A. Emeritus

Chapter 13

For the ENTIRE MONTH of October I followed my dad. There's one week left until the end of the month, and the current matter at hand has become preparing for the Devil's night mass and the annual Halloween soiree. It's an all hands on deck matter, as long as I can remember Halloween has been one of our biggest holidays. I'm trying to remove the floor wax in the ballroom with Fire and a couple other ghouls. It went from a two person quick job to five people and agony, all because we can't find the floor stripper.

We decided the best thing to do would be to divide and conquer. We each have a bottle of the polish stripping spray and various tools to scrub with. I'm working tile by tile and hating every minute. While I wait for the spray to break down the wax I sit back and watch the others work, each is using their power in some way to help them. Fire is trying to heat the wax with the remover, the earth ghoul on the other side of the room has abandoned all tools and spray to try and sand blast the polish off. The two air ghouls teamed up and are attempting... I have no clue what their plan is. I rack my brain to think of a way I could use my magic, I grab my spray and begin spraying a bunch all over not caring if I'm not that far yet. With my own power I bring the unused wire brushes over to me and use that to scrub the floor instead of scrubbing one by one. This will still take a while, but this will allow me to dry the floor as the section is done being scrubbed.

It took hours but each section got done in each of our own ways. The earth ghoul upon finishing gathered all the sand together and compressed it into a large piece of sandstone and put the wax in his bucket. The air ghouls scraped up one edge and somehow forced air under the pulled up section to make it peel and roll off, leaving a few rolls of wax. Fire melted every bit of floor wax and formed them into balls of hot wax before putting them in the bucket, and I ended up with a bucket of a waxy chemical sludge. The earth ghoul and air ghouls took the scraps and supplies leaving myself and Fire to sweep, mop and dry the floor.

We use the push brooms to move all the dust and dirt out into the balcony and sweep it off the edge into the garden below. After a very late lunch break I mop the floor while Fire follows me drying each section as we go.

I text Gizio that the floor is cleared so the ones on waxing duty can come. We go our separate ways to work on our next tasks, mine: changing the oil candles to the Halloween ones, and refilling them. With each candle that is taken down, the oil is poured into the new one and the new one is placed in the old one's spot. This job on average takes two hours, a little longer if I need to add more oil to a lot of candles. As I use the little tool that was made to reach the sconce candles, Papa and a group of ghouls come in with a large statue.

"Hey, what's that?" I call to them. My dad glares at me.

"Latine." He calls back, and I roll my eyes and draw in a breath.

"Quid est?"

The statue is stopped in the center aisle and lined up with the back window above the nave entrance.

"It's the statue of Lucifer we had made to replace the one that broke all those years ago." He explains. A couple air ghouls fly up and stand on the ledge the old statue sat on, and six aether ghouls use their powers to lift the statue and move it to where the original one sat. As it's placed the air ghouls up top hold onto it and guide it into the proper spot.

"Aster, how much is left?" One of the air ghouls calls to me.

"Ista duo et posticum." I reply, placing the candle I was holding back into place. The ghoul runs over to me, and places his hands on the short person reach tool.

"I'll finish the candles. Follow Papa, there's been a change of plans." He tells me and I release my grip on the tool and bounce over to Papa.

"Quando Latine loqui non possum?" I sigh, following him out of the nave. He glances down at me, but doesn't turn his head.

"You've done well. You speak Latin much better than you did at the start of the month." He gives a nondefinitive answer. I groan loudly.

"Egi libri omnes. Scis Latine scire. Quaeso." I whine. My dad sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"I guess, but you still need to practice occasionally." He agrees, "I'll have the table set up plans for you by the end of the night. If you're asleep when I finish them, I'll leave them on your nightstand." He looks at me, waiting for a response. I nod and continue walking along his side. "The ghouls working on rewaxing the floor said they'd get all the coats done tonight by midnight to keep on schedule as much as we can. So first thing in the morning I want you and Fire to start setting up the tables and such." Dad explains.

"Are the colors changing this year?" I ask and open the door to our office and sprint over to the big office chair, to plop myself into the chair before he can sit. Dad walks over and stares at me in his seat.

"I was thinking of having you help pick the colors. We did red and orange last year as you know." He tells me and begins putting fingers down. "What do you think we should do this year?" As he finishes his sentence he also puts his last finger down. It dawns on me what the countdown was and before I can scramble out of the chair, I feel the crushing weight of a full grown human on me and wheeze. "Piccolina, you should have seen this coming." He drawls and leans back, placing his feet on his desk. I place my right cheek between his shoulder blades.

"One wrong move and this suit gets bits of white paint embedded in the fibers." I feel his back stiffen before he stands abruptly. In a flash I'm out of his chain and sitting on my own desk, I cross one leg over the other before speaking. "If last year's colors went with the previous Papa's colors it would make sense to use your papal colors for this year." He nods and sits back in his own seat. I pull out my chair and put my feet on it.

"Are you saying to use green and black this year?"

"I think we have the ability to use more colors than that. Since green is already a little bit of a Halloween color, we could add in the classic colors like orange and purple." I lean over to grab my phone off the other side of Dad's desk, "I think we should keep the black table cloths and add green purple and orange accents around the room. The room already looks really bright, and a good amount of black could help keep the lights from getting too annoying." Phone in hand I begin to look for ideas on what we could do for the accents. Dad takes a deep breath and lets out a deep sigh.

"I'm going to let you handle the decorating plans this year." He folds his hands in front of him and leans back. "You're free until dinner. Close the door when you leave."

Bass in hand I stand at the door across from my one. I lean back and slam my foot just above the door knob, making the door swing open. I walk in and flip on the light; Fire throws his arm over his eyes before speaking.

"What the fuck!" he growls. Slowly his arm moves off his face and I see his eyes are a fiery orange. He sits up and looks around, eyes landing on me. "Oh, hey." He slips out of his bed and grabs his shirt off the floor.
"Bass." I say as I walk over and sit on his bed. Shirt half on Fire picks his off the wall and sits next to me. "Teach me what you know." Fire settles himself into place next to me and fixes his shirt.

"I'm so glad you're not only speaking in Latin. I don't feel obligated to speak back in Latin.

We start working on the bass lines for the songs that the band performs, take a break for dinner and continue until we both fall asleep. Myself falling asleep on Fire's bed, cross legged and hunched over face in the mattress. While Fire is sprawled across both his couch and coffee table, one leg hanging over the back of the couch, head hanging off the edge of the table.