"I don't care if your sister forgot the candy," he said. "I just don't want to listen to them fight about it." He started up the car and they took off.
"Seriously," she said, clinging to the inside door handle as Bob rounded a corner at thirty miles per hour. The G-forces would have flattened her against the window if she hadn't been belted in.
He drove north through the neighborhood and cut down a narrow road that ran between a housing project and a graveyard. Beyond the housing project were woods and train tracks, and then a neighborhood of tiny tract houses. He rounded another corner and slowed to a more respectable amount over the speed limit. Soon they were whipping past a pumpkin patch, under high tension power lines, and swerving into the parking lot of a supermarket.
Bob parked, jumped out of the car, and headed for the market. Elizabeth undid her seat belt and opened the door, but when she tried to move, she found that she could not bend forward to get out because of how the stays extended below her waist.
"Help, I'm stuck," she cried.
Bob ran back to her and took her hands. She swung her legs around and he hauled her upright. Tangled in her skirts, she stumbled into his arms and he caught her before she could fall. He set her on her feet and she pulled the rest of her skirts out of the car.
They ran into the market, where Bob snagged a hand basket and led her to the corner with all the Halloween goodies. The shelves were not quite bare, but the other last minute Halloween shoppers were making quick work of the remaining candy. Candy corn, little chocolate bars, Sweet Tarts. They grabbed indiscriminately at anything that looked good.
"Lady Luck, Lady Luck!" A passing child hung from his mother's hand and pointed at Elizabeth.
"What's the story with Lady Luck?" she asked Bob.
"She's in the lottery commercials. She has a long dress and carries a wand and she's blonde like you, but you're much prettier," he said.
"Bob! and Elizabeth, you look lovely, my dear." A smiling Miss Price pushed her cart into their corner. "Doing a little last-minute shopping?"
"We already ran out of candy," said Bob. He held up the basket.
"What wonderful costumes. Late baroque, right? Are you going to a party later?"
Elizabeth said, "No, but Alice said that she has something planned."
Miss Price nodded knowingly. "Of course she does. Have fun with the trick-or-treaters." She bid them farewell and pushed the cart on into the produce section where she picked up a couple more pumpkins.
"Do you think this is enough?" Bob showed her the basket. It was now completely filled with gaily colored cellophane packages.
"I hope so. I hope it isn't too much, because otherwise we'll be eating it until St. Patrick's Day."
They went through the express lane. When the cashier made another comment about Lady Luck, Bob reached into a display of Halloween items and plucked out a dainty pumpkin-shaped balloon on a plastic wand festooned with orange and gold curling ribbon. He presented it to her with a bow. "Lady Luck needs a wand," he said.
The wand was a big hit with all of the children they encountered on their way out of the store. Elizabeth touched the wand lightly to the head of a little boy dressed as Harry Potter, a jagged lightning bolt painted on his forehead, and wished him luck in his next Quidditch match while his sister, a princess, hid behind their mother.
The wand also made her popular among the trick-or-treaters at home. Dirk gave up twirling his fake mustache and Alice watched enviously. The children left her and her giant cat's tail as soon as they got their candy, and then started talking to Elizabeth. They asked her if she was a real princess, and if she could give their parents some good lottery numbers. Alice finally got tired of being ignored and went in to take a decongestant.
By nine o'clock, the flood of children had dwindled to a trickle of college students out for free candy.
"You're my same age," Alice, back on candy duty, told one as she pulled the candy bowl out of his reach. "You should be passing out candy, not collecting it."
The final trick-or-treater of the evening was Trip. He was not in costume and had only thrown a light coat over a button-down shirt and a pair of faded jeans. He bounded lightly up the front steps and caught Elizabeth about the waist for a quick kiss. He did not see Alice making gagging gestures, but Elizabeth did.
"What are you up to this evening?" she asked as she gently disengaged his hands.
"Yes," said Alice, "and why weren't you passing out any candy?" She sneezed.
"The upstairs people take care of that," he said with an airy wave. "Anyway, some friends of mine are having a party tonight. Would you like to come with me?" he asked Elizabeth.
Elizabeth opened her mouth to accept his invitation, but Alice pinched her arm and said quickly, "We've already got plans. Maybe next time you should give her more than five minutes' notice. Want some candy?" She held out her basket and Trip helped himself to a handful of chocolates.
"That's too bad," he said around a mouthful of Mr. Goodbars. "How about dinner tomorrow then?"
Before Alice could make up excuses, Elizabeth quickly agreed and enthusiastically returned the chocolaty kiss he gave her before he went down the steps to his car.
"What did you do that for? I could have gone to the party." Elizabeth glared at her sister.
"Don't you wonder why he asked you just now instead of last night? He must have known about the party last night. Maybe he had another date lined up and she backed out, so he figured he would just ask you."
"You don't know that," Elizabeth said.
"Yeah, but I can put two and two together. I guess you can't." Alice gathered up the candy bowl and the remaining candy. Elizabeth followed her into the house.
Bob had already shed his doublet and acquired a beer from the kitchen. He was lounging on one of the living room sofas and watching television. The living room smelled like burning pumpkin from where the candles had roasted the insides of the tops of the jack o' lanterns.
Dirk blew out the candles and added the smell of hot wax to the mix. "How much candy do we have left?"
"Only three pounds," said Alice. "We could just leave it out on the front steps. Somebody would take it."
"No, we can use it tonight." Dirk rose and flicked invisible specks of dust from his petticoat breeches.
"So what are your plans anyway?" asked Elizabeth.
"We're going to celebrate the witch's new year with our coven," said Alice.
Elizabeth laughed.
"No, for real. Halloween is Samhain, the pagan New Year. Our coven is going to meet in a special place and you're coming with us because we need to make up thirteen. One of the members has three little children and she can't get away for the evening."
"Where is this special place exactly?" Elizabeth was suspicious.
"Out on Belle Isle. There is this beautiful spot by the river that's partly enclosed in these granite cliffs." Alice's hands described a graceful arc.
Elizabeth had been on Belle Isle before. When they were children, their parents had occasionally taken them down to James River Park on the south side of the river. The river was very shallow at that point and they could cross out to the island by jumping from rock to rock. Belle Isle was a wild place with falling down buildings overgrown by Virginia creeper and poison ivy, and the remains of both a granite quarry and a hydroelectric power plant. She had no memory of any such scenic spots as her sister described.
At Elizabeth's doubtful expression, Dirk explained, "The city has done a lot of work out on the island in the last few years. They put in a bicycle trail and cleared out a lot of the brush. And they stabilized the buildings and made them less hazardous, so you can go in."
"Aren't all the parks closed at dark?"
"Yes, but we just jump the gates." Alice shrugged. "It's no big deal, lots of people do it."
Over on the couch Bob made a snort. "Lots of people get arrested too," he said.
Alice said, "We've never gotten in trouble. Would you like to come too?"
"No way. You need to somebody to call and help you make bail when the police catch you. And they will. They're going to have at least twice the normal police presence because of Halloween."
Penrose appeared beside Bob and nodded in agreement. "He's right. You really shouldn't go," he told Elizabeth. "You'll only get in trouble."
Elizabeth dug in her heels figuratively. If she couldn't do what she wanted, then she would do what Penrose didn't want. "When do we leave?"
"In a couple hours," said Alice. "We have to wash up, and change clothes, and get a few things ready to go. It'll be really fun."
Getting out of the stays was fun. Elizabeth undid the laces, and as the stays loosened, she was able to fill her lungs for the first time in three hours. She folded the ancient garments and hung the robe on a padded hanger in case some of the wrinkles were inclined to fall out.
Alice came into the room carrying a cup of salt which she placed on the vanity. "You need to wash with this for ritual purification. The idea is to make a fresh clean start for the new year, and to discard old bad habits and set goals for new ones."
Elizabeth looked at the salt doubtfully. This was asking a bit much of a cup of salt, and she decided that she would throw it down the drain as soon as her sister left her alone. "Is that so?" she asked neutrally, as she brushed the curls from her hair.
"We have to wear dark clothing too. Black or dark blue if you have it. If you don't, I can lend you some. That isn't part of the ritual, it's to help us get out to the island without being seen."
Alice wandered away to take her own briny bath and Elizabeth picked through her clothes. She had a pair of black jeans, a black sweater, and assumed she would be able to find a dark jacket on the coat tree downstairs. She took a quick shower without any salt involved and put on her bath robe. When she was about to rinse the salt down the drain, Penrose appeared.
He said, "Don't do that. It will corrode the plumbing. Allow me." He took the cup from her hands. "I'll put it back in the tin."
"Are you going to try to stop me from going?"
"Nope. Obviously your mind is made up. Besides, running around in the middle of the night with the neo-pagans won't hurt you, and if you get arrested, the worst that will happen is a charge of misdemeanor trespassing. If you want to have an arrest record, that is your own business. However--"
"However what?"
"I have a feeling that something isn't right. I can't put my finger on it though, and it might be my imagination. I'm sure you'll be fine as long as you're careful." He left with the salt.
"Are you ready yet?" her sister called from the hallway.
"In a minute." She hastily threw on the dark clothing that she had laid out and laced up her hiking boots. She found Alice and Dirk, looking very dark and mysterious, in Alice's room where they were packing up a small knapsack. Alice had her fair hair tied up in a black scarf and she did the same for Elizabeth. She explained, "The moon is really bright and our hair will light up like a flag if we don't cover it."
Before they left, Dirk went back to the kitchen once more with the knapsack and returned moments later, pulling the zipper closed. They all piled into Dirk's little red Volkswagen and drove down the hill and through downtown, which was empty of all revelry. He turned left off Main and as they cut across Cary Street, Elizabeth looked longingly down east to where the cluster of bars and restaurants in Shockoe Bottom pasted a yellow glow into the night sky. Dirk drove up into the Oregon Hill neighborhood and parked the car on a street which had been lined with old wooden houses, until the city had razed them all. The street now ran through an empty field, devoid even of trees.
They left the car and made their way toward where the Lee Bridge met the hill. Ducking out of sight of traffic, they scrambled and stumbled down a rocky slope beneath the bridge to a footbridge suspended from the traffic bridge. A short way along the footbridge, they found their way barred by a heavy metal gate which was locked up tight. A sign gave dire warnings against going any further.