Lon mumbled an agreement. But I couldn’t help but wonder if the teachers who worked here thirty years ago had recited the same adage to their students . . . while Bishop stood in the same spot where I stood now, making a mental list of his potential victims.

“How many times have you been here?” I asked Jupe as the three of us approached the entrance of Brentano Gardens amusement park later that afternoon.

“This year, or my whole life? ’Cause if you just mean this year, then that would only be three times, but if you mean since I was born, then, uh, let’s see—”

I whistled and drew my fingers across my throat. “Never mind.”

“But—”

Lon reached over his son’s shoulder, clamped his hand over Jupe’s mouth, and pretended to punch him in the stomach. Jupe’s muffled cry of laughter echoed off the pavement. They wrestled the entire way inside.

Brentano Gardens sat opposite the boardwalk in the heart of La Sirena, just across Ocean Drive. The brick wall surrounding it stretched over several outlying blocks of the Village and was shaped like the crenellated wall of a European castle, the rooftop outlined in white lights. It originally opened in the early 1920s, and its claim to fame was having one of the oldest American wooden roller coasters still in operation.

During the last two weeks of October, the park stayed open nightly until midnight for their annual Spooktacular carnival. When we arrived, would-be revelers were already lined up shoulder to shoulder at the ticket booths.

The park was sweetly old-fashioned, with bales of hay and pumpkins stacked around small kiosks shaped like overgrown toadstools. A tree-lined promenade filled with quaint restaurants and shops welcomed us at the entrance. Good thing, because I was starving. However, my excitement over the possibility of dining at the smiling-penis-rated Alps Fondue Chalet was trampled when we discovered the wait was well over an hour. We decided to skip it and go for bad carnival food instead. No one was happier about this development than Jupe, who happily polished off an entire corn dog and a fat pile of cheesy fries in a few short bites.

As we sauntered further into the park, Jupe hammed it up as our tour guide. Sure, the park brochure might tell you that the Whirling Wammie ride was built in the 1960s, but did you know that Jupe had thrown up after riding it—not once, not twice, but five times? He proudly pointed out all five vomit spots. There was also Thor’s Lightning, on which Jupe lost a flip-flop when he was seven, and the Black Forest Water Flumes, the ride that “almost drowned” him the following year when he wriggled out of his seat restraint and tried to go overboard while waiting for the ride to start. Lon rolled his eyes and silently shook his head behind Jupe’s back as his son related the dramatic event in stunning, high-def detail.

Two Spooktacular attractions were set up in the center of the park: the unfortunately named Jack-O-Land—which Jupe, and probably every other kid under eighteen referred to as Jack-Off-Land—and our intended destination, the Spirit Cove ride.

“Eye of Horus, the line is long,” I mumbled in frustration.

“It’s a Butler family tradition,” Jupe said brightly. “We have to ride it.”

“No, you have to ride it.”

“Dad said we can’t separate tonight,” Jupe argued.

Yeah, but I wasn’t in danger of being kidnapped by some elderly ex-Hellfire member with a chip on his shoulder.

“Buck up, witch,” Lon said. “I hate crowds. If I have to endure it, so do you. What’s two hours out of your life?”

“Two hours?” I glanced at the the queue area. It snaked around a dozen or more handrails. Hundreds of people shuffled along a few inches at a time.

“It looks like a cow pen,” I protested.

“Moo-ove,” Lon wisecracked as he urged me into the line behind Jupe. It kind of smelled like a cow pen, too. Someone needed to pass a law forcing people to use antiperspirant. I would vote for that; moreover, I would happily stand in line for two hours to do so.

While Lon checked his phone, I busied myself with thinking of ways that he was going to repay me later. We’d been in line only a few minutes when Jupe spotted someone he knew ahead of us and leaned over the rail to chat. While doing so, he conducted some discreet scratching beneath the waistband of his jeans. “Look,” I whispered to Lon. “Did you see that? What’s going on with that? He told me it was an injury.”

“Hmph. I’ll bet.”

“Is this a boy thing? Did you injure yourself when you were his age? Being . . . overenthusiastic?”

“More chafing than I care to admit . . . the occasional carpal tunnel flare-up,” Lon said with a self-deprecating shrug. As I bit back a laugh, he assured me, “I wouldn’t worry. He’ll be fine.”

“But will I? Now I’m gonna have to scrub those images out of my brain. I liked it better when he was sweet and innocent.”

“You’re a little late boarding that train. He hasn’t been innocent for years. He’s had his hands in his pants since kindergarten.”

“Stop!” I protested, covering my ears.

Lon laughed heartily and tugged me against his side. “Parenting sucks in all kinds of ways.” He followed Jupe’s movements with his eyes, shaking his head at his son’s obvious discomfort. Then I noticed someone from Dare’s brunch party walking past the ride queue.

I elbowed Lon. “Look. Isn’t that Dare’s son, Mark?”

At the sound of his name, the blond man looked up and spotted Lon, then me. The wince was barely perceptible, but it was pretty clear that we were the last two people he wanted to see. He pasted on a polite grin and stopped outside the rail near us. “Lon . . . Arcadia. Twice in one week. Imagine that.”