Page 264

Lakelyn

Three shots.

That was how many I had taken since the party started, and we hadn’t even made it past the forty-five-minute mark. I was already seriously considering a fourth, and surprisingly, it wasn’t because I was having a bad time. I was actually enjoying myself more than I thought I would. The problem was that my sister had apparently invited every resident in Hallowridge to my house, and every last one of them seemed determined to stop me for a conversation.

“Lakelyn! Girl, you look good!”

“Lakelyn, I heard you were back!”

“Girl, where have you been hiding?”

“Oh, my God! Is that really you?”

For nearly an hour, I had been hugging people, smiling until my cheeks hurt, answering questions about where I had been, how long I planned to stay, and what I had been doing with myself. Half the time I was pretending I remembered people I hadn’t seen in years while desperately searching their faces for some clue about who the hell they were. A few looked familiar enough for me to fake my way through it. Others had me smiling and saying, “Girl, it’s been forever,” because that worked whether I remembered them or not.

By the time I finally managed to escape another conversation, I took a long sip of my drink and surveyed the mansion.

Willow had really outdone herself.

The foyer and surrounding rooms had been transformed in a way I hadn’t thought possible without making the house look cheap or overly decorated.

The house looked beautiful, the food was plentiful, the bartenders were keeping everybody happy, the music was good, and people seemed to genuinely be enjoying themselves. More importantly, Willow wasn’t running around panicking or asking me every five minutes to help her fix something. She had handled her business, even if she had nearly stressed herself into temporary poverty doing it.

I was proud of her, and if I was being completely truthful, I was glad she had talked me into coming.

Well, she hadn’t exactly been the one who convinced me, but she didn’t know that yet.

Willow had somehow managed to hit that perfect balance between Halloween party and grown-people function, and judging by the crowd packed throughout my house, everybody else agreed.

But the actual guests?

Lord.

There were vampires, witches, zombies, demons, superheroes, movie characters, and enough sexy nurses to make me wonder whether half the women in attendance had ordered their costumes from the same damn website.

I had already counted three different Michael Myers walking around, although one of them had been standing beside the bar in the exact same spot for almost twenty minutes without moving. I couldn’t tell whether the person was extremely committed to the character or had gotten drunk and fallen asleep standing up.

Either way, I was minding my business.

I had been moving since the moment I woke up that morning. Between getting myself ready, making sure Granny had everything she needed for the evening, and dealing with Kaidence’s excitement about Halloween, I barely had time to sit down. That little boy had been talking about trick-or-treating for days, and he didn’t care about decorations, haunted houses, scary movies, or anything else most people associated with Halloween.

He wanted candy… free candy, to be exact.

And based on the way he had been talking, Kaidence apparently planned on collecting enough of it to last until the following Halloween.

Of course, I had bought him a Spider-Man costume because there was never any question about what he wanted to be. But I hadn’t bought one of those thin little costumes with the flimsy mask that ripped if a child breathed too hard.

Oh, no.

My son had a full, high-quality Spider-Man suit complete with gloves, boots, and a detailed mask that made him look like he had stepped straight out of the damn movie. The only thing he was missing was the ability to climb walls.

Thank God.

Because knowing Kaidence, his ass would’ve been hanging upside down from somebody’s roof trying to collect candy through an upstairs window if he thought it would get him two extra Snickers.

I had taken him and two of his little friends trick-or-treating earlier that evening. Their parents had come along too, and the boys spent an hour running from one house to another, comparing their candy, trying to decide which house gave out the best stuff, and arguing about whose bucket was the fullest. By the time we finally finished, Kaidence had enough chocolate, gummies, suckers, and miscellaneous sugar to supply a small convenience store.

I had already warned him that he was not eating all of it.