A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [305]
But it was his encounter with one fairy princess wearing an oversize set of wings and a gauze skirt that tugged hardest at my heart. Overwhelmed and exhausted by the occasion, she burst into tears when Matthew asked which piece of candy she wanted. Her brother, a strapping young pirate aged six, dropped her hand in horror.
“We shall ask your mother.” Matthew swept the fairy princess into his arms and grabbed the pirate by the back of his bandanna. He safely delivered both children into the waiting arms of their parents. Long before reaching them, however, the fairy princess had forgotten her tears. Instead she had one sticky hand wrapped in the collar of Matthew’s sweater and was tapping him lightly on the head with her wand, repeating, “Bippity, bop-pity, BOO!”
“When she grows up and thinks about Prince Charming, he’ll look just like you,” I told him after he returned to the house. A shower of silver glitter fell as he dipped his head for a kiss. “You’re covered with fairy dust,” I said, laughing and brushing the last of it from his hair.
Around eight o’clock, when the tide of fairy princesses and pirates turned to Gothic teenagers wearing black lipstick and leather garments festooned with chains, Matthew handed me the basket of candy and retreated to the keeping room.
“Coward,” I teased, straightening my hat before answering the door to another gloomy bunch.
Only three minutes before it would be safe to turn out the porch light without ruining the Bishops’ Halloween reputation, we heard another loud knock and a bellowed “Trick or treat!”
“Who can that be?” I groaned, slamming my hat back on my head.
Two young wizards stood on the front steps. One was the paperboy. He was accompanied by a lanky teenager with bad skin and a pierced nose, whom I recognized dimly as belonging to the O’Neil clan. Their costumes, such as they were, consisted of torn jeans, safety-pinned T-shirts, fake blood, plastic teeth, and lengths of dog leash.
“Aren’t you a bit old for this, Sammy?”
“It’th Tham now.” Sammy’s voice was breaking, full of unexpected ups and downs, and his prosthetic fangs gave him a lisp.
“Hello, Sam.” There were half a dozen pieces in the bottom of the candy basket. “You’re welcome to what’s left. We were just about to put out the lights. Shouldn’t you be at the Hunters’ house, bobbing for apples?”
“We heard your pumpkinth were really cool thith year.” Sammy shifted from one foot to the other. “And, uh, well . . .” He flushed and took out his plastic teeth. “Rob swore he saw a vampire here the other day. I bet him twenty bucks the Bishops wouldn’t let one in the house.”
“What makes you so sure you’d recognize a vampire if you saw one?”
The vampire in question came out of the keeping room and stood behind me. “Gentlemen,” he said quietly. Two adolescent jaws dropped.
“We’d have to be either human or really stupid not to recognize him,” said Rob, awestruck. “He’s the biggest vampire I’ve ever seen.”
“Cool.” Sammy grinned from ear to ear. He high-fived his friend and grabbed the candy.
“Don’t forget to pay up, Sam,” I said sternly.
“And, Samuel,” Matthew said, his French accent unusually pronounced, “could I ask you—as a favor to me—not to tell anyone else about this?”
“Ever?” Sammy was incredulous at the notion of keeping such a juicy piece of information to himself.
Matthew’s mouth twitched. “No. I see your point. Can you keep quiet until tomorrow?”
“Sure!” Sammy nodded, looking to Rob for confirmation. “That’s only three hours. We can do that. No problem.”
They got on their bikes and headed off.
“The roads are dark,” Matthew said with a frown of concern. “We should drive them.”
“They’ll be fine. They’re not vampires, but they can definitely find their way to town.”
The two bikes skidded to a halt, sending up a shower of loose gravel.
“You want us to turn off the pumpkins?” Sammy shouted from the driveway.
“If you want to,” I said. “Thanks!”
Rob O’Neil waved at the left side of the driveway and Sammy at the right, extinguishing all the jack-o’-lanterns with enviable casualness. The two boys