Page 5 of Trick Me (Immortal Vices and Virtues: All Hallows’ Eve)

Her eyes flash like something ancient waking. “Not a spell. A mirror. A test. A doorway, if you’re foolish enough.”

She produces a silver blade from her sleeve, impossibly small and wickedly sharp.

“You carve the peel in a single unbroken spiral. If it breaks, so does your tether to the answer. But if you succeed… and you cast it over your shoulder without looking… the first letter of your destined’s name will appear with the way the peel lands.”

“That’s just folklore.”

“Exactly,” she replies. “And folklore is simply memory polished with time. Truth that learned how to lie.”

Without breaking eye contact, she holds the apple and the blade like an offering.

“Who will ask fate to answer?”

A short man in a tux steps forward. Not bravado, more like something is dragging him by the spine. He slices, fumbles, throws. Gasps follow as the peel lands .

“An S ,” someone whispers.

The man’s breath catches. “Sarah. My ex.”

The old woman smiles slowly, as if she already knew. “Fate has no interest in your regrets. She plays the long game.”

Then her eyes find me.

It’s not a glance; it’s a collision. I flinch before I can stop myself, every instinct screaming that something has noticed me that should not.

“You,” she says, voice softer now. “You smell like the grave.”

I don’t respond.

“You walk too close to the edge,” she continues. “One breath in this world, one borrowed from the next. I can hear them around you. Old ones. Hungry ones.”

I feel them too.

The shift in temperature. The way the air thickens behind me, like the space I take up has grown crowded. I keep my posture neutral, but something just brushed my shoulder, and it wasn’t alive.

“I speak to the dead,” I say, more as a reminder to myself than a boast. “It’s my job.”

Her stare slices into me. Something inside me stirs in response. Not fear. Not exactly.

Recognition.

And deep down, I know I shouldn’t have come tonight .

I catch movement in my peripheral vision. A translucent figure by the window, an elderly woman, Victorian dress, looking lost. Another by the door, a young man, modern clothes, bullet wound in his chest. They’re always there if I look for them, especially on Halloween.

I carefully don’t make eye contact with either ghost. Rule number one of being a medium: Don’t acknowledge them unless you’re ready to deal with them.

The woman smiles, slow and sharp. “Come, pretty girl. Take your turn.”

She says it softly, but her voice carries low and is threaded with power, sliding into the bones of the room like a whispered command. Every head turns. The crowd shifts, attention locking on to me.

I hesitate. I hadn’t planned to participate. Hadn’t planned on being seen.

The woman tilts her head, eyes gleaming. “You, of all people, should know… fate doesn’t wait for permission.”

I glance around. No one else steps forward. They’re watching me, not just with curiosity but with wariness. Recognition. I’m not one of them, not entirely, but they can feel the death I carry.

Something tightens in my chest, and I step forward .

I’m in front of her, then she presses an apple into my hand.

“Perfect,” she croaks, as if this is the outcome she’s been waiting for all along.

I take it.

“I don’t really believe in fate,” I say.

“Belief isn’t required,” she murmurs, just for me. “Only participation.”

My hands move without waiting for my mind to catch up. The knife slides beneath the skin of the apple like it knows the path. Like it’s done this before. Maybe it has. Maybe I have.

The peel unwinds in one perfect, gleaming coil.

The air in the room changes. Charged. Expectant.

The crowd has gone utterly silent. I can feel their attention crawling over me, slick and inescapable.

“Now,” the woman says louder. “Don’t think. Just throw.”

I toss the peel over my shoulder.

A heartbeat later, there’s a sound. Not an impact. Not a splash. Something deeper. A vibration. A growl that isn’t human, isn’t performative. It’s real.

I turn.

The crowd behind me has already shifted again, clearing space around the source of the sound. And there he is.

The apple peel lies at his feet .

Tall. Broad. A man built like violence waiting for a reason. Hair dark and messy, framing a face too brutal to be pretty, too striking to be forgettable. Eyes like melted amber, and right now, they’re glowing red at the edges, a silent warning.

He looks at the peel. Then at me.

A slow breath drags through his nose, and his jaw tenses.

There’s a damp smear on his black jacket, darkened just enough to be noticeable. A thin sliver of apple and some tiny bits cling to the fabric. His shirt underneath is unbuttoned at the top, enough to show a slash of golden-brown skin and the edge of a tattoo curling up from beneath.

He wears tailored black slacks, clean, pressed, expensive. But there’s something in the way he wears them that makes the elegance feel like an afterthought, like a cage he could tear off at any second.

And then, he bares his teeth.

Not a smile. A warning.

“Watch where you’re throwing things,” he growls.

“I didn’t exactly aim,” I say, but the words come out uneven.

He doesn’t answer. Just turns, fury coiled tight in his shoulders, and walks away. People scramble to get out of his path .

“Charming,” I mutter, more to fill the silence than anything.

The woman doesn’t laugh. Instead, she watches him go with something like satisfaction.

“Oh, that one has lessons to learn,” the woman murmurs, more to herself than to anyone else. Her eyes cut back to me like a blade slipping between ribs.

“Now, dear,” she says. “Look at your peel.”

I turn, heart hammering harder than I want to admit, and step to where it landed.

The shape the peel has taken has me tilting my head to the side. Curled just so, a perfect, elegant C .

Not a coincidence. Not an accident of gravity. Deliberate.

“She got a C ,” someone calls out.

But the woman has already turned her back. She’s speaking to someone else, her shawl catching the candlelight as the crowd tightens around her once more.

Who was that guy?

Rude, sure. But honestly… if someone had chucked an apple peel at my brand-new dress, I’d probably growl too.

I rub my arms, trying to shake the chill.

Across the ballroom, I spot Sera.

She’s laughing, twirling in Rich’s arms, looking like the kind of carefree I haven’t felt in years .

For a moment, I just watch her.

Then I square my shoulders.

No more weird magic games.

No more fate or tricks.

I came here to have fun… so damn it, I’m going to.