a preordained time and place for trick-or-treating. People take the holiday seriously. Houses on the hill were decorated for the occasion, candlelit jack-o’-lanterns flashing flickering grins on every doorstep, fake gravestones in the front yards, fake cobwebs in the windows, plastic cauldrons from the dollar store spewing swirls of fake fog. Roving bands of trick-or-treaters went on foot from door to door, mostly accompanied by parents, but not always.
At around half past five, Jen’s phone rang. She took the call and hung up after a brief exchange. “Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“That was my mom,” she said in a grim tone. “Brandon’s missing. So’s his bike. That little shit! He promised me.”
“Damn.” I called in to dispatch. “Sue, it looks like the Easties vs. Townies battle is on after all. Can you notify the officers on patrol?” When I ended the call, Jen was on her phone again, leaving a voice mail.
“Just left a message for Bethany at the House of Shadows,” she said when she finished, her voice still grim. “She did promise to make sure nothing bad ever happened to him.”
“She probably hasn’t, um, risen for the night yet.” I glanced toward the west. The horizon was obscured by trees, but amber luminosity lingered in the sky. “Looks like another hour until the sun sets.”
“Great.”
“He’s a kid,” Sinclair said quietly. “He just wants to have fun with his friends. I would have done the same thing at his age.”
“On the verge of a zombie apocalypse?” I asked him.
He smiled wryly. “Probably.”
Over on the hood of her car, Sheila Reston shuddered. “Can we not call this a zombie apocalypse?”
“I don’t care what you call it,” her husband, Mark, grumbled beside her. “I just wish something would happen. I’m bored and I’m starving.”
I eyed a Harry Potter lugging a brimming bag of candy down the sidewalk. “You could always mug a trick-or-treater.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
I wasn’t about to complain about being bored any more than about feeling silly, but he had a point about being hungry. We should have gotten hot dogs at the harvest festival, or at least appropriated the leftover pies from the contest.
Just as I was thinking that very thing, another car pulled up to park behind us. I assumed it would be another member of the coven, but instead Lee emerged. “Hey,” he said uncertainly. “Mind if I join you? I brought pizza.”
“Oh, my God, Lee!” I scooted over and patted the LeBaron’s hood. “You really are a genius.”
I was on my second slice of sausage-and-mushroom when the Easties bicycle posse rounded the curve at the end of the street and came pelting past us, seven kids around Brandon’s age wearing hoodies and laden backpacks. One of them hurled a water balloon in our direction. It broke against the side of the LeBaron in an explosion of water and red food dye, most of it splattering Jen.
“Goddammit!” she shouted, hopping down. “Brandon Cassopolis, get back here!”
They didn’t even look back, let alone stop, instead pedaling hell for leather like kids in a Spielberg movie.
“We’re going after them.” I shoved the pizza box into the backseat. “Guys, hold the fort.”
Jen got behind the wheel and gunned the LeBaron. We nearly caught up with the Easties at the corner of Prospect, but a group of trick-or-treaters walked blithely across the street and she had to slam on the brakes while the bicyclists veered around the pedestrians. By the time we got through the intersection, the figures of the Easties were vanishing in the gathering dusk.
“That way.” I pointed, catching a glint as the last one turned onto Elm.
They ditched us in the labyrinth of short roads leading down the hill. “Left or right?” Jen asked at the next stop sign.
“Turn left,” I said. “They’re probably doubling back into town.” The victorious team in the Easties vs. Townies battle wasn’t exactly determined by scientific method. It was based on a rough estimate of who inflicted the most damage in the other’s neighborhood, or at least who bragged about it the loudest afterward. In the rearview mirror, I saw a second bicycle posse zooming around the corner of Elm in the opposite direction. That would be the Townies in hot pursuit. Apparently, the battle was shifting to East Pemkowet. “Uh-oh. My bad. They’re headed for the bridge.”
“Shit.” Jen tried to do a U-turn and had to wait for another group of costume-clad pedestrians.
I called Cody. He picked up immediately, his voice tense. “Daisy. What is it?”