Page 7 of All You Want
Todd ignores me, cupping his hands at the crowd giggling and running up and down the stairway. “Attention, everyone. For your own safety, please exit the premises. Hallowed Haunts is not open for business.”
He may as well be spitting in the wind. No one pays him any mind, other than to say, “Sheriff, can you take a picture of us?”
“There’s a ghost behind the bar, quick. Take a picture.”
“Picture, picture?”
“Hold the selfie stick, Sheriff.”
Since I’m hanging on to Todd’s beefy arm, my towering blond beehive, along with my painted face, including a big, black stick-on beauty mark is in every picture.
Ghostly mists rise from behind the bar and underneath the stairway, thanks to the dry ice Evan put in place. Using a holographic projector, he flits moving white ghosts around the semi-darkened room.
Everyone’s delighted except for Todd, and he’s relegated to shouting at the children to put out their sparklers.
“You’re a big meanie,” a little girl dressed as a pumpkin says. “A big mean sheriff of Naughty-ham.”
“Oh, Jessie!” I whip around and give Todd’s “niece” a high five. “Want to take a picture with the Sheriff of Naughty-ham?”
She beams and whips her head up and down, bouncing her dark, curly hair. “Only if he’s a ghost.”
“He doesn’t look very ghostly to me,” a sardonic voice behind me sneers. It’s Evan, and he’s carrying a pair of bellows.
“What are you doing with that?” Todd asks, but the answer puffs all over him as Evan launches billows of cornstarch, covering the hulking man with a cloud of white powder.
Todd’s hand goes to his service revolver, but I detach his fingers, one by one. “Chill. It’s cornstarch, you ghostly lawman, you.”
“Yay! Uncle Todd’s a ghost!” Jessie claps her orange-gloved hands and jumps up and down.
“Yes,SheriffTodd’s a big mean ghost now. Let’s get a selfie,” I prompt Jessie, because she’s not supposed to know she’s Todd’s sister’s daughter. It’s part of the adoption agreement to keep it from her until she’s eighteen.
Jessie hugs Todd’s legs, leaving imprints in the cornstarch, and who can resist the little sweetheart? Certainly not a big huggy bear man like Todd.
He hefts her up on his shoulders, the little pumpkin on the ghostly sheriff, and both of them mug and grin for the circle of cameras.
The ice is broken, and Todd keeps Jessie on his shoulders as they walk around the grounds of my haunted hotel. She points things out from her perch high up and kicks her booted feet excitedly when I take both of them on a tour.
By the time we return Jessie to her parents, who were busy passing out gospel tracts and street preaching, the crowd had melted away as magically as they’d appeared.
Todd straddles his motorcycle. “How did they know to leave?”
“Told you, it’s a flash mob, like a flash in a pan.” I ruck up my skirts and climb over the passenger seat behind him, uninvited. “Now, are you taking me to the station to arrest me for unlawful gathering without a permit?”
He says nothing when I wrap my arms around his hard girth. The motorcycle rumbles alive, and we zoom off into the darkness.
* * *
~ Todd ~
I’m sorely disappointed with myself for letting this crowd situation get out of hand, but right now, I have a bigger problem.
Tami King has her arms around my waist and her boobs pressed to my back. Her thighs cradle my hips, and her face is glued to the back of my head.
She’s also riding without a helmet, but so am I because someone stole it while I was getting plastered by cornstarch.
I should drop Tami off at her family home. It’s a huge Victorian mansion built in 1861 on a hill just north of the town square and two shakes from where we are now. But I can’t let the people strolling in the square see me and her riding on my service motorcycle without helmets.
Besides, the night is crisply cool, and the first quarter moon rising above the redwoods means it’ll be a full moon come Halloween.
