Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The doorbell wakes me like a jump scare—one of those cheap ones where a rubber mask drops in front of the camera and the speakers blow out.
It goes off again before my brain catches up.
And again. And again. The kind of doorbell assault you only get from delivery guys who hate you or mothers who know the code to your spine.
I surface from sleep in pieces: mouth tasting like powdered sugar and sin, hair snarled into a haunted haystack, one leg thrown over Bonehead’s naked stomach like I’m trying to keep him from floating away.
The living room is a battlefield of last night’s spoils—empty cider cups, a paper plate welded to the coffee table with caramel, the sofa wearing my corset like it eloped without me.
The fog machine hiccups a dying little puff in the corner and then gives up, which feels personally rude.
“Door,” Bonehead rumbles, not awake so much as vibrating on a frequency that knocks things off shelves. His arm tightens around my waist on instinct. Protector-mode in his sleep. Adorable. Inconvenient.
The bell hits again: ding-dong-ding-dong-ding, a frantic Morse code for shame.
Skully jerks upright from the floor in the nest of blankets I banished him to after he said the words deep-fried pickle too sexily and I couldn’t handle it. “If I answer it naked,” he croaks, rubbing his eyes, “is that against any HOA bylaws?”
“There are no laws in October,” I mumble, pawing blindly for my bat-print robe. “Only vibes.”
Marrow is already up—of course he is. He sleeps like a saint in paintings, hands folded, eyes closed, as if death taught him about good posture and he never forgot.
He ghosts across the wreckage, hair mussed, washboard abs on display, only in a pair of ridiculously tight and revealing boxer briefs that should be outlawed.
“Allow me,” he says, voice morning-soft velvet, and I hate how it makes my knees consider giving up.
“Wait,” I hiss, catching his wrist with sticky fingers. “What if it’s the police? Or Jehovah’s Witnesses? Or worse—Girl Scouts? I can’t say no to thin mints.”
The doorbell rings again. And again. And then somebody starts knocking with the rhythm of a migraine.
“Not cops,” Skully says, listening like a feral dog, head cocked. “Cops press the doorbell once and wait. Announce themselves. Then knock and wait. This is…personal. Annoyed. They know you’re here. They want you to feel it.”
My stomach drops into my toes. I go cold in a very specific, maternal way. “Oh, no.”
Bonehead blinks at me, sleep falling off him in slabs. “Smash?” he offers, sweetly hopeful, like a toddler offering to make breakfast with a chainsaw.
“No smash,” I whisper, scrambling off the couch, tripping over a coffin-shaped pillow, kicking aside the giant plush bat we won like it’s a corpse I don’t have time to bury. There’s my robe. “Everyone—act normal.”
Skully surveys the living room: candles melted into obscene shapes, skeleton garlands drooling off picture frames, a pumpkin on the mantel wearing my fishnets as a jaunty fascinator, fucked up frosting across the oven door still spelling HELL’S KITCHEN because I never cleaned it.
“Define normal,” he deadpans, but he’s already pulling on a pair of shorts and wiping powdered sugar handprints off the TV with his discarded underwear from last night.
The bell sounds again—impatient, relentless, familiar.
“October Halloway!” calls that familiar voice through the door, muffled and dangerous in its restraint. “Open this door!”
I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste iron and middle school. “Shit. Mom.”
Marrow glances at me, alert now in a new way. “Your mother,” he murmurs, no judgement—only recognition, like a priest saying the name of a storm.
“I’ve got it,” I say, which is the exact thing you say when you do not have it.
I sprint to the entryway, yanking my robe shut, trying to smooth my hair into something that says wholesome girl who just woke from a chaste dream about quilting instead of goblin queen with sugar in her blood and three boyfriends.
I crack the door.
Mom stands on the porch in a coat the color of budget oatmeal, eyes sharp, mouth thinner than my patience.
She’s holding a reusable grocery bag like a talisman; from the top peeks a Tupperware of banana bread that isn’t actually love so much as a weaponized guilt loaf.
Her lipstick is a shade of sensible berry.
Her perfume smells like department-store advice.
“Hi!” I chirp, too bright. “Happy almost-Hallow-”
Her eyes go wide enough to count my sins.
She takes in the fog halo curling around my ankles, the glow of orange bulbs snarling up our stair rail, the hand-lettered DO NOT SUMMON sign slanted above the shoe rack, the fact that I am wearing a robe patterned with tiny knives and blood splatter.
Her gaze slides past my shoulder and lands on Bonehead in the living room where—traitor—he stands up to his full mountain height at the sight of her, like he might be called to block a bullet.
Did I mention that he’s naked as a witch dancing under a full-moon? Well, he is. But at least he has the decency to try and block his massive cock from my mother’s eyes.
“Bonehead! Blanket!” He meets my wide, horrified gaze before grabbing the closest clothing item—my black silk one with neon pink ghosts on it—and jerking it on.
I turn back in time to see the banana bread bag tightens in my mother’s fist. “October.”
I wince before grinning wider. “Mom.”
She steps in without waiting to be asked because boundaries are for other people. Her heel hits a cluster of fake bones. The grocery bag thumps her thigh. She stops three paces in, staring.
The living room looks like Halloween vomited and then rolled in it. Among my normal amount of decor, there is so much more.
Our prizes from the carnival crouch in corners like pets: the raven Marrow won glowers ruby-eyed from the mantle; the bat Bonehead earned leers from the armchair; the sequined coffin pillow occupies the throne of honor—my lap, when I’m sitting.
A little cauldron on the coffee table burps fog.
The speakers mutter a playlist hungover from last night.
That’s not even mentioning the leftover binding spell shit. Really, too much to describe.
Skully materializes at my elbow with a grin that should come with a warning label. “Mrs. Halloway,” he says, smooth as a bribe. “What a pleasure. Would you like some cider? It’s…spirited.”
Bonehead, because he has the soul of an overexcited Great Dane, tries a bow and almost headbutts the ceiling fan as he swings back up. “Hi, Mom October,” he booms, beaming, and then visibly waits for a gold star.
Mom flicks a look at him like he’s a chandelier about to fall.
“Hello,” she says, polite the way knives are polite when they glint before they cut.
Her gaze lands on Marrow last; he inclines his head, exquisite, a small, courtly bow that would charm a ghost. For exactly one second, something like surprise cracks through her disapproval. Then the shell reforms.
“What,” she says, and the word is heavy with thesis statements, “is going on in this house?”
“Decorating,” I say brightly. “Celebrating. Festivating.” My smile wobbles. “Do you like my fog?”
“It smells like a vape shop inside a Spirit Halloween,” Mom replies.
She sets the bag down on the console table, eyes sweeping over a black lace runner, a stack of bat-printed napkins, and the bowl of for guests candy I refill compulsively.
She pinches a bat napkin by one corner like it might stain her soul.
“The neighbor called me,” she adds, as if the words should scald.
“Said there were men coming and going at all hours. Said last night sounded-” she flutters her hand, delicate as an insult- “raucous. I had a feeling.”
“About my raucousness?” I chirp.
“About my daughter,” she answers, and somehow it’s worse.
Behind me, Bonehead takes a step forward. Skully shifts like he might physically wedge himself between us and break the tension with his teeth if he has to. Marrow’s presence goes still and tight, the way a wire hums right before it sings.
I wave them back with a small flick of my fingers.
Not this. Not yet. “I’m fine,” I say, as if fine is a real thing you can hold up like proof.
“We were up late. Carnival. We won a bat.” I point at the monstrous plush, because if I don’t point at something I might start pointing at my heart.
“Isn’t he gorgeous? We named him Fangs McFloppy. ”
“Of course you did.” Mom rubs the bridge of her nose in that specific way that means I’m about to get a lecture disguised as concern.
“October. You have to stop this.” She gestures at the room, the piles, the fog licking the floor like a cheap special effect, the men who are not furniture no matter how badly she wants them to be.
“Now men? Multiple. This isn’t how I raised you. It’s not sustainable.”
“I sustain it just fine,” I say, and my voice comes out brighter than a warning flare. “I’m very sustained. I’m…marinated.”
Skully snorts a silent laugh; Bonehead fights one and loses. Marrow’s mouth almost curves. Mom does not find me charming. She is historically immune.
She takes a breath, squares herself like she’s walking into a courtroom where the exhibit list is my life.
“You could still have a job,” she says. “A real job. Benefits. A plan. You could still have…a family, if that’s what you want.
A husband. A future. This”—she picks up the DO NOT SUMMON placard between two fingers and sets it back down like it’s contagious—“is nonsense.”