Sorry for the delay. Yesterday got a bit crazy.

[October 31, 2014]

"Would you both hold still so I can get a picture!" Piper said, readjusting her phone again. In their identical police uniforms, two ten-year-olds stood back-to-back with plastic guns pointed toward the ceiling. Chris and Dwight kept bumping each other's backs with their shoulders, dissolving into giggles when first one stumbled forward, then the other. Dwight's dog tags dangled outside his uniform and jingled every time he got shoved.

"C'mon, Mom, just let us go already! You already got like a million."

"Paige will be down to take you any minute, so just be patient." Piper snapped a couple more, insisting all the rest had been blurry, before she let them grab their trick-or-treat bags and race to the front door. Chris refused his sweatshirt—"No one will be able to see my costume!"—and Dwight didn't have one, so they bounced in place on the balls of their feet until Paige finally made an appearance, carrying a car seat down the stairs. Three-month-old Bobby gurgled happily as Paige locked the seat into its stroller and pulled on a light jacket of her own. Finally, finally, she was ready. The boys tore out the door, leaving Paige to tag along from behind.

[October 31, 2017]

"Can we hurry up? I'm meeting Dwight at his house in ten minutes," groaned a thirteen-year-old Chris as Piper gathered her three children together. Wyatt, dressed in his usual clothes, looked bored, while ten-year-old Prue in her giant bunny costume kept trying to burrow between her brothers. Chris wore a pair of slightly out-of-style cargo pants and Dwight's favorite orange t-shirt, along with a silver chain with a set of dog tags made out of cardboard. He'd asked Dwight to borrow his dad's real dog tags but had been soundly rejected. Chris had also taken a few minutes with some hair gel to scrunch his locks into his best semblance of curls, a style reminiscent of his friend's dirty blond hair.

"If I could just get three smiles, we'd be golden," Piper griped back.

"I'm smiling, Mommy!" Prue chirped. She stuck her arm around her brother's backs, and Chris shrugged her off with a huff.

"And it's a beautiful smile, sweetheart." Piper snapped a couple more shots, then waved them off. "Okay, boys, please be careful by yourselves. Do you have the potions Aunt Paige brewed for you?"

"Mo-om," they groaned in unison.

"We'll be fine," Wyatt argued. "There hasn't been an attack on All Hallow's Eve for at least two years."

"That is not as long as you seem to think it is, young man," Piper chided. "All sorts of spirits and ghouls come out of the woodwork on a night like tonight. Do you have those potions or not?"

Wyatt patted his breast pocket while Chris reached into one of the many pockets on his pants, where he had stored the effervescent green vial his aunt had provided. "Can I go now?" he groaned.

With permission granted, he orbed behind Dwight's house, then walked around front to ring the bell. Dwight opened the door wearing a pair of faded jeans and a shirt with Chris's favorite band. He had brushed his bangs downward and to the side, the way Chris's fell when they got too long.

"My hair does not look like that," Chris complained at the same time that Dwight gave a guffaw of laughter at the sight his friend made.

"Right, like mine is all spiky like that in front?" Dwight protested. Unwilling to go without his dog tags, he had tucked his own under his shirt for the night. Chris saw a flash of silver chain wink from beneath his collar. "You looked more like me with your costume last year!"

"You mean when we dressed up like a murderer and a murder victim?" Chris laughed. "You think I looked more like you as a dead guy?"

Dwight shrugged, then gently nudged Chris out of the doorway as he closed and locked the door behind them. "Let's go."

[October 31, 2018]

"What are you boys supposed to be this time?" Piper asked with a frown as her son and his best friend trekked down the stairs towards the foyer.

"How is it not obvious?" Chris said, pushing a pair of round wire glasses up his nose. He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully.

"Uh… are you… Harry Potter?" she guessed.

"Are you serious, Mom? I'm wearing a button-down shirt. I've got pens in my pocket. We're wearing suspenders, for crying out loud." Dwight stuck his thumbs under his own suspender straps and stretched them forward with pride.

"So… not Harry Potter, then," Piper replied, amused.

"We're nerds, Mrs. Halliwell," Dwight offered, while Chris simultaneously groaned, "I can't believe you can't figure it out."

With a chuckle and an "ahh," Piper shooed them out before insisting they make it home before midnight. "I mean it," she said once they agreed, "Not one minute past, thank you. Chris, you have those… you know." She patted her pant pocket meaningfully.

"Yes, Mom, I have them," he intoned. "Uh… Pepper spray," he mumbled at Dwight's questioning glance. "She's just paranoid."

"Well, this paranoid mother will be watching the clock, buster."

"We get it, we get it," he grumbled. "Bye." Piper smirked as she closed the door behind them.

[Thursday, October 31, 2019]

Chris twisted his finger into the hem of his shirt as he held the phone away from his ear. He lay on top of his unmade bed with his legs dangling over the side, kicking the frame lightly as Dwight ranted loudly into the phone.

When Dwight finally paused long enough to take a breath, Chris jumped in to say, "Look, I'm not cancelling. There's just something I have to do first. I'll just be a couple hours late."

"What?" Dwight pressed. "What could you possibly have to do? There's no homework, you don't have detention, and we always hang out on Halloween. What could you possibly have to do first?"

"I just… promised my aunt I'd take my cousin trick-or-treating." His grip tightened on the fabric in his hand; he hated lying to his best friend, and yet he seemed to do more and more of it as of late.

"So I'll come with you," Dwight snapped back. "I don't see what the big deal is."

"He's… shy. He hates going with other people. It's a whole thing," Chris offered lamely.

"Bobby? Since when?" Dwight's voice was tight with impatience. Sometimes, Chris hated how well Dwight knew his family. It made avoiding the truth that much more difficult. "You know what? Forget it. Forget it. I'll go without you. This is stupid. See you later."

"Wait, Dwight, please—" The line was already dead. With a growl, Chris tossed the phone to the other end of the bed. "Why does this have to be so difficult." Stupid whitelighter duties, stupid magical heritage, stupid secrets. He let the cracks in his ceiling blur together in his vision, then blinked them clear again. After a moment, he sat up with a sigh. Swinging his feet to the floor, he stood up and headed downstairs.

"Mom! I can't find my shoe!" Prue's voice echoed down from her bedroom.

From the kitchen, Piper sighed. "Which one?" she called back, though she loathed to scream to her daughter from a floor away.

"The one that's not on my foot!" the twelve-year-old answered.

Paige was sitting at the table. She snorted back her laughter. She had come to bless a set of crystals that would hopefully add protection to the manor during All Hallow's Eve. With that taken care of, she, Henry, and Bobby would be leaving from here to go trick-or-treating once Bobby was finished getting dressed. In the meantime, she had decided to join her sister in the kitchen in the hopes of sneaking some treats for herself.

Throwing a scowl over her shoulder, Piper retorted, "Don't you have a kid to dress up?"

"Nope," Paige replied with satisfaction. "Henry's taking care of Bobby upstairs."

"I wish," Piper sighed. "You'd think, as a mortal, my husband would have a limited duty to the magical community. But guess what—you'd be wrong."

Paige frowned. "Where is he?"

"At Magic School, where else? He's strengthening the barriers of the living world to make sure they remain in tact." She sighed. "He should be back in an hour, but until then we're managing without him." She pulled a tray of cookies from the oven and set it on the counter to cool. Smoke curled up and wafted over to the table, where Paige closed her eyes, leaned back, and smiled with appreciation.

"Pumpkin?" she guessed.

"Of course," Piper scoffed.

The phone rang. Piper slipped off her oven mitts to answer it. "Hello? Hey, Pheebs, when are you coming? . . . You lost what? . . . Oh, Phoebe, you're—don't..." Piper laughed at her little sister. "You left your crystals here last night. You put them in the laundry room so you wouldn't forget them at home, remember? . . . Yeah, well, you did." Paige snuck over to try to steal a piping hot cookie. Without looking up, Piper swatted her hand away. "Yes, I set my crystals. Paige did, too. We're just waiting on you now. How long do you think you'll be? . . . Okay, just make sure you get here before sunset. I don't want to have to deal with any undead demons this year..."

Before she could bite back her reaction, Paige barked out a, "Hah!"

Piper whirled to face her youngest sister. "What was that?" she demanded. As Paige attempted to compose her face into a more innocent configuration, Piper continued, "I'll have you know that two years ago we didn't have a single attack. And last year it was just one little splinter demon—What?" She paused to something Phoebe said over the phone. "Half an hour's fine. . . . Okay, see you soon."

She hung up and grabbed a spatula to start scraping cookies off the tin tray. Ultimately, she let Paige have a taste ("One," she insisted sternly), though she had baked them for visiting trick-or-treaters. She would be staying at the manor alone this afternoon, not only to answer the door but also to keep a watchful eye out for opportunistic demons looking to access the manor's Nexus.

"Mommy! Mommy!" Bobby came racing in. A big, red, plastic helmet bobbled on his small head. The red sleeves of his costume folded over his hands. A silver badge glittered at his chest. "Guess what I am!" He threw his upper body onto her lap and hugged her around the knees.

"I don't know," Paige said. "Could you be a... fireman?"

He stood up suddenly, expression fallen, eyes shining with hurt. "No!" he cried, "I'm a fire chief!" He tried to adjust the helmet as it fell over his eyes.

"Ohhh, a fire chief." Paige nodded sagely.

Piper feigned a horrified gasp. "How could you not know that?" she asked, eyes crinkled with mirth.

Paige threw her a look but otherwise ignored the comment. To her son she asked, "Where's Daddy?"

"Upstairs. Getting ready." He shifted the helmet back again, then reached underneath it to push back the strands of hair that had fallen free to tickle between his eyebrows.

Prue marched into the kitchen brandishing a steel-toed black boot. "Never mind," she announced as Piper slid her hands back into the oven mitts and opened the oven door to pull out a second batch of cookies, "Found it." She was dressed in a black leather jacket, a dark mini skirt, and a black choker necklace with silver claws that dug into her neck. She had painted both her nails and lips in the same deep red color.

Piper wrinkled her nose but bit back her opinion. Instead, she made an effort to keep her tone nonchalant when she asked, "Where'd you get the costume?"

"Oh, most of it's from a box of Aunt Phoebe's old stuff. Isn't it the coolest? Aunt Phoebe was so stylish back then!"

Paige snorted into the crook of her elbow but said nothing as Wyatt wandered in. He hadn't worn a costume for the two years prior. This year, in a Hanes t-shirt with the sleeves torn off, he seemed to have decided costumes were back in fashion. He had cut some jeans with a pair of scissors, using great precision to make the holes look accidental. He had also snipped the fingers off a pair of old gray gloves. One of his shoes was missing, covered instead with a thick, striped sock. As a final touch, he had yanked an old, hole-ridden snowcap over his blond hair.

Piper's hands found their way to her hips. "There's no way you're going out like that, mister. You look homeless."

Wyatt rolled his eyes. "That's the point, Mom."

Chris chose that moment to enter the kitchen. "Oh, good," Piper announced, "you're just in time for a photo."

Rolling his eyes, he dutifully slunk over to stand next to his brother. He looked no different than any other day of the year in khaki pants and a plain t-shirt.

"What are you supposed to be," Prue said, wrinkling her nose as she came up beside him.

"A drug dealer," Chris replied, then in a spooky voice added, "They look just like uuuuuuuus."

Prue shoved him. "Oh, shut up."

Piper cleared her throat loudly to get their attention. "Smiles? Please?" She took a couple of pictures of the trio with her cell phone, handed her boys each a pair of effervescent potions, and said, "We're eating at eight forty-five, so make sure you're back by then. I closed the restaurant tonight, so that's where we'll be."

"Astronomica, eight forty-five, got it," Wyatt said. He stuffed the potions into his pocket and orbed away.

As Chris disappeared after him, he heard his sister's voice: "Can't I go by myself this year?"

Chris reappeared in Jake's bedroom to find the boy sitting on his bed with his hands between his knees, head bowed and shoulders hunched. Beside him sat a lump of a worn, colorless, fitted sheet. He looked up with surprise when Chris appeared.

"You came!" he cried.

"Course I came," Chris replied, pleased at the shy smile sent his way. "Why aren't you dressed up yet?"

The smiled faded a bit, then reappeared with a forced quality that wasn't there before. He nodded to the lump beside him. "I'm supposed to be a ghost…" he said, dodging the question.

His mother had draped the costume over the side of his bed—a stained white sheet that she had found a hole in a number of weeks back. Instead of discarding it, she had cut out two more holes to save money on a real costume for Halloween.

"You'd be such a cute ghost," she had said, but even he could see the lie between her teeth. "You'll be just like Casper," she had insisted, a reference he neither understood nor particularly cared to emulate.

Still, what harm could it really cause? Aside from the fact that, of the thirteen boys in his class, eleven planned to dress up like ninjas and the only other boy was one whose atheistic family refused to celebrate even the fun holidays. What further harm could it cause when he had unwillingly dressed up as a ghost both last year and the year before?

"Jake…" Chris knelt before his charge. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Jake chirped forcefully. "I was thinking about being a ninja, but a ghost is just as good."

Chris placed his hand on Jake's shoulder, giving it a soft squeeze. "You know, I just happen to be an expert at magical Halloween costumes. Why don't you try on your sheets?"

Jake looked up at Chris through his bangs. "You are?" he asked skeptically, but he did as he was told. Standing up, he shook out the sheet and draped it over his head so that his eyes peered out of two of the holes and his mouth aligned with the third. The sheet was so big that it folded over itself multiple times where it reached the floor.

Chris thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Ready? 'For tonight let us replace / The ghost sheet worn on this boy's face / Turn these clothes to ninja's wear / So in festivities he may share.'" It wasn't Chris's best work, but in a pinch it would do the job.

A pillar of smoke descended on the boy, swirling around him in thick wall of gray before fading down through the floor. In place of the sheet was now a boy dressed head to toe in black. He wore his usual dirty white sneakers, a stocking-like mask over his head, and a large plastic blade strapped to his back.

Jake stared down at his outfit in shock. "I'm-I'm a ninja! How'd you do that?" he cried. He peered over his shoulder and pulled the katana-like sword out of its sheath. "That's so cool!" His smile was infectious; Chris found himself grinning as he watched the boy slice the plastic blade back and forth in the air.

After a moment, Jake peeled off his mask to see his angel clearly. He quirked his head and gave Chris a once-over. "Do angels not dress up on Halloween?"

"Uh… well, some, I guess. Not me." He felt silly now for deciding he was "too old" for costumes and couldn't seem to bring himself to admit as much to the enthusiastic young boy. Instead, he asked, "Are we going to run into your mom out there?"

Jake shrugged, scuffing his sneaker against the gray carpet. "She got a new job at a grocery store, but they said she has to work tonight."

Though Jake seemed upset by this, Chris felt relieved. "In that case," he said, trying not to let the relief into his voice, "you ready to go?"

Exuberant once again, Jake scooped up a brown paper bag that lay crumpled on his bed and bounded for the door. Once they stepped outside the house, Chris glanced back to close the door. Taped to the inside of the front window, he caught sight of a giant Star of David.

Frowning, he asked, "You're Jewish?" Somehow, he expected he would have known this about his charge, though the topic of religion had never come up.

Jake brow furrowed quizzically. "What? No"—he followed Chris's gaze—"Oh, that." Shrugging self-consciously, he explained, "Mom puts it up so we don't get people knock. She says candy's expensive. C'mon, let's go." Without further fuss, he tugged Chris's arm and led him down the driveway.

Chris dropped Jake back at home with a bag filled to the brim. They had met some of the boy's school friends on the street, and Jake nearly glowed as he introduced his "older cousin" to the other kids. As soon as Jake stripped off his costume, the black outfit morphed back into a tattered white sheet, but Jake stroked it with reverence as he laid it aside.

Chris knelt in front of him, a hand on his shoulder. "I had a lot of fun tonight, Jake."

Jake smiled shyly. "Me too," he admitted with one shoulder hitched.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then?" Chris said hopefully, and smiled when Jake gave a firm nod. "Excellent. Right. Well, g'night."

"Do you…" Jake hesitated. "Do you want some of my candy?"

Chris politely declined the offer. He had to physically restrain himself from hugging the boy. Instead, he patted the shoulder under his grip and stood, dusting off his knees as he did so. With one last tussle of Jake's hair, he orbed out of the room.

Chris's next task was a lot trickier. He reappeared behind a cluster of trees at the park near his home. He, Dwight, and a few others hung out there often enough at times when it wasn't already occupied by grade-school children. They had planned to come here this afternoon, maybe after "ironically" going trick-or-treating.

There were a handful of teenagers there now. Chris spotted Dwight on one of the swings, digging his sneakers into the woodchips as he listened to someone else speak. Swallowing hard, Chris made his way over.

Someone dangling upside down from the bars of the jungle gym spotted him across the way. "Halliwell, you made it!" the boy called. Dwight's head jerked up, his mouth tugging into a frown.

"Yeah," Chris said without taking his eyes off Dwight. "I came as fast as I could. Just had a couple things to finish up first." Dwight scoffed but said nothing. Looking away, he dug his heels into the dirt and kicked himself backwards to propel the swing into motion.

For most of two hours he tried to ignore Chris's presence entirely. If Chris spoke up, Dwight would keep silent or find someone else to break off in conversation with. Beyond that, he kept his gaze studiously anywhere but Chris's direction. Chris tried not to let it under his skin, and everyone else either didn't notice or pretended not to.

By the time 8:30 rolled around and Chris had to get ready to leave, he could tell that Dwight's anger had dwindled to a steady resentment. Nobody else seemed to be paying attention to them, either. Now was his best shot.

"Dwight," he murmured directly, "A word?"

Dwight glowered at his sneakers but couldn't see a way to refuse without alerting anyone else to his feelings and bringing down the whole carefree mood. Reluctantly, he followed Chris towards the trees.

Chris tried to apologize, but Dwight held up a hand to stop him. "Do you even know why you're apologizing?" he asked. "You think I'm some needy creep who cares that you blew off half a night?"

That halted Chris's train of thought for a moment. "Well, aside from the whole 'needy creep' thing… kind of, yeah," he admitted.

Dwight rolled his eyes. "It's not this one night, Halliwell, you idiot." He snapped a twig off a tree and began to peel away strips of loose bark. "You've always been flaky, okay? I know what to expect."

Chris opened his mouth to protest but had to snap his jaw shut again. He had always considered himself a reliable guy. While he might complain or whine about it, he never ignored a call about a demon attack that required his assistance. He never refused to show up when his mother or father needed a magical taxi. Even the fact that he was assigned a charge before his older brother he considered a testament to his maturity and reliability.

But he could use none of that to argue with Dwight now. Worse still, how often did those very tasks for which he could be relied upon directly result in him cancelling plans with friends?

Heedless of his thoughts, Dwight continued, "It's one thing to miss a movie every once in a while. With you that comes with the territory. I'll always be the friend who tries harder; I get that." Chris stared at the ground, hating that Dwight was right. "But it's a totally different thing for you to cancel on me every time for two months."

Dwight swung his stripped branch against a tree trunk with a thwip thwip that echoed in the silence. "Eventually it's time to call time of death. So I guess…" He sighed, his anger seeming to dissipate with the exhalation. "I guess I'm not really mad. I'm just wondering if now's that time."

The breath left Chris's lungs. "It's not," he forced out at length. "I can't—I can't argue with any of what you said. I'm a crap friend, but I don't want to be…"

"So don't be, I don't know what to tell you," Dwight cut in with a shrug.

"I know I've been worse than usual." And how could he explain about getting a charge and about how, more and more as he got older, his mom relied on his help in defending against demons? "I don't have a good excuse, but I don't want to give up. I don't want you to give up."

Dwight shrugged again. "So I won't."

Chris blinked in surprise. "That's it?"

Dwight snapped the twig in two, letting the smaller piece drop into the grass. "You say you don't want to flake out all the time; I believe you. Now we just see if you can actually do anything about it. Think of it as probation." He stopped twirling the twig between his fingers to look directly into Chris's eyes, his own gaze somber. "But after this, that's it. I'm done being mad at you for being you. You flake again and I'm out."

Chris held up both hands. "Totally fair," he said.

Looking away again, Dwight said, "I'm assuming you gotta go. Don't you usually have a family dinner on Halloween or something?"

"Yeah." Chris grinned sheepishly. "We're weird like that."

"I know you are," Dwight replied with a small quirk to his own lips.

Chris turned and headed down the street that would take him to Astronomica. It was only a ten minute walk or so, and he wanted time alone before getting bombarded by family again.

It was 8:45 on the dot when Phoebe arrived with her daughters and husband in tow. Coop was dressed as he was every Halloween in a giant Cupid costume, complete with diaper, wings, and bow with heart-shaped arrow. He seemed to find the getup cosmically funny. Katie's face was dusted with silver glitter, cheeks pink with blush. She wore a pale pink Bo-peep dress with white stockings and silver shoes, along with a pair of glittering lavender wings strapped to her back. Her hair was folded into twin braids down her back, tied at the bottom with yellow ribbon. Lea had fully committed to her own choice with a onesie cow costume, including a hood with ears and horns and a cowbell around her neck.

Piper frowned under her classic witch's hat and cloak. "You're the first ones here. I told everyone not to be late."

Phoebe came over to kiss her older sister's cheek. She herself wore a brown colonial dress with a white apron, a la their ancestor Melinda Warren. "Relax, Piper, they'll be here. Did any demons come for the Nexus?"

Piper shook her head. "Looks like the crystals did the job."

Paige orbed in with Henry and Bobby a few moments later. Bobby released his mother's hand to adjust the helmet that kept falling over his eyes; his whole head seemed weighed down by the added pounds.

Pretty soon they were joined by Wyatt, then Leo, who arrived via mystical door from Magic School. Piper eyed the door that had appeared in the middle of her restaurant with distaste but allowed her husband, dressed as a properly done-up clown, to peck her on the lips. Some of his face paint smeared onto her cheek. With a grimace, she scrubbed it away.

"Would you go tell Prue her cousins are here?" she asked. "She's in the back." To Wyatt, who it appeared had somehow lost his second shoe over the course of the evening, she demanded, "Where's your brother? He's late."

"I have no idea, Mom," he groaned. "I haven't seen him all night."

"If he's not here in two minutes, I'm summoning his butt," she grumbled. Wyatt rolled his eyes.

"Okay!" Piper clapped her hands together to call for quiet as Leo and Prue trotted back into the room. "Let's sit down while everything's still hot, yeah?" She herded everyone toward the middle of the room, where she had pushed together a few tables to make space for their numbers.

"Chris!" she called to the ceiling as people started claiming seats.

The boy chose that moment to saunter in through the front entrance. "You're late," the matriarch announced.

"Yeah, yeah," he said in reply, finding an empty chair for himself between his father and Aunt Paige. With everyone here, Piper headed to the back to start bringing in the food.

Leo watched Chris take a seat. "You're not dressed up," he accused with a disapproving frown.

"Sure I am," Chris replied cheerfully. "I'm a teenage witch-angel hybrid who's undercover as a mortal kid. Can't you tell?"

"Oh, go help your mother bring food from the kitchen," Leo sighed. Chris grinned cheekily and obliged.

The end of dinner brought with it an unexpected announcement. Above the chatter Paige clinked her dessert spoon against her glass. Once everyone had quieted down, she said, "So Henry and I have something to share."

There was a brief pause, then, before she could continue, a squeal from her sister across the table. "I don't believe it!" Phoebe exclaimed. "You're—"

Paige cleared her throat loudly with both eyebrows raised. "May I share my own news, please?"

Phoebe ducked her head. Her "sorry" got muffled by the cloth hemp of her colonial dress.

"Thank you." Paige sighed, rolled her eyes, and finished, "I'm pregnant, okay? We're—" The rest of whatever she said got swallowed by the sudden din of exclamations.

"Congratulations!" "Cool!" "Aren't you too old?" "Mommy, what's pregnant?"

Paige had had a couple of early miscarriages after Bobby, so she and Henry had waited a bit before sharing the news. Now, they tried to field all the exuberant questions as they came—three months along, so she'd be showing fairly soon (Paige had carried pretty small during her first pregnancy), it was a girl (maybe, couldn't be positive for another few weeks), no they hadn't picked out a name yet…

The night ended on a high as all the adults and older kids helped carry plates and silverware back to the kitchen. Piper loaded everything into the industrial dishwasher while Leo started packing leftovers into glass containers. Piper took a brief break when her sisters entered. She and Phoebe swarmed around Paige with a giggling hug. Leo smiled fondly as he looked on.

By the time the restaurant was ready for the next morning's shift, both Bobby and Katie had fallen asleep. Henry hefted Bobby over his shoulder while Coop gently urged awake his daughter, who could not be carried anywhere in her incorporeal state.

People said their goodbyes and filtered out of the restaurant until only Piper, Leo, and their kids remained. After Piper had started the dishwasher and shut all the lights, they orbed home, ending what by all accounts had turned into a very successful All Hallow's Evening.

I hope you'll spend just a couple minutes to write a review, just to let me know if anyone's still reading. Reviews are golden!