Ash shuffled through the stuff on his desk until he found the incantation that Onny had included with the love potion. It was ridiculous, and he probably didn’t have to recite it since she already had when she made the potion, and yet…
He took a deep breath, and chanted the lines:
“To summon joy and love in another’s soul
For a connection that makes two people whole
For laughter and a smile that one can never miss
Sealed before midnight with a truehearted kiss.”
Ash lifted the stopper and trickled drops of the love potion onto his own mask and then into each color of paint on hispalette. When he and Cassidy donned their masks, the potion would be touching both of them.
Stilling his trembling hands, Ash began painting bouquets of abstract oval flowers on the cheeks and the temples of Cassidy’s mask. He stenciled on subtle, wavy gold lines. He limned the eyeholes with shimmers of glitter. And the love potion seeped into every painstaking detail of the mask.
Finally, when all that was dry, Ash hot-glued small blue and white crystals to the top edge of the mask, like the blue and white flowers in the hair of the woman inThe Kiss.
He sat back in his chair and admired his work. Smiling, Ash took his mask off the windowsill and set it next to the new mask. They really did look like they belonged together.
Ash took the noise-canceling headset off. The noise from the cross-country team was gone.
What time was it?
He reached for his phone on the top shelf.
Holy crap, hours had flown by as Ash worked. It was already 9P.M., and Onny had been texting all the while asking when in Halloween hell Ash and True were going to get to the party.
Ash:Lost track of time, sorry!
Onny:I hope you have a good excuse! I haven’t heard from you or True in a millennia! Why aren’t you here yet?
Ash:I was working on something.
Onny:Better be a time travel machine so you can get your tardy ass over here.
Ash:I have one more thing I need to do.
Onny:Does this have to do with the love potion???
Ash:Will be at the party as soon as I can. I promise.
Onny:ASHER LEE, I swear on my lola’s potions book that if you’re not here in half an hour, I will come over there and murder you and use the remnants of your corpse as kindling for my cauldron.
Ash:Wow. Really getting into the Halloween spirit, huh?
Onny:Shut up. And bring Cassidy.
Ash:Working on it.
Onny:Wait. REALLY????
Onny:Ash?
Onny:I take back what I said about the cauldron.
Onny:YOU ARE KILLING ME WITH YOUR STOIC SILENCE BUT I WILL ALLOW IT IN THE NAME OF L O V E.
Onny:Oh btw, the tarot card I flipped for you earlier was an upright Ace of Pentacles. It means new beginnings and prosperity in love.…
