Page 23 of The King of Halloween
Her spoon rattled in the bowl. It stood straight up as she turned to Adam. “I did not realize you two were ensnared in the pulsing throb of lust’s perfume. I approve.”
Adam groaned. “Not…it’s a euphemism. I’m not fucking him.”
“Oh. A shame. He seemed quite knowledgeable in many matters of the macabre.”
“That’s because he’s my competition! He sells Halloween stuff too, and you just gutted my business by selling him your masks!” Adam dug a hand against his face, partially to hide his disgust but also to try and massage away the headache always named Baph. It didn’t matter how long they went without talking; two minutes was all it took for him to go completely mad.
“He approached me with an offer, much as you had many years ago. I don’t understand the issue.”
“For fuck’s sake. You’re not some whimsical fairy. You get how capitalism works.”
She gave him the wraith glare, the full force of her silver eyes stripping him down for parts. But Adam had decades to build up an immunity and stared right back.
It was Baph who sat back. She stirred her honey, then added a splash of milk. “Whether withers the wanton willow? Beyond bearing its barking bite.”
He wanted to collapse into a chair and slam his head on the table, but the only other seat in the kitchen had a huge spike up the middle. “You realize you signed a contract with me? A contract that stipulates I am the exclusive purveyor of your Halloween masks.”
“Yes.”
“That means it’s illegal for you to sell them to anyone else, Beth!” Adam shouted. Her eyes flared, and he winced. “Sorry, Baph.”
His correction came way too late. She shoved back her chair, and the goat stirred at its mistress’ distress. Cloven hooves clipped over the tile causing Adam to realize those damn horns were right in groin-gouging range. Great.
“Give me your damn phone.” She jerked out her hand, and Adam slipped his cell inside. “If you will pay close attention, I did not sell him my finished masks for Samhain. All of those went to you in September’s shipment. Spy that paint job. The brush strokes are atrocious. The gems are practically falling off. And the hair…it is synthetic.”
“What are you saying?” Adam asked.
“He bought my prototypes, my failures. Stacks of old attempts not worthy of my name, but gathering dust. I thought the trade fair, as I would not have to pay for storage or destruction of the souls inside.”
They weren’t the good ones? “They looked perfect when I saw them.”
“That’s because your eyes are weak and untempered by the fire of creation.”
Adam kept trying to find whatever she was talking about, but the resolution was crap. He’d also accidentally snapped the edge of Raj’s nose and hair in the picture. It was blurry, but he kept staring at it when he was supposed to be focusing on the masks. “So a stranger shows up out of nowhere, and you just give him whatever you’ve got lying around?”
“He arrived at my doorstep inquiring about his mask—Dawon in the Night. We spoke at some length about how I create them. I gave him a tour of my workshop and, in time, the conversation swerved to my remnants. Those masks that never quite captured the spark of life and had to be cast aside into the abyss of the trash pile.”
Adam seethed in his mind, but he thought back to that mysterious man who’d beamed with excitement while they’d talked Halloween. It had reinvigorated Adam’s love more than a dozen parades ever could. “Why didn’t you tell me about them?” Cheaper masks would have been a boon to his store. Let people gawp at the perfect ones, then spend a hundred or fifty on the not-quite-perfect masks.
She stared him dead in the eye. “You already know the answer.”
“I would have listened,” Adam insisted.
“As you are listening now and not plunging yourself into darkness while wearing a mantle of spite and a crown of rumors?”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Lizzy.” He braced himself for the nut-punch from the goat, but she placed a hand in front of his face.
She twisted her head first to the right, then the left—like a doll with a broken neck. “You seem ill-sorted, Adam.”
“It’s the busiest time of year. I’m being torn in a hundred different directions. I’ve got a thousand things to do as Halloween King, and there’s this asshole trying to take it all away. So yeah, I’m ill-sorted. Imagine that.”
She patted his shoulders like she was about to put him in the game. The only sport Adam ever played was a half season of track when he tripped in a gopher hole and managed to break three kids’ arms by flailing. Adam frowned, not sure why he thought of his most embarrassing fail when he caught a notification on his phone. He needed to get back for the festival setup. Their king couldn’t miss it, after all.
Adam walked, and Baph followed, her hands still on him. They made their way together through the living room until he reached the porch and breathed in the air. Even though everywhere else smelled of leaves and the autumn sun baking trees, here was a cold fog crawling through mud. Trying to shake off the shiver, Adam focused on her. “Look, I…if you have any more extra masks, please sell them to me and not some handsome stranger that shows up at your door. Okay?”
“Handsome?” she asked, getting the same damn look in her eyes as Mom.
There was no way he could walk it back, so Adam walked away. He had a million things to do, and dealing with her would take a lifetime.
