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“And now, just to add the eyes of some children!”I cackled as I dropped the peeled grapes into the bubbling concoction. As the fruit hit the top of the dark, gooey liquid, the fog machine beneath the table bubbled to life at the prompt of a hidden pedal, spewing forth thick white fog into the autumn night. A light flickered in the flashlight I’d jerry-rigged with tape to stick under the table, and I let out a keen, reaching for the children on the other side of my witch’s cauldron.The six-year-olds in front giggled and screamed in delight, before their mothers swept them off towards the next house down the street, their bags full of candy that they’d snagged from my elaborate treat set up; full-sized bars only, of course. I gave away nothing but the best on my favorite holiday of the year.I looked down at my phone on my lap: 6:32 PM. Trick-or-treating was about to wrap up, and soon the adults would be crawling through the streets as they headed towards their parties and concerts. I lived in a college town, so the after-trick-or-treat drinking was almost as much of a holiday as Samhain itself.It had been another stunningly successful Halloween evening, if I could say so myself. The old, downtown house on Historic Avenue that I’d inherited from my Grandma after her passing was perfect for my spooky tendencies—all of the kids from around the city were sure to visit to see the elaborate Halloween setups that our street was famous for. This year I’d gone for the witch’s hovel, complete with skulls and herbs and glass vials full of questionable liquids.“Good show this year, Karrie!”I looked up from my lap as I heard my neighbor, Tom, call out. I waved a hand at him. “Oh, hey, thanks, Tom. Great alien set up you’ve got there, you might even win the neighborhood Halloween challenge this year.” Tom, an older guy about maybe ten years my senior, was dressed as a man in the middle of being abducted, complete with a little inflatable man carrying him off. His house was positively wrapped in aluminum foil and eerie “UFO” music rang out from his windows, which the older adults who were out trick-or-treating with their kids had positively eaten up. It had serious X-Files vibes, that was for sure.“Wrapping up?” Tom asked, no longer shouting as he meandered down the walkway that led to my house. Maybe waddled was the better word—wrapped up in the inflatable costume as he was, he squeaked with every awkward step. I groaned, trying to hide my disappointment. Tom wasn’t a bad guy, I just had zero interest in him, a fact that he failed to comprehend. It wasn’t even his appearance, he was alright (some might even say handsome), he was just kind of weird. I stood up, rubbing my hands together as I surveyed my home and the decorations I would spend the next week putting away. A part of me was sad, as it always was at the end of the evening. “Yeah, I think so,” I said, trying not to sound as disappointed as I felt.“No parties to go to?” Tom asked, and I sighed. There we go, the point of this conversation. He always invited me to his Halloween party, and every year I had to find some way to dodge it.I stepped onto my front porch, moving into the shadows underneath the porch light. A part of me was self-conscious. For my Halloween treat-dispensing, I’d donned my witchiest gear, with a pointed black hat and a cute, black and orange witchy Üsküdar Escort dress. I even had planted a gnarly mole on the end of my nose, which my eyes still occasionally focused on as being “not quite right” in my field of vision. The overall look was kinda cute? But also kinda ugly. The outfit had seemed respectable inside my own house, but as Tom approached, I felt like he was doing his best to look right through the material. I wrapped my arms over my chest defensively, saying, “Not this year, Tom, I’ve gotta get all cleaned up and ready for bed. Busy day at work tomorrow, after all.” The classroom had to be stripped of all of its Halloween decorations before my students got in, so I would have to be in a bit earlier than usual. It wasn’t quite a lie, but it wasn’t quite a truth, either. I was going to spend the next hour and a half taking a long, luxurious bubble bath, but Tom didn’t need to know that. “Maybe next year?”“You say that every year.” I was surprised by the reproach I heard in his tone—Tom had never pushed after I’d said no. In fact, he looked kind of angry, and he didn’t look like he was ready to leave quite yet.Annoyance kind of bubbled up, and I said back sharper than I should have, “And I might say it again next year, too. I never know how Halloween goes, you know that.” I didn’t like confrontation, but I also didn’t like the idea of Tom thinking he was owed my time. “Come on, Karrie, don’t be a stick in the mud. I know you love Halloween, I mean, look at you,” he gestured towards me and I froze, grossed out by the way his gesture seemed to mostly hover around my boobs and ass. I knew that the dress I’d chosen for the witch costume was a little bit form-fitting, but I’d been sitting behind a cauldron all night, I hadn’t expected to be ogled in my front yard. I moved to the front of my porch, and I was about to suggest I go to bed and he return home, when I stopped.“Do you have a cat?” I asked, and Tom turned, looking in the direction I was. I brushed past him, walking towards the small, dark form that was limping along the sidewalk in our direction. I knew as soon as I asked the question that no, he didn’t. No one owned this cat. He looked rough. I didn’t know if any vets were open on Halloween nights, maybe an e-vet, but I was already running through my bank account to be sure I had enough for a run if I needed to.The poor thing didn’t even fight me as I scooped him up, his body skin and bones in my arms. “Poor thing,” I said, looking down at him. He didn’t look like he had any open wounds or scabs, but he was skinny. “Let me get you looked at.”I thought I felt a faint purr as I brushed past a surprised Tom and opened the front door to my house. “Can’t make it tonight. Can’t make it ever. Goodnight, Tom.”It felt really good to shut the door in his dumb, staring face.Inside my house was completely different from outside. All of my Halloween decorations were outside; inside it was just… cozy. I hadn’t changed much after my Grandma had passed away, updated the couch and changed the carpeting, but otherwise it still just seemed like home.“Let me get a look at you, boy,” I said, taking him into the bathroom and under the fluorescent lighting of the vanity mirror. He was dirty, but he didn’t have fleas as far I could tell. His eyes were a brilliant green, like peridots, Üsküdar Escort Bayan and they never left me from the moment I picked him up. His fur was long and black, though he had white speckles throughout. He would’ve been big if he wasn’t so skinny, larger than any other cat I’d seen. He was bigger than most of the small dogs in the neighborhood, even. “You’re huge,” I said, surprised. He’d looked smaller outside. “You some kinda werecat?” I asked, joking. I needed a name for the big guy. Hex was kinda cute for a black cat, right?“You got a name, boy?”The cat, obviously, didn’t respond other than a soft mew. My heart melted a little bit. “I’m Karrie. How about Hex for you?” The cat mewed again, which I took as an affirmative. I turned the water on in the sink, running it warm, and waited for it to fill halfway. Again, I was surprised as the cat didn’t bother fighting me as I rinsed it down and washed it the best I could. I didn’t have any cat shampoo on hand, but most of the dirt and grime from the road washed away with just a brief rinse. I was distressed, though, as the bath revealed two punctures on either side of the cat’s belly, indicating he might have been in a scrap with a dog before he’d wandered up to the house.I found an old collar from my Grandma’s days in one of the closets by the door– it was meant for a small dog, but it would work for Hex for now. I wanted some way to show that, if he got out again, he wasn’t a stray. It fit around his neck snugly, a charming contrast to the green of his eyes and the black of his fur.I wrapped him up in a fluffy blue towel, saying, “Stay here, Hex, I’ll see if I can find something for you to eat.” I definitely had some tuna somewhere in my cupboards. I’d also look into a vet, maybe give a call to see if I could bring him in and get seen immediately. I was already feeling kind of attached to the handsome stray—he’d given me an out from Tom, after all, that counted for something.It took about five minutes to find the damn tuna, hidden in the very back and underneath a couple cans of ravioli, but I emerged victorious at long last. After a quick call to the vet, I was heading to the bathroom with a bowl of tuna and a bowl of water for the stray. I’d been advised to bring him in as soon as possible, just in case.“Here you go, Hex, some food,” I said, opening the door to the bathroom.“Thank you,” the man in my bathroom said, standing naked aside from a fluffy blue towel and a red collar around his neck.I screamed.He screamed.Thank God it was Halloween, otherwise someone might have called the cops before the man scrambled across the space and wrapped his hand over my mouth, silencing me completely. Terror held me still, anyways. Somehow, I still had the cat’s food and water in my hands.“Shh,” the man said, softly, his breath warm across my cheek. His eyes locked with mine, bright green peridots in a dark face, his skin almost black as midnight. He was handsome, in a willowy, lean sort of way. I could feel his muscles as he held me, still keeping me silent, though they weren’t the massive muscles of a bodybuilder. Instead, his whole build had the lean, honed muscles of a runner or sprinter. “Do not scream, please.” I had never seen him before in my life, but I knew him instantly.I didn’t say anything, obviously, and after Escort Üsküdar a moment he removed his hand from my mouth. “Hex?” I asked, softly. I didn’t scream, realizing there wasn’t much use. The man, whoever he was, was a full head taller than me, and it had only taken one demonstration to realize he was faster and stronger than me, too. He nodded in response to my question, and I felt my heart fall out of my stomach. What the hell had I gotten myself into? I thought I’d been adopting a cat, not an actual werecat thing. I didn’t say anything else, but that seemed to bother him, too, and he frowned.“What is wrong?” he asked, looking confused and almost distressed. Goddamn, why was he so handsome? I wanted to comfort him for some reason. His voice was deep, rasping as he asked, “Was I mistaken? Do you already have a familiar?”“A familiar?” I asked, brow furrowing. “I thought you were, like, a werecat or something? You know, like werewolves?” He shook his head, a scowl forming on his lips as the words ‘werecat.’ I felt like I’d offended him somehow. “No, familiars are different.”The questions were directed enough at me that I felt comfortable talking. Instead of answering, though—because how do you answer those questions??—I asked instead, “What are you talking about?! Who are you?” A part of me already had a hunch; after all, I had left a cat in my bathroom, and returned to find a man. A handsome, remarkably familiar-looking man. He had the dark skin, pale green eyes, and even white flecks sprinkled in his short hair as the cat, only he was a man. A naked man. “You were just hurt,” I said, grasping at the memory of the dog bites on the cat’s abdomen. I’d been about to take him to a vet! Looking at him, though, there was no evidence of the dog bite at all on his human body. He nodded. “I was attacked by dogs not long before stumbling across you. Changing into a human heals wounds,” Hex said, as if the answer were obvious. “I sensed you, and so I came to you. I knew you would help me.” His words were spoken with warmth, and if he genuinely believed everything he said.Glimpsing us in the mirror suddenly made something click, though.I, a woman dressed as a witch for Halloween, had stumbled across a black cat on Halloween night, who had (maybe, unconfirmed) transformed into a human. “Holy shit.” That was what he meant by familiar? Like, a witch familiar? He thought I was a witch?He looked at me, confirming my suspicions outright by saying, “All witches need familiars, and I don’t sense that you’ve been claimed by one, yet. Is that true?” I looked up at him, still close enough to touch me, and realized there was a peculiar look in his eyes. His green gaze was intense, unwavering, and my breath hitched slightly as I realized what the look was: desire.I went to step back, but the bathroom door was closed. Had I done that when I’d come in? Probably, not wanting to let the cat out into the rest of the house. Now, though, it barred me in, the man standing in the space that would allow me to open it and run out. Trapped.I licked my lips nervously. This was all a bit much. “Look, I think there’s been a mistake,” I said, wincing at the predictability of the line. Was I in some secret prank show? “I’m not actually a witch, I don’t actually know how to do any kind of magic. It’s Halloween! Don’t you know about Halloween?”He looked at me, tilting his head in a quizzical way. “Halloween?” He stepped closer, though, and I found my back pressed against the door. My heart was hammering, though I didn’t know if it was from fear, or what. What had he meant by claimed? My mind kept circling back around to that comment.
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