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Max took a deep breath. The air was quiet and still; weird sparkly witch dust was falling to the ground in bits and clumps all around them. Billy was asleep in his grave, Allison looked sort of dazed and worried--and Dani was crying.
Oh, no.
"Binx! Binx!"
Max looked over at Allison. All the excitement was gone, and an anxious twist in his stomach replaced it. With the witches dead, it made sense that all their curses would stop, but it wasn't fair that Binx should help save them and just die like that. And Dani would never really understand...
He started to lean toward her, but a voice from the foot of the grave stopped him short.
"Dani?"
Max whirled back around, moving in front of Dani. He squinted against the bright light coming from just in front of him--and then it was gone, and there was a kid there. Some kid with long hair and a Halloween costume and bare feet.
And then the kid said Dani's name again. Dani squeaked, "Binx!" behind him, and Max's jaw dropped.
"Binx?" he asked.
Dani came running between them and threw herself at Binx. For a second Max expected her to go right through him, but no, she plowed solidly into him, and his hands came up to hug her back.
"Hi, Max," he said over Dani's head, and Max sort of half-waved at him.
"Hi?"
*
They detoured by Allison's house on the way home, and Max left Dani and Binx at the sidewalk so he could walk Allison to her door.
"So...happy Halloween," Max said, jamming his hands in his pockets.
Allison laughed. "It was definitely an interesting Halloween."
Dani giggled; they looked over to see Binx trying to shush her, which just made her giggle more.
"What are you going to do?" Allison asked. "He's got to live somewhere, and go to school, I guess."
"Don't worry, I've got it covered." Max tried to look cool and in control and tall.
Dani and Binx were both laughing now.
Max sighed. "See you at school?"
Allison gave him a small, shy smile, and Max did an internal victory dance. "See you."
Dani opened her mouth as he bounced down the stairs, and he held up a finger. "Grab some pumpkins."
"What?" she said.
"Pumpkins?" Binx asked.
Max stopped at Allison's next-door neighbor's steps, grabbed the giant pumpkin with a pirate patch drawn over one eye, and shoved it at Dani. She made an "oof!" noise and almost disappeared from view behind it.
"Pumpkins," Max said firmly.
*
Max braved the wreckage of his room to execute his plan and get Binx a set of his sweatpants, and then the three of them sacked out on the couch. Max left the TV on and put an empty popcorn bowl on the coffee table for extra believability.
Their parents stumbled in, giggling, about half an hour later, and Max felt Binx freeze up next to him on the couch. He reached around Dani's head to poke him in the shoulder. "Relax," he whispered.
There were footsteps, and then the light through his closed eyes changed as his dad turned off the TV.
"Honey," Mom said from behind the couch, and Max hid his startled jump by rolling his face farther into the blanket on his chest, "Look! Max made a friend!"
Binx twitched next to him. Max poked him again.
*
His parents didn't notice the giant hole in Max's room until late the next morning. It was the sound of his mom freaking out that woke him up, actually. He clambered to a sitting position (his left leg felt dead, probably because both Dani and Binx were lying on it) and peered toward the stairs.
He heard "Giant hole!" and "Salt everywhere!" and "Horrible prank!" and relaxed against the back of the couch. "Stage one complete," he said to Dani and Binx, who were looking at him wide-eyed.
"Does this have anything to do with the pump--"
"Shh." Max waved Binx off as his mom came down the stairs. She looked completely shocked, and there were bits of pumpkin in her hair.
"Do they use catapults in Salem on Halloween?" she asked as she stumbled down the last few stairs.
Max's dad followed her. "The insurance company's never going to believe this."
*
"I can't believe you didn't hear anything," Mom said for, like, the fifteenth time over brunch.
"It just sounded like Halloween outside," Max said. "I told you this town takes it seriously."
"Tell me about it," Dani muttered into her pancakes. Binx grinned at her.
"But you didn't even--"
"Mom and Dad," Max said, a little too loudly, "you didn't even ask Binx how his flight was!"
"His flight?" Dad asked.
"My flight?" Binx asked.
"Your flight. From England. Yesterday."
"My--mmf!" Binx winced. Max, who'd met the business end of Dani's shoe before, winced in sympathy. "Yes. My flight. Well...it was...long?"
"Right, I figured since you were so late getting here."
"Getting here?" Mom asked. Binx stayed appropriately quiet this time.
"Yeah." Max waited a beat, then pasted an exasperated look on his face. "You guys didn't forget, did you?"
"They totally forgot," Dani said. Max hid a grin--good girl.
"Thackery Binx? The exchange student from England?" he prodded.
His parents exchanged glances.
*
"And they believed you? Just like that?" Binx asked as they tromped up the stairs to the guest room.
"There's a thing you have to know about our folks," Dani said over her shoulder to him. "They're, uh--what's the word, Max?"
"California flakes," Max said. At Binx's blank look, he said, "Like, kind of ditzy and out there."
"Oh. Like the people on Seinfeld."
Max tripped over a step and almost went down, but Binx grabbed his arm.
"You watch Seinfeld?" Dani asked.
"I only had to guard the candle one night a year," Binx said. "And it's hard to read when you're a cat."
"I guess I never thought about what cats do," Dani said.
"That's okay. It's been a long time since I thought about what boys do."
Max opened the guest room door and motioned the other two in. It was still full of mostly-unpacked boxes of things, but he figured Binx wouldn't mind.
Dani made a flying leap onto the bed, and then sat there, thoughtful, while Binx stood with his hands on his hips looking around the room, and Max stood with his hands on his hips watching Binx. "Well," she said thoughtfully, "boys go to school. And they try to get out of doing chores."
Max rolled his eyes.
"And they make that face a lot."
"Dani!"
"And they think about girls all the time. Especially ones with really nice--"
"Dani!"
"Oh, really?" Binx asked.
Max covered his face. "I hate you guys," he said.
*
After all that, getting Binx into school was a snap. "I'm pretty good at this, if I do say so myself," Max said, leading Binx through the cemetery shortcut that afternoon. "We need to get you a bike. And your own clothes."
"I can't say no to that," Binx said, tugging at the too-tight sleeve of his sweatshirt.
Max looked around the cemetery. There was still police tape around Billy's grave, but one of the caretakers was filling it in and grumbling about teenage pranks (Halloween was the best holiday ever for excuses). Jay and Ernie were in their usual spot, eyeing the two of them as they passed.
"We know about you!" Jay shouted as they walked past. "And your weirdo friend!"
"Don't make me sorry I let you out of your cages!" Max called back.
Ernie grabbed Jay and pulled him backwards. "Dude, I told you, leave them alone! They're crazy magic people!"
Max and Binx waited until they were out of sight before they started laughing.
"I never really asked you if you wanted to go to school," Max said abruptly as they turned onto his street. "Or live with us, or any of it."
"Are you joking? I wouldn't have anywhere at all to live without you." Some of Binx's hair had worked itself loose from where he'd tied it back, and he pushed it back impatiently. "My house burned down two centuries ago, and my family died out with my parents and my sister. I--I'll never be able to repay you, not just for this, but for the witches, and--"
"Of course, man!" Max slapped Binx awkwardly on the back. "You'd do the same for me."
"Well, I'd do my best," Binx said, smiling sideways at him. "But we never had a Super Nintendo, so I don't think you'd enjoy it very much."
*
It was amazing how easily they got used to having Binx around. It was either all the years of observing humans or all the hours of watching Seinfeld, but Binx adapted to modern life--sometimes better than Max did, he thought privately. Being from "England" excused any little mistakes he might make, plus it made him seem more grownup to Mom and Dad and cooler to the kids at school.
He took Dani to the park whenever she wanted, and went to her piano recitals. When Allison decided to take up karate ("In case I meet a bad guy and magic doesn't work," she said), he went with Max to all her lessons and then conveniently disappeared just when it was time to walk her home.
And one Friday he dragged Max to the living room while everyone else was busy in the rest of the house and turned on the TV.
"It's a show about people like us," he said.
They spent the next few months' worth of Fridays sprawled across the couch and floor, watching Agents Mulder and Scully take on aliens and psychics and werewolves. Behind them, the back yard froze, snowed over, thawed, and turned into a rain bog; in front of them, people argued about conspiracies and life after death.
*
The morning of his birthday, Max crept into Binx's room and inched over to his bed in the dark.
"Binx! Binx!"
"What, what--Max, is that you?" There was a clunk from the nightstand, and the lamp went on. Binx scrunched up his eyes against it. "Look, I told you, you'll get your present after school--oh."
"Yeah, oh." Max sat down next to Binx's knees. "What's wrong with me?"
Binx leaned forward and rubbed a section of Max's hair between his fingers. Max knew from his mirror what he was examining: the streak along his left temple that had suddenly turned pure white.
"This is because I took the potion and Winifred sucked some of my life force or whatever away, isn't it? Am I--I'm not dying, am I?" His voice cracked a little at the end there, and he made himself shut up.
"No." Binx grabbed Max's shoulders, hard. "You're not dying, I promise you, Max. They can't hurt you now."
"You're being nice," Max said.
Binx sighed. "It's possible, barely possible, that she got a little bit from you before she died. But it's all right," he said, shaking Max a little. "You're not sick, you're not dying. You might just get a few early wrinkles, that's all."
Max was pretty sure he was being lied to, but he just said, "Thanks," and slumped down onto the bed when Binx let go of his arms.
"Besides," Binx said, sounding more like his cat-self than he had in a while, "you're probably just going to get hit by a car anyway. I've seen how you ride your bike in traffic."
Max snorted.
"So what are you going to do about your hair?" Binx asked.
"I don't know," Max whined. "What do you think I should do?"
Binx ruffled Max's hair. "Actually, I do have an idea."
*
They walked out of the barbershop together the next day. Max's hair was in a military kind of cut, which neatly disguised his white streak. Binx was carefully folding the picture of David Duchovny he'd brought to show the barber and tucking it into his pocket.
"I don't look like a dork, do I?" he asked, smoothing a hand over his bare neck.
Max smirked at the word "dork" in a 300-year-old accent. "No, you look fine. I look like a dork."
Binx tried to ruffle his hair again, and Max batted his arm away, and it degenerated pretty quickly into a wrestling match in the middle of the sidewalk.
"Hey, Maxie!" Max stiff-armed Binx away from him and turned to see Jay and Ernie strutting by, although Ernie was so close to the edge of the sidewalk he kept bumping into the side mirrors of parked cars. "Tell your boyfriend I like his haircut!"
Max made a rude gesture back at Jay and turned back to Binx. "Man, those guys are such losers--what?"
"Boyfriend?" Binx repeated, looking utterly confused.
Max sighed. Great, this had to be the one thing Seinfeld hadn't prepared Binx for? "It's very simple," he started. "Trust me, I'm from California."
*
Just before school let out for the summer, Max and Allison had one of Those Talks.
He tried to mope around the house, but he couldn't quite get his heart in it. He liked Allison, and she was an awesome kisser, but he was getting kind of tired of the karate lessons all the time.
Binx and Dani took turns distracting him with video games and homework questions. And when Binx disappeared one day during karate lesson time and came back with a sullen expression and a limp, Dani poked him in the side every time he tried to ask Binx about it.
"But--" he said when Binx had vanished into his room with an icepack.
"Leave it alone, Max," Dani said, and she sounded so oddly grownup, he did.
He still saw Allison all the time, even once school let out and he was lifeguarding most mornings. Sometimes she'd come over and hang out with Dani still. He and Binx usually said hi and then ran off to Max's room as soon as they could. Max would make fun of all the books Binx had checked out from the library that day, and then he'd end up reading one kind of by accident. They usually fell asleep on opposite ends of the bed after a while, and Dani would come in and wake them up when it was time for dinner.
"Max?" Binx said quietly one afternoon in August.
"Mmf." Max pushed Binx's feet away from his face. "What?"
"Aren't your parents going to try to send me back to England soon?"
"No," Max said, leaving the ...stupid off at the last second. "Why would they do that?"
"They probably expect me to leave after a year. Isn't that how it works?"
"I think you give my parents way too much credit for knowing what month it is." Max laughed, but Binx stayed stiff and silent across from him. Max slapped a hand on his knee. "Listen, I told you already. You're a Dennison. Have you been worrying about this all along?"
"No?" Binx said in a small voice.
"Dummy," Max said affectionately, and fell asleep with one arm looped around Binx's legs.
*
School started. The new season of The X-Files started. Fall weather started. Homework started big-time, ugh. Binx was a million times better than Max in history, of course, and he knew all sorts of weird math stuff, but his English grades would have been awful except the teacher thought all of his old funky spellings were British and let them slide, so Max got to make fun of him for that.
The second October hit, people started putting out hay bales and pumpkins, and all anyone at school wanted to talk about was Halloween costumes, except for Max and Binx and Allison (and Jay and Ernie). Even Dani was way more into it than Max had expected.
"Did you get your tights yet?" she chirped one night over dinner.
He groaned.
"You promised."
"What did he promise you, sweetie?" Mom asked.
"He promised we'd go trick-or-treating as Wendy and Peter Pan this year!"
Binx's eyes got really big. Max glared across the table at him.
"But what will Binx be?" Dad asked Dani.
Binx held up a hand. "I'm afraid Halloween isn't exactly my favorite holiday. It 'wigs me out,' as Max would say."
Dani giggled.
"I should really stay home with Binx," Max said quickly.
"No!" Dani wasn't shouting--yet--but her face was scrunched up, a sure sign of a pre-tantrum. "You promised!"
Max buried his face in his hands. Binx reached across the table and patted him on the head. "There, there."
*
Max glared at the green tights sitting on his bed (Jay and Ernie were going to never in a billion years let him forget this if they saw him, and of course they would see him) and stuffed them under his pillow. He was not putting those on until the last possible second.
He tracked Binx down in the living room; he was sitting on the couch with his history textbook open on his lap, staring at the blank TV screen. "Binx? You okay?"
"Hm? Yes, absolutely." Binx closed the book and blinked up at Max. "Just..."
"Thinking?"
Binx nodded.
"Yeah. It seems like it's been a million years since last Halloween."
"At least three hundred," Binx said with a small smile.
Max looked out the window. Still plenty of light. "I have an hour before I have to get into that nightmare of a costume. Want to go for a walk?"
*
They ended up at the cemetery without ever talking about it. Max stopped to say hi to Billy while Binx stood silent in front of Emily's grave.
"Thanks again, dude," Max whispered to the leaves over Billy's new dirt. "You helped save my sister. I won't ever forget it."
When he looked up, Binx was sitting on a nearby rock. Max checked to make sure it wasn't actually a tombstone, then sat down beside Binx. He rested one arm awkwardly across Binx's back.
"I never really thought about what would happen after the Sandersons died," Binx said.
"You were busy making sure they never woke up. Which, looking back, was probably a way better plan than mine," Max said.
"I suppose I thought I would see Emily again."
Max tightened his grip on Binx's shoulder.
"I still will, I hope," Binx said. "But I have a whole long life I have to live until then. What am I supposed to do with it?"
"Well, I'm pretty sure nobody's ever asked me that before," Max said. He looked over and caught a little bit of a smile. Good. "But I do know a little bit about sisters, and I think if you don't do what makes you happy now, you're going to have to answer to Emily the next time you see her. Don't you think?"
"Yes, but--what makes me happy?"
Max met Binx's eyes, and realized suddenly that their faces were only a few inches apart. "Um...history?" he suggested, watching Binx watch him. "Playing in the park with Dani? Television?"
"Max," Binx said quietly. "Don't be mad at me."
Max stayed very, very still as Binx leaned in to kiss him. He closed his eyes; when he opened them, they were even closer to each other, and Binx had him by the shoulders again.
"I'm not mad," he said in the same hushed tone Binx had used.
"Oh." A very small smile started on Binx's face and spread as Max smiled back at him. Max kissed Binx this time.
"Did I mention," Binx said a minute later, "that I'm really glad you lit that candle?"
"I got that impression," Max said, and somehow managed to move even closer. "Did I mention I'm glad you're not a cat anymore?"
Binx put his head down and laughed into Max's shoulder; Max just sat there snickering.
"Happy Halloween, Thackery Binx," he said, leaning his head against Binx's. "And many more."