Autumn Flame (Seasons #2 )

Chapter 12: The Haunting of Upper East Side

The basement is covered in giant cobwebs. Bloody limbs sit stacked in bins, and a creepy clown blinks with glowing red eyes from the corner. It cackles maniacally at a group of startled teens.

I love Halloween. I do. It's such a fun time of year.

Except when I'm finished costume shopping, and I can't locate Preston in this maze of a Halloween store in the basement of a building so old, it qualifies as a haunted house even without the seasonal decor.

Where is he?

I hear mooching sounds and follow them, side-stepping the creepy clown. I was right.

"No, you hang up," he says in a baby voice. A pink feather boa sits around his neck, and he twirls it seductively. It looks ridiculous.

"No, you first." Felicity says from the screen.

I decide to creep up on him in a wolf mask. Nothing else exists in his world except Felicity on his phone. It's almost too easy to scare him into precisely the high-pitched shriek I was fishing for.

Felicity bursts out laughing.

I lift up my wolf mask, grinning widely. "Hi, Fel. Little Red," I wink at Preston.

"Rhys," she says, breathlessly. "I love you for that."

I salute her as Preston hangs up. He clutches his pink feathers like a scandalized matron and gives me a look that would make even my great-aunt Muriel proud.

I chuckle. "Let's get out of here."

Bags full of Halloween paraphernalia in hand, we trek down Madison Avenue. The air is brisk. It feels like something dark is stirring in the city.

It is no more than a thought when a breeze picks up the dirt and leaves from the ground and swirls them at my feet. It sends a chill through the back of my hoodie where my back is exposed.

I hand Preston my bag so I can adjust my pants, and it is this simple act that stops us on the corner of 58th Street. I wish we'd stopped anywhere else in the city.

It happens in slow motion, like it did in the park on the day she arrived back in town.

I glance up, catch my reflection in the window of a restaurant, and spot her through it.

Preston notices me staring. "You alright–oh."

Melanie is seated at a white-clothed table, in a restaurant full of sharp suits. Meanwhile, it's hard not to notice our reflection: Preston and I look like hobos begging for ten bucks to buy Starbucks. She stands out like a rose in the snow.

The thought brings a bittersweet memory of the first time I met her, in Peregrine Hollow during winter break.

"Who's that with her?" asks Preston, leaning in to peek through the glass.

I hadn't even noticed the two men at her side.

"The one on the left is Mr. Beau," I say. "The judge of our marketing competition."

"Wouldn't that be against the rules?" asks Preston. "Favoriting a single student?"

I stroke my chin. "Good question."

"And who's the dude with the epic mustache on the right?" he says, pointing. "I want to be him when I grow up."

I shrug. "No idea." The man looks like someone in his sixties, but who could easily pass for mid-fifties. He's built like an Olympic swimmer with good posture, and an even better suit. He watches Melanie with a smile in his eyes.

"That," says a female voice behind us, "is Mel's uncle from London."

"Olivia," I sigh.

Preston clutches his chest, startled again. "I swear, this day..."