“What did you get? What did you get?” Molly asked, clutching her sack in her hands. She jumped up and down so vigorously while she waited, she nearly toppled the hat from her head. The disguise she wore – a handmade hand-me-down belonging to her many sisters before her – was faded and a little tattered, but that was one of the reasons why Molly liked it. It made her look every inch the old, decrepit hag she was trying to be.

“Let me look, let me look,” Ryan commanded, tearing through the contents of his sack to examine his loot. Beneath the light of a street lamp, four little monsters, witches, and goblins compared their hauls, exchanging pies and other sweets for ones more favored, and gobbling down those that had broken or crumbled. One house along the route had even given out marbles. Real glass ones! Not the cheaper ones made of clay. Too bad they couldn’t quite remember which house that was. They might be able to trade costumes and go back for another.

“What do ya think?” Percy asked, adjusting the ragged sheet he borrowed from his bed in an attempt to transform himself into a suitable ghost. “Do ya think it’s time to head for home?”

“No! Not yet!” Willian cried. He was the youngest of the group, and this was his first Halloween night out. He did not want to go home yet, even though his feet ached inside his tight, thin-soled shoes, and he was so dog tired he thought he might collapse to the cobblestones any second.

“But we’ve hit every house in the city!” Percy argued, rubbing a hand down the knobs of his sore spine.

“Some of them twice,” Ryan added.

“What about that house?” William pointed a chubby arm directly ahead where sat a sullen house that appeared blacker than black beneath the scant light of the fingernail moon.

The three older children went quiet when they saw it, an air of the ominous falling about them as they considered the length of their tiny lives thus far along with a convincing excuse to avoid that one house like the plague.

“We…we have never gone to that house before,” Molly remarked somberly.

“That is because the windows are never lit,” Ryan said, hoping that that would make for a proper enough reason. He swallowed hard watching two candles appear suddenly, lit by unseen hands, as if conjured by his very words. “B-but, th-they are now.”

“My older sister Margaret won’t go there,” Molly said. “She said…she said that two witches live there.”

William scoffed. “That is not true. Lord Anderson lives there.”

“Yes, but have you ever seen Lord Anderson?” Ryan whispered.

“My mum has seen him once,” William said. “Said he was a lovely man, with fair skin and sea blue eyes…”

“No, no, no, not that Lord Anderson! The Lord Anderson! Earl Anderson!”

“They say he rides in a carriage darker than midnight,” Molly said, eyes trained on the window that held the two candles, shivering as two more appeared to join them, “even though he has enough money to have twelve carriages fashioned out of pure gold.”

“And it’s pulled by two wild horses,” Percy added. “That snuffle steam, breathe fire, and eat only the meat of children and drink whiskey.”

William jerked his head at that, but he did not stop them from continuing the tale.

“And they say he’s missing a leg. That he were fighting the devil himself, and the devil was losing. So he took the earl’s leg in anger! Bit it clean off…”

“…and left a little bit of himself inside the wound. A single tooth that causes the earl tremendous agony…”

“…and like the thorn of a rose, it bloomed there, a speck of evil that makes the man wicked and mean.”

William looked from one friend, to the other, and the other, dumfounded. “I think you three have been eating too many sweets,” he chided. “Those are all tall tales. He’s not a witch. He’s just a regular, old, boring lord.”

“Yeah?” Ryan said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Then go ahead. Knock on the door.”

“Yeah,” Percy said. “Go up there and knock. Then we’ll see who’s tellin’ tall tales.”

“Fine,” William said, tossing his sack full of goodies over his shoulder and starting across the road. “I will.” William walked slowly in his pinching shoes, every step more painful than the last, but he was determined to prove his friends wrong. If Lord Anderson were a witch, then how could he live in the middle of the city with no one else the wiser? His parents had never warned him off from Lord Anderson’s house. And didn’t he have a daughter? A beautiful young girl with raven curls who left the house most every day, hand in hand with her father, and wearing the most enviable dresses of any sold in town? That’s what his mother said, and William was much more inclined to believe his mother than any blatant lies his foolish friends would tell to frighten him.

Halfway to the house, the curtains in the lit window parted. William could see naught of inside of the residence, but what he did see made his blood run cold – a ghostly figure dressed entirely in black, holding in their arms a cat with the blackest fur, and smiling the smile of someone who sees an easy meal coming their way.

William stuttered a step. Then he stopped altogether.

“Go on, then!” Ryan called after him. “If there’s nothing to fear, show us!”

“Let us hope you come back alive to tell the tale!” Molly taunted.

“Ya went to church last Sunday, didn’t ya?” Percy yelled. “Let’s hope that saves ya! May the good Lord look kindly over ya!”

William stuck out his right foot and began to tremble, eyes locked on the grinning half-face in the window that seemed fixated on him, staring menacingly back. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot he walked, and as he passed the threshold that led to the stairs, the figure in the window disappeared like a wisp of smoke, and William’s heart began to race. He hobbled up the stairs, taking them at a sluggish pace, praying that he would find more courage somewhere along the way. Maybe he would get lucky and no one would answer the door. Or maybe that pretty girl would answer and assure him that all was well.

William reached out a hand to knock, but he could already hear the dull toll of footsteps approaching – click-clomp…click-clomp…click-clomp…click-clomp…

“Come on! Knock already!”

William leapt a foot in the air when he heard Ryan’s voice behind him. He turned and saw his three “friends” waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.

A right front row seat for the massacre, William thought. Some friends they are.

“Shhh!” he hissed, too terrified to move any further. “S-s-someone’s coming!”

The click-clomp, click-clomp grew louder and louder. It stopped at the door, and the sound of labored breaths, like those of a large, feral beast, followed shortly after. William swallowed hard. The door swung in and there, in the doorway, bathed in a golden light that illuminated only a portion of his features – namely his hands, his chin, and his grim set mouth - stood a man dressed in an elegant, knee-length coat of ebony fabric, with a raven perched on his shoulder that had feathers to match. In an instant, the boy knew what that raven was. It was the man’s familiar, an animal spell-bound to him to do his bidding.

Which meant that the man standing before him…was a witch!

“G-g-g-g-g-good evening, m-m-m-m-m-m-milord,” the boy stammered in a voice that was mostly exhalation and chattering teeth. Other than that, the boy could say no more. Neither could he move, hugging his bag of sweets to his chest as if it alone would shield him from the demonic presence that could only be one man – the accursed Earl Anderson!

The man stood silently, contemplating the boy as the boy gazed up at him, paralyzed with fear.

“Well?” the man barked, his word shadowed by his incessant drawing of breath. “Is there…not something…you wish to say…little goblin?”

William heard the question, but he knew not how to answer. What should he say to this servant of evil that would convince the man to spare his life? Please, do not eat me!? Do not boil me alive in oil (since that was what William had read witches do)? Do not chop me into pieces and feed me to your horses?

“No?” The dark specter answered for William, and William felt that, if there were an invisible hourglass counting down the seconds of his life, the sand had run empty. “Well, I have something for you then…” The man turned slightly, reaching for an object behind the door. William saw a flash of blue and silver, like a bolt of lightning fire from the man’s fingertips.

A sacrificial knife! Or a magic potion! It had to be!

On the road behind William, a horse tromped up, whinnying as its rider pulled the animal to a stop, and William could no longer stand to wait, no longer stay on that stoop and accept his impending death. He had only just turned seven, for Christ’s sake! No amount of candy or bravery was worth this!

“Ahhhh!” the poor boy screamed, turning at once and racing down the stairs. “Run! He is the devil! He is going to eat us!”

That rallying cry spurred the others into full-throated screams as they cut across the road and ran far, far away as fast as their legs could carry them.

Blaine watched them go with a sigh, putting the plate of treats back down on the receiving table by the door. “There goes another lot off.”

“And I had such high hopes when I saw him from the window, my lord.” Kurt tsked. “What a shame.”

“That blasted platter shocked me again,” Blaine complained, giving his fingers a shake.

“Tis the dry weather. A storm is coming.” Kurt wrapped his arms around his husband’s torso and squeezed. “My love…” Kurt giggled “…must you look so severe when you answer the door? If you frighten off any more children, we will have sweets galore for days.”

“You can blame Mr. Crawford for that,” Blaine muttered, but teasingly so. “I think he overestimated the number of children that live in this part of London.”

“Or you did,” Kurt countered as his husband shut the door. He shook his head, remembering fondly the afternoon they had spent in Adam’s bakery in town – the first time Blaine had stepped foot into the place. The Anderson Family had returned to London for the holiday season to be closer to Kurt’s father and his sister, which was, by far, the greatest gift the earl could have given him. Kurt had gone in to the bakery with Blaine at the earl’s request, keeping in mind a rather brief list of baked goods and sweets for the giving. It was Blaine, in the end, so enraptured by every delectable little thing, every meticulously decorated cookie, every delicious smelling cake, who nearly bought out the whole shop. Mr. Crawford told Kurt later over a cup of tea that he had had to place a special order for more flour and sugar just to fill it, but that that one order would more than put him in the black for the remainder of the year, and well into the next.

“Tis not my intention to frighten them away.”

“I wonder what it is about you,” Kurt mused, fixing his husband’s ink black coat with a proud smile on his lips. “You make such a handsome warlock.”

“Do you think maybe it is the fake bird, my love?” Blaine asked, side-eying with disgust the stuffed creature that Kurt had attached to his shoulder. Blaine wasn’t all too fond of the blasted things when they were alive. Scavengers, the lot of them, picking at the carcasses of the dead. He recalled an unkindness of them congregated greedily over the body of poor Rolly, Kurt’s beloved horse. The monsters had the horse picked savagely by the time Blaine and Sebastian had found it. Sebastian tried to console his master by reminding him that that was just what ravens did, clean away the decay so that new things could grow, but Blaine did not want to hear it. He had hoped to bury the animal whole and lighten the burden of its tragic demise in Kurt’s heart. Robbed of that opportunity, Blaine despised the birds ever since. But this he never told Kurt. He didn’t want to bring up that awful memory, or have that vulgar image of his gentle horse burned inside Kurt’s brain.

Thus, having the corpse of a raven mounted beside his cheek was somewhat of a nightmare.

“I think it is the heavy breathing,” Kurt deduced.

“I cannot help that, my love. Tis getting a bit tiresome walking to the door.”

“We could have Sam do it.”

“Tis tradition for the Master of the House to open the door and hand out treats to the children. I have hidden from those traditions for so long now.” Blaine sighed. “Tis nice to feel one with the world again.”

Kurt took Blaine’s hand and kissed it. “And I applaud you for that, my lord,” he said, watching with longing eyes as Blaine kissed his hand in return. “So if you wish to continue, I will not object, though I’m not too certain more children will be gracing our doorstep tonight.” Blaine frowned, knowing why that would be, and Kurt piped in again, quick to wipe that frown away. “But Sebastian and Hunter should be bringing Marley and Beth home soon. You can turn the task over to them when they do.”

“You could have gone with them,” Blaine told his husband. “I know that you wanted to. You worked so hard on Beth’s costume.”

“But you were feeling poorly, my lord. You barely left my side when I was bedridden. I will not leave you alone while you are unwell. There will be other Halloweens. And besides…the night is far from over.” Kurt grinned at his husband, stepping close in the hopes that Blaine would take him in his arms.

And Blaine did, because aside from needing his husband’s body pressed against his every minute of every day, Blaine knew what that grin meant.

It meant no more scaring children tonight.

“Have I told you what a fetching warlock you make, my love?” Blaine asked, sliding an arm around Kurt’s waist.

“Witch, my darling. Witch,” Kurt corrected him, fitting himself further into the crook of his husband’s arm. “Observe the pointed hat. And my cat, Isabelle, but she has run off somewhere.”

“Ah, yes. The black cat and the pointed hat,” Blaine murmured, looking his husband over from the tip of that hat; down to his flushed face; the long, smooth column of his neck; down the seams of his shirt – a shirt that, though simple in its style, left little of Kurt’s glorious arm and chest muscles to the imagination, “and this incredibly fitted garment that you chose to make.”

“What is wrong with it, my lord? Tis only a plain black tunic,” Kurt defended with a confused pout to his lips. “Nothing too spectacular. I put far more time and effort into your jacket, my lord.”

“And tis a fine jacket…minus the bird perhaps.” Blaine turned his head to glare at the thing, but bumped it with his forehead instead, knocking it askew.

“Oh, my love!” Kurt laughed, trying to set the crooked bird upright again. “Is it a terrible bother? I apologize. I thought that it would lend an aura of authenticity to your already…sensual mystique…”

“Not a tremendous bother,” Blaine said, enjoying the way in which his husband described him, “but perhaps we should turn over door duties to Sam, so you and I can go upstairs…” Blaine raised a hand to Kurt’s face and ran his fingers down his cheek. “Then you can help me make a few adjustments to my costume…until our darling Beth returns, of course.”

“Of course, my lord. I think that that sounds like an astounding idea,” Kurt said, not needing more convincing than that. “Besides, with Sam manning the door, we are vastly more assured to give Mr. Crawford’s treats away.”

Blaine rang for the downstairs butler but did not wait for him, leading Kurt hurriedly up the stairs in the hopes of making it to the top before more children arrived. He had had his fill of other people’s children for the evening. He could not wait until his own blessed child returned home.

But until then, he would very much enjoy entertaining his husband.

“Oh, but my lord, before we retire, do you think we need more candles?” Kurt turned to survey the decorations from the vantage point of the stairs, but Blaine did not take a single peek back.

“No,” Blaine said, ushering his husband past candelabra after candelabra after candlestick filled with every spare taper they had hidden in the house. “No more candles.”