“Longer hours could help raise a little more money,” Sophia relented. “Extra time for raffle-ticket sales and other fundraising booths. But only if people are willing to stay.”

“They’ll definitely stay if we keep the prizes until the end,” Sydney said. “Everyone’s always dying to see who wins.”

Her words sent a tiny chill down my body. No one would be dying, I reminded myself.

Sophia tapped a pen against her clipboard. “What if one more hour puts us over the top?” she mused. “Record-breaking fundraiser for charity would look pretty good on a college application.”

Always with the college dreaming. See? In Nowhere, everyone was trying to get somewhere. I was just the pied piper helping them along.

“Okay, fine,” the redhead said. “But only if we agree that after the awards, we kick out the senior citizen set and still have an after-party.”

Everyone voiced their agreement while I chewed on a nail and pretended to notice something interesting on the floor. They would all have plenty of school dances in their future . . . somewhere else.

Sophia called for a vote, and then the committee got to work creating social media posts and updating the flyer. It had all been so much easier than I’d expected, with everyone just falling in line. That was the power of a queen bee. Too bad all my bees would soon forget I existed.

Reg reacted to my success with worse than his usual indifference. When I filled him in on the committee meeting, he grunted, “Great. Guess that’s that, then,” with a giant scowl. I didn’t get a chance to ask what was eating him before Sal interrupted and put us to work helping with dinner.

Later, we sat at the kitchen table, enjoying Sal’s famous chili for possibly the last time, and I waited to poke Reg until Sal took one of his “constitutionals” (a colorful term he used for taking a little too long in the bathroom that did nothing to tame the visual).

“You know we don’t have a choice,” I reminded Reg. I kept my voice to a whisper, even though Sal could never hear us over the bathroom fan.

“I know.”

“And you know our friends will be taken care of.”

“I know.”

“Including Poe.”

“Whatever.”

“Okay, what’s the problem?”

It wasn’t like Reg to be this surly, and I worried he wasn’t fully on board with our Halloween plan. Admittedly, I wasn’t fully on board with it myself, but it was us or everyone else. I hoped Reg could see we didn’t have any other options.

Sal returned then, and I jerked a thumb in his direction as he sat back down to his bowl of chili. “You’re as grouchy as this guy.”