Free Angel Lane by Sheila Roberts Page A

helped herself to another piece.
    â€œDon’t be a pig,” scolded the woman, who also took a second helping.
    Hmmm. Oink, oink.
But pigs made good customers. “If you think that’s good you’ll have to come by sometime and try my truffles,” Jamie said.
    â€œDo you give samples?” asked Miz Piggy.
    Jamie suspected this woman could easily sample her right out of business. “Sometimes,” she said evasively.
    â€œI’ll have to come check them out,” the woman promised, and took a third piece of fudge. “Thanks.”
    Maybe she should have just given the woman the whole plate and been done with it. Oh, well. What did she expect? She was offering free chocolate. Who could resist that?
    A little ghost of wind swept under her gypsy skirt, raking her legs with icy fingers and making her shiver. If she’d known she was going to be so cold she’d have bought some long underwear. Thank God this ended at seven. She and Emma had a date with a bowl of candy corn, a scary movie (or so Emma claimed), and some drink called a Vampire’s Kiss that sounded like it involved enough alcohol to stock a liquor store. Maybe they should have had the alcohol before the Goblin Walk. It would have helped her stay warm. She sneaked a look at her watch. Six o’clock. An hour left to go. Ugh.
    Next time she checked her watch she still had forty-five minutes left to stand out in the cold. Time wasn’t exactly flying. It wasn’t even marching. It was just strolling by, taunting, “Neener, neener,” with each icy breeze that tickled her skin. She was so not doing this again. She didn’t care if it was good for business. They didn’t get as many people down here anyway.
    She looked across the way. Roxy and Monique were packing it in, turning tail on the approaching stream of trick-or-treaters and ducking into their shops. Jade Forrester, who owned Jade’s Jewels, hadn’t even bothered to show. That left only her, and she didn’t have the heart to close up. She sucked it up, pasted on a smile, and braced herself for the next wave that came at her in a wall of noise.
    It was almost like some giant amoeba, she thought, just one big, noisy cloud of masks, robes, and reaching hands. The blob surrounded her. It took, squealed, and then moved off down the street, making her think of dragons parading through San Francisco’s Chinatown on Chinese New Year. Somewhere toward the end of the tail, however, she distinguished a sound that wasn’t happy. Crying.
    She peered past a noisy clump of teenage boys trying to hide their age and size under bedsheets to see a wilted little fairy with chestnut curls dragging a plastic pumpkin full of candy and looking like she’d witnessed the end of the world.
    Jamie left her candy bowl for the boys to raid and hurried to the little girl. “Sweetie, are you lost?” Of course she was. “Where’s your mommy?” Well, duh. Like the kid would know?
    â€œI want my grandpa,” the child sobbed.
    Lost children weren’t exactly Jamie’s specialty, but she did know enough to call the cops. “Here,” she said, putting a hand to the child’s back and propelling her toward the store. “Let’s go see if we can find him.”
    The little girl moved right along with her, which was good in a way, because Jamie could get her to safety and hang on to her. But this kind of cooperation made her wonder if the little girl’sparents had ever warned her against talking to strangers. “What’s your name, sweetie?”
    â€œM-M-Mandy,” the child sobbed. “I want my grandpa.”
    â€œI know. We’re going to find him. What’s your grandpa’s name?”
    â€œGrandpa.”
    That narrows it down
. Jamie unlocked the shop and brought Mandy the fairy inside, locking the door after them so no one would think she was open for business and come in. She quickly