My pirate costume swings beside me in a paper bag the wind might carry off at any moment. Ernesto babbles on beside me about how his team messed up some big presentation or something, but I can't focus on that or the people trying to talk to us as we pass. Something about the interaction in the Haunted Halloween has my head running overtime on calculations.

According to my research, I'd done absolutely nothing right. I was shaky, anxious, slightly rude, and as awkward as I've ever been. So the look I saw in her eyes couldn't have been what I think it was. I need to reevaluate my abilities to read emotions, I think.

"Hey! Hey wait! Alex, right?" The woman from the store is chasing us down the street in her purple stocking feet.

"What's she doing?" Ernesto asks, looking up from his phone for the first time since he left the store. "I really have to go. I'm so late."

He grabs my elbow and tries to pull me down the street toward his car, but I don't comply, stumbling slightly as his strength overpowers my stillness. "Just leave me here," I say without thought. "I'll catch up."

"You don't have a car."

"I'll take a bus."

"It's your funeral." And with that, he releases my arm and, I assume, heads to his car. I'm not sure, because all I'm doing is staring down the beautiful and wild woman still inexplicably chasing me full tilt down the main street. I can't stop myself from imagining this is a very different kind of story in which someone who looks like her is chasing someone who acts like me for a much more romantic reason.

"Hey," she says again, leaning down to catch her breath as she reaches me. "Did I see it right? You work at LJB Technologic?"

Her breath is coming in pants and she holds up a finger to let me know she still has more to say as her deep black waves fall over her shoulders and frame her reddened face.

"Sorry," she adds when a few moments have passed. "I just ran a bit too far and I need to up my cardio game."

"Okay." What is she doing chasing after me? My heart speeds up in my chest, palms growing sweaty and pins and needles run up the side of my jaw.

"Okay so I overheard you and your friend back there and I think I might have an idea that can help us both."

"You overheard us?"

"Okay I totally eavesdropped, can we cut to the chase?"

I've got to appreciate the loud way she's honest.

She takes my silence as acceptance and continues on with her idea as I trace the edges of her face in my mind.

"Well, I was thinking that we can help each other. I think maybe from how you and your friend were talking that you might want some help getting back at someone. He said something about being spontaneous and fun. Well, I have a really spontaneous and fun idea. I need to get back at my ex-boyfriend and all I need is for you to help me get into LJB Technologic's offices."

I have to shake my head. Did this woman just ask me to break into a building for her?

"I can't just break into an office for you. I have... a reputation and a job to uphold. Is whatever you're doing even legal?"

"Now that doesn't sound like something a spontaneous and fun person would ask, does it?"

There must be spiders crawling up my back. I cannot be hearing her correctly. The ocean roars in my ears. And Debrah's words flutter back into my head.

God, Alex, do you even know how to treat a woman?

Not assertive... need to be more spontaneous.

"You must have heard my friend wrong," my lips move without thinking. "I don't think I'm cut out for anything illegal. I have too many things to protect."

I almost say more than I should, but manage to stop myself before going too far.

She sighs and sits down on the sidewalk, pulling at a small hole in the toe of her stockings. "Sorry. I know it sounds... Look, I know how it sounds. It's maybe not entirely legal but it's not entirely illegal either. You'd just be getting me in and then after that absolutely nothing would break any rules."

"I can't lose my job over this. I don't even know you." But for some reason I'd like to. That reason probably has to do with my burning desire to know why she's dressed as an evil witch. Among other things.

Plus I'm completely confounded as to why she ran after me. Was it really just a convenient situation with where I work? The compelling need to figure out why everything is happening threatens to take over, but I've learned that asking people how things went or why they acted a certain way yields less than accurate results. Maybe if I observed her a bit I'd be able to figure it out.

Like if I helped her?

"Fine," she huffs. "It was a bad idea. Thanks anyway."

She spins on her heels and storms away, failing to stop at the street corner and throwing herself into the street with all the confidence of someone the cars will simply have to avoid. And for the second time today we part with more questions than answers.

What is it about her that's so hard to figure out? What could have possibly possessed her to ask me for help? And most importantly, why was I about to risk everything to say yes?

* * *

Turns out the buses in this little town aren't as efficient as I was hoping.

When my sister Melanie invited me to move to Heartsbrook even though my work was in the city, it sounded like a really good idea. There was literally no way I could refuse. But for a guy used to Toronto transit systems, the two buses careening through the maze of Heartsbrook streets was less than ideal.

I never thought I'd pay a compliment to the Toronto Transit Commission. Never. So there's a first time for everything. And for me, that time was twisting onto the sixth small street I've never heard of before finally reaching the cross street by my sister's house.

I thank the driver and exit the small van masquerading as a bus before making the short walk to my sister's place wishing I'd worn warmer clothes this morning. But that's how life works when you stay out later than you planned. Too many variables to account for.

The walk is faster than usual because I practically jog it, hoping the extra energy will keep me warm enough to feel my toes by the time I get there.

I round the last corner and see the whole reason I moved her playing out in front of me like the scene from a movie. My sister and her youngest Emma are draping a spider web over the tree in the front yard and having a lively debate over where the large stuffed spider should live for the month of October.

"I agree with Emma," I try to call from a few houses away, but the light jog has me more out of breath than it should. So I have to try again when I reach the front yard, scooping Emma into my arms as I do so.

"You can't agree with her," Melanie jokes, stepping down off the low stool she was using to decorate her Victorian style home. "She's your goddaughter so she has an unfair advantage."

"You're my sister. The advantage seems about the same to me."

"You forgot to factor in the cuteness of this child's pout," Melanie laughs, turning toward the house with the comically huge spider balanced on her head.

"Should we tell her about Herbert?" I whisper to Emma.

"No," she giggles and jumps into my arms. "I want to see how long she'll keep him there. Maybe she'll wear him like a spider hat when she goes to work tomorrow."

"Maybe he'll wake up and crawl out of the house in the middle of the night," I whisper, tickling her belly and spinning her around in the crisp autumn air.

"Dinner time, Emma," Melanie interrupts with a call from the front door. "And don't you keep her out there with your bad behaviour, Alexander."

There is one person in the whole world who would call me out on my bad behaviour and I'm voluntarily living in her house. Sometimes the world plays cruel tricks on all of us, but at least my cruel trick isn't as bad as Melanie's. So I just smile and spin Emma around to my back, racing into the house after my sister, whose head is still adorned with the large stuffed spider we've dubbed Herbert.

"We must wash our hands!" I call, brandishing my invisible sword before us to banish imaginary enemies that block our path.

"The queen demands it," Julia giggles from the living room. "Hey, uncle Alex."

"That's Sir Uncle Alex to you, Julia." I survey her eyes and posture. Today seems like a good day. "Have any fun today?"

She prattles on about how her class is making Halloween crafts all week and she made something special for her mom. She's still talking about her little toilet paper ghost when we sit down to a dinner of pizza, salad, and more garlic bread than we could reasonably eat in a week.

I don't get to ask before Melanie holds up a hand and shoots a sideways glance at her youngest child. "Don't ask."

Emma doesn't even wait for everyone to be sitting down before she's piling her plate with a mountain of garlic bread and absolutely nothing else. How much have I missed being out of town for two days?

"So," Melanie says once everyone has food on their plates, "a little birdie told me you had a little run in last night and then another one this morning."

If that little birdie is named Ernesto, I'm going to kill him. I just chew on my slightly soggy pizza as the radiator kicks to life in the corner, shuddering and hissing as it does. I really should get that looked at.

"Aren't you going to say something?" she whisper-hisses into my ear.

"Not in front of your children I don't."

Naturally, they don't give me a buffer for long, quietly eating and then demanding to be allowed to go play with their blocks as soon as they've finished. Normally Melanie would make them stay at the table until all the plates were clear, but today she lets them go. Because today she has an ulterior motive. It doesn't take a statistician to tell why that pattern was broken.

And in that annoying way she's done since before she learned how to talk, Melanie doesn't say anything. She just stares me down with a look on her face that says 'you need to tell me what's going on right this minute or I'm going to call Carmina to find out.'

But instead of answering, I ask, "What are you talking about, exactly?"

"Honestly, brother, I love you but you are dense sometimes. And I'm pretty sure this one is on purpose. I mean your situation with Debrah spiralled into a run in with a woman in purple horns? Or something. That part was unclear. Dr. Flores down at the hospital did confirm that the reason you never came home last night was that you arrived in the emergency department after hitting your head passing out."

She stares at me as though I'm supposed to say something. But what am I supposed to say?

"It isn't like you to drink that much, Alex. I'm worried about you. Was it something Debrah said?"

Was it ever. "No. No, it's nothing. It's just that I wanted to prove I'm still sexy or attractive or whatever. It was stupid."

She literally snorts so loud she inhales some of the tea she was drinking and ends up wheezing like a dying goose as she tries to clear it from her airways. It's very comforting.

"It's not stupid," she says once she regains her composure. "You are a catch. I'm sure the gossip will be spreading about you in no time."

I can't help the groan that escapes me when I think about what must be flying around Tea Sip right now. Maybe I should break my self-inflicted moratorium to figure out what's being said about me.

I look up to see Melanie smirking at me over the top of her mug. "I thought it might be something like that."

"Something like what? I'm just thinking about the gossip that must be spreading on Tea Sip right now."

"You mean like how you were chased down the street by Heartsbrook's own Jack Whitfield? Who recently dumped the illustrious Luther Bellsworth? Like that kind of gossip?"

"She what?"

"She chased you down the street. Or was that part not exactly true. Mrs. Fendershan isn't exactly known for her accurate accounts."

"No. I mean Jack, the girl in the purple stockings, is the infamous woman who just broke up with Luther?"

"Yup. She found Luther cheating on her. It was a whole thing, so naturally it's everywhere on the app. Honestly, what have you been doing on there? It's a treasure trove of information on every person in town, pretty much."

But I don't need to go on Tea Sip to figure out that if Jack's ex is Luther Bellsworth, then the person she wants revenge on inside LJB Technologic is none other than the CEO and all around jerk who owns the very company I work for.

I reach for my phone before I have time to rationalize why I shouldn't do this.