Page 44 of Marcus-stiltskin

He laughs. “I don’t think there’s much to show off.”

“Oooo, can we do a couples costume? I have a witch outfit that I was going to wear. You could be my cat, or a broom, though that might be hard to do on short notice and hard to sit in–.”

“What if I just go as a scarecrow?”

“Like the Wizard of Oz?”

He makes a face. “No, just a regular one. I have a brain, thank you.”

I laugh. “Sure. I think that’d be cute. We’ll need to hunt you down some clothes.”

“Actually, I already have some.”

That stops me. “You do?”

“Yeah, hold on.” He disappears into the bedroom and comes back with a cardboard box. He drops it on the chair next to me. “I don’t know why I brought these with me. I should have just donated them.”

Inside the box is stuffed full of colorful fabric. I reach in without thinking and immediately pull away. The clothes arewarm. Like fresh from a hot dryer warm. Marcus watches me as I snatch my hand back with a puzzled expression on his face.

“You okay?”

“Yeah…it’s just…they’re hot.”

“Hot?” He begins to pull each item out–there’s a scarecrow costume and doctor’s scrubs and tan safari outfit, complete with cheesy hat. “Are your hands okay?” He takes my hands in his for a moment and then touches the costumes again. “They feel pretty normal to me.”

I reach back out to touch the fabric of the scrubs this time, but the heat that emanates from it is strong–so strong, I can’t even touch it. Something Esmer said the week before clicks and I sigh.

We had been sitting at her kitchen table while she went through the mail and she’d dropped a piece on the floor. I reached to pick it up before Freddie K. decided to destroy it and nearly dropped it on the ground.

It was hot.

Esmer had just laughed at the look of horror on my face when she told me the heat was a sign of an enchantment.

“But why is there an enchantment on a credit card application?”

“To suck you into debt, of course.”

“Seriously?”

“You’d be amazed at what's enchanted. I’ve seen MLM product lines with enchantments attached, game apps with in-app purchases, cryptocurrency.”

“Why?”

“To suck people in, of course!”

I focus back on Marcus. “Was Catrina a witch, by any chance?”

He sits back down in his seat and picks up his fork to eat. “No. Just a normal human. She loved Halloween, though. She’d always make me dress up. Her work had an annual costume contest, and they had prizes.”

I reach out for the third costume–it’s not quite as warm as the other two. Why would Katrina have costumes with enchantments on them? It’s so random…unless…”

“Was Catrina super competitive?”

He laughs. “How did you know? She would always spend hours working on the costumes. The year I was a scarecrow and she was…”

“A cornstalk? A raven?” I guess.

He laughs. “No, just a girl scarecrow.”

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