Page 46 of The King of Halloween
“And I’m sorry about the masks. Are they really made by your sister?”
He chuckled. “Yes.”
Raj thought back on the strange woman who’d seemed more part owl than part Stein. “Has she always been so, um…private?”
“After our father died—”
“She became terrifying?” Raj asked before he gulped, remembering they were blood.
To his relief, Adam laughed hard. “No. She was always that way. At five years old, grown men would cross the street to avoid her. I was going to say she moved to her farm and more or less abandoned human contact after our father died.”
“I shouldn’t have sold them,” Raj said.
“No, you should. She let you. Did you really spend hours talking with her?”Adam’s voice started to fade. Raj froze in his tracks and began to trail back toward the corn to find him.
He tried to think back to that day, his heart pounding with the fear that at any second she might turn him into a lamp. “I don’t know if hours. Maybe an hour.”
Adam whistled from deeper into the field. “That’s impressive. Most people last five minutes at best. Even I can only do a half hour before I need to breathe the air of the living.”
A bunch of the council members walked past Raj, asking if he knew the way out. Uncertain, but wanting to be helpful, he pointed to the left, and they took off. Smiling at them, Raj glanced around, then he looked through the corn. Adam was nowhere to be seen.
Had he moved on? Maybe he’d already finished the maze and was on to his next kingly duty. Taking a deep breath, Raj started to walk to the eastern field when the wind carried a voice toward him.
“I’m sorry.”
It was little more than a tickle in his ear. Raj heard the tone more than the words, and it pulled him to the left.
“My behavior at the festival was abhorrent.”
Raj dashed down the path, then hooked to the right, taking him closer to Adam’s voice.
“I don’t even know why I acted that way. Arrogance. Shame. Fear. You were right, by the way.”
He has to be just up…
Damn it!
Raj came face to face with a wall of corn. “I was? About what?” he shouted through the shaking stalks.
“They were your apples. My mother told me later that she moved mine because I was ‘being uncivil.’ Which I was. And maybe still am. I can’t tell anymore.”
That voice that once bubbled over in pride was wounded, limping, and scared. It cut Raj down, and he placed his palm on the corn. “If I’d known they were going to throw those apples—”
“Don’t apologize for the actions of bigots,” Adam snapped. He gave a mournful chuckle. “You didn’t throw them.”
“But I should have stopped it.” Raj shook his head. Every time he replayed that moment in his head, he’d scream at himself to storm up there, to lift the lights, do anything other than watch Adam struggle like a moth in a spiderweb.
“You’re not exactly my biggest fan,” Adam said with a laugh.
“Adam,” the mayor called out over him. The corn shook where Adam stood. “How in the devil do you get out of here?”
“Haven’t a clue,” he said. “Maybe we’ll starve.”
“Don’t be so morbid,” the mayor chastised him before the sound of footsteps rose.
Raj peered up at the sun that’d already started sinking. It might be best if he made his way out. He could talk to Adam face to face instead of through the autumn foliage. Maybe they’d let bygones be bygones and end on an amicable acceptance.
His talking companion fell silent or took a path away from him. Either way, the two split, Raj’s harried walk turning into a sprint. He could see the huge skeletons towering before the entrance just a few yards away. Picking up speed, he followed the curve, and his heart stopped.
