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Shira, Sumi, and Freya: A Halloween Special
Freya had been Athena for seventeen minutes when someone handed her a clipboard.
This was not among the goddess's traditional responsibilities.
"Could you manage the queue for a moment?" the woman asked.
Freya looked down at the clipboard.
There were twenty-six names, three columns, and no indication of what any of them meant.
"What am I managing?"
"The queue."
"Yes. For what?"
"The haunted house."
"Is there a capacity limit?"
"Forty, I think."
"You think?"
The woman looked toward the building behind her.
"Look, I'm sorry. We're having a difficult evening."
Freya examined the clipboard again.
She could already see four things wrong with it.
This was irritating.
She had not come to the Halloween festival to correct administrative deficiencies.
She had come because Sumi had purchased three tickets in August and announced, at dinner, that October thirty-first was now a contractual obligation.
Shira had objected.
Freya had pointed out that they were not contracts.
Sumi had explained that the tickets were nonrefundable.
Freya had asked how much they cost.
Shira had looked at her.
"Don't."
Freya had asked anyway.
And now she was standing outside a century-old theater wearing an ivory-and-gold costume, carrying a ceremonial spear, and attempting to determine whether the number twenty-six meant tickets sold, visitors admitted, or a theoretical estimate of the number of people currently hiding in the building.
