Garrett:I'm at your house.
Penny:How very stalkerish of you.
Garrett:Sorry. I can leave. I don't want to make you uncomfortable.
Penny:I was being weird yesterday. Ignore me.
Garrett:I can't ignore you.
Penny:You might be able to jimmy the lock and go inside. I think it's raining.
Garrett:I won't melt. If it gets bad I'll wait in the car. I don't want your neighbors to call the cops on me.
Penny:I'll be there soon. There was a tiff on whether the giant pumpkin stand was going to be closer to the town hall or if the giant onion booth was going to be closer.
Garrett:Sounds like a serious problem.
Penny:You have no idea. I thought there was going to be a brawl!
I watched the rain pour down. Actually it was blowing sideways, and I was getting soaked. I pulled my collar up and stepped off the porch. I would wait this out in the car.
There was a crack. Lightning lit up the sky. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have said the electricity almost sketched the form of a skeleton. It hit the tree. A branch arced, crackling with white lightning that sent it crashing and burning into the car with a pop. The car was on fire!
I watched it burn for a moment, hardly daring to believe what I was seeing. A fire truck screamed in the distance. It pulled up in front of the house with a black hearse close behind.
Penny jumped out, a look of horror on her face as she ran to the burning car. I sprinted down the cracked path and grabbed her, pulling her back.
"What are you doing?" I shouted.
"Oh my god, Garrett!" she said, looking up to me wide-eyed. "I thought you were in the car and the ghost killed you!"
"Ghost?" Clint, one of the firemen, said as he and his men sprayed a deluge of water on the car.
"Yes," Morticia replied, adjusting her sunglasses. The orange flames reflecting in the lenses made her look demonic. "The ghost doesn't like new cars."
"Sounds like you need the Ghostbusters!" Clint said and laughed as he sprayed more water. The fire was out as quickly as it had begun.
"I’m so glad you didn't get burnt up in the fire," Penny said, hugging me and burying her face against my chest.
Lilith shrugged. "We do have the hearse, so it wouldn’t have been all bad."
Salem was howling when we went back into the house. Morticia and Lilith disappeared then came back with several bundles of leaves and lit them on fire. Salem sneezed and rubbed his face against my pants leg.
"What is that?" I asked, coughing at the thick white smoke.
"Sage," Morticia replied. "We need to cast away the evil spirits." They smudged me with the smoke then handed Penny a bundle of leaves.
"Walk around the house with that."
"Okay." Penny grabbed my sleeve. "You probably need to towel off, don't you, Garrett? You're drenched."
As soon as we were upstairs, I took the sage from Penny and doused it in the glass of water on the nightstand.
"We're supposed to burn that!" she protested.
"I have a better way of banishing evil spirits," I said, taking off my wet shirt.
"Oh yeah?" Penny said, reaching up to put her hands around my neck. "We should stick together then, you know, for safety, so the ghost doesn't get us."
