Shock gave them both a curious look, before it slowly melded into an amused smirk.

Even without seeing his face, Shock caught tells in Barrel's body language that he still wasn't getting it. Better yet, she saw the torn look in Agatha's eyes as she stared at her little brother and tried to decide how mad at him she still was.

Finally, Agatha pushed him away. Barrel, none the wiser, just carefully got himself back to his feet.

"O-okay," he said, with a bit of pain as he clutched his stomach. "I'll see you later, I guess."

Barrel turned to head out of the shop. He saw Shock smirking and pushed his sister again as he passed her, and this time, made sure to step out of tripping range.

"Later, spider-legs!" Shock called after him.

Barrel either didn't hear her over the bell, or ignored her. Shock just smirked at his back, shot a glance to Agatha, then went back to working on chipping the Godzilla glue away. She was a lot more pleasant as she worked, having gotten her fill of amusement from Barrel and Agatha.

Agatha saw Shock watching them both, and it occurred to her that Shock had been the one to trip Barrel, resulting in him being positioned just perfectly to do the soul gaze. Had the two of them planned that?

...No, Barrel had been doing heavy lifting all day and his sister had been in the shop, so they couldn't have talked about it without Agatha seeing. And they couldn't have predicted where Barrel would be helping out, so they couldn't have planned it out last night.

So the tripping was definitely not a dual act. But had Barrel just taken advantage to try and get her to go easy on him... Or had Shock tripped him in an attempt to trigger a Meat Cute moment?

...Carver had been pretty forthcoming with advice on how to approach him. Shock had to protect her reputation as a bitch and therefore couldn't be openly helpful. But she did care about both her brothers...

Was it possible that she and Carver had thought up something like this to help move things along, and Shock had just taken advantage of the moment?

Agatha squinted at the eldest trickster. Shock was in a decidedly better mood, now... And if the witch hadn't been too mad at Barrel, this would be a point to start congratulating herself. The trip had been executed exquisitely...

Bones. She'd probably just ruined a carefully laid out plot to finally get them together!

But the attempt had still been valiant, so Agatha probably still owed a thanks. Hmm...

Shock just kept chipping away at the glue, completely unaware of Agatha's thoughts. She would retain her good mood until the drollness of her punishment overrode the high.

~~~

Once the wall was fixed, Lock assisted at the pumpkin carving station to clean up bits of shell and guts for compost, and to place the seeds in a bucket to give to Behemoth later. Here and there, he took a break and carved a pumpkin, both to help out and to break up the monotony of the task. He'd even taken one of Carver's lazy "tombstones" from the previous day and detailed it a bit more.

Lock finished the tombstone pumpkin, then went back to collecting pumpkin innards and flesh. He reminded himself that there was less than two weeks to Halloween, when their punishment was over.

Lillith was flying overhead, taking advantage of the bat's eye view to help assess the layout of the decorations and make suggestions for slight adjustments. Everything mostly looked fine; she had managed to get out of rehearsals and was pretty much just trying to look busy. After a while, she landed near the pumpkin carving station.

"The alley behind the cat hovel could use some more jack-o'lanterns," she told Lock. "Be a dear, and go deliver those."

Lock smiled when he saw Lillith, and was actually glad for the new task. He was getting sick of the feel of the pumpkin guts on his hands.

"Sure thing," he said, with a flick of his tail.

Before getting to the task, Lock approached Lillith, wanting a quick nuzzle first.

Lillith raised an eyebrow as he moved toward her. When he got close enough to reach for her, she gently -- but very firmly, using a touch of vampiric strength -- grabbed his face and held him at her arm's length away.

"Last time I let you get close to me, you hit me over the head with a memory-wipe water balloon," she reminded him sweetly. "You should probably just stick to prep chores for a while. Wouldn't want you getting into any more trouble now, would we?"

Lock gave her a playful smirk as he held up his hands and tail to show all three were empty.

"Oh, come on, Lillith," he said. "I don't have anything on me."

Lillith's eyes flashed as she dropped the act. "Never pulled anything too big this close to Halloween, you said. Halloween Town has nothing worry about, you said. Unwitting mortals, you said!"

She stared coldly at him and pushed back to drop him tail-first into a bucket of pumpkin guts.

"You lied to me. And you just missed your last opportunity to apologize for it."

She turned into a bat and held herself in place well out of his reach. "Go deliver those jack-o-lanterns."

She didn't wait for a response before flying away.

Lock stumbled back when she pushed him. A few of the monsters at the pumpkin carving station stopped to stare for a moment.

"Okay, to be fair, that first one was true," he said, with an amused smirk and a flick of his tail. "We never have. Until now."

The smirk quickly faded as she continued to speak. Lock just sat there for a moment, ignoring the slimy feel of the pumpkin guts seeping through his clothes. He stood up and tried to go to her, but she had already become a bat and hovered above him. That Lock had no response regardless said enough.

Another moment passed before he realized that some of the other monsters were still staring. Lock glared at them when he noticed.

"What are you looking at?" he demanded.

His tail threateningly flicked behind him, and it was enough for the pumpkin carvers to suddenly remember they had a task to do and get back to it. Lock quickly wiped the pumpkin guts off, dipped his hands in the fountain as he passed it to clean them, then went to go do the pumpkin delivery.

He also promised himself he'd find a way to make it up to Lillith.

Lillith took great satisfaction in keeping Lock on his toes for the rest of the day. She avoided giving him any completely useless or impossible tasks, given that the town was behind a few days and didn't have time to waste just to satisfy her spite, but she did have him run a few errands that weren't... explicitly necessary.

The vampiress never said anything to him except to give him orders and didn't acknowledge anything he said to her, either. She was determined not to let the trickster sweet-talk his way back into her good graces. He wasn't getting off the hook this time, no matter how cute his face was or how skilled he was with that tail. She wasn't falling for it this time. Nope.

---

The bell above the door jingled cheerfully as Carmilla stepped inside the little store.

"Welcome to the Witches' Shop! Best bargain in town!" Aggie's chipper voice reflexively called out from... wherever she was. Ah, there. The tip of her pointy hat poked out from behind a shelf visible through the door to the back room. She didn't wait for a response before shuffling back upstairs.

Agatha was at the counter flipping through a Ghoul's Life magazine and periodically sending Shock thoughtful glances. The younger witch waved to Carmilla. "Anything I can help you with?"

The countess shook her head. "No, thank you. I'm just here to pick something up. I know where it is." She stepped over to the ladder, where Shock was lazily poking at the glue holding a short broom to the ceiling.

Carmilla cleared her throat expectantly.

Throughout the day, Lock made a few attempts to talk with Lillith, only to be stonewalled every time. Fine, so he told a few little lies to cover for his sister. No one got hurt, and it was a really good prank, so what was the big deal?

He got more desperate as the day went on, even attempting werewolf pup eyes and knowing gestures with his tail to try to sway her.

Yet Lillith held firm.

By the end of the day, he'd all but given up trying, and just did the mundane tasks she assigned him.

~~~

Shock was currently trying to think of a way to switch out the wedding broom with Agnes', and thus didn't put nearly as much effort into getting it down as the other two. That it required the ladder and caution gave her more excuses to take her time. She gave a side glance to the door, scowled when she saw Carmilla, and went back to chipping off glue.

She ignored Carmilla and Agatha for the most part, until Carmilla cleared her throat.

"What?" she asked.

She knew what. She didn't care.

"The ladder is in my way." Carmilla spoke in that short, tight manner of a customer who expects an employee to jump to serve them in any regard. "You need to move it."

Agatha glanced up from her magazine to watch them in case a fight broke out. Given Shock's recent attempts to help her with her relationship, the witch didn't want to jeopardize the trickster's good graces. On the other hand... Carmilla was a customer, and Shock was in the way by her own fault...

Agatha decided to keep quiet for the time being and avoid taking sides unless the two started a brawl.

"In case you haven't noticed," Shock said, "I'm busy. Or are you just as blind as a vampire as you are as a bat?"

Shock leaned over to chip off some glue shards directly over Carmilla both to inconvenience the vampiress and to make her point.

She crossed her arms and glared up at her rival.

"In case you haven't noticed, you wouldn't be busy if you hadn't put that broom up there in the first place."

Actually, Carmilla didn't know exactly what was going on with the brooms, but she knew that removing it from the ceiling was part of Shock's punishment. It was easy enough to guess which trickster put it up there.

"And I need something off the shelf behind you. So move."

"I didn't put this one up," Shock shot back. "Carver did."

She smirked.

"So you can wait like the rest of us, Your Highness."

Carmilla took a deep breath, then smoothed her features into a mask of genteel politeness. "Fine, I guess I'll just have to make myself able to go around."

She transformed into a bat and flew under the ladder. Once she got to the other side, she shifted back into her humanoid form. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough room for her full size between the ladder and the shelf she needed to get to, and the sudden shifting shunted Shock's platform sideways. The ladder clattered to the ground. Shock managed to grab onto the broom to prevent herself from falling, and was left hanging from it.

Agatha payed enough attention as the ladder fell to know it was going to fall into the center of the floor, then quickly went back to reading. The merchandise wasn't in danger, and she still didn't want to get involved if she didn't have to.

"Oh my, I'm so sorry!" Carmilla batted her eyelashes up at the dangling trick-or-treater. "I guess, being blind as a bat, I miscalculated how much space there was over here. Such a shame..."

Agatha choked back a snicker and pretended to be engrossed in her magazine.

Shock tightly gripped the wedding broom. Fortunately, part of the handle jutted out from the rafter it was glued to, giving her a convenient hold to grab onto at the last second. Her feet kicked at the air in a pitiful attempt to keep the ladder steady. Shock glared down at Carmilla.

"Oh, you're gonna be sorry!" she cried.

Shock mentally calculated her height from the ground, and to the nearest shelf. Probably shouldn't risk toppling it over if she jumped to it; that was not damage she wished to pay for. If anything, she at least had no fear of falling down at an inopportune time thanks to the Godzilla glue.

Carmilla casually pulled a couple items off the shelf and brought them over to the counter.

Agatha finally set her magazine aside and rang up the vampiress. She smiled and avoided looking in Shock's direction. "Thanks for your purchase. Come back any time!"

Shock kept a careful eye on Carmilla and waited for her to buy her items and head for the exit. She smirked as she waited for Carmilla to get in just the right--

Yes, there!

She quickly swung and let go of the wedding broom. Shock then aimed to use Carmilla to cushion her fall.

Carmilla finished making her purchase and wiggled her fingers toward Shock in a jeering wave as she headed for the door. She wasn't stupid enough to turn her back on the oldest trickster without keeping an ear out for trouble. And... Yes, there is was. A slight woosh as Shock flung herself at her.

The vampiress used her supernatural speed to step sideways and backwards at the last possible moment. Shock, unable to alter her trajectory, landed bum-first on the floor.

"You should take some dancing lessons. Might teach you a bit of grace and poise." Carmilla cheerfully hopped over the trickster on her way out.