Hunter

The Town of Salem

"Halloween is upon us!" Juliet shrieked as she danced around the hallways in her regular succubus outfit. It consists of a few leather straps that cover key components of her body, designed to drive onlookers into a trance and under her spell. There's always been an unspoken rule that as Halloween approaches the monsters and ghouls are allowed a little more freedom in their appearance until November rolls over. Typically they have seven days to walk among the humans in their "costume" and mingle with them in their natural form.

Juliet has been looking forward to this day for a while. She has been keeping an eye on the calendar while organizing her finds to help decorate the office. All of today she's been putting pumpkins on random surfaces around the office with goofy faces stuffed with an LED light to make them glow. As she skips down the hallway she hears Hunter yell out, "Juliet! My office!"

Her fun is over for now as she is forced into her boss's office, "You called." With a stern face, he is staring at the pumpkin left on his desk, "I need you to explain to me a few things. First, what the hell is this?" He turns the pumpkin around so it's facing her. The face is a goofy one with its mouth open and tongue sticking out. "Secondly, who gave you permission to do this? Lastly, why are you not in business attire?" He was not having any of her fun. She sheepishly covered herself with her arms as her more modest work clothes appeared around her, "Well, it's Halloween and it's my favorite holiday. We monsters and demons get to have some fun around this time and I wanted to share it with the office."

"This is still a place of business. You can have your fun after you are off and before you are on."

"I'm sorry."

"The decorations have to go. I want you to round them up and take care of them."

"But!"

"No! Buts! This is my office, this is my building. We keep to a professional standard. I don't care how, just remove them." He grabs the pumpkin off of his desk, "Especially this one."

"Yes, sir."

With her head down and the pumpkin cradled against her chest, she closed the door behind her. Always as if on cue Hanson is outside the office waiting for her. In a light tone, he whispers, "You can put them in the third-floor conference room, we never use it." It made her smile like she needed to. It took an hour but she got the pumpkins she had scattered about the building together in the conference room where they looked like a social gathering. She turned off the lights giggling at the glow from the LEDs. As she rounded the stairs to the second floor Hunter walked out of his office with a stack of paper in his hands. With his booming announcement voice, he rattled the hall, "Pack your things! We have a job!"

Within an hour they were on the plane taking off from the tarmac. Hanson, Hunter, and Juliet were all centered around the table on the plane where they were about to get their briefing. Hunter looked rather excited about this one, "OK, the job is simple. We're heading to Salem Massachusetts." Juliet let out a giant squeal when he said the destination to where his ears were ringing. "Holy hell, what is wrong with you?!"

"We're going to the Halloween capital of the United States! How can you not be excited?"

"Because we're not going for fun. We're going for work which is why we're going at all. This contract pops up every year and this year we finally snagged it. We're going to be working from the time we land to November first so we're going to be busy the entire time and we'll be doing this in shifts. Hanson, ''You'll be doing the swing shift, I'll have the overnight shift, and Juliet will get morning and afternoon."

"Aww, but that's not when everything lights up."

"And exactly why you have the day shift. Now, every year something weird always happens and they have a team of hunters on standby. They always seem to screw it up. This year, we got the contract before anyone else so we're the ones who are going to set the bar and not hose this up. We'll be working with a local woman by the name of Marguerite, a witch who's been living there since the days of the witch trials so if anything is happening, she is the one to know about it. Be nice to her, she's a family friend."