Last time they visited Gravewood, Jesse’s mom had driven them, but now without the luxury of a car, the walk took longer.

  Gravewood was located near the edge of town, just off a road called Misty Pine Street. It’s a road that showed its age in its pale gray asphalt, having not been repaved in so long, the painted line separating the lanes had long since faded away. Orange and yellow leaves had all but completely covered the road, having fallen from the overgrown trees on either side, claiming it for their own.

  It’s a road that nobody who didn’t know about Gravewood would have a reason to travel down.

  At the end of Misty Pine sat an old security booth, manned by a familiar zombie, Jesse recalled his name as Doug, who was still reading that same newspaper he had been on Halloween night. He briefly wondered if the guard had moved at all since then.

  Whatever the case, Doug barely raised an eyebrow at him and Siobhan, only casting them the briefest of glances to ensure that they were not driving a car into the vehicle free neighborhood, before returning right back to his paper. It helped that they were both in their monster disguises, Siobhan done up in full scarecrow makeup and Jesse with fake fangs glued to his teeth.

  As they crossed the threshold into Gravewood, he half expected to be stopped by the invisible barrier that surrounded the whole neighborhood, but they passed through with ease. Apparently, Bella’s potion from Halloween not only allowed them to leave Gravewood, but come and go as they pleased now.

  Before reaching the neighborhood proper, they had to pass by the large pumpkin patch near the security check point. Seeing as nobody was around, Jesse took the opportunity to go over their hastily thought up plan with Siobhan.

  “Let’s walk quickly, get in, talk to Bella, get out, all hopefully without anybody else seeing us.” He knew they had on their disguises, but he’d still rather not test their luck. They’d had too many close calls on Halloween.

  “And what do we do if somebody does see us?” Siobhan asked.

  “Play along as much as we can and-”

  “Oh, what are you two doing back here?”

  The voice was, unfortunately, familiar. Sitting in the pumpkin patch right where they had left him was Brom, the talking jack-o-lantern who had “helped” them find a way to escape from Gravewood, and was now currently glaring daggers at them.

  “All that trouble to get you past the barrier,” he went on. “And then you just come waltzing back in? Kids these days are so ungrateful.”

  “Relax, Brom,” Jesse said. “We’re just here to talk to Bella really quick.”

  As much as he disliked the pumpkin, he let out an internal sigh of relief. At least Brom already knew about their secret. Had they run into anybody else, they would have had a lot of explaining to do.

  He squinted suspiciously at them. “You say that, but you’re probably going to kidnap me again.”

  Siobhan turned to Jesse, folding her arms. “Should we take him with us?”

  “We don’t really have a reason to.”

  “We also don’t have a reason to kick him across the entire pumpkin patch,” she pointed out. “And yet.”

  “What is it with you people and kicking me?” he demanded. “I’m still reeling from the last time Bella did and her boots are pointy.”

  She ignored him. “What if he tells someone we’re here?”

  Jesse thought about it. “Good point. Looks like you are coming with us, buddy.”

  “Oh joy, I get to be manhandled again. Try not to drop me this time.”

  With their extra companion in tow, they made their way over to Bella’s house on Bloodhill Boulevard, taking extra precaution to avoid Moonset, which Jesse knew to be the main hub of activity in Gravewood.

  It was a little over a week ago that Jesse had first stood on Bella’s front porch, fretting over if the mysterious witch would help them or kill them. Now, he knew better than to be afraid of her, ringing her doorbell without hesitation.

  The witch opened the door with a smile that quickly fell from her face as she realized who they were.

  “What are you two doing here?”

  “That’s what I said!” Brom huffed from Jesse’s arms.

  “We need to talk,” he said. “Can we come inside?”

  Even with the knowledge that they were no longer trapped in Gravewood, just being in the neighborhood made him fidgety. It would be better to get this over with as fast as possible.

  She ushered them into her house, which to her credit, looked a lot tidier than when they last visited, all of her stray spell books and papers having been cleaned up from off the floor. She was also dressed more casually too, in a comfortable black sweater and shawl, her witch’s hat nowhere in sight. Jesse absently noted that Brom was right; the boots she wore were pointed at the toes.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” she said as they sat down in the living room. “I thought after Halloween you would never come back to Gravewood ever again. Not that I’m not happy to see you,” she added hastily.

  “I didn’t think we’d come back either,” he admitted. “But we have a problem. There are monsters everywhere in Oak Hollow.”

  He explained to her all of the weird supernatural things that he had seen since Halloween, all of the monsters that had seemed to appear out of nowhere, Siobhan chiming in with her own experiences.

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  After they finished, all Bella said was, “Uh... yeah.” She didn’t look surprised.

  He blinked at her. “You knew this would happen?”

  “I thought it was a possibility. It must be a side effect from eating the monster food.”

  “But I thought the potion was supposed to fix us,” he argued.

  “The potion was supposed to get you through the barrier,” she corrected. “Which it did. Being able to see monsters now, that’s a different matter entirely.”

  “Well, is there a different potion we can make to fix this? Some sort of spell you could cast?” He could feel his pulse start to quicken. There had to be something they could do to go back to normal.

  But she just shook her head sadly. “Monsters haven’t just started appearing randomly; they’ve always been here. When you ate the monster food, you gained the ability to see through the veil, to see them, and once that line has been crossed there is no going back. I’m sorry, but there is no ‘fixing’ this.”

  Jesse frowned, turning to Siobhan. “Haven’t you mentioned something about this ‘veil’ before?”

  “It was just something I read about online,” she muttered, turning red and casting an embarrassed glance at Bella. “That there’s some sort of force, a veil, that separates the normal world from the supernatural world.”

  “That’s half true.” Bella stood up, grabbing a book from the nearby shelf. She flipped through its pages before turning it around to show them an illustration of a human and what looked like some sort of demon, separated by a thin wavy line.

  “The reality is that the ‘normal’ and ‘supernatural’ worlds are actually the same, not completely different planes of existence like you might be thinking. It’s just that the veil keeps most humans from witnessing any of the crazy magic stuff.”

  “And now we can see through the veil, because of the monster food,” Siobhan clarified. “Are there other things that can cause humans to see through it?”

  “The most common way is to witness something supernatural. The veil is kind of like a large, thin blanket. It covers a lot of area, but it has its limits on how much it can actually keep you warm, you know? So, if a human sees a monster doing something extreme, the veil wouldn’t be able to hide it.”

  Jesse knew he wasn’t going to like the answer, but he still had to ask. “Extreme like?”

  “A vampire draining someone’s blood,” Bella started listing off. “A poltergeist throwing something across a room, a werewolf transforming-”

  “A giant spider-lady biting someone’s head off,” Brom chimed in.

  He shuddered. “Okay, I get the picture.” It would be pretty hard to ignore any of those.

  “Where did the veil come from though?” Siobhan asked, fully engrossed in Bella’s explanation.

  “That’s a difficult question.” She drummed her fingers on the cover of her book. “It’s like asking where life came from. Nobody knows for absolute certain and different people have different theories. All we know is, there have always been monsters, and there have always been some humans who could see them better than others, like me.”

  Jesse remembered when he first learned about spirit mediums, special people who could supposedly commune with the dead. He’d always thought they were just grifters spouting nonsense, but maybe there was some kernel of truth in their scams.

  Or at the very least, some mediums who were actually legit.

  “Is that why you became a witch?” Siobhan pressed.

  “In part,” Bella said. “I also just find the supernatural world fascinating.”

  Jesse knew that Siobhan could keep pestering Bella with new questions all day, so he made the executive decision to cut her off. They came here for a reason after all. “This is all very interesting, but what are we supposed to do? How can we keep avoiding monsters if we can see them now?”

  “I understand your concern, but let me reassure you; you're not in as much danger as you think. None of the residents of Gravewood would do anything to jeopardize the safety of the neighborhood, and most of them rarely ever go past the barrier anyway. All the monsters you’ve seen around town- It’s unlikely any of them would try to attack you.”

  “Just, you know, don’t go wandering into the woods at night,” Brom added. “That’s where the vampires tend to feed.”

  Bella scowled. “You’re not helping.”

  If Brom had hands, he would have raised them in defense. “Hey, they need to know these sorts of things if they want to survive. I’m just trying to teach them so they don’t learn the hard way. Speaking of which, you also shouldn’t go to random parties you find fliers for out on the streets. Or talk to strange, animated pumpkins. Or-”

  Brom’s tangent was interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. Jesse and Siobhan exchanged glances, tensing, as Bella went to answer the door.

  Even from the living room, they could hear the familiar booming voice of Hank Harwood.

  “Heya, Miss Bella. Just dropping by to see if you’re still coming over to Moonset.”

  “Right, that was today! I’m so sorry, Hank, something came up, but I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

  “Aw, don’t worry about it, take your time. Or better yet, if it’s something I can help with, I’d be more than happy to.”

  “Uh, not really, it’s just-”

  “Hang on.”

  Though Jesse couldn’t see them from where he was sitting, it sounded like Hank took a big sniff of the air.

  “Is that... Jesse? And Siobhan?”

  “No,” Bella said, at the same time Brom called out, “Yes!”

  Rounding the corner from the foyer, Hank popped his head into the living room, a visibly stressed Bella right behind him.

  “What are you kids doing here?” he asked, tail wagging when he spotted them. “I thought you lived out of town.”

  Jesse fumbled for the story that he and Siobhan had brainstormed before coming to Gravewood. “No, we uh, we just moved here, a little before Halloween.”

  “Not here here,” Siobhan added. “On the other side of town.”

  “Oh, well, it’s great to see you again. Can we expect you to visit us more often?”

  “Probably not,” Jesse said hastily. “Like we said, we live on the other side of town, so...”

  “We’re just here because we wanted to talk to Bella about something,” Siobhan said.

  “About what?”

  There it was; the question that Jesse had been dreading. He liked Hank, but the man was way too nosey. Pun intended.

  Before they could scramble to put a flimsy answer together, Bella came to their rescue.

  “They wanted to get my advice on planting mugwort, since they were planning to start a garden of their own. Right?”

  “That’s right!” Jesse nodded eagerly, latching on to the lifeline she was throwing them. “Especially because her garden out front is so...”

  “Practical,” Siobhan finished for him.

  “That’s great,” Hank beamed. “You know, I also dabble in gardening myself. I could share what I’ve learned.”

  Bella cleared her throat. “That’s really sweet Hank, but weren’t you in the middle of something? On Moonset?” she prompted.

  He slapped a hand to his head. “I can’t believe how easily that slipped my mind. Sorry to bother you all, I’ll take my leave now. Unless... I could trouble you two to help out as well? We could always use some extra hands.”

  “Of course they’ll help!” Brom said before anyone else could answer. “It’s not like they have any reason to avoid the monsters around here or anything.”

  Jesse grit his teeth. “When you put it like that, how can we say no?”

  Seriously, how?

  “Excellent,” Hank said, clapping his hands together. “I know everyone will be excited to see you two again.”

  Jesse wished he could say the same.