Page 7 of A Witch’s Guide to Surviving Halloween

Chapter Four

“Flying ballerinas!” Lucy shrieks, throwing her hands up in disbelief from where she sits on the edge of a display table, one leg tucked up beneath her. “I just can’t believe it.”

I sigh, grabbing a stack of thrillers and fitting them into their slots on the shelf one at a time. “I know. Want to know how? Because you keep repeating it.”

“I keep repeating it because it’s so unbelievable.

I get the skeletons; Grandma loved her pranks.

I can just picture her giggling as she set that charm, poised to go wrong the moment the decorations left the store grounds.

But flying ballerinas?” Lucy grabs one of the little skeletons sitting on the table and flies it through the air as if to make her point.

“I don’t know what happened!” I wave one of the paperbacks at her, the pages flapping and flopping. “I charmed those brooms myself. The same charm we use every. Single. Year. That never should have happened.”

Lucy chews on the inside of her cheek, studying me with black-lined green eyes while toying with the skeleton figurine’s flexible joints. “Are you sick?”

I pause, tipping my head at her. “No.”

“Maybe you said it wrong,” she offers, pointing at me with one of the toy’s hands.

“I didn’t say it wrong, Lucy! I read it from the freaking book.

” I throw out a hand, gesturing toward the coffee bar.

From here, I can just make out the corner of the spell book passed through generations of my family, so old it would be nothing but dust if it weren’t for the incantation keeping it together.

The book that holds every spell, charm, incantation, and hex my family has ever used, developed, or (admittedly) stolen with every new generation of witches.

Lucy worries at her lip, contemplating every possible option as I shelve another stack of books. “Has anything changed? Was anything different at the parade?”

Pressing my lips together, I stare at the colorful spines, studying the rainbow of colors and font styles.

Blues, greens, and blacks are all lined up nicely on the shelf in neat rows, decorated with jagged titles meant to instill fear and intrigue.

Mentally, I run through all the events from the night before, both planned and unplanned.

“I mean . . .” My shoulders sag. “I was pretty worked up about the speeches.” I scowl at the books, the admittance burning my tongue.

Lucy shrugs, barely acknowledging my show of weakness as she continues to make her skeleton dance on her thigh in an imitation of the ones last night. “Perfectly understandable. Everyone hates public speaking.”

“Grandma didn’t,” I whisper, letting my forehead thump against the books.

Lucy rests the toy in her lap, expression softening. “You’re not Grandma, Amelia,” she says quietly, letting the reminder hang heavy between us before straightening and continuing in a far more confident voice. “Besides, Grandma wasn’t so perfect.” She waggles her arms. “Hello? Dancing skeletons?”

I half-sob, half-laugh at her imitation of last night’s disastrous decorations. “Luce, what am I going to do?”

“Well, you certainly can’t keep hosting if your anxiety is going to cause the magic to run amok through the town.”

“I don’t have anxiety,” I retort.

Lucy raises a scolding eyebrow at me.

“Fine,” I sigh. I fall back against the bookcase, clutching a novel to my chest as if it can shield me from reality. “So, what? Turn the whole thing over to Don? I can’t do that.”

Lucy snorts, the corner of her lip lifting. “Why not? I would. He’d be thrilled. He never gets to host.”

I shake my head, unwilling to even contemplate the option. “No way. I can’t have the whole town thinking I can’t handle things now that Grandma is gone. Besides, I’m not even sure that’s what it was. My anxiety was worse before I got on stage, not after.”

Lucy gives me a sad, tight-lipped smile, a mix of understanding and pity shadowing her eyes.

“Ugh, stop looking at me like that.”

She throws her hands up in surrender, toy skeleton rattling. “Fine, fine. So, we need to figure out what else could have caused the magic to flip out and find a solution before the market tonight. That can’t be too hard, right? Run me through everything that happened again.”

“I gave the speech, and then Stacy brought me to the host’s section. The first float came by with Don and the gymnasts doing their thing, and I was talking to Oliver, and then—”

“Wait”—Lucy holds up a hand to cut me off—“you were talking to the new guy in town when the ballerinas started flying?”

“Would you stop saying that?”

“Would you answer the question?”

I sigh and wave my book at her. “Fine, yes. I was talking to Oliver when the brooms started acting up.”

She nods thoughtfully, looking like she’s working through a math problem involving a guy who bought eighty-seven bottles of soda with a buy-three-get-one-free coupon. “And then what?”

“Then I ran over to do a charm reversal, and he helped gather up one of the girls—”

“Wait!”

I glare at her for cutting me off again, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“The new guy was helping with the flying ballerinas? You left that part out last time.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me because you were so focused on the flying ballerinas.” I raise an eyebrow and challenge her with a tip of my head.

“Point taken, I won’t say it anymore. Please tell me how the new guy helped with your unruly sticks.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “That is not an improvement.”

She waves her hands at me, urging me to continue.

I roll my eyes until the back of my head hits the hardbacks behind me. “Yes, we were talking, and then the brooms started acting up. Sophie started spiraling toward the pumpkin truck, and he ran over and got it under control before I could get there.”

“I thought you said the brooms needed a reversal charm?”

I nod, thinking back to how the broom kept hovering even though the charm should have only worked with a rider present, not after.

“They did. That’s what made the whole thing even weirder.

It’s like they had a mind of their own. Like something amplified the magic, or it was fighting back, or something. ”

“So, if the brooms required a reversal, how did Oliver get it under control before you got there?”

“Well, he . . .” I think back to that moment, playing it over in my mind.

I watch Oliver swoop in out of nowhere and rescue the little ballerina from her broom.

I’d been so caught up in Sophie’s safety, the discoing skeletons, and screaming teenagers that I didn’t take a second to question how the broom stopped flying. “I don’t know.”

“And he helped with the skeletons, too, right? He was already on the float when I arrived.”

Brows furrowing, I remember one of the skeletons lying in a lifeless heap at his feet before I’d even gotten the moon-soaked salt from Lucy. “Yeah, he did.”

Lucy jumps to her feet, forgetting her toy on the table, and I follow close on her heels as she saunters toward the front of the store.

She leans against the frame of the bay window overlooking Main Street, crossing her arms with a smirk.

I follow her gaze to the bakery storefront across the way, where a banner hangs, proclaiming: Grand Opening Friday!

Through the windows, I watch Oliver walk through the bakery, wiping down tables. His white T-shirt hugs his brawny frame, and the sleeves wrap around his thick arms as he flips another chair over, situating it around one of the small white tables left behind by Miss Laura’s retirement.

“What are you thinking?” I ask her, reading the gleam behind those devious eyes.

“I’m thinking the new guy might know more about what’s going on than he’s letting on.” Lucy waggles her eyebrows at me. “And I think it’s up to you, as sponsor, to figure out what it is.”

“Me?” I squeal, indignant. “I’ve already planned everything, and I’m hosting. Why don’t you figure out what it is?”

“Because I’m not the one who was flirting with him at the parade last night.”

“We were not flirting. We were just . . . talking.”

Lucy dismisses me with a wave of her hand. “Psh. As sponsor and host, I think it’s up to you to ensure the new guy gets a good tour of . . . What event is tonight?”

I cock my hip and give her my best exasperated glare. “The market—which you very well know.”

“Ah, yes. The Witch’s Market. The perfect place to show someone around, introduce them to the town, pry into their personal life . . .” Her mischievous grin is so wide that even her eyes sparkle.

I worry at my lip and narrow my eyes at her, trying to think of any way out of this. “And if he doesn’t go to the market tonight?”

“Oh, we certainly can’t have that. You’ll have to go over and invite him.”

I roll my eyes and push a sigh through my nose. She isn’t going to let up; it isn’t the Lucy way. “Fine, but you have to keep the coffee bar open late tonight like you promised. You can’t just pretend you have no idea how to make a latte after five.”

“Deal!” she chirps before turning away and heading for the espresso maker. “Don’t forget to ask about the fritters.”

I scowl at her retreating back, and I push through the front door before I can talk myself out of it. The bell overhead happily announces my exit.

Despite the cool autumn day, shoppers and tourists crowd the sidewalks, studying the seasonally decorated storefronts beneath turning leaves and unlit lampposts that will give Main Street a mythical glow come sundown.

I hurry across the street, pulling the sleeves of my sweater down over my hands when a brisk gust of wind bites through the weave.

It lifts not only my dark hair and hem of my skirt, but the fallen leaves that scatter across the brick road with a hiss too.