Chapter 92: Halloween, of All Nights

Undefined Conviction

Chapter 92: Halloween, of All Nights

The city didn't stop being itself just because the world Cole lived in had quietly become considerably stranger than jack-o'-lanterns and candy corn, and Mia had made it very clear, weeks in advance, that this year's Halloween was happening properly or she was holding a grudge into the next decade.

"We are doing this," she announced, dumping a bag of decorations onto the kitchen table with the force of a general deploying troops. "Fake cobwebs. A pumpkin. Candy that isn't the cheap kind, because cheap candy is how you get egged, and I refuse to explain to a Ministry official why our apartment got vandalized over discount chocolate."

"You've clearly thought this through," Cole said.

"I've thought about very little else for two weeks. Everything this year has been either terrifying or exhausting. I want one holiday that's just normal. Costumes. Bad decorations. Reeve embarrassing himself in front of trick-or-treaters."

"I don't embarrass myself," Reeve said, wounded, from the doorway, already wearing half a costume that looked, charitably, like a mummy who'd given up on the project partway through.

"You embarrass yourself constantly. It's part of your charm."

Elena, seated at the table stringing plastic bats along the window with the focused delight of someone experiencing an ordinary tradition for the first time in five years, looked up with real warmth. "I haven't done this since before. Feels strange, in a good way. Like borrowing a piece of a life I forgot I was allowed to still have."

"You're allowed to have all of it," Dana said, quiet, watching her sister with a tenderness that had slowly replaced four years of raw grief. "Every ordinary piece. Especially the ones that seem too small to matter."

Elena set down the string of plastic bats, considering that. "I used to think small things were a waste of time, before. Like if I wasn't chasing something important, I was failing at being a serious person." She laughed, soft and a little rueful. "Four years staring at copper walls taught me otherwise. Small things are the whole point, most days. The important stuff just borrows the room they leave behind."

"That's suspiciously wise for someone decorating a window with dollar-store bats."

"I contain multitudes too, apparently. Runs in the family."

Vesper arrived that evening in a costume that made Cole do a genuine double-take — dark, sharp-cut, deliberately theatrical, and she caught him staring with an expression that suggested she'd planned for exactly this reaction.

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"What," she said, all faux innocence.

"Nothing. You look—"

"Say it."

"Considerably more distracting than the actual decorations."

"Good. That was the goal." She smiled, small and satisfied, and swept past him into the kitchen where Mia had already set up a bowl of candy roughly the size of a small country's emergency reserves. "What are you supposed to be?"

Cole gestured vaguely at his own hoodie, unchanged from any ordinary day. "Myself, but tired."

"That's not a costume."

"It's the most accurate costume I could think of. Honest, at least."

"You're hopeless."

"I contain multitudes. One of them is apparently hopeless at holidays."

"Next year," Vesper said, already plotting, "I'm dressing you myself. Non-negotiable. I refuse to attend another Halloween beside a man cosplaying his own exhaustion."

"Bold plan, assuming there's a next year that looks anything like a normal holiday."

"There will be. We're going to make sure of it. That's basically the whole plan lately, isn't it — making sure there's a next year worth having."

They spent the evening handing out candy on the front steps, Reeve's half-mummy costume steadily disintegrating with every trip up and down for more bowls, Marek showing up unannounced in a full, genuinely impressive costume that put everyone else to shame, and for a few hours the whole apartment building's stretch of sidewalk filled with kids in cheap plastic masks and parents trailing behind with flashlights, entirely unaware that two doors down, an eighteen-year-old boy the Ministry had labeled Category Zero was quietly enjoying the single most ordinary night he'd had in months.

A small girl in a lopsided dinosaur costume demanded, with the total confidence of a five-year-old negotiating her first real deal, that Cole let her pick two pieces of candy instead of one. He let her take four, mostly to watch her father's resigned amusement, and felt something warm settle behind his ribs that had nothing to do with the mark or Verdict or any of it — just an ordinary evening, doing an ordinary kindness for someone who had no idea any of the rest of it existed.

"You're good with kids," Vesper observed, watching the exchange.

"Low bar. Mostly you just have to let them win occasionally and not lie about the good candy being gone."

"Still. It's a nice look on you."

"Everything's apparently a nice look on me tonight. First the arms at the pool, now candy negotiations. I'm building quite the resume."

Marek, overhearing, called over from where he was fending off a pack of teenagers demanding to know how his costume worked. "Don't let it go to his head. He's insufferable enough already."

"Too late," Reeve confirmed, mummy wrappings trailing behind him like a losing battle. "Head's already gone. We're just managing the fallout at this point."

"This is nice," Vesper said, sitting beside him on the steps once the trick-or-treaters had thinned out, candy bowl half-empty between them. "Genuinely nice. I keep waiting for something to interrupt it."

"Don't jinx it."

"Too late. Already said it out loud."

Cole laughed, and looked up at a sky finally, mercifully ordinary — no unfamiliar stars tonight, no dreams pressing at the edges of his attention, just an autumn evening and a girl beside him stealing candy out of the bowl meant for actual children.

"Happy Halloween," he said.

"Happy Halloween," she agreed, and leaned into his shoulder, and for one whole night, at least, the world let them have it uncomplicated.

[End of Chapter 92]