Was she feeling wicked? “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
“I’d be up for a bit of devilment myself.” The way Deacon’s eyes landed on her lips made her mouth go dry. Surely, he wasn’t suggesting—“I think you should ride into town on your broom.”
Flying. He was talking about flying.
Vivienne felt herself deflate. “I haven’t read the whole rulebook, but I’m pretty sure Kensington wouldn’t approve.” They reached a stretch of sidewalk, and she scraped the mud off her shoes.
“I certainly won’t tell anyone about anything you do tonight.”
He was still talking about flying . . .
But he was looking at her mouth again, and her stomach was fluttering, and if he didn’t stop looking at her mouth, she was going to do something stupid and try to—“Max.”
Deacon’s brows came together. “What?”
“Um, what were you saying to him—to Max—before we left?” She skirted around a large puddle, but the back of her dress still got wet.
Deacon flew over it. “It’s a secret.”
“I’d say you’re good at keeping secrets by now.”
“I’m excellent at keeping all kinds of secrets.”
She swallowed against the lump in her throat. Did every word out of his stupid, beautiful mouth have to sound like a proposition? “Am I allowed to ask if you had us put into self-defense classes, or is that another secret?”
Deacon groaned and raked a hand over his face. Which was a weird reaction to a pretty simple question. “Kensington gives all new recruits training in self-defense,” he clipped.
“That wasn’t what I asked you,” she shot back. His guilty look was all the confirmation she needed. “You didn’t have to do that.”
He jumped and smacked a low-hanging branch. A handful of damp orange leaves fluttered around them. “Do what?”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” she muttered, pulling a leaf from her costume.
“I wouldn’t be a very good guardian angel if I didn’t at least try to protect you—or ensure you can protect yourself.”
The only thing that needed protection right now was her stupid heart. “I don’t want a guardian angel.”
“Then what do you want, wicked little witch?”
She froze. It was a good question. And she didn’t care if he was talking about something obscure. He needed to know where she stood in whatever this was. “I want someone who isn’t going to fly away, Peter Pan.”
She left him standing there and hurried to catch up. Why had she even bothered saying that? She shouldn’t have opened her mouth.
Deacon flew to her side and resumed walking. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“I don’t like your costume.”
She rolled her eyes. This guy. As if she cared whether or not he liked it. “And why don’t you like my costume anymore?”
It was his turn to stop. She stopped beside him; the rest of their party continued without seeming to notice.
Deacon leaned in close enough for her to see his pupils dilate. “Because,” he whispered, his warm words tickling the fine hairs along her green neck, “that damned green face paint makes it impossible for me to get away with kissing you.”
HOLY CRAP.
She hadn’t been imagining things. He wanted to kiss her. He’d said that, right? She wasn’t hallucinating. Deacon wanted to kiss her.
Would washing her face in one of the puddles look desperate? Probably. Definitely.
What in heaven’s name had possessed her to paint her face green?
Yellow halos around the streetlights gave an eerie glow to the dark night. Following the sidewalk from house to house, they filled their bags and baskets with candy. A few people said, “Aren’t you all a bit old for this?” But mostly, there was overwhelming appreciation for Deacon and Ethan’s performance.
At every house, Deacon walked up first, and Ethan followed him as close as possible, mimicking his every move. After he and Ethan had collected their candy, Max, the pirate, chased them to the next porch. There were a fair number of duels fought between stops; Peter and his miming shadow always emerged the victors.
“They must have practiced this,” Vivienne said to Nicola as they watched the guys wave goodbye in perfect unison.
Nicola shrugged. “They’ve been planning it for at least eight weeks. Two months ago, they asked me to be Tinkerbell,” she said with a snort. “I’m way too tall to be a pixie.”
Two houses later, Vivienne realized Deacon had gone missing. Not that she was aware of his every single move. That would have been stalkerish.
How times had changed . . .
There was screaming from around the corner of the last house, but she thought nothing of it. Deacon caught up with them by the next driveway.
The odd pattern of Deacon disappearing and reappearing continued into the next hour of trick-or-treating. Once their containers were filled to the brim, the PAN agreed to call an end to their candy-collecting excursion. On the way back to Kensington, their party met a smaller group of three teens and ended up chatting to each other about the best houses that were giving away full-sized candy bars.
“I love your costume,” a sexy angel told Deacon.
“Thank you.” He removed his hat and bowed. “I like your costume as well. Very original.”
Vivienne had encountered at least five other sexy angels in this neighborhood alone.
“Is the accent real or just for Halloween?”
Deacon put his finger to his lips. “It’s a secret.”
“I won’t tell.”
His eyes darted to Vivienne when he said, “I don’t share my secrets with just anyone.” Then he smiled back at the angel, and replaced his hat. “You have to earn them.”
Vivienne wasn’t jealous. Her stomach twisted and ached from all the candy. She was NOT jealous.
“And how would I do that?” The angel raked a glittery silver nail down his chest.
He grinned and whispered something into the girl’s ear. Her eyes widened and she took a step back. Vivienne could only imagine what he’d said to her. It was probably funny and flirty and wildly inappropriate.
“Have you guys seen the ghost yet?” the second teen, a sexy policewoman, said. Her eyes lifted to the moonless sky, and she shuddered.
“You think you saw a ghost?” Deacon shivered.
“What did the ghost look like?” Nicola sounded serious.
“Do you really want to know, or are you going to make fun of me like everyone else?” the officer asked.
“I really want to know.”
“Well, it was white and had these hollow black eyes.” She spread her eyelids with her fingers. “I only saw it for a second in the sky, but it was definitely real.”
“You’re sure it was flying?” No longer looking at the girl spinning the tale, Nicola’s eyes were fixed on Deacon and Ethan—both of whom seemed to be searching the night for signs of the supernatural. “Maybe it was something stuck in a tree.”
“I told them someone probably hooked the costume to a drone or something like that,” an astronaut in a realistic costume said from beneath his tinted helmet. “There’s no way the ghost of Worcester is real.”