She looked familiar to me, but it took a few more seconds to place her. She stood there, waiting, grinning from ear to ear, wearing a white, clinging dress, turquoise and silver earrings, a turquoise squash necklace, and sandals.
Devin saw me looking at her and waved her forward, smiling at me.
“Hey, do you remember Crystal? She and Juana asked to help you out in terms of getting ready for the ceremony… all the spa things, like facials, a massage, salt scrubs. The stuff you can do before Johann gets here for all the wedding preparations. She says she helped you and Angel out before? When you came here to visit?”
I blinked, then turned, staring at her.
I’d totally forgotten that trip.
It seemed like a million years ago now, my being summoned here by Black because of odd, otherworldly vampires that appeared in the New Mexican desert.
I’d been in Hawaii when Black got to New Mexico.
Not speaking to him.
Well, that’s how Black put it.
Of course, I had been speaking to him… on the phone, that is… because I never seemed able to not speak to Black, even when I wanted to murder him… but I’d needed serious space from him after New York. Serious enough, I hadn’t always answered the phone when he called, even from a few thousand miles away.
Serious enough, I couldn’t talk to him at all for the first few weeks.
“Of course I remember!” I smiled at Crystal’s shy grin. “I honestly don’t know how you remember us,” I added after a pause. “Given how many people must pass through here.”
Angel enveloped Crystal in a hug, beaming in her face.
“Speak for yourself, doc,” she said to me, giving me a mock frown. “I would be deeply offended if Crystal hadn’t remembered me.”
She winked at Crystal, her voice turning dry.
“Miri was dumb and only stayed a few days,” Angel said, motioning with her head in my direction. “Cowboy and I came back here and stayed for weeks. When we weren’t eating our weight in tacos, and he wasn’t dragging me rock climbing, or horseback riding, or base-jumping… I was dragging him down here.”
“So no sleeping then?” I said innocently. “No jumping in the pool? Or getting hammered on margaritas?”
She waved me off, her Louisiana twang growing more audible. “We found time for all that, too. Among… other things.”
She waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively, and I laughed.
“You’re a dork,” I informed her.
“And time’s a-wasting,” Crystal informed us, her voice suddenly turning businesslike. She clapped her hands, then proceeded to motion with them, as if she were shooing two particularly stubborn cows into a barn, waving us in the direction of the spa.
“We’re on a tight schedule today, ladies. Chop, chop. You’re just going to have to be smart asses to one another while you’re getting worked on…”
I laughed, shaking my head.
“And of course we remember you,” Crystal added, her voice a teasing scold. “Jeez, you know you’re like… super famous, right? Juana and I are obsessed. Between the two of us, we have seriously collected, like, every single article we could find about you and the boss since you left here last time. Like, seriously… every single one. That doesn’t even get into all the photos and magazine spreads and online fan clubs and chat groups. We’ve been following all of y’all since the last time you were here… really, ever since Mr. Black bought the place. We were just looking at all the gorgeous photos of the two of you from Hawaii…”
I fought to keep the smile on my face, remembering how some of those headlines and articles must have read.
Terrorists. Murderers.
Aliens. Vampires.
She must have seen some of that on my face, because she laughed.
“Oh, don’t you worry, hon. We know they printed all kinds of nonsense. But we liked to see where you were. So many glamourous places! And then there were all the crazy stories about what was happening in San Francisco, and how you had to help out the government…”
She trailed, glancing at Devin, who was gesturing with his hand under his chin, making the shut up gesture to try and get her to stop talking.
She blinked, flushed bright red, and turned back to me.
“Anyway, we have the whole first part of the morning mapped out for the two of you!” She beamed at me again. “We had so much fun planning it, I gotta say. The boss called us with suggestions and they sent both of your dresses this morning… with Mr. Black’s fashion consultant sending us suggestions for your hair we could show both of you. Everyone else is kicked out of the spa today… your party basically has the run of the place. And no press!” she added firmly. “The boss has security crawling all over, and he was real clear he didn’t want any of them vultures in here until the ceremony’s about to start.”
Her enthusiasm and sweetness were like a tonic.
I remembered her with much less of an accent.
She’d more or less hidden her accent entirely the last time we were here, but now I found myself thinking she probably grew up in Texas.
Wherever she came from, by the time she finished speaking, I had to fight not to hug her.
I hugged Angel’s arm against my side instead.
“All of that sounds amazing,” I told her, glancing at Juana when I realized she’d joined us at some point while Crystal was talking. She just stood there, grinning, like she was tickled to be there at all. “We should really dump off our stuff, first… then we’re all yours…”
Angel laughed, tugging on my arm as she leaned towards my ear.
“I think the stuff-dumping has been accomplished without us,” she whispered loudly, grinning at Crystal and Juana. “You really haven’t gotten this being rich thing figured out yet, have you, doc? Or how hotels work.”
I looked around at the red and black, Navajo-patterned carpet on top of the stone tiles, and realized Angel was right. Our luggage had been whisked away, and I’d been too much of a space cadet to even notice.
Angel was already tugging me towards the spa, and I followed willingly enough, even as some part of my light looked briefly for Black.
No cheating, he murmured softly. Don’t help me cheat. I’m already climbing the walls, doc.
Black––
No. No cheating. I mean it.
He sent me a tiny pulse of warmth, then winked out of my light.
I wanted tacos.
I wanted chips and guacamole.
I wanted to sit in the hot tub, drinking margaritas on the rocks, staring up at the blue New Mexico sky. I wanted to do nothing for three to five… maybe twelve… hours.
Alas, this was not that day.
Not that I minded being pampered in other ways.
I knew the desire to hide in the resort’s jacuzzi was mostly nerves.
Crystal and Juana did their best to calm me down.
The massage made me melt.
The sauna and shower that followed were lovely.
The facial, waxing, hair softening treatment, pedicure and manicure, aromatherapy, acupuncture, and whatever else they did to me, all with me wrapped in a fuzzy bathrobe, sipping fizzy drinks and smoothies, chatting with Angel while they did all the same things to her… all of it was lovely, but weirdly exhausting by the end, too.
Then Johann and his team showed up.
The New York fashionista grinned at me like a predator when he saw me, looking like it was Christmas morning and I’d just offered him a tree’s worth of presents.
He and his team took over the entire spa, complete with air kisses, jokes, murmurs of disapproval with this or that thing about what they’d done to me so far, and a millimeter by millimeter scrutiny over my skin, face, hair, lips, eyes, eyelashes, toes, back, and even the bathrobe they’d put me in.
Then Johann played with my hair and announced they would cut it.
He put me in a much sleeker robe, and made me twirl until I was dizzy so he could decide some final touches on h
ow he wanted the dress to hang on my form, and what he wanted with my hair, and how I looked at different angles.
Then Johann had his people cover every single mirror in our area of the spa with white sheets, so that Angel and I couldn’t look at ourselves while he got us ready.
Angel’s eyebrows had risen so high by the end of their pre-game show, I thought she might tell them forget it, that she’d hide in her room and dress herself.
Thank God, she didn’t do that.
Both of us were ushered to chairs and Johann’s people got to work.
They shushed us when we tried to talk to one another.
Johann played soft music, brought us fruit spritzers and strawberries.
Then he told us to close our eyes… and just let it all happen, darlings.
I did as he said, and then Johann and his people were trimming and styling our hair, dressing us, doing our make-up, our hair, painting on nail and toenail polish, rubbing ointments on our shoulders, arms, hands, upper chests… pretty much putting together all of the aesthetic touches on both me and Angel for the ceremony itself, since Black paid Johann to design looks for both of us.
For Angel, that meant building a look around the dress she’d picked out.
For me, the mission was a lot more open-ended.
Black and I had been so slammed with work and killer cyborgs and traveling to other dimensions… I just asked Johann if he would mind picking out everything for me, from the dress to the shoes and everything in between.
I don’t think I’d ever seen Johann look that happy.
Now I wondered if I’d been an idiot, leaving all of that to someone else.
Black assured me it would be fine, that Johann was an artist, but I’m not going to lie, I was nervous as hell. Not being able to see any part of myself in the mirror as he gradually put me together didn’t exactly help.
By the time they got to the dress… the final touch-ups with the fitting… then my hair done up for how it would actually look for the ceremony… then stockings, garters, undergarments, backless bra, jewelry… then finally putting the dress on for real… then the make-up… then the shoes… then a few more touches to my hair and make-up and a few flowers woven in… and suddenly they were done.
They finally wanted both of us to look in the mirror.
I stood next to Angel, wishing I stood next to just about anyone else.
Angel looked like a supermodel.
She looked like she was about to walk a runway in Paris, or maybe onto center stage in a world class theater as a prima ballerina.
She seriously looked like a magazine spread, with her hair coiled artistically around her head, done up in perfect, elaborate braids, woven through with tiny wildflowers and baby’s breath, with a few sprinkles of yellow and pale pink buds.
She wore a full-blown Cinderella dress, shockingly white, that accented her tiny waist, strapless to show off toned shoulders and perfect skin, with lace gloves, white stockings, insanely high heels decorated with pearls, a plunging neckline.
Everything about her looked delicate and precise, even the deep white of her dress, which exactly matched her satin shoes and Parisian veil.
Watching Johann and his team put her together, even as they flitted between the two of us, I couldn’t imagine how I could ever look even half as good as she did.
Angel always had a certain quality I envied––something Johann picked up on and accentuated with every item he chose for her––a regal, queen-like quality that made people instantly take notice of her.
Of course, I knew from Angel it could intimidate people at times, too.
She joked that it served her well as a homicide detective… if less well with boyfriends.
Cowboy wasn’t most guys, though.
He’d absolutely lose his mind when he saw her.
Angel was staring at me, though, her eyes shining. She looked about to speak, but Johann raised a hand, his voice booming in the small space.
“ABSOLUTELY. NO. TALKING. SILENCE!”
Angel closed her mouth, fighting not to laugh.
Then Johann’s two assistants were whipping off the white sheets, and my eyes left Angel and focused on my own reflection in the mirror.
I admit, it shocked me a little.
Maybe more than a little.
I barely recognized myself.
I mean, I’d seen bits and pieces of what he’d been putting on me, so it shouldn’t have come as such a total surprise, but somehow, seeing it all together like this, it was.
He’d cut my hair more than I realized.
The dress looked different than I expected, too, even from looking down at it while they put it on me. From one perspective to the other, it was a completely different dress… with little similarity between my limited perspective, and how it looked in a full-length mirror. From my perspective above, I just saw the piles of light-looking material, falling in a way that made it look bunched up, giving it a kind of ruffled, flower-type texture.
Looking in the mirror, those piles of light-looking material I’d been pulling at and stroking with my fingers, now looked like thick bunches of bone-white roses, with barely discernible highlights of black and gold.
In the mirror, those highlights shimmered and gave the dress depth, making the fabric look like it had been sprinkled with gold dust.
The top was a laced, low-cut corset in the back, but the bust didn’t plunge overly low in front, fitting me snugly in that pale, bone-white, just a bare shade darker than Angel’s.
Rather than strapless, like Angel’s, mine had light, off-shoulder sleeves attached to the more severe corset, made of the same material as the lower part of the dress, and glimmering with just the faintest hint of gold.
It looked like the bottom half of me was immersed in clouds of bone-colored feathers, contrasting the severe corset on top, and my black hair, which they’d mostly left down, the soft curls accented with gold and pale green flowers.
I looked so different, I honestly didn’t know how to react.
“Can I speak yet, damn it?” Angel grumbled at Johann, her hands on her hips.
“No,” Johann said haughtily.
He winked at me as he said it, then looked back at Angel.
“You are gorgeous. You know you look gorgeous, you are dismissed,” he informed her, waving her away imperiously.
I burst out in a laugh, but Angel gave him an incredulous look.
“You are not to touch a single hair on that girl’s head,” she said, pointing at me. “Not. One. Hair. She looks perfect.”
“Go away you impossible girl… I must speak to this one, for her husband insisted I do so, once I had completed my side of things.”
I frowned at that, but when Angel quirked an eyebrow in my direction, I gave her a perceptible nod, letting her know it was okay for her to go.
Once she’d walked out of the back room and into the one in front, which we were using as kind of an “antechamber” for the wedding ceremony itself, Johann turned to me.
He instantly went from haughty to concerned.
“You are very quiet, my darling,” he said, that worry reaching his voice. “Your husband told me, very seriously, that whatever I did to get you ready for this, I was to make you happy. He said he would have very, VERY hard words for me, if I did anything at all to make you feel bad about yourself, or to show you in any kind of unflattering light.”
Something about what he said…
…it hit me like a punch to the gut.
For like the third or fourth time since that morning, I was again fighting tears.
I didn’t even know why at first.
I knew I missed Black.
I missed just hanging out with him.
I missed things like going running with him, and our morning workouts, and going surfing, and going out to dinner.
I couldn’t remember the last time we’d just done normal things.
The kinds of things we used to do before Koh Mangaan.
&nbs
p; The kinds of things we did before my uncle went off the damned deep end and decided to enslave most of the human world.
Thinking about Charles, I simultaneously felt grief that he wasn’t here, and honestly wondered why I hadn’t killed him.
I’d never in my life resented him as much as I did at that moment, for his stupid obsessions and fears and paranoias about humans, and how that more or less ruined things for everyone.
My uncle, for all of his intelligence, was an idiot.
He’d feared the future so much, he’d set out to create the worst one imaginable, just so it wouldn’t broadside him. At the end of the day, Charles projected his fears over the whole world, making his nightmare into everyone else’s reality.
I tried to shove it out of my mind.
Even so, some part of me mourned the normal life I’d once had, even with Black. Again, I was reminded how little of that “normal time” I’d had with Black of late.
I forgot sometimes, that he could be incredibly sweet.
I forgot we liked to do a lot of the same things.
I forgot we’d talking about spending time in Santa Cruz, and going camping, and both of us learning to surf for real… and maybe going back to, you know, solving crimes again.
Black genuinely liked P.I. work.
I did, too… although I hadn’t fully realized it until it was gone.
It was so easy to forget that version of me and Black.
“Oh, my love.” Johann sounded genuinely mortified. “I have upset you! What is it? We can rip this whole dress off you, my darling. I have other things we can put on you instead––”
I was already shaking my head.
Clearing my throat, not wanting to touch my eyes in case I messed up the amazing make-up job Johann’s artist had done, I shook my head again.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “You, my good friend, are not touching a damned thing.”
25
Under The Blue-White Sun
Jax looked around the outdoor seating area, a little blown away.
Being hooked into the main security construct grounded him to a degree, but the sheer size of the crowd overwhelmed him, even with that.
Black Of Wing: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Romance (Quentin Black Mystery Book 14) Page 22
