Lupin Howlsworth's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lupin Howlsworth had rebuilt Halloween City from garbage and territory wars into a place monsters trusted. Now he wanted it to be the capital of the entire monster world. But he could not hear himself think. The banshees had been wailing for three days straight, and every office in City Hall shook with it. He stood at his podium in the main chamber, trying to approve a trade deal with a delegation of goblins. The wailing drowned his voice. Papers rattled on the desks. A chandelier of jack-o'-lanterns swung overhead. The goblins pressed claws over their ears and pointed to the door. Lupin watched his biggest deal in a decade walk out. The wailing had a source, and he knew her name. Moira Wail had led the banshees since before Lupin took office. She took every slight as war. This time the city had cut the banshees' graveyard district from the new festival map. To Moira, that was an insult worth screaming over until the city broke. Lupin did not send guards. He walked to the graveyard himself, alone, ears flat against the noise. Moira stood among the headstones, small and pale, green eyes burning, mouth open mid-shriek. Behind her, dozens of banshees matched her pitch. "You left us off the map," Moira said. Her voice cut clean through, somehow quiet and sharp at once. "Thirty-two years, and you still forget we exist." "I'm not here to argue the map," Lupin said. "I'm here to listen." He sat down on a cracked tomb. The wolf in him wanted to bare teeth. He kept his voice low instead. "Tell me what you actually want. Not what makes me flinch. What you want." Moira's wail faltered. No mayor had ever sat in her graveyard and asked. "We want to be heard," she said. "Once. Officially. Not shut in the back where no one listens." Lupin thought of the festival, of the delegations he hoped to impress, of a capital built on every kind of monster. An idea formed. "Then the banshees open the festival," he said. "A chorus. On the main stage. Loudest voices in the city, pointed at something instead of against me." Moira studied him. The other banshees had gone silent to hear. "You'd put us at the front?" "I'd be a fool not to," Lupin said. "No one can ignore you. I'm done trying." The wailing stopped. For the first time in three days, Lupin heard wind in the dead trees. He heard his own breath. Moira held out a thin hand, and he shook it. He walked back to City Hall in silence that felt like a gift. The deal was wrecked, but the noise was gone. Then a courier met him on the steps, breathless. The goblin delegation had not simply left the building. They had left the city, and told every other delegation the capital could not keep order. Lupin had bought quiet. He had spent his reputation to do it.