“I know you want to go with them, but you’re still not better yet,” Jesse told Lucy, who was safely back in her box, as he and Alicia walked down the street.

  With all of the excitement of the day now behind them, Lucy was getting restless, especially now that it was the typical hunting time of her colony. She kept scratching at the sides of the box and whimpering to be let out, but he held firm.

  “Are you talking to that bat?” Alicia asked with a crooked smile.

  Jesse groaned. “Damien’s rubbing off on me.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s cute.”

  It didn’t take them long to arrive at his mom’s clinic, and while she remained outside with Brom and the trapped imp queen, he once again snuck in through the back door.

  Damien was waiting for him in Lucy’s treatment room. His eyes lit up as soon as he saw them.

  “You’re back! I was so worried about you.”

  For a split second, Jesse thought he was talking to him, but then he gingerly lifted Lucy out of the box and cooed at her. He checked her over for any new injuries and once he was satisfied, returned her to her cage.

  “So, how’d it go?” he asked, turning his attention to Jesse. “You get the imp out of your school?”

  “Mission accomplished. Lucy was a big help.”

  “That’s my girl.” He beamed proudly. “And without a scratch on her.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”

  “And you kept it. That’s not something everyone does.” Damien looked at him as if he were seeing him in a new light. “You know, you should come by the Den sometime.”

  “The Den?” Jesse asked.

  “It’s where me and some other vampires live,” he explained. “We all turned roughly around the same age, so we all crash together in a house in Gravewood. We usually go hunting together, too. What do you say? We could give you some pointers on using your vampire powers.”

  That sounded like the absolute last thing he wanted to do. “I’ll think about it.”

  Damien flashed a fanged grin. “Just hit me up whenever. You know where to find me.”

  Back outside, Alicia was crouched down on the curb, applying the finishing touches of her ghoul makeup while Brom sat next to her, giving her pointers.

  “A little darker under the eyes,” he said. “You’re looking more like a zombie than a ghoul.”

  “One of these days, I’m going to learn the actual difference between the two,” she said as she swiped the brush where he instructed.

  “You two seem to be getting along now,” Jesse remarked.

  She shrugged. “When he’s not constantly trying to blow our cover, he’s actually not that bad. Besides, he gets along well with Ashton.”

  “I’m like a bad stench; I get more tolerable the more you hang around me.”

  “Anyway, we good to go?” When he nodded, she pulled a phone from her pocket and Jesse realized with a start that it was his. “By the way, I almost forgot; I grabbed this from the hallway at school after you dropped it.”

  “Thanks,” he took it from her, then almost immediately regretted it. “Ew, gross.”

  His phone was slick to the touch from imp drool, shallow bite marks covering its protective case.

  “Yeah, I tried to get most of it off, but that stuff is nasty.”

  He wiped it as best he could on his pants leg before slipping it into his own pocket. “Looks like I’ll have to buy a new case, and hope mom doesn’t ask too many questions about why.”

  “I’m great at lying,” Brom said. “Let me help you come up with a story.”

  “Why not?” He decided to humor the pumpkin, letting him come up with all sorts of crazy stories, Alicia occasionally jumping in with her own ideas, as the three of them walked back to Gravewood.

  Adam let them into the house and Dr. Rotbart greeted them as soon as they set foot in his lab, almost as if he had been waiting for them this entire time.

  “Ah, successful I see. Did everything go well? Are any of you in need of new limbs?”

  “Not at the moment,” Jesse told him. But the night was still young.

  “Wunderbar.” He took the trap from Alicia and examined it, turning it over to inspect every angle.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “No signs of damage, apart from the broken antenna,” he mumbled to himself. “Once I get that fixed it should drastically improve the efficiency of the trap, but what about storage capacity? Perhaps if I....” And that was all Jesse was able to catch of the doctor’s rambling before he switched to rapid German.

  Adam cleared his throat. “Doctor, you still have guests.”

  If he hadn’t said anything, Jesse was certain he would have continued like that for the rest of the night. “Oh, my apologies. I haven’t yet thanked you for trying out my invention, so thank you.”

  “We’re the ones who should be thanking you,” Alicia said. “By the way, what do you plan on doing with the queen?”

  “I’m going to study her for a few days before I release her back into the wild. Far, far away from human civilization, I might add, where she won’t be able to do anymore harm.”

  Jesse looked at him skeptically. “You’re not going to experiment on her, are you?”

  Dr. Rotbart gasped in offense. “Heavens no! Do I look crazy to you?”

  He decided to keep his answer to himself.

  “My study of her will be purely observational in nature,” the doctor continued. “I wouldn’t dream of hurting her. I even have a nice spacious cage for her to live in instead of the tiny trap.”

  At the mention of the word trap, the device rattled violently, as if the queen had been listening to their conversation.

  “Yes, I said cage,” he told it, holding it aloft with his robotic hand. “Consider it a time-out for all the trouble you’ve caused.”

  “Is there anything else you need us to do?” Jesse asked.

  “Oh no, you and your friends have already-”

  A loud bang came from the other side of the room, making him flinch.

  Adam had slammed his large fist down on one of the side tables at the very back of the lab, pinning the tarp that Alicia had been trying to peek under.

  “Do not look under there,” Adam said, voice as hard as stone.

  She backed away, hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I was just curious.”

  “It’s quite alright, fraulein,” Dr. Rotbart said, though he looked noticeably paler than he had moments before. “While I appreciate a healthy sense of curiosity, there are a lot of dangerous tools and inventions in this lab. You would do well to tread carefully in here.”

  While the doctor’s tone was friendly enough, Jesse couldn’t help but feel his words had an ominous ring to them.

  Maybe we should take our leave. Now.

  He ushered Alicia to the door. “Thanks for everything, Dr. Rotbart. We couldn’t have caught the imp queen without you.”

  The doctor waved them off, returning to his usual self. “You’re a bunch of clever kids. I’m sure you would have figured out something. But feel free to come back any time. My door is always open.”

  The next few days passed by without any incident. The random acts of vandalism that had occurred throughout Oak Hollow Middle School stopped abruptly, as had the sightings of bats leaving the school grounds during the night, and the football field was eventually deemed bat-free, even though the pest control specialists never did find out where they had made their roost. Football and cheerleading were uncancelled, though they had a lot to make up for in lost time.

  The week after thanksgiving break, Lucy was finally all healed up and deemed ready to leave the clinic.

  “I can’t believe our little girl is leaving the nest already,” Damien said, wiping a mock tear from his eye. “They grow up so fast.”

  “It’s going to be weird without her here,” Jesse agreed.

  Throughout the holiday and the days following their defeat of the imp queen, he had been spending more time volunteering at his mom’s clinic alongside Damien, growing closer with the both of them, strangely enough. He found that the vampire was a lot more chill to be around than he had expected, though he still worried every conversation with him would lead to blowing his cover.

  Lucy looked a lot better now; joyfully fluttering around her cage, free from the restrictive bandage she no longer had to wear.

  “I’m going to miss her,” Damien said wistfully. “But she needs to go where she belongs.”

  “You could always come with us to release her,” Jesse’s mom suggested, having listened to them banter with a small smile on her lips.

  He shook his head. “No, much too painful. I’d rather say goodbye here at the clinic, where I can still pretend that she’ll be in her cage tomorrow.”

  As his mom readied the box that they would be transporting Lucy in, Damien took Jesse to the side. He whispered conspiratorially, “Truth is, I actually have plans to go hunting with the other vampires. I’d put it off, but some of them haven’t fed in a few weeks and you do not want to tell a hungry vampire they’ve gotta wait. And there’s no way I’d keep Lucy cooped up here any longer than she needs to be.”

  “I understand.”

  “By the way, when was the last time you fed? Do you need to come with us?”

  “No, I’m fine,” Jesse said hastily. “Besides, at least one of us should see her off.”

  Damien clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man. I’ll tell the other vamps to steer clear of where you and Dr. Carmen will be.”

  “Ready, Jesse?” his mom called, and Damien let him go with a salute.

  “Ready.”

  The gravel crunched under the wheels of the car as Jesse’s mom pulled them off the side of the road, out near the woods just outside of town.

  “Here should be good,” she said, unbuckling and climbing out.

  After losing their queen, most of the bats from the school had relocated here, safely away from any humans who could do them harm. Hopefully they wouldn’t see Lucy back at the clinic after they released her.

  It was a couple of hours after sundown and the woods were eerily quiet as Jesse followed his mom. He couldn’t help but think about how Damien and the other vampires were hunting in another part of these very woods, draining the blood from animals, or maybe even a couple of hapless campers. He shuddered at the thought.

  He heard a distant squeak from a bat too far away to see, and from the cardboard box in his hands, Lucy returned it with an oink of her own. She was getting anxious, ready to return to the wild, to her family.

  He opened the box, letting Lucy poke her head out and examine her surroundings with echolocation.

  “Hold it up high over your head,” his mom instructed. “And tilt it at an angle. Don’t worry about getting her to leave; she’ll fly when she’s good and ready.”

  It took a couple of minutes, but there was a scratching noise in the box above him, and suddenly the weight was lifted off. In front of him, he could see Lucy flying off into the night.

  As he watched, his mom gently placed her arm around his shoulder. “She’ll take it at her own time. We just have to trust she can take care of herself.”

  He got the feeling she was talking about more than just Lucy, as her words hit a little too close to home. They stood there silently together, and he made a promise that one day, he would tell his mom the truth, about Gravewood and Halloween, everything.

  But he wasn’t ready, not yet. One day.