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Montgomery crossed his arms, giving Dale a hard stare. “Should I leave you to it, friend?”

Dale swept a bar towel over his shoulder and yawned. “I think I’ll call it a night.”

He swaggered out from behind the bar and joined his female friend who was grinning at him proudly. Apparently Dale’s bartending skills impressed her.

The crowd was dwindling at this point, and Willow emerged from the office looking perfectly put together. Montgomery felt so light, he wondered if he might float through the ceiling.

He’d mixed her a cocktail with Irish whiskey, sour apple schnapps and cranberry juice, shook vigorously, straining it into a chilled martini glass lined with caramel drizzle, then garnished it with an apple slice.

“I thought this might appeal to you,” he said to Willow when she reached the bar. He slid it to her, and poured himself two fingers of single malt scotch.

Willow grinned brilliantly. “The color of your eyes.”

“I wanted to do something besides Midori,” he said. “Something reminiscent of those cookies you make.”

“Caramel apple crunchies?”

“The ones with cranberries.”

“Oh, the cran-apple delights?”

“Whatever you call them, they’re delicious.”

He brought the glass to his lips, almost too happy and grinny to take a sip. He looked into her shining eyes, the way they glimmered with a secret. That kiss.

She winked, bringing the green cocktail to her lips. And a flash of déjà vu jolted him, like the skipping of a record he’d heard all those years ago when the Moonstone sold those vinyl disks.

But it wasn’t just sound that skipped just now. It was a vision, and suddenly he was there behind the bar, taking a sip as a woman with shining, glimmering eyes ran to him from across the crowded bar.

“Don’t drink that,” he cried, slapping the martini glass out of Willow’s hand just before it touched her lips. The glass flew across the bar, splashing the green liquid onto the floor, the glass breaking just beyond the puddle.

Willow yelped, and looked down upon her white dress, now splattered with green drops of liquor. Her gaze lifted to Montgomery, horrified, alarmed, confused.

“Why did you just do that?” she wailed.

To which Montgomery answered gravely, “I know how I died.”

It was Monday. Two days until Halloween. About three twenty-six in the afternoon.

Currently, Willow was hiding away all the apple schnapps, just in case. She wasn’t ready to throw it out. She’d paid good money for it, after all. So, she figured a locked cabinet was an adequate transition spot. Sort of like when you’re not ready to put your clothes in the hamper so you drape them over a chair.

Montgomery tried to reason with her.

“For the last time,yourmartini wasn’t poisoned. It was a knee jerk reaction once the memory flashed before me.”

“Whatever you say, Snow White.”

She had taken to calling him Snow White almost immediately after he told her he died by poison. Of course, he didn’t understand any of her modern pop culture references, so why should this one be any different? He usually nodded vaguely, which Willow found more amusing than anything. He also was quick to point out that although the poisoned liquor he drank that night in 1912 was green, it certainly wasn’t apple schnapps. Someone must have slipped something in his scotch without him knowing. It wasn’t until he’d already sipped it did he notice the color. A bright, bioluminescent green.

Still, death by poisoned apple schnapps? How often can you say that happens? And to be able to tease the deceased about it? Priceless.

Not to make fun of murder, by any means. But really, it had been over a century. Whoever killed Montgomery was long gone by now.

So, she’d called him Snow White the rest of the evening, and throughout the next day, dropping the fairy tale books in front of him and playingSomeday My Prince Will ComeandWhistle While You Workover the shop’s speakers on repeat.

Dale enjoyed the latter, and whistled along, much to Montgomery’s chagrin.

“I wonder if that’s why your eyes turned green,” she said, turning it over in her mind.