“Pirate Dave’s Haunted Cove?”

“Why not?”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“I told you I’m in marketing. I’ve never worked with an amusement park before, but I could learn.”

“Are you asking me for a job?”

“Permission to come aboard?”

“What about the packs? Will they let you work with a vampire?”

“What I do is none of their business. This whole pack thing just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t even like fruit baskets!”

I could tell Dave was having trouble following my reasoning, but either he caught on or decided he didn’t care, because he switched from conversation to kissing.

After a wonderful few minutes, he said, “And tonight?”

“I thought we could go out for a bite. And for dessert, we can come back here for a bite.”

“Prepare to be boarded,” he said with the patented Pirate Dave gleam in his eye.

A week later, the park reopened, bright and shiny, and thanks to some hard work on my part and a little glamour on Dave’s, we had a good-sized crowd waiting to appreciate our efforts. We hadn’t had time for much more than cosmetic changes, but the employees were enthusiastic again, which made all the difference in the world.

The one big change we had made was the whole Sea Queen ritual. Pirate Dave still picked a Sea Queen during the parade, but now his selections were little girls, so naturally he’d stopped the suggestive banter. And if any of the Queens got nervous about being near the handsome pirate, they had Salty the Sea Dog right there to distract them. I still couldn’t really speak while in canine form, but I could manage to bark appropriately: “Arr-fff!”