Halloween at the Cafe

All hallows eve brings Tricks…at the café

Nina loves Halloween in its modern incarnation and thrills in decorating her café with kid-friendly spookiness. Candy and toy treats on the counter. Pumpkin spiced beverages. Ghost and bat shaped cookies and cakes. Glow-in-the-dark cotton spiderwebs. All the fun Halloween traditions.

Except for witch decorations, of course. Too on the nose for Nina.

But this Halloween, something feels…off. Wrong. Like a sour note on a keyboard. Larger crowd than usual. Like someone booked a party at the café and forgot to tell her. Everyone seems happy. Laughter and delight fill the room. So why does dread skitter down Nina’s spine?

Watching the crowds, Nina knows a problem when she sees it. And if she can’t solve the mystery, this Halloween trick won’t be a treat.

HALLOWEEN AT THE CAFE is available to read for free until the 1st of November, when another story will be posted. For readers who would prefer to read on a device of preference, or who would like their own personal eBook of this story, you can find it here.

BUT NOTE: check out Day 8 of the SPOOKY SEASON CALENDAR first!

Halloween at the Café

A Café Story

As a witch, Nina had a preference for the seasonal holidays. The solstices. The equinoxes. The fall equinox in September was joyous and frankly her favorite food celebration. The winter solstice both solemn and celebratory because the longer days were returning. The summer solstice carried all the fun of long days with the knowledge that from that moment forward the days got shorter. The spring equinox brought rebirth and growing warmth.

But if she had to pick a holiday that wasn’t a seasonal shift to celebrate, spooky season and Halloween were the ones!

And yes, she realized it was a bit cliché to be a witch celebrating Halloween, but she didn’t care. She loved the holiday. Especially this modern version of it. Back in the day, it hadn’t been this big a deal except in a few places as the year turned and, for some pagans, the new year started. The first few days of November were the celebration of the dead in a lot of areas, so there was that.

In the last fifty years, Halloween had really taken on a life of its own, though. Separating from its roots in celebrating the dead and the changing year, the time when the veil between living and dead was thin, and had become just an all-out celebration of all things spooky.

And both the bookstore and the café were dressed up for the season. As Halloween approached, the oranges and reds and yellows of fall were splashed around the café, with more pumpkins and gourds and straw corn stalks than really fit in the place. There were chalked autumnal and Halloween scenes on the windows, spooky spiderwebs that glowed in the dark dripping from the walls and around the arch between the bookstore and café, and dancing skeleton cutouts hanging on the walls.

Behind the counter, she had strings of pumpkin lights and skull head lights, their orange and white glows brightening the place as the sun set earlier every day. She even had bowls of wrapped candy and allergy friendly toys on the counter for anyone who wanted a pre-Trick or Treat gift. The cakes and cookies under the clear cake toppers on the counter were frosted with oranges and greens and purples and shaped into pumpkins and black cats and skulls and ghosts.

The one thing she did not have hanging around the place were witch decorations. No witch hat cookies. No witches flying on broomsticks across full moons. No Wicked Witch cardboard cutouts on the walls. She did have a cinnamon broom stick in one corner, but that was mostly because it smelled really good and added to the coffee and pastry scent in the café. That was over by the bookstore decorations, and it lured people into the café—she’d set up something with a peppermint scent nearer to the winter solstice to lure people in then. But cinnamon did the trick for autumn and for Halloween.

She didn’t use any witch decorations for two reasons. One, a lot of them played into stereotypes she wasn’t keen on, and too many of those stereotypes had bigoted origins. And two, it felt a little too on the nose.

She hadn’t used any vampire decorations this year either. Because, well, Rhys.

He wasn’t a vampire, but he did hunt them, and that just felt a little insulting. Plus, she was certain his brother, who was a vampire now, would find vampire decorations a good excuse to inflict some sort of mischief on the café. Something Nina could do without. She also didn’t want to inadvertently insult one of the regulars. She had three different vampires who came in a lot, and a couple that were not regulars but did drop in every so often. She did not have any mummy regulars, nor did she have any animated skeletons or pumpkins. And if there was a ghost in the café, it had never made itself known to her. Okay, there was that one time, but that was a temporary haunting and not a permanent ghost situation.

So Halloween decorations in the café were specifically designed to be neutral, fun, and not too spooky because a lot of kids came into the bookstore and café and she didn’t want to scare them.

At home, she put out Halloween candy in a large pumpkin bowl for kids coming by to just take what they wanted—she lived in a place that actually still got quite a few Trick-or-Treaters—but on Halloween night, she stayed open late to hand out candy here. A lot of the stores on their street did the same, so kids had a guaranteed safe place to go. It was a big deal and she loved it.

The countdown to the Trick-or-Treating started, for her, early in the morning right after she opened the store.

Boo settled happily onto his stool by the register, which was covered by a sheet with “ghost eye” cut outs on it. A real “boo” for her familiar. Which, he loved. She had a plastic “caldron” and a plastic jack-o-lantern on the counter full of wrapped pieces of chocolate. And she had a teal plastic pumpkin bowl filled with little toys and stickers and allergy friendly treats.

The espresso machine hummed as she served the morning crew, many of whom took advantage of the day and ordered pumpkin spiced coffees—she’d created her own blend to make sure there was a nice mix of cinnamon and ginger. The tea drinkers were treated to spiced teas in autumnal flavors. And by midday, she was glad she’d ordered extra Halloween cookies and cakes because she would have sold out of those treats already if she hadn’t.

Everyone who walked into the café seemed in a celebratory Halloween mood. Some even wore costumes, and a few of the teenagers that strolled in all dressed up were so sweet she wanted to throw more chocolate at them than they took. She had bags and bags of treats piled up under the counter and back in the storage room. She’d nearly run out last year and had no intention of making that mistake again this year. But to be fair, last year was her first Halloween in the café. She was a lot better at judging what she needed to order to keep her customers—and in this case, Trick-or-Treaters—happy.

She had to be careful that any costume she wore was safe to wear around food, so nothing with pieces that might fall off. No glitter or stuck on pieces of fur. Which was fine because she didn’t want to dress as a werewolf anyway and potentially insult any of her shifter customers—she had regulars in that community too. She refused to dress as a witch for the same reason she refused to put out witch decorations. Something pop culture probably would have been great, but she was a little behind on modern pop culture and hadn’t had time to research any new costumes. So in the end, she’d chosen an old standard, something she’d dressed as before, and which didn’t have any parts that could interfere with her café’s cleanliness.

Nina dressed up as a skeleton. But her skeleton costume was a onesie pajama set so it was both cozy, comfortable, and fun for Halloween. An excuse to wear comfortable pajamas to work is always a good day. Even for the boss.

Akira worked the café on Halloween too, because she also loved the holiday. Akira chose a character from an anime series that Nina didn’t know, but it was a super adorable costume complete with a bright red dress and a sword. Akira kept the sword strapped to her back and managed to serve and make coffee and buss tables without ever bumping anyone with it. Which Nina found impressive. Because they were serving drinks and food, Akira hadn’t worn the wig that apparently came with the costume, but as far as Nina could tell, that didn’t matter.

Kids started coming through the door at three in the afternoon, the little ones who wouldn’t be out too late, and some teenagers after school. Nina happily gave them all treats. And some of the teenagers bought coffees to go with their sweets. By five o’clock, the café looked like a Halloween party, with all the people sitting around in costumes. It only occurred to Nina that so many people had come in wearing costumes and then stayed when she looked up and noticed that Agnes wasn’t in her usual seat. It was instead occupied by someone dressed as a giant bear-like creature wearing a laser gun strapped across its chest.

She paused mid-serve and looked around.

Yeah. Everyone in the café was decked out in costumes. Had someone sent out an email and organized this? Even last year when she’d dressed up and decorated the café, there’d still been a lot of people without costumes on here. Maybe there was a party going on nearby, or a haunted house pop-up or something?

In between customers, Nina asked Akira that question.

Akira blinked at her and looked around. “Oh, yeah. Wow. Hadn’t noticed everyone is in costume. That’s kinda cool and also a little weird, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.” Or maybe just…coincidence?

Except Nina wasn’t keen on coincidences.

Leaving Akira to handle the next few customers, she ducked into the bookstore to ask if there was supposed to be a party going on or if the bookstore owner had noticed everyone dressed up. But in the bookstore, there were still plenty of people not costumed. A few were dressed up, and there were two grownups with a gaggle of small children all in costumes in the kids’ section of the store. Everything here looked like a normal Halloween type of day. The owner hadn’t heard about any pop-up haunted houses or parties either.

“Just your luck you’ve got a café full of happy Halloween people,” the owner said with a grin, adjusting her seasonal bat glasses.

Nina smiled back, but inside she was…leery.

When she returned to the café, she paused in the archway between businesses as she felt a very faint zing.

Oh oh. That was magic.

But Nina hadn’t set any spells on this entrance that weren’t protection wards. She’d set a number of them on her own door and on the door to the bookstore. She’d have done that under normal circumstances, but also Rhys’s vampire-wizard brother, Virgil, was a pain in her ass and occasionally tried to hexed the café because he didn’t like Rhys dating her. Also sometimes other weird stuff happened here and she wanted to protect the bookstore and the bookstore owner.

She only had one small ward on the archway, though, because danger would have to get past all the wards on both front doors before ever getting near the opening between businesses. It had felt like a waste of magical energy to set anything more on that passage.

Maybe she should have.

This didn’t feel like Virgil magic, though. Wizard magic had a specific…texture for lack of a better word. A texture she could sense if she brushed up against it. This didn’t have that texture. This spell had the feel of witch magic to it. And not a witch Nina was familiar with.

She scanned all the costumed clientele. No one seemed to be bothered, in pain, or upset. No one was watching her. Most people were laughing and chatting or deep in their books or phone screens. The gaggle of teenagers near the front, in the window seat where Rhys sat when he was here, were talking animatedly and loudly enough Nina caught a few words from halfway across the room. They were all dressed in costumes from a science fiction movie Nina had seen in the theaters a few years ago. Another group near the back of the room were all wearing a mixture of costumes from classic zombie to sexy nurse. Everywhere she looked, people in costumes, and none of them seemed to notice that that might be weird.

She’d have started to doubt herself, figured maybe it was just a coincidence. If she hadn’t just felt that spell on the passage between bookstore and café.

She smiled at people and asked how everything was, checking in, making sure all was well as she headed back to the counter. Akira was leaning against the short door that led back behind the counter, talking with Boo, who was also watching the crowd. Boo didn’t talk back to Akira, of course. Even if Akira knew Boo was a familiar that didn’t mean he could just go around talking in front of her during business hours. But he and Akira did get along very well. And Nina noticed he was nodding in agreement with whatever Akira was saying.

Nina gave him a look and he let out a little huffing cough before starting to lick his front foot like an ordinary cat. Akira straightened from the low door so Nina could join her behind the counter again.

“Everyone who has walked in here and walked out since you went next door has had a costume on,” Akira said. “There has got to be a party or convention or something. It’s like Comic Con in here.”

“Mmm.” Nina nodded, but her mind was running through the feel of that spell on the archway, trying to process what it had been, what the spell felt like. Since it didn’t seem to be hurting anyway, she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. For all she knew, some other witch who just really really liked Halloween had done it for a fun sort of prank. A trick in the Trick-or-Treat game. Even though Nina had more than enough treats for everyone.

“Uh…” Akira nudged Nina, pulling her out of her thoughts.

Nina blinked at her.

Akira nodded to the arch between bookstore and café. “I just watched someone in ordinary clothes walk through from the bookstore and the minute they stepped into the café, they were wearing a costume. See the Hello Kitty? That’s the one.”

Shit. Nina had been afraid of that. But that Akira had seen it happen was Not Good. “Did anyone else see that?” Nina asked quietly.

“Not that I can tell. No one reacted to it happening anyway. And honestly, if I hadn’t been looking right at them when they walked into the café, I wouldn’t have noticed either. I haven’t seen that happening with anyone else coming in.”

Probably because the archway “trick” spell ensured everyone was just coincidentally looking somewhere else whenever a new person without a costume on walked into the café. If that were the case, though, Nina wasn’t sure how Akira could have seen the change. But she realized she herself hadn’t noticed people coming in and suddenly having costumes on either. That her gaze had never settled on anyone walking in. She’d been too busy or just happened to be looking away.

“This is really weird,” Akira murmured.

Nina nodded. She made an effort to watch the bookstore archway, waiting for someone new to come in or out while Akira served the Hello Kitty customer—who seemed very happy with their costume and preened when Akira complimented it. The customer didn’t find it strange that they were in a costume they hadn’t been wearing until they stepped into the café.

“Yup,” Akira said as the customer took their coffee to a nearby table where several other costumed people were already sitting and was offered a seat. “Weird.”

Nina had no idea if those people really all knew each other, but at least everyone was being kind and friendly. Despite being bespelled.

How the hell had someone snuck a spell onto that archway without her noticing?

Her immediate suspect was, of course, Virgil. But she and Virgil had an arrangement, which he took advantage of. He was allowed to come sit in the café and glare at her all he liked, and in exchange, he wasn’t allowed to set any more magical spells or vampiric tricks on the café, Nina’s customers, or Nina. Virgil made a regular trip to the café just to sit in the corner and glare at her, and she didn’t kick him out or glare back. And the whole thing worked out well for both of them because Virgil hadn’t caused trouble in her café in months.

But if not Virgil, then who?

Because she was making an effort to stare at the passage between bookstore and café, Nina spotted the next customer walking in. A young man dressed in a hoodie and jeans, a coat folded across his arm, carrying a reusable bag from the bookstore that appeared to be full. Before passing through the archway, his dark curly hair was cut short to his head, his dark brown skin was free of makeup or mask, and his clothing fit the weather. By the time he was on the café side of the archway, he was decked out for a masquerade, complete with red and black sequin and feathered carnival mask, a checkered red and white harlequin costume, and a black cape draped over his shoulders.

And weirdly, he still carried the reusable bag full of books. His coat was gone. His ordinary clothes were gone. But he still had the bag of books?

This was so weird.

He didn’t seem upset with the outfit when he stepped to the counter. In fact, he fussed with the lace cuffs on his costume and gave a very elegant nod when Akira complimented his look.

When they were alone again, Nina said, “Okay. This is weird. And probably not good. But no one seems bothered. No one is getting hurt.”

The problem was, she couldn’t tell who was in here wearing a real costume, and who was in here wearing a bespelled costume.

“No one seems to notice,” Akira said. She looked around. “And no one seems to be leaving either. Have you noticed? Like, for the last…fifteen minutes or so. People come in, costumed, have a seat, and no one leaves.”

Nina hadn’t noticed, though she had been waiting for someone to walk out through the bookstore exit so she could see if they changed back to ordinary clothes. No one had but she hadn’t been watching that long.

The bell over the front door rang. She turned in time to see a new customer coming in wearing a costume, but not in time to see if the costume appeared after they entered or if they’d been wearing it before coming in. And when she asked, Akira hadn’t noticed either.

Nina went to the front door and held a hand over the frame, looking for a spell like the one on the archway. And there it was! Despite the wards and protections. A harmless seeming “trick” of a spell that hadn’t triggered any of her wards because it wasn’t a “harm” spell. A “trick” that doesn’t cause anyone physical pain and doesn’t cause any deadly harm to the café and its customers wasn’t something she’d warded against.

She faced the café again, just as someone else walked between bookstore and café. They went from wearing a pants suit, like someone on a break from an office job, to wearing a pirate costume, complete with ballooning pants tucked into knee high boots and a cutlass tucked into a thick red sash around their waist. Nina really hoped that cutlass was plastic and as fake as the costume.

That thought had her looking around at all the costumes that came with swords, laser guns, and knives. She shivered. She really really hoped those were all fake.

Just costumes. Everything seemed to be just costumes. And no one was arguing or seemed upset. In fact, there was a lot of laughter and talking. Like a full blown party happening in the café between people who hadn’t known each other just a few minutes ago. The newly minted pirate waved to someone across the café, ordered a latte, then joined a completely different group after Nina served them their drink. People moved between tables, sat and chatted with one group. Waved someone over from another. Like everyone knew everyone in the café.

Which was…statistically improbable.

“It’s like we’re having a party,” Akira said. “But someone forgot to tell us.”

That was exactly what it was like.

Nina wanted to close the café, keep anyone else from coming in. But how did she explain to the bookstore owner that they both needed to lock their doors and kick out the bookstore customers because something weird was going on in the café? There wasn’t a gate between the two businesses. They’d discussed it, but they were both open during the same business hours every day. Nina needed the traffic from the bookstore. And the bookstore benefited from having the café open when it was too. So they’d decided they didn’t need to invest in that particular extra expense when Nina had leased this location two years ago.

She was regretting that decision now. But only because she wanted to protect the bookstore customers by preventing any more from coming into the café.

Asking the bookstore owner to close her store on a busy night, when kids were starting to parade past outside, popping in to Trick-or-Treat, wasn’t something Nina wanted to do. But locking her own front door wouldn’t fix the problem with people still coming in from the bookstore.

And all those Trick-or-Treaters! She wanted to participate in the fun, but if they came in and couldn’t leave…?

She went ahead and locked her front door. Watched as a gaggle of kids and parents, the kids probably no older than seven, walked right past the café without seeming to notice. They went into the bookstore, got treats from the register desk, and walked out, everyone happy and chattering. No one even glancing toward the café.

Okay. That was weird. But also maybe good. Nina scanned the café. Yeah. No little kids were here at the moment. There’d been kids coming in and out all day, but there didn’t seem to be anyone younger than fifteen or sixteen in the café at the moment. There were some teenagers, though. And that worried Nina as much as having younger kids in the place. Teenagers were still kids.

She went back to the counter and told Akira, “I’ve locked the front door so no one else can come in. We’re almost completely full now anyway, since no one is leaving.”

“Good idea given…” She waved at the costume party going on. “But what about the bookstore people?”

“Working on that part.” Nina was going to have to put a spell of her own on the archway that deflected customers, something that made them uninterested in coming into the café, but didn’t repulse them or anything. She didn’t want to accidentally destroy her own business while she tried to keep people safe. But she did need to keep more people from walking in.

Then she had to figure out how to unhex everyone.

She was contemplating spells, considering the best option to put on the archway, when one of her regulars came to the counter, looking…unhappy.

Greta was a vampire, but they didn’t discuss that out loud. Greta wasn’t like a Virgil kind of vampire, whose sly sneaky nastiness caused trouble. She was quite young in vampire years, and she only ever came in to sit and quietly read and sip at coffees because she could still stomach a little non-blood liquid. Nina liked Greta and was happy to have her as a regular.

At the moment, though, Greta didn’t look like a happy customer. She didn’t look exactly angry, but she didn’t look happy.

And, Nina realized, she also didn’t seem to be wearing a costume. She was dressed in jeans and a lovely oversized red sweater that looked as soft as the pajama costume Nina was wearing. Her skin looked a little rosier than usual, which meant she’d probably fed recently. But she wasn’t wearing a mask or Halloween makeup. Her sweater didn’t even have a cute Halloween pattern or anything. She looked ordinary. As ordinary as a vampire could look, really.

The only person in the café who looked so ordinary.

Even before Greta said anything, Nina had a horrible, sinking feeling in her gut. A suspicion that had her tensely waiting to hear why Greta looked so unhappy.

“I think there might be a problem,” Greta said.

“Ya think,” Akira said, but her sarcasm wasn’t directed at Greta. She was scowling at the crowds, looking as nervous and upset as Greta looked.

“What’s wrong?” Nina asked.

“Okay, so, you know how I…” She glanced at Akira, then to Nina said, “I have a very limited diet. And mostly can’t…eat solid food.”

Nina nodded, also glanced at Akira, but Akira didn’t show any sign that she thought this conversation was odd.

“Well, I just ate a muffin,” Greta said. “An entire muffin. It tasted great. And it settled fine. I’m…digesting it now.” She leaned in close to Nina and lowered her voice. “I didn’t throw it up. An entire muffin. Me.”

Yeah. That was bad. As a young vampire, Greta could still take tiny bites of solid food if she needed to pretend to be human. But she couldn’t have stomached an entire muffin without throwing it back up again. Just like the coffee she took tiny sips of. She could manage liquid better, so sometimes she could even finish an entire cup of coffee if she went slowly. But Greta definitely shouldn’t have been able to eat an entire muffin without consequences.

“Any stomach ache?” Nina said, afraid to look closely at the suspicion now knocking at her brain.

“Nope. Feel fine. Feel great even.” Greta leaned even closer. “But I can’t hear all the conversations in the café anymore. Like not distinctly. And I’m not feeling…quite like myself at the moment.”

“You feel strange?”

“No,” Greta said, “that’s the thing. I feel normal. But I haven’t felt normal in five years. Not since…you know.”

Nina nodded. She did know. She was also afraid she knew why Greta felt normal too.

“When you come in here,” Nina said, slowly, “you’re usually ‘wearing’ a costume, right? Dressed to look like a regular person. So you don’t stand out.”

“Yeah,” Greta said with a shrug, though her gaze danced to Akira and back.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Nina said. She looked around the café, horror slowly dawning. “I think you’ve become your costume.”

“Huh?” Greta asked.

“Huh?” Akira said.

Nina gave Boo a long look where he was sitting up on his stool. He wasn’t licking his paw at the moment. Instead, he was staring intently at Nina.

Nina almost didn’t want to say this aloud.

“You’re dressed as a ‘normal human,’” Nina said. “So you are now a normal human.” Nina glanced down at her skeleton outfit and groaned. “Oh no. This is bad.”

By the time Nina had gotten her phone out of her pocket to text Rhys, she could feel the spell taking over. She glanced down at her hands and there were just bones clacking around. She didn’t feel like she was nothing but bones. But when she looked at her body, she was a skeleton inside black pajamas. At least she was covered up!

She looked up at Akira. Who now had cartoon features, big anime eyes, and hair the color of pink cotton candy styled in pretty waves that held in a way natural hair wouldn’t. Nina scanned the café. This was so not good.

The party vibe continued, but now there were actual werewolves and vampires and space cowboys and superheroes walking around her café. Someone dressed like Superman flew between tables and used laser eyes to heat someone else’s coffee. The recipient of the warmer coffee thanked “Superman” like this sort of thing happened every day.

A werewolf howled and one of the other anime characters did a hand gesture that created actual magic, a portal from which she pulled a bejeweled crown. No one blinked at the portal. Or the bejeweled crown.

The customer who’d walked in and suddenly been wearing a Hello Kitty costume walked past the counter looking like a large cat wearing a skirt and a red ribbon by their ear. The one who’d turned into a pirate swished their sword around in a dramatic way that had Nina wincing because the sword definitely had the glint of real metal now.

So far, no one had fired off one of the various laser guns or swung a sword into anyone. There were some fresh spiderwebs on the wall from that one person dressed like Spiderman, but otherwise there didn’t seem to be any damage being done and no one was hurting anyone else. The two “vampires” hadn’t lunged in to drink blood from anyone. The “evil villain” characters weren’t taking hostages. The superheroes didn’t try to leave the café to go rescue anyone. The guy dressed as a firefighter didn’t start a fire to put out.

But all the costumes had changed and taken on a definite reality. Everyone was now their costume.

And Nina wasn’t sure how to break this spell!

Oh. She glanced at Boo as a whole new worry hit her. Could she even do magic as a skeleton? Was Boo a familiar now or just an ordinary cat since that was his “costume” like Greta’s was “normal human.”

She slid close to him and murmured, “Magic?”

He shook his head.

Shit. She was afraid of that. She definitely needed help now. Someone with real magic but who knew what to do with it. She looked at the cellphone in her skeleton hand and tried to open the screen with a bone finger. Which did not work. Great.

She looked at Akira, but Akira had wandered off into the crowd and was doing some twirling and laughing that seemed very out of character for her.

So Nina turned to Greta. “You still with me?” she asked.

The sound came out hollow and echoey, like it originated in her chest and not from her mouth. Because she didn’t have vocal cords at the moment. Or lips. Or a tongue. She could now feel that she was just bone. And yet she still also felt like herself with things that should work like skin and muscle over the bones of her skeleton.

But at least she could speak even if it didn’t sound like her anymore.

Greta nodded, frowning at everyone in the café. “Akira seemed aware she was not an anime character right up until she started to think she was an anime character. I still feel like a normal human being.”

“Good because I need a normal human being,” Nina said. Or tried to say. Speaking this way was so strange! “I need you to call Rhys on my phone, tell him we need help. But he has to come to the café dressed as a wizard.” She paused. Sighed. “And if Virgil is around, bring him, but he also has to dress as a wizard, not a vampire.” She needed magic help and Virgil going full vampire instead of wizard wouldn’t help anyone.

The clacking of her teeth and jaw bone, without the padding of gums and lips and tendons, made Nina wince again.

“Can you understand me?” she asked because what she was hearing sounded progressively echoey and deep and awkward. No tongue made it hard to form words.

Greta nodded. “I got the gist. Rhys. Wizard. Virgil. Wizard.” Greta shivered a little. “I’d rather not be around Virgil, though.”

Yeah, Nina got that. But she needed magical help and, whatever else he was, Virgil was also a wizard. And would remain one so long as that’s what he and Rhys dressed up as when they walked in.

If Rhys was wearing his day job clothes, he’d walk in and be an ordinary lawyer. No magic. No vampire hunting. No skills to help break the spell that had taken over the café. She had no idea what Virgil would become if he walked in wearing his usual—and frankly clichéd—black, but it probably wouldn’t be a wizard with magic. Which Nina needed.

She hunted under the counter and came up with an order pad and a pencil. Folding her bone fingers around the pencil was tricky, but easier than trying to form words without a tongue or lips. She carefully wrote out what she needed Rhys to know as Greta held the phone to her ear, waiting for an answer.

Greta explained the situation succinctly and quickly, and Nina was grateful that Rhys didn’t appear to argue with her or force her into repeating the details. Though Nina couldn’t hear his side of the conversation, Greta didn’t appear to be getting annoyed so Nina assumed Rhys just believed the story.

After Greta hung up, she slid the cellphone across the counter to Nina and said, “He’ll be here soon and dressed as a wizard. He mumbled something about needing a costume for that, though, so it might take him a bit to get here. Not sure anything is open with new costumes at this time of evening on Halloween.

Nina was worried about the same thing. Outside, the sun had set and the sidewalks were getting crowded with Trick-or-Treaters going from shop to store in their elaborate costumes. The sounds of loud chants of “Trick or Treat!” from next door in the bookstore set Nina on edge. She kept waiting for someone else to walk through the archway and be caught in the spell because she’d never gotten a chance to ward that entrance to keep people out.

With the front door locked, no one came in that way. And no one even jiggled the door latch and tried to come in. People walked past as if the café wasn’t actually there. Went into the bookstore and got their treats, then walked out again without glancing at the café. After watching at least four different groups do the same thing, Nina thought she might be able to relax a little. Whatever else the spell on the café was doing, it seemed to be deflecting any newcomers now that the place was full.

Although, that might mean Rhys and Virgil wouldn’t be able to get in either. Might not remember why they were on this street, dressed as wizards, walking into a bookstore. Shit.

Nina tried to cast a small spell, a simple levitation spell that should have lifted her pencil up off the counter an inch and then set it down again. The spell didn’t work. Nina couldn’t feel any of the magic she normally felt and had, frankly, thought was in her very bones. She ran a skeletal hand over Boo’s fur, after pausing to get permission—his nod was hesitant but accepting—and waited to feel that charge of strength. But nothing.

Boo was a normal cat at the moment and she was a skeleton. These were not roles designed to wield and power magic.

She walked carefully around the café, checking in on everyone, though she’d reached a stage where she could no longer speak to anyone. The sounds that came out of her mouth now were just clacks and clicks. But no one besides Greta seemed to notice that everything was so strange. And the fact that Greta continued to be aware of the strangeness, even though Akira had gone fully into her anime character, was a relief.

Nina wasn’t even sure why she was still aware of the strangeness. The skeleton costume hadn’t seemed to have wiped out her own personality, hadn’t replaced her with a different persona. She was still Nina, a café owner. She just wasn’t a magical witch at the moment. And her cat wasn’t a familiar.

She stood near the archway into the bookstore, watching for Rhys and Virgil, but also hoping to scare away anyone who came too close to the café. Fortunately, no one did. Unfortunately, that still left the question of whether or not Rhys would be able to remember the café and come inside when the spell was clearly keeping new people out.

She was glad at least the youngest people caught in the spell were the teenagers—who didn’t seem upset or hurt so that was some consolation—and the smallest of Trick-or-Treaters were safe from it.

As she waited for Rhys, Nina ran through the options for who might have set the spell. It was so specific. And strange, too, because she hadn’t had a feud with a fellow witch in decades. Not since her youth. That seemed to be a phase for witches, at least one “enemy” to feud with for the first thirty years. Then you ended up resolving things and getting on with your lives because there were too many good things in life to bother getting caught up in a permanent fight.

She hadn’t seen or heard from her former “enemy” in…twenty years? And the last time they’d met, they’d had a nice meal and a chat about life and current events. Carol had married a human man who believed in witches, settled in the suburbs, and had two kids. She still did some magic on occasion, specifically to ensure she looked the age her neighbors thought she was supposed to be, but otherwise had settled into a quiet, relatively mundane life. At least, that had been Carol twenty years ago. Nina had no idea what she was up to now.

Nina had a few very close witch friends that she’d kept in touch with over the years, but most of them were scattered to different corners of the world. They kept in touch by video chat these days, and regularly had full meet ups to celebrate different holidays—if they couldn’t make those meetings in person, they did virtual parties. But none of them would have pranked her store in a way that might harm her customers or her business. None of her friends typically pulled pranks at all, but especially wouldn’t pull a mean prank.

This wasn’t Virgil’s work. Not wizard magic. Definitely witch magic. So unless he bought some spells from another witch, he probably wasn’t involved. It would break their truce, again, and end his ability to glare at her from the corner of the café any time he liked.

Who the hell could have done this?

She was about to go back to the counter—where Greta was minding things for her thankfully—when she spotted Rhys at the door of the bookstore.

Rhys wearing a costume that… Well.

He was definitely a wizard.

Rhys was dressed in a long dark blue and purple coat over fitted blue pants and had a very large red cape over everything. He also had a goatee that hadn’t been there the last time she’d seen him—yesterday morning—and his hair was styled. Mostly he kept his dark brown hair loose and, unless he had a court appearance, a little messy. She liked that. But at the moment, he had a slick style that wasn’t like anything she’d seen from him before. He had a large amulet hanging around his neck that, at a distance, looked a little bit like a green eye.

Behind him, another wizard walked in. And if that wizard was Virgil, Nina couldn’t spot him under the giant gray hat, full white beard and floor-length gray robe. He carried a huge wooden walking stick and had a long rope-like belt wrapped around the robe.

Those were…elaborate wizard costumes.

The two men scanned the bookstore then headed toward the café. Nina watched the amulet around Rhys’s neck, which she’d assumed was plastic, flare with green light as he approached the café. The two men paused just at the archway, looking inside but apparently not seeing her because Rhys’s gaze moved right over her. Then they stepped through.

And froze. Blinking hard at the crowd. Frowning, Virgil in his Gandalf the Gray costume lifted his hand and a sparkling ball of white energy formed in the center. He closed his hand and put the energy out. Then tugged at his beard, hard, and cursed.

“What the hell is going on in this place?” He scowled at Rhys.

Rhys made some gestures with his hands and passed them over the green glowing amulet hanging from a thick chain around his neck. The amulet swished open and revealed a green stone, which he plucked out and held between his fingers. “Well.” He gave his head a little shake and replaced the green stone and the amulet swished closed.

“Find your girlfriend.” Virgil snarled. “This is weird.”

“Yeah it is.” Rhys scanned the café.

Since he didn’t seem to be noticing her, Nina stepped in front of both him and Virgil and waved a skeleton hand.

Virgil straightened, looking appalled. Rhys started to raise his hands, like he might cast a spell. Paused. Leaned closer and said, “Nina?”

She nodded. The gesture felt oddly like it might make her head fall off so she stopped. Without the muscle and skin holding everything together, being a walking skeleton felt…precarious. She gestured toward the counter and led them through the throngs of living costumes, the party still in full swing. Across the room the werewolf howled again. And the Spiderman person shot more spiderwebs from his wrist that landed up near the ceiling.

Rhys whistled under his breath and Virgil snarled.

At the counter, Greta shrank back from Virgil, but Virgil didn’t pay her any attention. And why would he? Neither of them were vampires at the moment.

Nina awkwardly picked up the pencil she’d been using and slid the note she’d written Rhys explaining all this across the counter.

“Everyone’s costume became real about a half hour ago,” Greta said, straightening next to Nina and giving Virgil a wary look. “So…Nina is a real animated skeleton. Boo is a normal cat. The guy dressed as Superman is Superman—he heated someone’s drink with laser eyes. Everyone in here is what they dressed as.”

A mummy lumbered past the counter, their aged and ragged wraps slipping off here and there and the dried husk of a body beneath was even creepier than Nina’s bone body. At least to her. She wasn’t sure if the mummy would feel the same.

Rhys looked hard at her. “Someone bespelled the café?”

She nodded, but gently. Then gestured for the notepad. He slid it back to her. She wrote in careful letters, her skeleton hand still awkward to use, “I don’t have magic like this. I need you to break the spell on the archway and front door.”

Rhys read the note and his eyebrows shot up. “That’s why we had to dress as wizards.”

She nodded again.

“Had I known, I might have picked a different costume,” Virgil said.

“No you wouldn’t have,” Rhys murmured, but his attention was on the archway. “Prank or attack?” he asked Nina.

She shrugged, a gesture which clicked the bones of her arms against her ribs, but the black pajamas covering her skeletal body softened the bump.

“Do you know who did it?” he asked, facing her again.

He didn’t even wince when looking at her as a skeleton and she was grateful. This was awkward enough. She shook her head no again, because she couldn’t for the life of her think who might have done something so potentially dangerous.

Nina had so much she wanted to say to Rhys about her fear for her customers but she couldn’t even make a facial gesture he might be able to interpret.

He reached across the counter and very very gentle settled his hand over her skeleton fingers. “We’ll take care of it,” he said.

If she could have smiled, she would have.

He tapped Virgil on the chest with his knuckles and then headed back toward the archway. Virgil gave Greta a slight frown, then followed Rhys.

Greta murmured, “I very much hope he forgets he saw me next time he comes in.”

Nina wanted to pat her but was afraid the gesture done by animated bones might be more disturbing than reassuring. She went around the counter to follow the men, and Boo jumped off his stool to follow.

Or at least Nina thought he intended to follow. But instead, Boo wandered off among the tables, rubbing up against people’s legs and accepting pieces of croissant when people gently handed him some of theirs. Boo never ate the food here. He wasn’t allowed croissants because the butter made his stomach upset. Apparently, he’d forgotten. Or maybe he thought since he was technically a real cat at the moment, the butter wouldn’t matter.

Nina was not looking forward to all the complaining about stomachache later.

Grabbing the notebook and pencil off the counter so she could at least try to communicate with the wizards, she wove through the crowd, trying not to get bumped because she didn’t want any of her bones falling off. So far, everything felt like it was stuck together, but without all the connective tissue and surrounding skin, the whole moving skeleton thing really did feel precarious. Again, she was glad to be in the black pajamas.

She dropped the notebook and pencil into her apron’s front pocket as she scanned her customers. So far no one seemed to notice anything strange. They were all wrapped up in the illusions. And no one was fighting, which was good because there were characters that were actual enemies in their own fictional universes wandering around the “party.” Akira seemed fine in her cluster of similarly dressed anime people, too, which was a relief.

Why Nina as a skeleton and Greta as a “normal human” could still see what was happening but no one else could was a mystery, though.

The brothers stood at the side of the arch, their gazes moving over the smooth, painted chunk of wall that was the cut-out between the two businesses. They remained in the café side but the bookstore side was easily visible. And still it seemed as if no one on that side noticed the café. A good thing. She’d have to ask Rhys how he’d been able to see through that element of the spell once she could speak again.

Rhys glanced at her and she was, once again, struck by the fact that he wasn’t reacted weirdly to his girlfriend currently being nothing but walking bones. She knew he was a good man, but that just confirmed it for her.

“So,” he said quietly, “the spell is witch magic. You knew that?”

She gave a little nod.

“Thought so. It doesn’t seem to have any tricks or traps on it that we can find. And I’m pretty sure, though we can’t see it, that there’s an anchor for the spell. A physical something or other that’s got the spell in it.” He nodded toward the decorations that were surrounding the arch on the café side. “We need to check everything. I am assuming it’s on the café side. If we can’t find it, though, I’ll move into the bookstore and try searching there.”

She gestured to the far side of the arch, and started hunting among the webs and small spiders she’d used to decorate around the passage. There were a few larger bats hanging in the web and from the ceiling. She’d need a stepstool to reach those. Rhys was taller but she wasn’t sure he’d be able to reach all the decorations near the ceiling either.

She turned to go get the stool, only to see Rhys floating up to the ceiling with his cape fluttering around him. When he glanced down, she made a shrugging gesture, her hands turned up.

He motioned to the cape. “The costume is real while we’re in here. So the cape can…do things.”

That was kind of cool. And if she’d had a better costume choice, this wouldn’t be too horrible. Just…well, her mundane customers were caught in the spell, too, and that could go bad very quickly.

She hunted closer to the ground, all the little plastic spiders she’d trapped in the fake web. As she hunted, it occurred to her that the decorations hadn’t been affected by the spell. All the spiders were still fake. The bats were fake. The glow-in-the-dark spiderwebs stretched everywhere. The ghosts. All of the decorations were just decorations. So the spell very specifically only affected people in costumes. Even if their costume, like Greta’s, was to disguise their real nature.

When they found the spell, she wanted it broken so she could go back to being herself, but she also wanted to study the magic for a few minutes. Except, she couldn’t without it being broken. Damn. Maybe Rhys could tell her what he learned when they found it.

Her bone fingers brushed over a section of the web as she moved to the next plastic spider. And the plastic spider…moved.

Oh. That wasn’t a plastic spider!

Nina did not get real insects in her café because she kept a very clean establishment. She leaned in closer to study the spider. And realized it was, actually, a plastic spider. Black and solid, with lines of plastic that simulated hair, eight perfectly curved legs and a generic head and body combo. Even its eyes were little white dots of paint and not real eyes.

But it had definitely moved.

She pointed at it, getting the bone tip of her finger as close to it as she could without touching it. It remained still. Then she set her finger to the web and the spider moved.

Ah! That was it. She waved at Rhys and Virgil while still keeping her eye on the spider. When she felt someone come up behind her, she pointed at it, looking back to see Rhys and Virgil both leaning over her shoulders to stare at the spider.

Virgil was frowning, which was a little hard to see through the thick beard and mustache. He barely even looked like Virgil with all that extra gray hair. He usually played into vampire goth, so seeing him in light colors was odd.

“That’s a plastic spider,” he pointed out the obvious.

If she had eyeballs, she would have rolled her eyes. She moved her finger up close to the spider, as close as she could get without touching it. Nothing happened. Then she set her finger to the web and the spider moved, its eight little plastic legs scrambling over the white cotton stretched to look like web.

Virgil straightened away. “That’s not a plastic spider.”

“Except that it is,” Rhys said quietly. “It’s just a bespelled plastic spider.”

“Can we destroy it, then,” Virgil said. “Crush it and break the spell.” He leaned closer to the web again, so close he was brushing up against Nina’s bone shoulder, which felt uncomfortably close considering he hated her and she wasn’t overly fond of him.

“Wouldn’t recommend just crushing it without studying it,” Rhys murmured.

And Nina pointed at him and nodded. Witch magic could have some tricky traps inside spells. She didn’t want to accidentally make all this permanent. And anyone who could have created a spell complicated enough to change all the costumed wearing people in the café into their costume but not changed the decorations and also kept any new people out once the café was full was obviously powerful. And tricky. So just crushing the plastic spider without making sure that would work was a very bad idea.

Rhys reached for the spider, but it scrambled away from his touch. Not far, just a few inches. But every time he tried to grabbed it, it moved away.

“Let me try,” Virgil said, though not in a demanding and irritated way, as Nina would have expected. His voice was deeper too. And sort of resonant and pleasant at the same time. Not Virgil’s usual voice. That…might not be good.

She frowned at the side of his face as he reached for the spider. Or would have frowned if she’d had lips. Mostly it was a mental frown. Was he starting to forget who he was and turn more into the wizard he was dressed as? Or was that just her imagination because she was worried about her customers?

Virgil got his hand cupped over the top of the spider, trapping it against the web. He smirked at Rhys, lifted his hand to pick up the spider, and it jumped away. Virgil snarled.

Rhys’s cape snapped out and flattened the spider to the wall, keeping it covered even as it was obvious the spider was trying to jump away under the red material.

Okay. That was a pretty cool trick.

Virgil made a face at Rhys, but Rhys ignored him as he bunched the spider inside the cape material and picked the whole thing up. Nina wanted to ask if he could feel the magic and what the spell was and if it would be easy to break… And all the questions piled up against her teeth without any way of getting out. She took out her notebook and pencil to write some of the questions down.

Rhys glanced up at her, saw her taking the notebook out, and said, “It’s definitely witch magic. The spell is complicated. But I’m not feeling any particularly tricky traps.” He frowned. “And according to the knowledge of the wizard I am at the moment, I can snap this inside the cape…”

He trailed off, made a series of hand gestures over the bulge in the cape. There was a squeaking sound. A puff of smoke…

And Nina felt her tongue in her mouth again. She glanced down and there were her skin-enclosed hands again! She moved her face. Yup. Muscles and lips and she could frown and smile again. The black pajamas she’d been wearing were back to having a cute cartoony skeleton on the front of them. And she felt the magic flowing through her again.

She grinned and threw herself at Rhys giving him a big hug. “Thank you! Argh. Being a skeleton is not a pleasant experience.” She leaned back and he was smiling at her.

“There’s the face and voice I adore.”

Nina’s heart squeezed and she rose on her toes to give Rhys a kiss. Gentle and grateful and full of promises.

“You two are so pathetic,” Virgil said, sounding exactly like himself again.

Rhys glanced past Nina and his grin turned smug. “Told you Strange was a more powerful wizard than Gandalf.”

“Gandalf could have crushed that spell too. You just didn’t give me enough time.”

“Right.”

Nina raised her hand before they continued the argument. It sounded like one that went back a ways and could go on for a while. “Thank you both. Very much. You were both very impressive wizards and very helpful.”

Virgil scowled at her, but then did a sort of shrug sigh gesture and said, “You’re welcome.”

Wow. Now she really was impressed.

Virgil looked between the two of them and then scanned the café. Nina followed his gaze. And noticed Greta slipping out of the café’s front door into the busy city streets where a flow of costumed groups of kids and grownups continued to move by. Hopefully, Virgil would forget she existed if he didn’t see her again as a vampire. Especially since he was back to being a vampire now. A vampire in a wizard costume. But it was dark out. He was more vampire than wizard now.

“Everything looks normal and irritating again,” Virgil said. “I have other things to do tonight so I’ll be leaving.”

“What do you have to do?” Rhys asked, frowning suspiciously.

Virgil smiled, a slow, wicked smile. And swung out of the café, going through the bookstore’s exit. Nodded at some children dressed as hobbits on the way past. The kids squealed and cheered on the way up to the bookstore counter to get their candy.

“You’re okay now?” Rhys asked, bringing Nina’s attention back to him.

“Yes. Thank you. Oh, it’s good to be able to talk again!” She pushed back, though she loved being in his arms, and gestured to the lump in his red cape. “Now that I can, I need to take a look at that. And we have to take care of whatever spell was on the front door. It obviously broke when this one did, so they must have been linked.”

“I’m not sure there’s much left,” he said, a little regretfully. “The spell I used was pretty strong. Weird too because it wasn’t the sort of wizarding magic I usually use.”

“Must have felt weird being a pop culture wizard instead of a real wizard.”

He opened the red cape, which was just ordinary shiny material now. Inside the little pocket he’d folded around the plastic spider there were a few burnt pieces of deformed plastic that had melted some of the cape’s polyester. She hovered her hand over the remaining bits of plastic but only felt a very faint hint of the spell. She’d gotten enough of a sense of it to know she’d recognize another spell by this witch. But she had no idea who the witch was.

“That’s not good, is it?” Rhys said when she told him as much.

“No. Not good. Seems I might have either a new enemy or someone with a bad sense of humor who’s trying to be friends. And I’m leaning toward the new enemy.”

“New?”

“Don’t have any active enemies at the moment. Settled things with most of the past ones.”

“None that might still have a grudge?”

“That are alive?” she said carefully. “No. My last one was living a quiet life in the burbs with her family last I heard.”

“Having a mysterious potential new enemy is not good,” Rhys said.

“No. It’s not. But at least for tonight, their games were foiled.” She glanced at the fake spiderwebs stretched over the archway into the bookstore and gasped.

In bright orange writing, the words:

Trick This Time… Next Time a Treat?

As she watched, before she could run a hand over the words to capture a sense of the spell, the words faded. Leaving only a web of cotton behind. Even when she did try to run her hand over where the words had been, no sense of magic remained.

Tricky. Very tricky.

Boo slipped close and rubbed against her leg then. The feel of their magic sparking together washed relief through her. She leaned down and ran her fingers through his fur, then picked him up. He was a heavy, large cat, but she was too relieved to have him back to normal to worry about it. She gave him a big hug and Boo purred loudly against her cheek.

When she raised her head to look at him, she asked, “You okay now?”

He nodded, looked around, then purred louder.

“Yeah. Rhys and Virgil helped break the spell. Well Rhys broke it, but if I don’t give Virgil credit for showing up to help, it’ll hurt his feelings.”

Boo made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort-laugh. Then he went back to purring and ducked his head under Rhys’s hand when Rhys reached out to give him a scratch. That her familiar and her boyfriend liked each other made Nina smile.

Still carrying Boo, she and Rhys went to the front door to look for a matching spider that would have triggered the spell there. She found a few whisps of the cotton spiderweb and a section that looked burnt and imbedded with a tiny bit of plastic. Which meant the spider or whatever had anchored the spell at the front door had broken along with the spider from the archway. She set Boo down to clean up the burnt web, tucking what was left of it and the melted plastic into her apron pocket for later analysis.

She studied the sidewalk, but only saw crowds of Trick-or-Treaters streaming past. Greta had unlocked the door when she’d slipped out earlier, so Nina didn’t have to worry about reopening the café. One thing she didn’t have to worry about anyway.

She sighed, picked Boo up again, and glanced back at the spot on the wall where the words had been. “Looks like we have a new enemy somewhere out there,” she said to her familiar.

His purr turned into a brief hiss, then he went back to purring as Rhys scratched the spot under his chin that he loved to have rubbed.

Rhys looked at the fake spiderweb over the archway into the bookstore, then back at Nina. “What do we do about this?”

“Tonight? Nothing. I have a business to run and now that things are back to normal, I need to make sure everyone assumes things are normal. But I’ll start asking around. See what I can find.”

“I’m here if you need me,” Rhys assured. “Anything. Any time.”

She smiled, looking up at him over Boo. “I know.” He was here tonight when she needed him. Wizard costume and all. “So… Dr. Strange and Gandalf, huh? How did you come by those costumes at the last minute?”

To her delight, he flushed. “Virgil and I have had the same argument going our whole lives. Which was a more powerful wizard…” He rolled his eyes. “We might have dressed up as our favorites more than once.”

She grinned, and shifted Boo to one side so she could kiss Rhys. “Lucky me you chose wizards to fight over.”

“I suppose it was.” He frowned a little. “Why did you choose a skeleton?”

“The pajamas were comfortable and didn’t involve anything that might compromise food safety.”

“The skeleton pajamas are pretty cute,” he said, his gaze dipping lower, a look that sent a thrum of heat through her. “But maybe something with…skin next year? And maybe some sort of magical power.”

She snorted and exchanged a look with Boo who sneezed and shook himself hard.

Yeah. Lesson learned. She’d dress as a witch, or at least something with magic, from now on. Maybe not a stereotypical witch. She still had some pride. But at the very least some character that had magic or powers.

No more skeleton pajamas as a Halloween costume.

Thanks for reading HALLOWEEN AT THE CAFE! I hope you enjoyed it.

Remember to go over and check out the SPOOKY SEASON CALENDAR for all the Halloween fun. Previous days are still up so you can pick up any treats you missed (real treats, no tricks!) And every odd day throughout October, check back for a new SPOOKY SEASON treat! (Nina isn't the only one who likes this time of year *grin*)

Thanks again for reading! Don't forget to check back on November 1st for the next Cafe story!

HALLOWEEN AT THE CAFE Copyright © 2026 Kat Simons

All Rights Reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.