Cadenbury Town Does Halloween (Cadenbury Town #7)

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

I t’s a while later that I find myself walking around the fair with Sal, everyone else is off playing in the fair or walking around talking to people around the haunted house and along the walk.

“Is Connie at home?” I ask.

“Yeah, we weren’t sure how she would get on with the noise and so many people, so Emily is looking after her. We might bring her next week during the day, it will be quieter for her,” he pauses. “Even now I still can’t believe I have a daughter.”

“Well believe it my friend, your daughter is a cutie,” I tell him. “And soon to be a strong magic user.”

“How mad is that? It was lovely of Cleo to give her a pendent to help. I’m just worried about the future. What if we tell her off and she uses magic in anger?”

I touch his arm. “She might try it once, but she doesn’t have an angry bone in her body. Plus, we’re all just going to teach her good magic. I’d be more worried about Connie bringing her stuffed toys to life, or her toy horse.”

Sal laughs. “Yeah, that will probably be it. Nix told me Nora is on at him and Cam all the time about having a baby.”

I laugh. “She’ll wear them down eventually.”

Sal smiles. “She will. Hey,” he says suddenly. “That’s one of the people from the shop earlier.”

I look where he’s pointing and see a child about twelve or thirteen walking towards the donut stand.

“Let’s go and talk to him,” Sal says, and we head his way.

We reach him just as he reaches the side of the donut stall.

“Hi, do you remember me? You came into our shop earlier today, but left when we looked at you,” Sal said.

The boy looks terrified of us and takes a step back.

“Are you a magic user?” Sal asks him, seemingly not to notice.

Before he can answer two men come rushing over and stand in front of the boy, a younger man comes and stands beside him. One man with dark hair and the other three have light brown hair. Looking at them, the three with light brown hair are related.

“What the hell?” the dark-haired man growls out. “Are you in the habit of scaring young children? What were you going to do with him or to him?”

“Nothing,” Sal protested. “I recognised him from earlier and just wanted to talk to him.”

“So you do that by scaring him?” the other man asked in anger.

“No,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “Look this is going wrong.”

“I’ll say,” the man with brown hair snaps out.

“I’m only going to tell you this once, stay away from us, and stay the hell away from our brothers,” and with that, the dark-haired man blows out a breath and we both go flying backwards.

I groan as I hit the ground and so does Sal. I sit up and see they have gone. I look at Sal. “Well, that could have gone better.”

“Yeah,” Sal says sitting up, just as a furious looking Cam comes running over.

He sees us and looks confused. “Please tell me it wasn’t you two that scared a child and made the family run out of here,” he practically demands.

Sal and I stand up.

“Yeah, we did,” I say, brushing my hands down over my jacket.

“Call Addy and Jude here now,” he says, looking angry and crossing his arms over his chest.

Hey babe, can you come over to the donut stand?

Sure, is something wrong?

Yeah, but we’ll tell you when you and Jude get here.

I can feel Adhan's confusion. Okay, I’m on my way.

Thanks “Adhan is on his way,” I say, feeling really bad.

“So is Jude,” Sal adds.

“We didn’t mean to scare him,” I say.

“Scare who?” Adhan asks, coming to stand by Cam, Jude at his side.

“The family I showed the Myers house to earlier. I saw them dashing out of the farm, when I asked them what was wrong, they said two men were preying on their youngest brother,” Cam says. “They said the two men were by the donut stand. When I arrived, I saw both Ernest and Sal picking themselves up off the ground.”

“You scared a child?” Adhan asks in astonishment.

“We didn’t mean to,” I say.

“I saw him at the shop earlier. He was with a light and dark witch. I just wanted to talk to him,” Sal tells them.

“So you corner an unknown child and try to talk to him on his own?” Jude says, sounding angry as well. “What the hell Saladin? What would you have done if someone had done that to Connie?”

“Covered them in boils,” Sal admitted.

“We honestly didn’t give it a thought that he wasn’t from around here,” I add. “We talk to everyone.”

Adhan runs a hand down his face. “The one thing I pride myself on is knowing this town is a safe place for everyone, and you two, two of my own family, have just made a child so scared, that the family ran out of here to protect him. To say I’m disappointed in both of you is an understatement.”

God, I didn’t think it was possible to feel any worse about myself, but knowing I’ve disappointed Adhan, hurts. “I really am sorry,” I say.

“Somehow that doesn’t really help,” he snaps out. “You both better hope we see them again so you can both apologise.”

Not only is Adhan disappointed in me, but I’ve made him angry. I feel my shoulders slump. I’d been so looking forward to today, and now it’s ruined.

“Do you know where they are staying?” Jude asks Cam.

Cam shakes his head. “No, they might just be day visitors. I’ll hang around the ticket office until closing in case they come back.”

“I doubt they will be back today,” Adhan says. “Ernest, go to the ticket office and take over from whomever is there. If you see them arrive, contact me immediately.”

I nod. “Will do.”

“I’ll stick around as well, Dark, go home and look after Connie so mum can come and look around,” he puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out his car keys, handing them to Sal.

Sal nods.

“This isn’t over Dark, we’ll talk more about this later,” Jude tells him.

“Okay,” he says softly. He looks at me. “Sorry, Ernest. See you all later,” and with that, he walks off in the direction of the car park.

“Come on Ernest, to the kiosk with you,” Cam says.

“Okay,” I look at Adhan. “I’ll see you later.”

He nods. “You will.”

I think this is only the second time I’ve walked away from Adhan and he hasn’t smiled or kissed me. The first time being our first argument, when he tried to stop me from going to work after I played with magic.

“He’ll calm down soon,” Cam says as we walk towards the entrance.

“I know. We both forgot that visitors wouldn’t know us, and had nothing to fear from us.”

“Hopefully we’ll see them again and explain things,” Cam said. “Now smile so you don’t scare anyone else.”