hang out in public on Halloween, but the daemon was intense.
Maybe that was the allure. He wanted to blend among normal people and be praised for his appearance rather than feared or shunned for it. Even supernaturals feared Asa and the incredible beast within him.
“That’s fine,” he agreed without complaint, his eyes brightening.
Apparently, Asa and the daemon wanted out for a few hours to celebrate surviving yet another case.
A genuine yawn stretched my jaw, and I shooed them. “Wake me up when it’s time to go.”
Alone in my room, I did try to sleep, but I must have used my weekly allotment while recovering.
Since I had yet to check my phone, I did that, and I immediately regretted it.
Mayor Tate was already in a snit over “the eyesore.”
I assumed she meant my shop.
Her voicemail was one long rant, and I lost interest a few seconds in. The highlights were her blasting me for my poor timing, as if I had planned this to spite her, and her guilting me for ruining the ghost walk for my neighboring stores.
Done with my dose of reality, I tossed my phone, hauled out the grimoire, and began reading.
* * *