Eleanor sits on the base of the statue of three ladies with their backs to each other, closest to the Ramble Ave exit of the square. The square is full of elm trees and interesting statues, and she’s always liked this one the most. One of the ladies is wearing a spiked crown and is holding what looks like a ferret. Another is holding a frog, and the last has her hand resting on the head of a dog sitting at her feet. What really sealed it as Eleanor’s favorite is how the dog looks up at its lady adoringly while the ferret’s eyes are on the frog, and the frog sleeps peacefully, one leg dangling over its lady’s open palm. She also liked the yew hedges curving in a U around the low wall around the statue, the shine and greenness of their leaves, and the brightness of their berries. In just over a month, they would likely be the brightest spot of color in the square until spring.

While waiting for Michelle, she has been watching folks walking by, admiring how absolutely into Halloween the town seemed to be this year. So many seasonal sweaters with pumpkin and black cat motifs. A lot of surprising costumes — the mail carrier with wings and a group of teens wearing identical skinny tails capped with tufts of fur poking from their jackets. A woman with a bag of knitting dressed as a very convincing sheep. A man carrying a horned toddler. Some sort of puppet, maybe? So cool. She kicks her feet, letting her heels bounce off the stone wall under the weird sisters and their animal friends, enjoying the best night of the year.

“Heya,” Michelle says, catching her gawking at an interesting group passing.

“Oh hey,” she says, turning her attention back to the center of the square. “So, you think we just start heading that way?” She gestures behind herself.

“Or we could see if anyone looks like they’re going to the show and sort of follow them? Other folks gotta be passing through here to get there, too, right?”

Eleanor points down at her, “Yeah, yeah! That’s true! Good plan, good plan.” Reaching into her bag, she pulls out a headband with some cat ears and one with glittery balls attached to long springs. Holding them up, she asks, “Do you wanna be a kitty or a fancy bug?”

“Antennae!” Michelle squeaks and makes grabby hands towards the deelie boppers. “Please!”

Grinning, Eleanor pulls a second set out, “Yesss! Ok if we kinda match?”

“Yes!” Michelle nods, looking at both sets being offered to her. One is silver, and the other is purple. “Ooooh! What if we did this?” she reaches for both and pops one glittery bopper off each, swapping them, and then hands one back to Eleanor. “Maybe?”

“Yeah, yeah, cool!” Eleanor beams as they both nestle them into their hair comfortably behind their ears and shake their heads in little circles at each other to set them into motion.

#

René Akerregi turns to the crow perched on a sign next to him, placing both of his hands over his main heart. “They’re too cute. How do you just watch over them and not just coo over how adorable they are all the time?”

Fable tilts his head to differentiate this stare from his nearly constant side-eye. “Typically, we only see them when they’re sleeping? And I do not coo.”

“Typically, you don’t caw either, but it seems exceptions have been made for this one,” Jinx needled the crow, rotating one eye to look at the girls. She had positioned herself on Rene’s shoulder, wrapping her tail around his arm, gripping his suit jacket, blending into its rich black worsted cashmere. Her head took on the black and white of his hair, masking her well from any more astute Obscure, but for the most part, she and Fable would be unseen.

“Young man, do note when you speak to us, you look as though you are conversing with yourself,” Fable says, choosing to ignore his colleague.

“It’s Halloween. No one should be surprised by a haunting,” he dismisses. “And the culture of the Obvious dictates that the beautiful and the old are absolved of eccentricity. So, I am doubly pardoned even if they’re unaware of my age.”

“Who would argue with that?” Jinx chuckles, then says, “So, age over beauty—your elders would like to know what you have in mind.”

“Look, they’re on the move,” he nods towards the girls hopping off the wall under the bronze gaze of the triple bodies of Hecate, antennae bobbing as they adjust their backpacks and trail after a group of high schoolers in patch-covered jackets and combat boots, leaving half a block between them.

“Walk and talk, young one,” Fable demands, settling on his unoccupied shoulder.

“And look like I’m talking to myself? No, thank you.”

#

  Michelle is conflicted. Just a few short hours ago, she’d assured Mr. Akerregi that she would be spending some time thinking over what he’d said and his recommendation that she give her mysterious relative a chance to talk to her. The part that was repeating itself in her mind now, walking next to Eleanor in their matching bug headbands after sunset, was how, now that she was establishing a connection to the Veil, she would see things differently. He’d said the Veil thins the closer you get to Halloween and lasts for about a week after, so it would be easier to spot the Obscure. Looking around her as they walked up Ramble Ave, she was having a hard time telling what was a costume and what was not meant to be seen. And Eleanor wasn’t helping. “Look at those cool lights,” she’d just whispered, elbowing Michelle’s ribs gently to get her attention.

“Hrm?” Michelle looks across the street at an old house lit with hundreds of little green and yellow orbs. A gaggle of kids in pale shrouds lit from within by LEDs, she assumed, run by the fence.

“And their costumes are so good,” Eleanor continues, motioning toward a house where a mother and daughter, who she suspected were not just dressed like cats, were thanking an elderly woman who might have been part tree. “She’s like Grandmother Nature. I like her hair!” she gushes quietly as they were still tailing the teenagers ahead of them.

The tree woman pets the little kitten girl on her head, and her tail curls up in a little half-heart, which Michelle recognized from a book on cats she’d been obsessed with as a child. Happiness. Trust. Affection. As the large cats say goodbye and the girls step closer, the old woman looks toward them, surprised. Every leaf of her long hair seems to turn to face them. “Merry met, good neighbors!” she says, holding out her basket of treats to them.

“Oh, thank you!” Eleanor beams. The older woman’s hair blooms—purple petals the length of their fingers unfurling in a chain reaction from the top of her head to the ends of her waist-length tresses, which, now that Michelle was closer, were interspersed with vines.

“Woah, cool,” her companion says, eyes wide.

The woman cocks her head, but her attention is drawn to something further down the street; when it is returned to them, she smiles, “A blessed Samhain to you dearies,” as she leans back against her front steps.

“And to you!” Michelle says as she hooks her arm around Eleanor’s and leads her away.

“Did you see?”

“Yeah, cool trick,” she says, wishing desperately that she could ask Mr. Akerregi what is going on with Eleanor and the Veil. Is she a diviner too?

“Was everyone this into Halloween last year? I don’t remember. But I guess I just went to the hayride like usual over at the farm.”

“I usually go with my brother and some of our neighbors. They have a lot of kids—triplets even—and it’s kind of wild. Hard to really pay attention to anything other than keeping them from getting hit by cars or running off. They’re a mess. After the last time, I told Mom I was done with Halloween for life, and she felt bad so I didn’t get roped into it this year.”

“Oh, good job, Past Michelle!”

“Right?”

“I want to eat this candy. That lady seemed like not a maniac—we can eat this, right?” Eleanor asks, looking at the perfectly normal chocolate bar. “We should probably be getting some as we walk, huh? By the time we get back from the show, everyone will be done handing it out.”

“Ah! I brought some just in case,” Michelle pulls an arm out of her backpack straps and spins it around to her chest. Unzipping it, she retrieves a pillowcase, a quarter of the way full of different types of candy. “It’s two bags of assorted fun-sized ones from two different companies.”

“Wow. You’re kind of a schemer, huh?”

Michelle frowns. “Is that bad?”

“No, no, I think it’s cool. I don’t have to think about this stuff because no one is paying any attention to me. I can pretty much do whatever I want, you know?”

“Hmm,” Michelle weighs the pros and cons of this while keeping an eye on the punks ahead of them. The streetlights are getting farther apart as they continue up Ramble Ave.

Eleanor continues, “So I just haven’t developed your talent for thinking ahead.”

“My powers of deception. I’m like a budding criminal, I guess.”

“Whatever! I’m saying you’re cool. Take a compliment!” Eleanor bumps her shoulder, and she stumbles a bit before her hand is grabbed to steady her. She squeezes it and smiles. “Okay?”

“Ok, ok. I’m a genius mastermind. Very enviable. Yes.” She blushes in the dark, mostly unseen.