Page 66 of Dark

“You’d prefer Thin Mints?” Smirking, he drew a matching daisy on the inside of his thumb.

“You try fighting off enemy werewolves while wearing chocolate infomercial goggles.”

A beat. Then—

“Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

I leaned across the seat and gave his neck a love bite. “Let’s go. This princess has a castle to storm.”

Blood Moon’s chamber of commerce had expanded the Harvest Moon Festival from what used to be a one-weekend event with a couple of cheap carnival rides, a cotton candy stand, and a ten-minute corn maze a good hound dog could have solved drunk (which no joke, actually happened one year) into an explosion of pumpkins and cornstalk decorations adorning every doorway, two haunted houses, costume contests, and a fleet of food trucks selling everything from kettle corn to pumpkin-flavored ice cream. If you were a local? Good luck trying to park in town the last half of October when tourist season was in full swing. But it was a town tradition, and there was something nostalgic about seeing the hay bales and signs for apple cider come out every September.

Past a field packed with cars, a massive sea of corn stretched endlessly out towards a dark smudge of trees off in the distance. With two dozen checkpoints, hidden clues to decode, and four miles of pathways, Blood Moon’s nationally recognized corn maze took half the day to explore. And until the emergence of real vampires onto the worldwide scene spoiled all the fun, the maze had also opened up once a year at midnight for Bite of the Living Dead, a horror extravaganza complete with volunteers from the high school band chasing you through the maze dressed as zombies. Totally my scene.

Ethan and I waded through the crowds, past the pumpkin carving table, around a fenced-in area with bleating sheep, goats giving a destruction of four-year-olds some serious side-eye, and what had to be the world’s most patient llama, towards the food trucks, which had gone all out for the occasion with the fall-themed food. Blair’s was dishing up wedges of pumpkin pie speared with sugar cookie bats. An ice cream truck listed Cranberry Coffin, Chocolate Grave Digger (complete with Oreos and worms), Vampire Bite (strawberry with miniature marshmallow fangs), and maple pecan.

Dallas jerked his chin as we passed The Iron Spoke’s truck where the werewolf and hippogriff sandwiches smelled suspiciously like brisket and turkey.

“Brody rides his ass about that every year.”

“Because of—?”

“That, and the idea of eating Harry Potter’s friends causes meltdowns.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

We reached the edge of the stage. Setting down my gear, I twined an arm around Ethan’s neck. His thumbs hooked into my beltloops, tugging my hips flush with his.

“Sumatra can get Violet a double hippogriff and a gravedigger malt if they have it. Extra Oreos.”

His cheek twitched. “Does he need to pick out all the gummi worms, or is Her Furry Majesty eating those now?”

I bit his ear, tucking my nose into his collar to inhale the scent of soap and espresso off his skin. “Shut up and bring me my chocolate.”

The stage was a simple wooden platform that got thrown together and torn down every year. Free-standing sound and lights. The small rise allowed line of sight all the way out to the highway, a crowd of what had to be over a thousand people waiting for hayrides, choosing fat orange pumpkins, and eating corndogs and kettle corn out on picnic blankets on the nice fall day. I stepped up to the mic with my acoustic, palms suddenly sweaty. How long had it been since I’d stood in front of a crowd without my bandmates?

Tightness formed in my throat. I caught Ethan’s eye from over by the food trucks. Raising his thumb to his lips, he kissed my daisy. A fluttering sensation filled my chest.

“Hey, y’all—” I started.

Into a dead mic. Frowning, I toggled the power switch. Checked the connection. No joy. Murmurs broke out. There was a flash of movement—Ethan pushing back through the crowd. But I was already following the cord back to the speakers, looking for the faulty connection, the extension someone forgot to plug in.

Which was how I found them—the two severed ends of the mic cord sliced cleanly through as if they’d been cut with a knife.

* * *

While Psychedelic Sugar Chicken went on in my place, the five of us formed a huddle off away from the crowd.

“Round the horn,” Brody announced. “And then I’m calling this. Ethan.”

“We pull out.” He couldn’t seem to stay in one place, eyes scanning the highway, the parking lot, the rippling field of corn. “They’re here, even if we can’t see them. No way to know what else they’ve screwed with, if they’ve rigged the stage to collapse, planted a bomb—”

I rubbed my temples. “Our people have been in place since dawn. There’s been no sign of any other shifters. Or vamps, for that matter.”

“Which tells us they know what they’re doing,” he shot back. “I don’t know how they’re planning on grabbing you, and I don’t want to wait around to find out.”

“We’ve been over this. It’s our best chance to end it. Yes, there’s some risk. We knew that going in.”