"[I]Never[/i]," Lock and Barrel agreed.

Both of them grinned brightly. Shock twisted the rope ladder to make it twirl. When her back faced Jack, she mockingly leaned backwards and wrapped one leg in the ropes to keep herself positioned there.

"...Although..." she said.

"Although...?" Jack asked, as he leaned down closer to face her.

"Forget-me-lots are tricky to deal with," Shock said with a devious smirk. She shot a glance up to Lock. "There [i]might[/i] have been an [i]incident[/i]."

Lock's tail twitched as he picked up on it.

"It's [i]possible[/i] that--"

Barrel grinned even wider.

"--[i]We[/i] don't know either!"

Jack glared at them. He tapped his foot as he pondered it, then smiled. He turned his attention to Shock specifically.

"A trick of this magnitude is nothing less than a work of art," he said, "convincing the [i]entire town[/i] we've missed Halloween. So surely, a mind that thought of something this clever [i]also[/i] thought of [i]every[/i] possible contingency?"

His smile crawled a little more as Shock narrowed her eyes into a glare. Jack knew he had her - or more accurately, her [i]pride[/i] - caught in the spider's web. There was no way she'd let herself look like a fool on front of her posse.

"And [i]you[/i] of all would have planned for such an...[i]incident[/i]," Jack said. "Right, Shock?"

That she didn't have an immediate response told him everything. She knew - they [i]all[/i] probably knew - the correct date.