24
5:33 P.M.
TRICK OR TREAT
“Looks like Halloween might be canceled,” Don Day said from the other end of the couch.
Jessica looked up from the book she’d been trying, and failing, to read. As usual the Weather Channel was on. A man in a bow tie was coaxing a swirling mass of white out of the Gulf of Mexico and onto the Texas plains.
It was headed straight for Oklahoma.
“Is that rain?” she said. “For tonight?”
“It was a hurricane, but by now it’s just a tropical depression,” her father said in his Weather-Channel-lecture voice. He leaned forward to peer out the back window. “By the time it gets here, it’ll only be a thunderstorm.”
“Only a thunderstorm…” Jessica watched in horror as the satellite image repeated its course across the TV again and again, stopping at the border of Oklahoma every time. “Um, when’s it supposed to get here?”
“Sometime tonight. It might rain out all the fun.” He gave her a puzzled look. “You’re not going trick-or-treating, are you?”
“Duh. Of course not.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “I’m probably doing trig homework all night. But thunderstorms are kind of scary, you know, especially on Halloween.”
Especially at midnight, and particularly when you were trying to keep two hundred pounds of fireworks dry because you were fighting off an invasion of monsters. In the last two weeks of planning, no one had brought up the possibility that it might rain.
“So, Dad,” she said a minute later, trying not to sound too interested. “Are they saying the storm should be here by, like, midnight?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to tell what’s going to happen once a hurricane, or even a tropical depression, hits land. Could take until tomorrow morning. Might break up into nothing. Or it could keep going strong and get here by nine or ten.”
“Whatever!” Beth announced from the doorway. “I’m going trick-or-treating even if it’s raining golf-ball-sized hail. Or even golf balls.”
Jess looked up at her little sister and had to suppress a snort of laughter. Eight coat hangers stuck out from Beth’s shoulders at all angles, covered with black paper and bobbing wildly. Her face was mostly blackened with makeup, exaggerating the whites of her eyes, and she was wearing plastic vampire fangs.
“What are you supposed to be?”
“I’m a tarantula, stupid.” Beth took a step closer to the couch, angling one of the legs so that it menaced her father.
“Ow,” he said as it struck his head, eyes still trained on the Weather Channel.
“You’re calling me stupid. Look in a mirror.” Then Jessica frowned. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“From Cassie. We’re both going as tarantulas. She has this thing about spiders.”
A chill ran down Jessica’s spine. “She’s coming over here tonight?”
“What? Don’t you like Cassie, Jess?” Beth said sweetly.
“Yeah, she’s wonderful.” Jessica lowered her eyes to stare at her book. Cassie had been over a few times since that first awful Spaghetti Night. The two of them had left Jessica alone so far, but tonight she had a feeling they were going to show up at exactly eleven-thirty, when she had to slip out of her room.
At least in one way it was a good thing: it would be a lot safer for Cassie here than in Jenks. Once midnight fell, the rip was going to start expanding, zooming down the 36th parallel. Hopefully it wouldn’t grow wide enough to swallow houses on the north side of Bixby. But even if it did, the darklings might not make it this far.
That’s what Jessica had been telling herself all week, anyway.
“Well, you won’t have to put up with us in any case.” Beth swiveled her hips so that one of the tarantula legs banged against Jessica’s head. “I’m going over to her house.”
“What, in Jenks?”
Beth looked at Jessica with surprise, and even her father’s eyes lurched away from the Weather Channel.
“Um, yes, Jess. Because that’s where Cassie, like, lives.”
“When are you getting home?”
“Jess, you’re being weird. Dad, tell Jess she’s being weird.”
“Jessica?” her father said.
“Well, trick-or-treating in a strange part of town and everything.”
They both looked at her in puzzlement a little bit longer, and then a knowing smile broke out slowly across Beth’s face.
Their father turned back to the TV, which was filled with images of the storm roiling the Texas coast. “Lighten up, Jessica. It’s Halloween. Cassie’s grandmother promised they’d be in bed by eleven and that they wouldn’t eat too much candy.”
That last word seemed to remind him of the open bag of candy corn on the coffee table, and he leaned forward to grab a handful.
“Mom said not to eat that,” Beth said.
“Mom’s not home yet,” he answered.
“But it’s dangerous!” Jessica cried.
“What?” her father said. “Candy corn?”
“No. Being out there in the country. With a possible storm coming and…everything.”
Beth was still smiling. “You don’t want me in Jenks tonight, do you?”
Jessica ignored the words, staring at her book, trying not to chew at her lip. Her little sister was headed right into the path of the darkling invasion, but she couldn’t think of a single way to stop it. Beth had that smug look on her face—this time she really was ready to spill everything she knew if Jessica got in her way.
And this was not the night to get grounded.
“Come on, Dad, let’s get moving,” Beth said. “The Weather Channel will still be here when you get back. Like it ever changes.”
“The weather changes all the time, smarty-pants,” he said, scooping his keys and another handful of candy corn from the coffee table and rising to his feet.
Jessica found herself wishing that she’d become all predatory, like Rex, so that she could slip outside right now and pull the starter cable out of her father’s car. But she didn’t actually know what starter cables looked like and wasn’t a hundred percent sure she could even get the hood open.
What else could she do? Explain that the food chain was about to turn upside down? That Bixby was about to be invaded? They’d only think she was kidding or crazy.
She would have to deal with this at midnight. Along with everything else tonight, Jessica was going to have to make sure her little sister was okay.
“See you later, Jess,” Beth taunted from the front door.
Jessica didn’t answer, and the door slammed with a booming note of finality. She looked at her watch, her stomach slowly winding itself into knots.
Only five forty-five, and already Samhain was off to a brilliant start.