Out of nowhere: Halloween night. There was no autumn post-Sliceday; it was all just the same tropic heat as always. But as the sun set, jack-o-lanterns blazed. Some were made of actual pumpkins, others with larger, weirder vegetables that took to carving more easily.

The Tourist Winnie had them all over. And orange lights on strings, and the floating Gardeners who lit themselves in purple and orange. Trick-or-treaters roamed the narrow streets with their parents.

I saw a lot of costumes, many of which I didn't understand. There was a Human kid in a spiky cardboard box saying he was a Maker. A squad of smallish round Gardeners that were lit up to resemble the Death Star, a beach ball and a magic 8-ball, among other alien things I didn't recognize.

Lir and I responded with terror or admiration as required. Adaobi just yelled in delight.

Teenage Humans and Cazadors not in costume, but blurring in and out of the stalk, yelling BOO and screaming laughter. They kept getting me over and over, though I could tell when they were nearby and hammed it up for their amusement.

Adaobi was in her handing-out-candy costume, a blonde wig, yellow track suit with a black stripe and a samurai sword with a flashlight in the hilt. I'd asked her who she was, and she'd rolled her eyes and told me she was the Lethal Banana. Whatever. "I want you to meet some people," she said.

Lir and I were doling out treats on her porch. Neither of us were in a costume; we hadn't known what day it was, and we were also sticks-in-the-mud. "Ain't feeling social," Lir said.

"Not true, you're handing out candy and you love it. It's pretty important, and I think it'll help you learn something."

"Aw, maaan," Lir and I said in chorus.

"Yeah, yeah. Okay, shh. Here they come."

Two kids and a mom, all in costume. The Human mom was cute, in an amusingly racy cocktail dress with a lot of skin showing and skeletal hands holding her cleavage together. She had a tall, peaked witch hat and thigh-high striped stockings. I recognized her as one of Adaobi's friends during the night Lux had seduced everyone at the Hooch bar.

"Heyyy, it's the Bride from Kill Bill!" she shouted at Adoabi. Then pointed at me. "With Rocket and Groot!"

"You're Groot," Lir said from my shoulder.

"Thanks."

"What have we heeeeere?" Adaobi knelt before the two children. One was a little Human girl, maybe age 7, dressed like a Winnie, with the antlers, bark outfit and a tiny village on her back. "That's a great costume, Chantal!"

The little girl grinned, spun and did something so that the town she wore lit up. Tiny streetlamps, windows and little Gardeners on wires waved around. It was pretty spiffy. Lir and I applauded.

Chantal bowed. "Thank you, firefighter guys."

Lir and I exchanged a glance.

"And who's this?" shouted Adaobi to the other kid, a young Cazador girl. As if she didn't know: the little being had been spraypainted purple and white, with a lightning bolt zapping down her back. She was a tiny, furry dinosaur version of Adaobi.

And she was shy, hiding behind the Human mom. "Hi," she said softly to Adaobi.

"I sure love your costume!"

"Thank you," said the purplish Cazador. She faded into the Stalk, all except her right arm, which waved the candy bucket.

"Candy for them, my minion, at once!" shouted Lir.

"Yes maaaasterrr." I lurched forward and loaded them down with too much of it: Kung Fu Crawdad taffies. Maker Mochas, Zoomie Drops and Sonar Sours.

"Why ain't you in costume?" the Human mom asked me. "She get you out of it already?"

I frowned. "I don't have a costume, I didn't know today was Halloween."

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"No worries, keep it up, Green Flag. We gotta go, there's candy in these streets that belongs to us. And tonight her mom gets out of the tank!" She scooped up the shy Cazador girl. The three of them left, yelling farewells at Adaobi.

"All three of those people died in the attack," Adaobi said. "And the Cazador's mom is still coming back online. She's a family friend."

"Ohhhh," said Lir. "I…it never occurred to me."

"Souls don't just amp you up and make you rather attractive, Mateo." She lit her face from below with her flashlight. "They let you return from the graaaaaave."

"Excuse me," I said. "Can anyone tell me what the actual fuck?"

"The soul acts as the mind's backup," Lir said. "This is the first disaster I've seen since I've been here. I keep forgetting it's possible."

"It's illegal in some parts of the world still," Adaobi said. "No idea why. But if you ever get killed, your soul will know what to do. Kind of a cultural change; people are still getting used to it."

"A cultural change?" I was stunned. "Is that all it is to you?"

"In the end, yeah." She jabbed me with her blunt costume sword. "Does this help? You're always beating yourself up about bringing Todd here. Sure, it was really bad. He did bad things."

I know I looked miserable.

But she kept at me: "But it wasn't you who did the bad things. And it's possible to heal. We have the systems to do it in place, all of us contribute to it. People can come back if they want." Jab jab. "Okay?"

I frowned. "It…still hurt. It's still traumatic for them. I'm sure of it."

"We can help with that with therapies and Magic and … well, just being there for each other. Because in the end, life is trauma."

"Got that right," Lir said.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"Thought you already–"

"BOO!" Screamed the pack of teenagers as they blurred from the Stalk. I made a show of yelling and spilling my huge bowl of candy everywhere. They swooped in, grabbed fistfuls of it from the ground and ran laughing. "You gosh darn kids," Lir said perfunctorily.

Adaobi was smiling as we pantomimed anger. Mostly she smiled at me, didn't say a word. I didn't know what to make of it.

"Won't he make a great dad?" Lir shouted gleefully.

Adaobi blushed, those round red Pikachu spots blazing on her cheeks. Betrayed by her dermal cosmetics.

After Lir had made things awkward, I fled. I had a lot to consider: death had been…what, if not nullified, it had been fixed with a workaround? And these people, so damn casual about it?

It was the kind of thing that made you think. And since Lir and I were bad people, it made us think bad things.

"Can you hurt a soul?" I asked him that night in the little cottage Ruhk's crew had built on Molly. We were away from Tourist Winnie and Adaobi. This was horrible violent Walsh talk. "Can a soul be destroyed?"

"It can." Lir was cuddled up beneath a weighted blanket and wearing a sleep mask with a pattern of cartoon Schmendricks all over it. He looked ridiculous. "They almost killed the President that way, but he had a hostage and he weaseled out of it. But nonphysical weapons can work. I read about it in Schmendrick's second book."

"Why are you so into her?"

"She fine."

"That little girl recognized us."

"The Winnie costume kid? Sure, we walk around town and people know who we are. They…like us."

We considered this. A community that welcomed weirdos like Lir and I. Like me, really; as a cute Cazador, Lir was automatically cool.

"Lir?"

"Mateo?"

"Mom."

"Yeah. Too late for her. She never had a soul, it turns out, and … otherwise we could have fixed it, but…" His ears dipped.

"Fixed it." I laughed. Fixed it. "I want to protect these people," I said. "From…We need to learn how to destroy a soul."

The next day I found a Winnie bookshop called Walking Papers. In the Magic section there was the book by Schmendrick De Los Cazadores: I Want My Friends to Be Monsters. And next to it: a copy of I Don't Want Certain People to Exist. It was very detailed and surprisingly vicious. It was a much better read than the first one.

And it would prove itself useful in the end.

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