It's the last class of the day. Justin's students shift anxiously in their seats, glancing furtively at the clock on the wall as if it will make time move faster. A few of them squint at the cryptic writing on the back wall from time to time, when they think their teacher's not looking. Justin walks the floor, caught up in his lecture.

"Now Halloween, as you all know, is an extremely important time in the Wizard World. The mortal world generally knows it as a day of innocent revelry, however those of us that dwell in the magical realm are, of course, aware of the very real danger that exists when the veil between our two worlds is thinnest, as it is on the night of Hallow's Eve. Magically speaking, it's a time when almost anything can and will happen. Now, in contrast to mortal folklore, the use of Masks was originally implemented in an effort to protect-."

"-innocent trick-or-treaters from your ugly mug, is gonna be my guess," a familiar voice remarks from the doorway.

Alex has propped herself up in the doorframe. Fresh from work (or "work", in Justin's opinion), she's resplendent in skinny jeans and Babydoll T-shirt, with a faded "Helping Hands" logo on the front, smirking and shining at him. Idly, Justin wonders if she has to looks that good naturally, or if she has to- Justin, stop it! he reproaches himself, and does.

Gathering himself for a moment before he replies to her snub, Justin rubs his tired eyes. It's not not right... Justin shouldn't be thinking about his sister that way. And it's been worse, lately. He's just be so exhausted. And he's seen so little of Juliet, and it's Alex, and... Alex.

And yesterday's insanity in the lab seems like a long time ago, in the same way that time and space got all stretched and improbable during the long moments in which the lab burned. Burned? Well, while it did whatever-it-was. Justin's been poring over his magical chem books ever since, and while he was able to find a reference to the original manuscript that the inscription obviously came from, he can't come up with a single satisfying explanation as to what happened. Or why.

And naturally, he and Alex haven't talked about it. They're good at not talking about things - one thing they have in common. Alex breaks right his thoughts, and Justin's so caught up in them that he actually jumps a little.

"So what's it gonna be, Teach? Tricks or treats?" His class titters, amused, and Justin feels his thin hold over their adolescent attention span slipping away.

He rolls his eyes in response. "Alex, I don't have time for this. What do you want?"

She brightens, which he would have said was impossible about two seconds ago, extending a hand and nodding toward the exit. "We need to go shopping for our costumes. Well, for yours, actually." She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, making Justin uncomfortable (well, more uncomfortable), obviously performing for the benefit of his class, as she adds, "I've already got mine."

She so childish!

The class's murmuring gives way to outright giggles, and Justin feels the last of his hold over them fall away. Mentally he curses. Unable to help himself, he growls, "I told you, I'm not wearing any costume! Now would you kindly quit interrupting my class. I'm sure you have other things to do, " he adds with heavy emphasis, the closest thing to snark he can manage in his flustered state.

"Justin, it's a Costume. Ball. " She pronounces each word with exaggerated stress on the syllables, as if speaking to one of the slower students in Justin's old Delinquent class. "And it just so happens that I cleared my calendar for this, so can we please get a move on already!"

"I realize that it's a Masquerade, Alex. And I'm flattered that you sacrificed your important social schedule to disrupt my teaching, really. But I'm absolutely not going to be going in some silly get-up, so unless you have something to contribute to the lesson, I'd suggest you run along before someone mistakes you for one of the Delinquents and sends you to... to detention!" He growls, advancing on her.

It's not a very good burn. Actually, it's remarkably weak... Alex always throws him off his game. But his bored students seize on it, several of them murmuring "oooh..." as if he'd threatened her with Gryphon-duty. One of the more rambunctious kids, toward the back, follows up with a wolf-whistle, and Justin feels his cheeks growing warm with embarrassment. He puts a little more space between them, stepping backward in what looks way too much like a retreat.

Alex stomps her foot, a gesture that's both adorable and infuriating, and Justin wonders, not for the first time, how she manages to pull off that particular combination. Then she advances, reaching for his arm as he yanks it away. "Come on, Justin! Class is almost over! We have to get going before all the Halloween places are closed!"

Justin groans. His class rustles their assignment books, both watching the show and hoping to be cut loose.

"Oh, what? Did you have plans?" Alex's voice is syrupy sweet, false. She barks a laugh, not even having to verbalize what she thinks about that. The words "Justin" and "plans' have never managed to coexist happily in the same sentence.

He sighs, feeling the familiar slump in his shoulders, the sinking in his stomach. "Class dismissed."

Alex turns out to be right about one thing: by the time she badgers Justin out the door out the door, and after he's got everything put away for the night, almost everything Halloween-related is closed. They end up in the mortal world, of all places, in a mall near the Megaplex.

"HALLOWEENLAND" is one of those seasonal gigs that shows up once a year, essentially one enormous basement divided into aisles every kind of spooky paraphanelia imaginable, from the cheap to the outrageous. It only shows up once a year, blowing into town right around the time the leaves start to fall, and disappearing immediately after the big night. A month from now, the space will be occupied by a kitschy holiday-themed store called "Christmas Towne", then stand empty until October rolls around again. And store isn't run by the same company or anything; the proprietor seems to vanish along with the styrofoam pumpkins and rubber masks, as if he's been put away somewhere for the year.

And here's something else: They've been visiting HALLOWEENLAND since they were kids, Justin has never noticed any setting-up, never seen the store in a disarray of boxes and half-finished displays, no matter when he's been here. It just blows into town overnight, and on the first of November vanishes appears… well, magic.

The place is creepy.

Justin doesn't even want to go in. Alex insists.

From the moment they cross the threshold, Halloween calls to them in a thousand voices. Animated ghouls lurch and shudder like stop-motion photography, talons extended and teeth bared. The mad laughter of crones and the jolly wishes of "Happy Halloween!" collide with a chorus of wolves' howls, canned but nonetheless effective.

It's a riot of fall color and ghastly pageantry. The whole lurid scene blazes, pools out in front of them as far as they can see (and they can see pretty far, because the room is huge): styrofoam pumpkins and paper ghosts, gleaming candy-colored platters, and cheesy plastic bowls with skeletal hands that grab you when you reach for a treat. Sacks of cotton cobwebs and racks of rubber skeletons. There are whole aisles of fake blood and plastic teeth and cheap pancake makeup, props and costumes; everything you could ever ask for in a haunted house. As if the whole cacophony were part of a stage-set, the show is dramatically spotlighted here and there by the artificial "fire" of torches and cauldrons made of fluttering paper flame, lit by nothing more serious than one tiny batter-powered candle apiece.

Justin's eyes begin to whirl in their sockets... and he feels a bit sick. He thinks he might need to sit down. But he's quickly distracted by his sister's sudden lack movement. She's frozen in place, staring towards the back of the store with the face like that of a child's on Christmas morning.

"Oh… wow." Alex's voice sounds small, breathless. Justin glances at her, suspicious.

"Um, you okay?" He pulls gently on her arm, tugging harder when she doesn't respond.

"Huh? Ow, Justin! Let go!" She yanks her arm out of his grasp, pulling free from where he'd been shaking her. She points. "Look!"

Look at what? But he follows her pointing finger. Is that a…a bouncy house?

That's exactly what it is. A bounce-house for children, but done-up in theme just for the occasion… A bounce-house of glistening inflatable gingerbread, iced in glittering sugar-candy that's probably been spray-painted on, the quaking sides decorated with the likenesses of a grinning hag, a cringing brother and sister walking hand-in-hand... and candy, candy, everywhere you look. The fake cut-out "windows" are edged in chocolate slabs, the "roof" tiled in realistic candy-corn. The path leading up to the house is a high-traffic roll of carpeting decorated to look like stepping-stones edged in peppermint sticks, and it's lined with a tiny parade of inflatable children, obviously lured by its delights, alternating with pretty paper "torches" fluttering in their own breeze.

It takes Justin a minute but he gets it, finally. It's Hansel and Gretel, the classic (mortal) fairy tale, but in the Halloween-edition. He remembers their mom reading him this story before, though it has been a long time. (He remembers trying to read it to Alex, too, and the subsequent loss of several pages. She's never been much of a reader.) Justin notices that there's even a miniature mock-up of the cage where the witch kept Hansel while she fattened him up for the fire: this one is less embellished, just a cardboard shack made to look like aging wood and iron bars, with an oversized padlock on the outside, and bony skeleton's hand protruding from between the inflatable bars. Guess Hansel's sister didn't manage to free him in time, in this version. Justin shivers.

"It's perfect," Alex breathes, and Justin has to shake her again.

"What are you talking about, Alex?"

"For the play!"

"Alex…what…what play? You never mentioned anything about a play."

She comes out of her reverie, looking back at him as if he ought to know what she's thinking. "For the play. For the performers?" She heaves a long-suffering sigh. "Look, I thought I told you. It's for work, and it's for the Benefit. We're staging a short play as part of the Masquerade, just a little light entertainment to help people to understand what we-" she breaks off in midsentence, but keeps talking as if it never happened, " ...and I'm in charge of costuming and props. I wasn't sure how I was going to do the house, I've kind of been killing myself over it, but this…! This. Is just. ...Perfect." She sighs. It's the happiest Justin's seen her in a long time.

Justin doesn't know how to respond. It's not like Alex to get so excited about something as mundane as a children's playhouse, and she's doesn't exactly have a great track record with theatrical productions (cough, Peter Pan, cough) and he doesn't really know where to start. Fortunately, he doesn't have to: they've attracted the attention of the store's proprietor, who apparently objects to them standing around gawking at the merchandise without acting like they want to buy anything.

The proprietor is a small man, mousy, with wire-frame glasses and a beady ratlike expression. In fact, as children they'd called him "rat-man", as sort of a joke. All the kids had. He hasn't changed much, the rat-man... It's been a few years, and Justin would expect him to look, well, older. He guesses that maybe everyone looked old when he was a kid. Or maybe the guy just ages well, or... well, who knows. Anyway, it's not really Justin's problem.

Rat-man had been reading a newspaper behind the counter, seated on a tall stool, when Justin and Alex had entered the building. Now, as he scuttles over towards the two imbeciles gawking at the bouncy house, he squeaks,"What is it that you're looking for?" in his high-pitched old man's voice.

Both siblings jump. And making them turn, guiltily, like children caught stealing candy.

"Um, we're here to look at masks?" Alex manages, looking almost composed. As usual, she's the first to speak. Justin's lips are still frozen, his thoughts chugging furiously, sort of thrown by the whole gingerbread house thing.

The man scoffs, a weird rodent-like sound almost like a laugh, peering at them over his rimless bifocals. "So it's masks, is it? Don't want to be recognized, do ya? Well, that's common enough, isn't it!" He spits the last words at them with a sort of venom that makes Alex take a step back, into her brother. Then the man is streaking down a shadowy aisle with a speed that seems surprising, given his age and size.

"Come on, come on!" the man calls over his shoulder, "The disguises is down this way!" He pauses to wheeze, the sound catching in his throat and echoing across the store. "They won't know ya from yer own brother!" That gives Justin a nasty jump, but whatever. He's not likely to know that Alex is his sister, and far less likely to know the inappropriate slant of some of Justin's thoughts lately. This guy's a mortal, obviously. Probably. Seizing Justin's wrist, Alex rushes to see what treasures the store has to offer, dragging a reluctant Justin along behind her.

A half-hour and an armful of masks later, Alex pushes Justin into one of the tiny dressing rooms - she says it's so he can see what he's trying on, but he suspects she's more concerned with preventing his escape - and yanks the purple, moth-eaten curtains shut, enclosing them together already-tiny space together. Justin feels a little claustrophobic, but he really just wants to get this over with.

Over the next... hour?... or so, because he's lost track of time in here, his sister orders him into one mask after another. Under the pressure of her most recent assault, they'd finally agreed that he'd wear a mask... not a stupid costume, just a simple, not-completely-undignified mask... to the party. It was under Alex's assertion that he'd be even more likely to stand out without one (well, and her reminder that almost all of the heroes of his childhood were masked in one way or another) that he'd finally folded. And to get her to stop talking. But Justin is fast losing patience with this. Irritated, Justin yanks the most recent abomination off his face (he's not the Freddy Krueger type, thanks) and turns to her, sliding the curtain back to get a little air, to put some distance between him and her haranguing.

"Why the big deal about Halloween anyway, Alex? Wouldn't Christmas be a better time for your little Charity drive or whatever? It's not as if you celebrate any of the other holidays."

She tries to balance a pirate's hat on his head, and Justin brushes it away. "I celebrate my birthday," she points out impishly.

"You're not a national holiday."

"Not according to you, maybe…"

"Not according to anyone. Come on, answer the question."

His sister scowls. "Well, for one thing, Halloween is bigger than Christmas in the Wizard World. As you know, Professor."

Okay, fine, he'll give her that one. But there's more to it that holiday spirit, he can tell. "Fine. But you're always like this around October, Alex, and for someone who can barely be bothered to remember the days of the week most of the time, it's just... well, it's just weird. You're not the holiday type! So, give."

She sighs. "Justin, don't you get it? Halloween is special, okay. Think about it. It's all about the rest of the time, you have to be yourself… well, unless you're a Wizard, but even for us there are limits… but mostly you have to be who the person... or Wizard, whatever... you always are, and you already have a pretty good idea who that is..." She holds a feathered and pumpkin-orange mask up to his eyes, grimaces, and tosses it on the growing stack of rejects. "... and so does everyone else, which is even worse. Everyone's already decided who you can, or can't be." She balances a top-hat on him, looks a it critically, and puts it into the "maybe" pile without asking Justin what he thinks. "But one night a year… just one… you can be anybody. Anybody at all, Justin!" She turns away from him to examine a row of glittering masquerade masks, plucking a shimmery purple one from the front and holding it to her face. "Man, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one!" she scolds him from behind the molded plastic. "Hey, how about this?"

She holds out her other hand, which is somehow holding its own mask, though he could have sworn it wasn't just a second before. (Alex, Justin sometimes reflects, is a little more like a magician than a wizard.) She's offering him is a mess of red and black sequins, tapering down to a long bird's nose, somehow both ridiculous and fierce. Justin makes a face. "Not that one."

Alex groans over-dramatically.

At least two hours in, and they're still at it. Justin has rejected both the reject pile AND the maybe pile, prompting a series of snide remarks from the little man behind the counter, who undoubtedly has to reshelve them. Alex, undeterred as she always is once she sets her heart on something, has stockpiled another basket of disguises and trapped him in the teeny dressing room again. Justin's kind of getting used to it.

"What have you got against costumes anyway?" she asks, poking through the stack for the next reject. "How come you never dress up on Halloween?"

"I just don't," he says, trying to sneak a peek at the clock through the crumpled velvet curtains, while Alex successfully blocks him. "I'm not good at lying. That's always been your territory. That's what a mask does. It makes you look like something you're not."

"Or hides something you are," Alex points out, holding a zombie mask up to his visage.

"Same difference," Justin grumbles, pushing it away.

She blows her breath out, puffing her bangs out of her face. "Honestly, it's not. No one should know that better than you."

Oh, he's so not touching that.

He frowns at her suddenly as a thought comes to mind. "Hey, why are you here torturing me? What about your costume?"

Alex grins up at him."You'll see it at the party," she smirks. This is all about you, big brother." She hands him a rubbery "Batman" mask.

Okay, it's been at least three hours and Justin has officially had it.

"Justin, if you take much longer they're going to think we died in here!"

(Though, to be fair, it does smell as if something has died in these dressing rooms. What it is, Justin does not want to know.)

They've been in and out of that damned dressing room for what feels like- and may be- hours, and Justin has yet to make a firm decision either way.

There's a brief, muted bing-bong sound - it's the door, letting the owner (and Justin and Alex) know that someone was leaving. There's only been one other person in the shop the entire time they've been in it... and it was some goth girl that Alex insisted was giving Justin the eye. Which she wasn't. Justin can't help but notice that Alex doesn't seem sorry to see her go... er, to hear her go, a hint of a smile ghosting across her face at the sound. Then, something happens.

Then there's a brief click of machinery… and the lights go out. Not just in the dressing room or anything... everywhere. Too late, Justin realizes that the guy behind the counter must have thought the exiting customer was THEM, leaving. The EXIT lights appear out of the darkness, glowing eerie green. While the siblings stare at each other, stupidly, there's a sliding, grinding sound... It's the door! Justin realizes with a rising panic. The metal door that shuts off the entrance from the rest of the world! Er, from the mall. Whatever.

"WAIT!" He shouts, as Alex glares at him and blocks her eyes. "We're in here... don't lock up yet! We're STILL IN HERE!"

There's no reply. The rat-man is gone. Outside the dressing-room, the growls and chants of the machinery left on to shine in the display window (in a basement? Malls make no sense) takes on an ominous quality.

They're locked up in here. His gut tightens, nervousness pooling in him like an acid. Why, though? It's just Alex, after all…

(Oh. Right.)

(It's Alex.)

Justin's reaches for his wand. The wand flares… then sizzles, electricity snapping like a dying light bulb. Alex gives him a knowing look. Under other circumstances, she'd undoubtedly find his his deflated expression almost, no scratch that, it'd be completely hilarious.

"I can't do it," he admits, staring dumbly down at his wand. "There's too much…"

"…plastic?" she finishes for him, the two speaking almost in tandem.

"The natural enemy of magic," Justin sighs, looking at the walls that surround them, visible by the faint green glow of the EXIT sign at the far end of the dressing-room. "Plastic walls, plastic masks, rows and rows of plastic god-knows-what... our wands are almost powerless around this stuff."

Right. They look at each other.

"Can't you try again?" she urges, making her best puppy dog face. It's pointless, of course. Her lower lip protrudes. Oh… well. Maybe just one more try. (Justin wonders if she has a date lined up after this, and pushes away the unwelcome thought like a buzzing insect.)

"Here," Alex says, slipping her wand out of her boot, "We'll both do it. Double our chances, right?"

Justin shrugs. Moving together, the twist the wands counterclockwise in the air...

This time, the magic careens wildly off the walls, and both siblings duck, Alex covering her head as if it's a bomb that's loose and not just an errant streak of magic. The walls make a soft bonking sound as the missile smacks into them, arcs away, then comes back for another blow…. until the sparkling glow bounces in a diagonal that lands it on the only available surface that's not plastic: the mirror. Which, of course, doesn't reflect magic. It shatters. Their image scatters across the floor between them in shards.

"Oops," says Alex, not looking sorry enough. Justin gives her a dirty look.

The mirror, lying in pieces between them, reflects her smirk and his answering scowl in a million different ways. All the separate, broken bits of themselves stare back at them with dismay.

"Great idea, Alex," her brother growls.