Page 118 of Some Kind of Haunted

Logan shifts, almost like he’s uncomfortable. When I think of him as always golden, always at ease, and never uncomfortable.

Maybe you were so uncomfortable in your own skin that you had to imagine he was carefree in his, a little voice inside me suggests.

It feels a little bit like an indictment, and I’ve had enough of that sort of thing recently, but I don’t think it’s wrong.

“Hey, asshole,” I say, and Logan looks at me. “I love you, you know.”

Thereby losing all possible points for the year. Maybe for life.

Logan shakes his head. “Get it together, Lex.” But I can see the gleam in his eyes. He looks at Jack. “I’m going to go to the jail. I might not be able to get Nora out until the morning, but it shouldn’t be too long.” He looks at me. Then back at Jack. “I think she might have hit her head, buddy. You might want to check for a concussion.”

Jack actually smiles. “I got it covered.”

I let go of Jack and launch myself at Logan, hugging him tight.

And he can posture all he wants, but he holds me. Hard. And he whispers, “I love you, too,” for good measure.

“Bring Nora home,” I tell him, pulling back, and delighted to see that I’ve left mud all over his shirt.

Logan nods, then takes off, his long strides eating up the night. Jack slides his arm over my shoulders. “I don’t have my bike down here—”

“I want to walk,” I tell him. “Without worrying about the light.”

“You want to test it.”

I laugh a little, leaning into him. “I know we blew up the deal. I know it in my soul, Jack. And I want to feel it. Over and over again. Celebrate it, even. And the best celebration I can think of is walking through this town and not thinking it’s the creepiest place I’ve ever been.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Jack says.

Another promise.

So Jack and I walk home.

As we get back into Midas proper, we walk through a happy fall night teeming with people—a very different night than the one I ran through earlier, knowing full well that my life was on the line. As well as everyone else’s.

I like this version a whole lot better. It’s like some kind of harvest festival. Laughter and shouts and low murmurs fill the air. I can hear kids laughing, and it’s clear that no one is afraid of the shadows. The smell of roasting nuts and sticky sugar is everywhere.

“Isn’t it . . . too late for all this?” I ask Jack.

He looks around, a little baffled, too. When he holds out his phone, I can see the time reads eight. Not midnight.

Neither one of us knows what to make of it, but Jack comes to a stop and points up. Lights gleam all around us, except the clock tower doesn’t anymore. Not like it used to. The spotlights still illuminate it, but it’s cracked. And the face is dull instead of shiny and oppressive.

The time on the face reads 11:59, but nothing is moving, nothing is ticking. It’s stopped there.

They’re gone, I think. And whatever happened with warped time doesn’t matter. It’s the night before Halloween again. The festival is right and perfect.

And the demons are gone.

It’s like the final knot of tension deep inside my gut loosens. We won. It’s over. I really do need Jack’s support then, because my knees feel a little weak.

He leads me into the diner and tucks me into a booth. The diner is so packed I don’t have a clue how there’s even one empty chair, let alone a whole booth, but there is.

“Owner’s prerogative,” Jack says, reading my mind. “I’m making you some food. Once you eat, I’ll take you over to my place. We’ll get you cleaned up and into bed and this time, there will be no sleepwalking.”

The way he looks at me when he says that makes my cheeks heat up, and I suspect he intends to hold me down to keep me in one place. I am totally okay with that.

As he heads back into the kitchen, I realize I know nothing about his place. I think I thought he lived in the Swamp Fox Shoppes complex somewhere, so this is a fascinating development.