Red Herring ✔️

15. Traditional Ghosts

Cont.

Mazie looked down at the ceramic tray of different shaped cookies. In this surreal experience of Christian sitting in her aunt's kitchen, frosting Halloween cookies, and bonding with her cousins, she could barely connect her hands to her brain to pick up a cookie and start painting.

"I had to see what you were gonna make so I could be sure to show you up," she said with quick wit. She wasn't even sure where that came from.

Chuckling, Christian laid down his cookie on a fresh sheet of parchment paper so that the icing could dry and harden. "I'm down playing my frosting abilities so that you won't get upset."

Rolling her eyes, she ignored his teasing which she was really starting to enjoy and picked up a cookie. "Oh please, neither of us are going to beat the twins." She motioned to Winter and Willow who displayed their frosted cookies to their mother for her approval. Fe oohed and ahhed at the disasters they created of multiple colors all swirled together and drooling off the edges.

Kids. Both of them laughed, trying not to make it too obvious.

"Please, do more! I made far too many!" Fe nudged the tray of cookies closer to them. With all of the kids happily occupied, Felecia could finally get to expertly design her cookies. Mazie knew that these would be the ones she gifted to the neighbors and sent along with Rob to the office. Fe loved to bake home goods but she didn't necessarily like them sitting around the house.

At Felecia's provoking, Christian extended his hand across the island to retrieve another cookie. Mazie cut him off when he picked out a ghost shaped cookie. "You can't do that one. You just did a white pumpkin." Plus, she was in the middle of frosting a ghost herself.

Eyeing her, Christian shifted his hand over to a witch's hat. She nodded approvingly. "I can make a ghost something other than white, ya know."

"No, you can't."

"So you're a traditionalist?" He asked. When Fe saw him reaching for the black icing, she scooted it in his direction. Mazie appreciated how his shirt stretched taut along his back. More than that, she was equal parts charmed and freaked out about how easily Fe accepted him into her home and how smoothly he fit in. Natural. Real.

She shrugged. "Not necessarily. But have you ever seen a purple or green ghost?"

This made him laugh for reasons unknown. "Have you ever seen a ghost period?"

"We witches and ghosts get together sometimes."

Her comment glued an intrigued smile on his lips. His demeanor completely flipped from that morning. The somber frowny moody Christian was long gone. "I'll have to take your word for it. Maybe you're right since you don't exactly look like the witches I've seen in movies or imagine."

Mazie held up her white ghost with black eyes and a creepy smile. "The movies greatly over-exaggerate our appearances. Our souls are ugly not our faces."

"You're not a witch, Mazie," Felecia corrected, trying to burst her bubble.

She wasn't fazed. "As far as you know."

"Can you cast spells?" Willow inquired curiously.

"Only at night," she said quickly.

"It's dark out now," Willow pointed out.

"The spells don't work until midnight."

"Mazie," Felecia warned. She didn't want Mazie to scare them again because they all knew that she wouldn't be the one up with the kids if they awoke from nightmares.