alleviate the uneasiness I felt in the marrow of my bones.
“You be careful out there tonight, Daisy baby,” my mom said to me, hugging me in farewell. “And you, too, honey,” she added to Jen.
“We will, Mom Jo,” Jen assured her.
Jen and I followed the parade on foot down the main street of downtown Pemkowet, which was easy enough to do since the array of pint-size lions, witches, skeletons, zombies, and princesses moved at a snail’s pace. Ken Levitt brought up the rear in a squad car, creeping behind the procession.
At the end of the parade route, parents and children gathered on the municipal basketball court, where folding chairs on loan from the Women’s Club had been set up, and Mrs. Brophy from the library read an abridged version of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in a loud, theatrical voice.
Even though I knew what was coming, it was effective. There was a paved footpath that led up the hill alongside the basketball court, and when Mrs. Brophy got to the story’s climax, the Headless Horseman himself came clattering down the footpath astride a coal-black horse, looking about seven feet tall in the saddle thanks to the long, dramatic cape obscuring his entire head and torso. Children shrieked, local parents cheered—it was an annual event, and the guy who played the Horseman had a riding stable a few miles outside of town—and adult tourists shouted in excitement and reached for their cameras and phones, many of them believing it was a real apparition. Like I said, it was a badass costume.
The Headless Horseman drew rein long enough to hurl a jack-o’-lantern onto the court, smashing it against the cement, before whirling and trotting briskly back up the footpath.
Once he’d vanished, the mood broke and the crowd began to scatter, sheepish tourists putting away their cameras, realizing it had all been part of the act. Rafe, who’d circled around town to position himself across the street during the parade, roared away on his motorcycle. Stefan and I had agreed to limit the utilization of the Outcast to large public gatherings where widespread panic could prove dangerous.
At least we’d gotten through the first one without incident. I let out a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s phase one over with, anyway.”
Jen tapped the hammer hanging from her carpenter’s apron. “On to phase two?”
“Yep.”
We retrieved Jen’s convertible and drove up the hill—it’s not much of a hill, but it’s the only one we’ve got—to the main residential area of Pemkowet, parking on the street in front of the high school, where we’d have a good view of the neighborhood.
Ken Levitt pulled up alongside us. “Are the two of you going to be all right here on your own, Daisy?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got additional backup coming in a few.”
“Good.” He nodded. “I’ll be cruising the neighborhood up here on the hill. Cody’s doing the same over in East Pemkowet, and Bart Mallick’s making a circuit of those new developments on the outskirts. Anything happens, call dispatch.”
“Will do,” I said. “And if you see anything . . . call me.”
Jen watched him drive away. “Call me a wuss, but I’m hoping that additional backup comes quickly.”
“You’re a wuss,” I said obligingly.
“Thanks.”
As it happened, we didn’t have to wait long. Mark and Sheila Reston arrived within a few minutes, parking behind us. We milled around in the street, making the sort of awkward conversation that arises when a handful of people who don’t know one another well gather to prepare for a possible massive ghost uprising or zombie apocalypse. Things went more smoothly when Sinclair arrived after his final tour of the day, sputtering up the hill to join us in the battered Chevy Lumina he’d purchased a few weeks ago.
That made four people on backup. To be honest, I’d rather have had Cody there, but it made sense to spread our resources around, coven members and police presence alike. If anything did happen, we’d have to converge, fast. But I’d chosen the hill since I figured it would get the most traffic from trick-or-treaters, and as I’d observed, the dead seemed to like an audience.
Perched on our cars and swinging our heels, we waited while a soft pre-dusk dimness settled over the hill and kids in costume flitted from house to house.
Despite the hour, the unnaturally balmy conditions persisted, a warm breeze springing up to rustle the piles of fallen leaves along the streets. Halloween in Pemkowet is old-school—none of that sterile contemporary business of determining