Free Tricks & Treats: A Romance Anthology by Alexis Abbott, Candace Osmond, Kate Robbins, JJ King, Katherine King, Ian Gillies, Charlene Carr, J. Margot Critch, Kallie Clarke, Kelli Blackwood

right, by the guiding light of instinct. But that guiding light has deserted him this time. That instinct has gone awry. So the question now is: what does he want to happen?
    “Renee, you can't! You can't!” Samantha's cry echoes over the howling wind. Her daughter halts in mid-stride, two steps from the edge. She turns her head a fraction. “Renee, you can't! This is not your time. Listen, Renee. He's coming.”
    “Mom?” The young woman spins around, scanning the snow and the treeline. When she doesn't see anyone, she shivers and hugs herself. Then she creeps back toward the blanket, looking this way and that, convinced she's just heard her mother's voice.
    But how is that possible? Bellamy asks himself the same question. To the best of his knowledge, no one in his charge has ever directly communicated across the barrier between life and the in-between. He watches in awe as Samantha kneels with her daughter, lifts up a corner of the blanket and wraps it around the crying girl.
    “Mom. I knew you wouldn't leave me.”
    “And I never will.”
    The blanket slips. Renee looks around again. Her mother isn't there. Instead, someone else is approaching through the trees. Footsteps crunch the snow. Birds fly out from bare branches. A lone figure appears. Tall. Lean. Wearing a Coast Guard jacket, jeans and a Klondike hat.
    “Tom?” Renee gapes at him, covers her mouth. She starts to jog over the hard, frosty grass. Stumbles. Almost falls, then speeds up, throwing caution to the wind. “Tom!”
    He waves first, sees her running. He's cold in his bones, exhausted, but he'd never not run to greet the love of his life when she's so happy to see him. He catches her, spins her round. They embrace like it's their last chance to show how much they mean it.
    Samantha smiles a secret smile as she returns to Bellamy's side. He's lost for words. They both watch and listen as the reunion unfolds. A miraculous reunion that should not have happened but has. Somehow.
    “Now do you believe me?” she nudges Bellamy.
    “I'm not... How did you do that?”
    She shrugs. “I'm sure I don't know. You're supposed to be guiding me, remember? I just got here.”
    “But once a soul has crossed over to the in-between, it can't return. It can't reach back.”
    She studies him from the corner of her eye. “But you can.”
    “I can what?”
    “You can cross over, back and forth, whenever you like.”
    “That's my calling. It's what I do.”
    She quirks an eyebrow. “Then give yourself some credit. You just let me save my daughter's life.”
    “I...?”
    “And I'll never be able to repay you. Bellamy, she's alive now because you willed me the power to intervene. Don't you get it? You didn't want her to jump any more than I did. We acted as one. That's how I reached her.”
    He's torn by yanks of forgotten emotion. Joy: the couple have their happy ending, and he's helped facilitate it. Fear: the couple have their happy ending, and in helping to facilitate it, he's interfered with primal forces, in ways that go against his calling. Will the powers-that-be look the other way, or will they make him answer for altering the young woman's fate? Hope: if something like this is possible, and he and Samantha haven't broken any cosmic laws, what else can he do with his power? Could he possibly interact with the living before they die, and not just watch and wait?
    Love: seeing Renee and Tom reunited like this reminds him what he lost, what he was denied. The freckled girl with the frilly parasol, standing on the dock, waiting for a sailor who would never return to her. If only someone had intervened to save him that day in the midst of battle, things might have turned out differently. They might have lived a long, happy life together...
    “You want to know something?” Samantha says to him, still watching her daughter.
    “Yes,” replies Bellamy.
    “You said you came to help me, but I think maybe there's a flip-side to that coin.”
    “A