Not On My Patch: a Young Wizards Hallowe'en Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

time…”
    “But laughing at the old ones still gets under Its skin.”
    “Way under,” Carl said, “since it really, really hates not being taken seriously…” He looked back at the house. “But who doesn’t like being safely scared, occasionally? Pleasantly scared, by something that can’t really hurt you?” He grinned as an eldritch howl came floating out one of the upstairs windows, accompanied by the shrieks and then the laughter of small children. “It starts getting you used to fear… so when you come up against something really scary, you can cope a little better.”
    “Like being vaccinated,” Nita said. “The weakened bugs make you immune…”
    “A useful metaphor,” Carl said, over more of the upstairs screaming. He grinned in the dark. “I should get back in there: some of those spells have to be reset after they fire a few times.” He patted Nita on the shoulder, vanished into the dark again.
    Nita sat there for a few moments, listening to the noises from inside the house, and then glanced over at Jackie. “You’ve been quiet…” Nita said under her breath to the pumpkin.
    It took a moment before the answer came back. Something’s wrong , the pumpkin said.
    Nita started to get concerned. Oh God, I did something wrong and the cutting’s affecting it now after all…! “Are you all right? Do you want to go back home?”
    Back home, it said, yes. But not your place. My home. Where I grew. Something’s wrong…
    Her pulse had been starting to slow down, but now it started to pick up again, and she wasn’t even clear why. After a few minutes, when Kit wandered out into the garden looking for him, Nita’s pulse was beating even faster. “We have to go,” she said.
    “Why? What’s the matter?”
    “Jackie needs to go back to the pick-your-own place,” Nita said. “Something’s wrong there, he says.”
    “Wrong?” Kit bent down and put a hand on the pumpkin. “What is it, guy?”
    I don’t know. Just… something’s wrong. And getting wronger.
    It was sounding more agitated by the second. Nita and Kit looked at each other. “Don’t ask me what’s going on,” Nita said. “Maybe a pumpkin can start getting sensitive to things if it spends all evening hanging out with wizards? But he was connected to that ground for a long time… he’s in a position to know if something’s wrong there. And considering the day he’s had, I think we should humor him a little, don’t you?”
    “Can’t argue with you there. ”
    “Where’s Ronan?” Nita said.
    “He’s inside having some of that punch,” Kit said. He wiped his forehead, looking a little surprised at the sweat there. As if on cue, his mustache promptly fell off. Kit started fishing around in his pockets for the spirit gum again, and then muttered something rude under his breath and stuck it back on again, even though it would only go on crookedly now.
    “Done with the punch,” said a voice out of the dark. “Dairine’s right behind me. I could smell you two worrying out here. What’s up?”
    “Jackie wants to go back to where he was picked,” Kit said. “There’s some kind of trouble there.”
    Nita had pulled her manual out of the little belt pouch where it hung on this costume, across from the chased sheath for her rowan wand. She paged through it hurriedly to the mapping section, tapped on it until it brought up an image of the little strip of suburban farmland that remained between her town and Uniondale. “I’ve got the coordinates,” she said.
    Got them here too, said a calm voice in the back of her head.
    Here’s another one who’s been quiet today , Nita said privately to the peridexis. Taking a day off?
    Just staying in the background while you enjoyed yourself, the peridexis said. But the enjoyment seems to have hit some kind of hitch --
    Because we may be back on duty again! Stay with me— “Dair, Bobo’ll feed Spot the targeting data—”
    “Got it,” Dairine said a second later. “Spot,