October 31

Part one of three- Yor and the two men she killed this week

"I can't come into work today," Yor told her boss. She bowed and tangled her fingers nervously around the coiled phone cord. The living room carpet was plush underneath her stocking clad feet. "I understand. I apologize. Yes, I will see you tomorrow. Thank you very much." She bowed again and then hung up the phone.

She turned to survey the empty kitchen with the feeling that she was going to battle. Yor tied on her apron firmly. It was her armor.

"I am going to make cookies," Yor announced. She put all her determination into her tone. "I can do this!" She made a fist. "Many people all over the world make cookies every day!"

That affirmation made her feel a little better. She pulled down Loid's cooking books and started paging through the desserts. Pies, cakes, … she found some cookie recipes. Madeleines? That sounded hard. Chocolate chip? She didn't have chips. Ah, fruity cookies? Yor paused at that, looking at the cheerful little circle with a glimmering red lake of jelly in the center. It looked like fresh blood. She found herself smiling. "I like this!" Yor announced. She put the cookbook on the counter open to that page and then started hunting for ingredients. Cake flour- where was that? She measured out Loid's bread flour instead, since it was already out. Baking soda? She looked through everything liquid, but nothing in the cupboards said baking soda.

She found a powder that proclaimed it was for baking, and she found a clear soda that Loid used when mixing cocktails.

Yor considered them. "What if I mix them?" she wondered. She checked the amount. 1 Tablespoon of baking soda- so, ½ of the soda, and ½ of the powder should work! She dumped that into the flour, since the baking soda and salt were supposed to be the first things to go into the flour.

Wait.

She blinked. "Salt?" Yor tilted her head and then squinted at the book. That didn't seem right. Why would you put salt in cookies? Salt was the opposite of sugar. So she put sugar in instead and then mixed it. She added in the jelly, more sugar, some melted butter, and a few other things. Right before she mixed, Yor had a burst of inspiration. Fruit was healthy, yes, but so were nuts! She could add nuts in and then the cookies would be more nutritious for Anya. Yor hummed as she hunted through the cupboards. She eventually found almonds. She carefully diced them and then added them to the cookie dough. It was…

Yor lifted the spoon and frowned at her dough. It had a gloopy texture. And come to think of it, in the photo the outer ring of the cookie was off-white. Her dough was entirely pink.

Maybe the oven would fix it!

She checked back in with the book and followed its instructions to scoop dough off of a spoon onto the baking sheet. Then she put it in the nice cold oven, set the timer, and turned on the heat so that it would have exactly the correct amount of time exposed to heat.

That left her with some free time. Yor took off her apron and then went to find the costumes. She laid Loid's out on the sofa and checked over the seams and hems to make sure that there were no problems. It didn't need to be ironed because it had been stored properly.

She peeked in on her cookies- 8 minutes left!

Anya's costume was fresh off the laundry line. Yor lined up her necessary accessories and then packed that all away in a bag to take to the school. And then she got out her own Halloween costume from where she had hidden it.

Yor stared at the pink froth of tulle. Her stomach churned with nerves. It was very different from anything that she had ever worn before. "It will make Anya-chan happy," she told herself. That was the important thing. Halloween was for children.

She wasn't quite ready to confront the dress yet. But she had made an attempt. Yor went back to the kitchen to check on the cookies. They didn't seem done yet, so she added another 10 minutes. Then she dug out the bazooka she had made last night for her costume. It had been very difficult to make something that would fit into her biggest purse when folded! She had managed to make something that looked mostly alright, using thick pipes that she painted black. Yor gingerly checked it with her index finger to make sure that the paint was fully dry. Her finger came back clean, so she cheerfully hauled the bazooka toy to the living room with the rest of the costumes.

She checked on the cookies again and frowned at them. Yor took them out, but they didn't seem right. She had a vexing sense that she'd forgotten something. Something was wrong.

"Ah!" Yor hit her palm with a fist. "I forgot to call the Shopkeeper!"

She went back to the living room phone and did just that. He picked up on the second ring. "Good morning," Yor sang.

"You're not in the office today," he said. He didn't sound surprised. "I have a mission. Can you do it?"

Yor blinked. "Is there a specific time?" she asked. "I'm busy in the evening."

"It must done before the evening," the shopkeeper said. "The target is a 76 year old grandfather of four."

"That sounds fine," Yor said, doing a little bit of math regarding transportation time. "What neighborhood?"

She took the information, made a mental plan, and hung up the phone. Then she put her apron back on. Yor hummed as she slid a baking mitt onto each hand. Hot air burst into her face when she opened the oven and withdrew her tray. She set it down on the table and looked at the cookies.

She tipped the cookies into the trash bin.

"I think that I will buy cookies," Yor said to the empty apartment. It immediately began to smell of something that she failed to identify as hot plastic. She had some time. She changed into her assassination outfit and covered it with her winter coat. She walked past the kitchen on her way out without noticing that the cookies had melted through the plastic bag in the trash bin.

She tried the local grocery store first. The bakery had a lot of Halloween decorations and empty display trays.

Yor blinked at the desolation. "Oh," she said. Shoppers walked past her. "Sweets are very popular for Halloween, aren't they?" She blinked. "I had better try another bakery."

There was a standalone bakery four blocks away. Yor hurried there in the cold, scarf whipping in the wind. She finally stepped inside with relief that immediately turned to despar.

The shelves were empty, except for regular bread.

"Oh no," Yor wailed.

The woman behind the till gave her an affronted expression.

Yor put her hands over her face and breathed slowly. "There's more places to try," she told herself. The sounds were muffled by her fingers. "I can do this!"

The bakery store worker sighed loudly.

She didn't notice. Yor turned and left before the bells on the door had even stopped jingling from her entry. She tried two more bakeries with increasing panic.

Yor was nearly in tears by the time she had to admit defeat and go to her assassination job. She could- she could go to a bakery afterward! Yor nodded sharply and got on her way. The target was actually fairly close to the neighborhood that Anya went to school in. She walked underneath a grand wrought iron gateway with the name "Wright" hidden in metal leaves. It seemed… expensive.

"I wonder if the grandchildren go to Eden Academy," Yor mused. She walked around the house once, looking over the doors and windows. There was an open window on the third floor, near a tree. She picked that for her entry so that she wouldn't have to break anything. She climbed the tree in record time and casually unbuttoned her coat with one hand while she walked around the house looking for her target. The dossier promised that only one person was home at the moment, so she wasn't worried at all.

The floor creaked underneath her.

"Myrtle?" a man's voice called from off to her left. "Is that you? I thought that you were already out."

Ah. "Found him," Yor said cheerfully to herself. She pushed her coat off and let it fall to the floor where it would keep free of blood. She crossed the long hall and pushed open the door to find her target reclining on a sofa overlooking a window to his backyard. She could see a swingset and a slide on a gentle hill.

The elderly man inside blinked at her. "You're not my lovely wife," he said, sounding mildly confused. He put down his book. "How may I help you, Miss?"

"I'm here to kill you," Yor said apologetically. She unleashed her knives. "And I'm very sorry that I'm about to ruin your costume."

The old man looked down at his white ghost costume and then back at her. "You're here to kill me?" His voice went very high. "What? Why? What did I do?" Then he paused and put a hand on the Halloween costume. "You'll ruin it? My wife bought me this," he said in an offended undertone. He wrapped his hands around the hem as if he was considering taking it off.

Yor paused. Usually the shopkeeper said the target was a traitor and how. This time, all he'd mentioned was the man's grandchildren. "I don't know," she admitted. Now she was confused too.

They looked at each other. Neither of them seemed to know what to say next.

"I trust my boss," Yor decided, and she killed the old man in the sheet ghost costume. Unfortunately, the costume was ruined. She was bloody too. She put her coat back on in the hallway to cover it up and then found her way to the front door. It rang just as she opened it.

Yor found herself face to face with a young man holding a delivery package.

"Oh!" she said, in surprise.

He shoved it at her. "Here you go, ma'am," the delivery man said. He nodded and then immediately turned to leave.

"Oh," Yor said helplessly. "Oh no." She glanced down at the box in her hands and her mouth fell open in a small o.

The label said "Blatchford Bakery."

They weren't hers…But Yor opened the lid to see neat stacks of slightly pink cookies with little white frosting ghosts on top. "Oh," she said again. "Well…" she glanced upstairs, where the only resident was lying dead. "It's terrible to waste."

With that problem sorted, Yor went home to clean up before Anya and Loid got home.

THAT EVENING

Harold Chambers had not considered himself to be a spiteful man in life and his newfound determination to murder a young family of three was starting to weigh on his self image. He wound his orange scarf a little tighter around his ruined neck and walked into Eden Academy as if he belonged there.

Once upon a time, he had. He'd graduated from this school. Being there brought him an eerie sense of unreality. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe he hadn't woken up on the floor after being murdered. Maybe cleaning that room and telling his housekeeper to stay out was just a dream. Maybe he'd had a stroke, or he was still dying on the floor and having an elaborate hallucination.

'That would be too kind.'

He walked through the crowd of parents and grandparents but he felt wholly apart. No matter what fantasies he could cook up, he was dead. He'd been murdered and he still didn't know why.

'That woman called me a traitor. A traitor to what?' Harold scoffed. Air escaped his neck into the scarf and puffed the fabric. He hastily patted it into place. 'I don't have any political role. I'm long retired. I don't need to work with everything that I inherited. And my moron son couldn't possibly make his own money, so that's for the best.'

…Had he been assassinated so that someone would benefit from his estate?

No. No, he rejected the thought entirely. Harold scanned the room, looking for the Forger family. That was still surreal. The assassin seemed so normal and soft. It was hard to believe that the scantily clad bitch who'd killed him had a normal family with a doctor husband and an elementary school age child. It made him dislike her even more. She shouldn't be working at all, much less killing retirees. She should be managing the household.

'Not that it will matter,' Harold told himself firmly. 'As I will avenge myself upon her.'

He ignored the doubt. He had never considered himself a man capable of murder. But he must. She had killed him. It was justice!

Harold finally spotted a member of the Forger family. The husband was lingering near the cookie table, talking to an older woman in an ostentatious witch hat. His body language was uncomfortable.

Hmm. Harold circled closer. When he came to the side, he realized that he knew the woman. Harold frowned. Myrtle Wright nee Hargrove was a blight upon society, and it was to Dr. Forger's credit that he seemed to recognize that. She'd been sniffing around his son even though he was far too young for her, and she was married besides.

"Ah, I was just hungry." The doctor's voice was pleasant and just the right side of professionally warm. He looked less ridiculous than most of the parents present, in a black suit. The only proof that he was in a costume was that he had a sad little domino mask over his eyes.

Harold's eyes drifted back to Myrtle Wright. Her witch costume included a tight-laced corset with black cat embroidery, elaborate makeup, and a great deal of feathers. Myrtle, he thought, had not adjusted well to her age. She seemed to think that maintaining her youthful figure entitled her to dress like a cheap harlot.

"What did your wife make, Dr. Forger?" Myrtle tittered. "I've heard that she's not much of a cook. I'm curious to try her treats."

…She had a new romantic target, Harold realized. He silently pitied the doctor. Harold wanted to kill the young man and his whole family, yes, but not inflict that harridan upon him.

"Ah, I think that Yor-san brought those cookies." The doctor pointed. Harold was musing over how he'd get any of these people alone to kill them when he realized that Myrtle was taking a long time to answer.

Her face was bone white.

The doctor' brow furrowed. "Are you alright, Mrs. Wright?" He took a step closer to her, despite how uncomfortable he had obviously been with her flirtations. "You seem quite pale. Should you have a seat?"

"No," Myrtle said. Her voice was a little high.

The part of Harold that loved gossip sat up and paid attention. He looked between Myrtle Wright's panicked expression and the pale pink macarons with ghost decorations.

'They mean something to her.'

"I'm quite alright. I was merely startled- I suddenly remembered something." She let out a high and obviously fake laugh. "I need to go and make a call. Do excuse me, Dr. Forger."

"Of course," the doctor said warmly. He gave her a respectful nod and waited until her back was turned to pick up one of the cookies and examine it with a confused frown.

He abandoned his attempt to corner Dr. Forger. Myrtle Wright was more interesting at the moment.