Free Not On My Patch: a Young Wizards Hallowe'en Story by Diane Duane Page B

to get your beard growing, you’re stuck with it…”
    “And you don’t want to start shaving yet. Fair play to you there,” Ronan said, rubbing his own face, which was adorned under the makeup-grime with what looked like about three days’ worth of stubble. “Believe me, I don’t mind having a little holiday from the face scraping every now and then…”
    “How did you get here, though?” Nita said, taking the bag away from Kit and putting it back on the candy table. “I thought you’ve still got trouble with doing single teleports out of Ireland, because of all the old spell residue built up in the ground. Did you hitch over with somebody who had an authorized transit?”
    “Nope. No problems at all with single transits today,” Ronan said. “Because in the enlightened land in which I dwell, Hallowe’en is an official government holiday… and this being the case, the local senior wizards always open some ‘safe transport’ spots so people celebrating The Day That’s In It can spelljump in and out of the place without too much trouble.” He glanced around. “But speaking of my usual ride, where’s wee Darryl? Thought he’d be here.”
    “He had a change of plans,” Kit said. “Decided to stay over in Baldwin this year. It’s not that long really since he finished up his Ordeal, and his folks are still a little freaked out by it all. He doesn’t want to push them too hard on the letting-him-be-out-by-himself issue, so he’s letting them ride herd on him at Halloween this time.”
    “Pity,” Ronan said. “And he didn’t want to do one of his be-two-places-at-once tricks?”
    Kit shook his head. “Tom and Carl told him to cut back on the colocation stuff for a while till his power levels settle down. I think they’re afraid he’ll strain something.”
    “Or find out something about himself he shouldn’t know?” Ronan said. “Oh well. Too bad: always like having his smiling face around. So what’s on the agenda?” He looked over the table and picked up the trick-or-treat bag Kit had just put down. “We doing the same drill he coached me on? Go door to door, say the magic words, get people to give us sweets for nothing?”
    “That’s it,” Nita said, deftly reaching in as he was starting to open the bag, taking it away from him, and putting it back on the table. “And then over to Tom and Carl’s to see what their ‘haunted house’ looks like: it’s their turn to do one for the town this year. We’re just finishing up some last details here.”
    “Meaning stuff that should have been done two or three nights ago,” Kit said.
    Nita sighed: Kit had been teasing her about this for a couple of days. “Come on, it’s all in the dining room…” Nita said, and led the way through.
    The dining room table was covered with newspapers, and the newspapers were covered with the remains of prep for the night’s trick or treaters. There were about sixty or seventy more of the little paper bags decorated in orange and black, all now stuffed with candy and twisted closed: and there, still untouched, was the pumpkin.
    Ronan looked it over. “Not as big as some I’ve seen around here,” he said, sitting down at the table and picking up one of the bags. “Some of your neighbors have ones the size of beach balls.”
    Nita considered taking this bag too away from Ronan, and then shrugged. “Yeah, well,” she said, and leaned on the table, gazing at the pumpkin. “We’re kind of working our way back in gradually.”
    “Back in?” Ronan said, opening the bag and peering into it curiously.
    “Yeah. The way school around here used to be, when you were twelve or so everybody started thinking that that was too old to be trick or treating any more, so I stopped. And then the year after that, Kit and I had our Ordeal, and I got kind of distracted. Hallowe’en didn’t seem like such a big deal all of a sudden, and except for Dairine, the family kind of went off it for a while. And then