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“Ten million?” Ronan asked. “I can live with that.” Dreams of a big house and a yacht danced in his head, but the planchette wasn’t finished. “N-Y-S-O-N.”

“What the hell?” Mark asked. “Tennyson? The poet?”

Justin stood up and set a hand over his heart. “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all!” He and the other boys dissolved into hysterical laughter.

“This is bullshit,” Ronan frowned and pulled his fingers off the planchette. “I thought a real ghost wanted to tell me about my future, but it was just you assholes playing a joke. Dickheads!” Ronan laughed along with the other boys. His English class had just finished a unit on Alfred Lord Tennyson at school. Justin and Mark were classmates. It made perfect sense that the boys would do something to prank Ronan at the party to make sure he was worthy of being one of them, but he’d had no idea they’d punk him with a long dead English poet.

Either way, Ronan had passed the test. He was finally part of the “in” crowd.

Ronan never gave Tennyson another thought.

1

Ronan

Salem, Massachusetts, present day…

Ronan O’Mara stood in the princess aisle of the local Spirit Halloween. He was surrounded by little girls who wanted to dress like Ariel, with her clamshell bra, or Belle, with her bright yellow ball gown. He held up a Snow White costume for Everly to see.

“I don’t want to be a princess, Daddy.” Everly rolled her eyes dramatically. “I’m a third grader now. Princesses are for babies,” she declared, with her hands on her hips.

“Says who?” Ronan asked, his heart a touch broken. Everly was growing up way too fast. All he wanted to do was hold on to his little girl a bit longer. Was one last year in a princess costume too much to ask?

“I’m gonna be a villain this year, right, Aurora?” Everly smirked at her father as her friend ran up beside her.

“Right!” Aurora stood by Everly’s side. “I want to be Maleficent because she’s evil and beautiful!”

“I’m gonna be the Wicked Queen before she turned herself into a hag.” Everly beamed. “Bring me the heart of Snow White!” she bellowed.

“Villains are the next aisle over,” Ten called.

The girls ran toward Ten, while Ronan took one last, longing look at the princess gowns. “When the hell did this villain thing start and why are you behind it?”

“If we fight this, Everly’s just going to lean in harder.” Ten wore a knowing look. “Aurora will too and they don’t do a thing without each other. It’s a losing battle, Ronan. They’re growing up.”

Ronan shook his head. “She’s not even a tween yet. I thought I had a few years left before she turned her back on the sweet little girl she’s always been and turned into a sorceress.”

Ten snorted. “Cartoon villains are the perfect way for kids to test the waters. All of us have an inner villain inside us. It’s the person who cuts you off in traffic or laughs when a co-worker doesn’t get a promotion. Who among us hasn’t wanted to curse a baby because we weren’t invited to a party?”

Ronan understood what Ten was saying. He grabbed a Maleficent horned headpiece and put it on. “Take that, baby! I curse you in the name of the law.”

Ten giggled. “If we let the girls try evil on for size, they’ll realize they don’t want to turn puppies into a fur coat or murder a sibling to become king. Besides,” Ten grinned. “You look pretty badass in those horns.”

Ronan grabbed a black cloak and posed in front of the mirror at the end of the aisle. “Damn! I look good!”

“Uncle Ronan, we’re twins!” Aurora shouted, running toward Ten and Ronan. She was also dressed in a Maleficent costume. She gave a little twirl and her black and purple dress swished behind her.

“You look amazing, honey. Is this the costume you want?” Ronan asked. Fitzgibbon was at a therapy appointment and had sent Aurora with Everly to get a Halloween costume.

“My Daddy is gonna love it!” Aurora ran back toward Everly who was eyeing a gorgeous Wicked Queen dress.

“Did Fitz say anything about what kind of costume to buy when he dropped Aurora off?” Ten whispered.

Ronan shook his head. “No. He just handed me a hundred dollars and told me to buy whatever costume Aurora wanted. Is he going to be okay?” Fitzgibbon had shot and wounded Jude in the shoulder nearly six weeks ago. Jude was back to work and held no ill will toward Fitz, who’d been glamoured into shooting him by psychic Jonas Crawford, now a resident of the Essex County Jail, awaiting a murder trial. Fitz was still traumatized by what had happened and how close he’d come to killing Jude.

“It’s going to take a while,” Ten said. “You were somehow able to break Crawford’s hold on you, and Fitz thinks he’s a lesser man because he wasn’t strong enough to do the same.”

“He was strong enough to move the gun away from Jude’s chest so his shot hit him in the shoulder. I’ve been to the shooting range with Fitz more times than I could count and his aim is always dead on. He only misses when he wants to miss.”