The air in Salem still tastes faintly of autumn — pumpkin spice, crisp leaves, and the ghost of Halloween mischief — but for Stephanie and Alex, the season’s tricks may be more than harmless pranks. In the quiet aftermath of Stephanie’s triumphant book launch and the shocking unmasking of Anastasia, a fragile calm should have settled over their lives. Instead, a single stray encounter and a flying gourd have detonated a chain of unease that neither of them can quite shake.

Stephanie Abigail Klene, newly celebrated and weary from the glare of publicity, thought she could finally exhale. Her pages had been turned, secrets exposed, and a curious chapter of her life had closed. Beside her, Alex — steady, pragmatic Alex — was ready to focus on the future: planning the big hospital gala, tending to the practicalities of life, and enjoying the simple pleasures of being together. Yet Salem is a town where the past refuses to be tidy, and one stranger’s warning lodged itself like a burr in Stephanie’s mind.

On a Halloween night that was supposed to be all candy and costume whimsy, Stephanie had bumped into Susan Banks outside the Brady Pub. Susan’s words were strange, urgent — a kind of superstition wrapped in prophecy. She insisted that danger was not a story device but a living thing, circling close enough to bite. She warned that some of the eerie scenarios Stephanie had scribbled into her manuscript might leap from fiction into flesh. At the time, Stephanie dismissed it as spooky theater, a Halloween prank given extra breath by superstition and the season’s mood. Who would have believed that a flying pumpkin could make that warning land with such literal force?

The incident with the pumpkin was absurd and comic on its face: Rachel Black — mischievous, reckless Rachel — launches a pumpkin into the path of a gathering, and it strikes Alex squarely in the chest. The impact should have been nothing more than a moment’s laugh, a bruise to be treated and a story to retell. Instead, the event reverberates like an omen. The pumpkin’s strike becomes a splintering chord, awakening Stephanie’s anxiety and forcing her and Alex into a state of hyperawareness they can’t easily relinquish.

Not long after the bizarre accident, the couple makes a discovery in their home — something small at first glance but heavy with implication — that settles over them like shadow. It’s the kind of thing that would make anyone’s skin prickle, the kind of clue that reads like a deliberate breadcrumb dropped just for them. Stephanie, whose mind is creatively wired, is both amused and unnerved: she writes mysteries for a living, yet she never counted on being the subject of one. And Alex, practical and grounded, finds himself drawn into speculation despite his better judgment. The pair exchange looks heavy with unspoken questions. Was Susan’s warning merely theatrics, or had she seen something none of them wanted to admit?

Their puzzle opens like a book of whispered chapters. Theories multiply: coincidence, targeted mischief, or a darker design aimed at catching them off guard. As the town lights glitter and the gala invitations circulate, Stephanie and Alex must decide whether to treat this as a harmless flurry of unfortunate events or the first breaths of something that could grow teeth. Their investigation is equal parts tender — Alex watching over Stephanie’s frayed nerves — and tense, as they pry at corners of their lives that had seemed safely folded.

Meanwhile, the quiet corridors of power in Salem tremble with another kind of unrest. Theo Carver, the young son of Abe, steps into a role many expected him to covet: CEO of Dera Enterprises. It is a position once promised to Gabby—a promise that now sits like a raw bruise in the hearts of those who believed in her ascent. Theo’s elevation is less triumph than provocation; he walks into the office with a swagger that unsettles his father and alarms old allies. Abe watches his son with a hard curiosity, sensing an unfamiliar hardness in Theo’s stride, a chip on his shoulder that feels more dangerous than youthful ambition.

What interests Theo most is power — not merely in profit and balance sheets, but in the ability to redirect loyalties and rewrite expectations. He begins his tenure with a calculated move: he seeks out Gabby Shereimenez, the woman who was once told the corner office would be hers. The meeting is awkwardly graceful — the CEO offering rapprochement — but beneath the surface lies calculation. Theo wants Gabby onside; he recognizes that for the company to flourish, for Gabby Chic to continue being the jewel of Dera Enterprises, she must be placated. What he offers will be pragmatic, not sentimental: partnership over payback