by Amy Boyles
“Don’t you think it’s enough of a spectacle that the audience will be filled with werewolves and witches?” Cordelia pointed out smartly.
“No, I don’t,” Betty said.
I tried to make my voice sound as nice as possible when I said, “I’m just not sure it’s for me. It’s beautiful,” I said to Penny, so I wouldn’t hurt her feelings, “but I don’t know that it’s to my taste and style.”
Penny looked relieved. She placed a hand on my back, ready to unfasten me. “Let me just get you out of this.”
In a flash Betty stood on my other side. “No, you won’t. She needs to wear it for a few minutes. It’ll grow on her.”
I seriously doubted Betty was right. “Betty, I think I’m going to stick with my other dress.”
From in front of me, Cordelia’s phone rang. She glanced down at it and slumped. “Garrick trying to get me to go on a wonderfully romantic trip.”
Amelia sucked her finger where the book had nearly bitten through. “At least that’s the worst of your problems. You don’t have crazy objects to avoid.”
“You can find a new job,” Cordelia argued.
“You can find a new boyfriend,” Amelia countered.
Penny jerked me to one side. “This isn’t the dress for Pepper. You heard what she said.”
Betty tugged me toward her. I was the rope, and they were playing tug-of-war. “And like I said, this will grow on her.”
“No, it won’t,” Penny argued.
“Yes, it will,” Betty demanded.
I was beginning to feel like a puppet in all this. Like my ideas and wants didn’t matter—at least not to my grandmother. She was acting like this was her wedding, which was absolutely not true. It started with the flowers, but now it had seeped into my gown.
My wedding dress, for goodness’ sake. The one thing that I should be able to pick because it represented me and my taste. It should be mine, all mine. Axel understood that. Even my cousins understood that. I didn’t understand why my grandmother didn’t.
“I just wish this was simpler,” I heard Cordelia say. “I wish Garrick would let things evolve organically.”
“And I wish my job wasn’t so dangerous,” Amelia said.
“This isn’t the dress she wants,” Penny snapped.
“It will be,” Betty shouted.
Betty gave one hard yank at the same time that Penny did. A loud rip sounded, and the dress tore down the back.
Penny gasped. Betty gaped.
Frustration had mounted inside me. I fisted my hands together and said, “I wish this wedding wasn’t even taking place.”
All gazes snapped to me. I immediately didn’t mean it. Of course I wanted my wedding to take place. I wanted to marry Axel. But with the way Betty was acting, I’d much rather elope in Witch Vegas than deal with her.
The room fell into silence. Betty dropped the half of the torn dress she held.
“I’ll see you at home,” she said and stormed out.
Penny tsked. “It’s a shame. This would be a perfect dress for someone. Just not you.”
She helped me out of it. “I’ll have the alterations on your gown made later this week if you want to return to try it on sometime. It only needs a little bit of taking in here and there.”
She smiled. “Then it will fit perfectly.”
Cordelia threw her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry, cuz. It’ll all be fine. Let’s head on back to the house. I’m sure Betty has cooled off by now.”
We stepped outside, and the air chilled me. I rubbed my shoulders. “It feels like it dropped twenty degrees.”
Amelia pulled a sweater from thin air and wrapped it over her shoulders. “Sure does.”
I glanced up and down the street, but there was no sign of Hugo. “Where’d my dragon go?” I pointed to the spot where I’d left him. “He was right there like twenty minutes ago. Where is he?”
Cordelia hiked a shoulder to her ear. “He probably followed Betty. Knowing her, she promised him food or something and he couldn’t resist.”
“It would be like her to ruin your fitting and then take your dragon,” Amelia said.
I frowned. “What was up with that? Why was she so insistent on me wearing a completely different dress?”
“Who knows?” Amelia buttoned her sweater. “Maybe she just thinks that a witch needs to be married in a particular way.”
“I think she’s proud of you,” Cordelia said. “You practically defeated the Head Witch Order on your own, and she wants to celebrate you by showing off what sort of witch you are.”
“But I’m also human.” I could practically taste the cheese with my whine. “And that part of me wants as normal a wedding as possible.”
“Tell her.” Amelia rubbed my shoulders. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
I stared at her. “Are you kidding? So many things.”
She laughed. “Yeah. You’re probably right about that.”
We reached the house a few minutes later. I decided to walk in and talk to Betty about my concerns. Let her know everything that was bothering me. We’d have a nice little chat, and in the end, all would be right in the world.
“Here goes nothing,” I said after petting Jenny the guard-vine. I pushed open the door and found Betty siting in her rocking chair.
“Girls, dinner’s almost ready. You can unpack your things and tell me about your day.”
I smirked. Betty knew exactly about my day. I pegged my purse on the wall and sat across from her. “I don’t know what that was back there at the dress shop and I appreciate you trying to help me with my wedding dress, but I’m still human and I want my dress to reflect that.”
Betty’s eyes widened. “Pepper, what are you talking about?”
I took her hand. “You know what I’m talking about. How you wanted me to try on the dress made of spider silk and how you ripped it off me because you and Penny Poe got into a fight about what I should be wearing for my wedding.”
Betty shot Cordelia and Amelia a confused look. “Is your cousin feeling okay?”
Cordelia snatched an apple from a bin and bit into it with a loud crunch. “Are you feeling okay? You’re the one trying to take over her wedding.”
Betty yanked her hand from mine and rose. “What are y’all talking about?”
Now it was my turn to shoot a confused look to my cousins. “We’re talking about my wedding to Axel. The wedding I’ve been planning for months.”
Betty slapped the back of her hand to my forehead. I flinched. “Are you feeling okay? No fever,” she murmured. Betty grabbed my arms and felt them. “Seem to be feeling fine.”
I pulled away. “Betty, what are you doing? I feel okay. I don’t have a fever, and I’m not hallucinating any of this.” I pointed toward the door. “Just five minutes ago you made me put on a wedding dress constructed of spider silk for my wedding to Axel Reign. What’s so crazy about that?”
Betty’s eyelids flared wide. “Pepper,” she murmured, “are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”
I scoffed. “Of course I didn’t hit my head. What are you talking about?”
Betty’s gaze drifted to my cousins, who looked just as perplexed as I felt. “You’re not marrying Axel. Don’t you remember? You broke up with him months ago.”
I laughed nervously. This was all too strange. All too crazy. “What do you mean, I broke up with him? I didn’t break up with Axel.”
She slowly nodded. “Yes, you did. You broke up with him so you could date Rufus Mayes.”
I shook my head. “No.”
Betty grasped my shoulders. “Pepper, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’ve got to start remembering. You are getting married soon—in one week. But you’re not marrying Axel.”
My heart nearly stopped. My throat dried to a desert. My tongue was glued to the inside of my mouth. My heart drummed against my ribs, and my voice shook.
“Who am I marrying?”
Betty’s eyes fille
d with insistence. “You’re marrying Rufus, your fiancé.”
I fainted.
Chapter 3
I awoke in my bed. Cordelia and Amelia both sat flanking me.
I rubbed my eyes and laughed nervously. “Y’all, I had the craziest dream. It was so unreal. I imagined that I wasn’t marrying Axel. Instead I was marrying Rufus Mayes. Isn’t that wild?”
But the sober expressions on my cousins’ faces told me that it wasn’t wild and that in fact, I wasn’t dreaming at all. I had been situated smack-dab in the middle of a nightmare.
And all I wanted to do was call Axel. I wanted to pick up the phone and dial his number, but if what Betty had said was true, I’d dumped him.
Oh, gosh. This just got worse and worse.
“Y’all,” I pleaded, “please tell me something. Tell me what’s going on.”
Cordelia pointed to Amelia. “The reality that we know is that you’re supposed to marry Axel soon.”
Amelia nodded. “That’s right.”
I punched my fists into the bed and sat up. I grabbed a couple pillows and stuffed them hard behind me to support my back. When I sank onto them, I exhaled loudly. “Okay. So what the heck is going on?”
Amelia fired off a stern look to Cordelia. “You tell her.”
Cordelia swallowed loudly and pulled something from her pocket. I immediately recognized it as that Fantasy Island stone. Heck, I didn’t know its real name, and that seemed as good as any.
I spoke slowly. Every word felt painful, as if saying them would hurt me. “Are you saying that somehow we triggered its magic?”
Cordelia nodded. “I think so. The three of us, at nearly the same time, wished for different things. I wished that Garrick would let things evolve organically.”
Amelia frowned. “And I wished my job was less dangerous.”
I closed my eyes. “And I wished my wedding wasn’t happening.” I buried my face in my hands and moaned. “Oh no! I did it. I wished I wasn’t marrying Axel. But that isn’t what I meant. I only wanted my life to be normal again and that Betty would butt out of my planning.”
I threw myself to the other side of the bed. “This is horrible, y’all. And I thought we’d really screwed up when we released the magic eater in town.”
Which was true. Not long ago me and my cousins had unleashed a magic eater that had taken the life of Saltz Swift. Our friend Sylvia Spirits had been the guilty party behind the entire fiasco.
It had been a huge mess.
I lifted my head and studied them. “I believe the sweet tea witches have outdone ourselves on this one. What are we in? An alternate dimension? Am I Bizarro Pepper?”
Amelia threw back her head and laughed. “If you’re Bizarro Pepper, then I’m Bizarro Amelia.”
Cordelia nibbled the corner of her mouth. “Even if we’re trapped here, from what I understand, it can’t last forever. We’ll have to get out at some time.”
I flexed my fingers. “But I’m engaged to Rufus. Engaged to be married within a week. If I marry him, then…we’ll have a wedding night.”
Amelia’s lids flared with concern. “Whoa. That is bad.”
Cordelia shrugged. “Or good. However you want to look at it. I mean, you’d get the best of both worlds.”
I threw a pillow at her. “I’m not doing that with Rufus. I love Axel. Axel, who I apparently broke up with.”
I started to moan again and then realized whining and crying wasn’t going to do any good. The three of us were in a situation, one we desperately needed to fix and fast.
“We need a game plan.”
“First off,” Cordelia said, “I don’t think we should tell anyone what’s going on. Just leave it. First, we’ll sound crazy.”
“That is true,” Amelia said.
I snapped. “If we’re in the same time, but just in a different reality, do you think Southern Wishes is open?”
A spark lit in Cordelia’s eyes. “I bet it is. I bet we could go there and talk to my dad, figure out how to return to our lives. Easy peasy.”
Driven by the possibility that we might be able to get out of this situation quickly, I nearly catapulted from the bed.
“Great. So let’s go there and see what we can dig up.”
Right then, my window lifted. The three of us turned, and I fully expected to see Mattie the Cat enter. Where was Hugo? I was starting to get worried about him.
But instead of Mattie jumping inside, a raccoon I’d never seen before in my life grabbed the windowsill and hoisted itself onto the floor.
The raccoon stood and brushed himself off. His gaze drifted to the three of us staring at him.
“What? Do you want to take a picture? I’ll pose for you.”
It spoke. Like spoke where my cousins and I could easily understand it—him. It sounded like a him.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Oh, very funny, Pepper.” The raccoon pulled a pouch from around his waist and emptied it on the floor. “I found all this great stuff today. We can use it on that beauty spell you’ve been working on—the one for your wedding.”
He picked through the collection. “Let’s see, I found a quail egg, two stones of quartz—had to dive into the Potion Ponds for that one.”
He wagged a finger at me. “Let me tell you, the sprites who live in there were pretty ticked at me for invading their space. Little buggers almost bit my toes off. Oh, and I found an eagle’s feather—found the nest, actually, but you’ll never guess where.”
He stared at me as if waiting for me to ask him where he found it. “Okay. Where?”
“With the giants.” He raised his hand to stop any protest. “I know. I know. You’ve told me before not to go there, but they live so high in the mountains I knew that was the only place where we’d get the eagle’s feather.”
He smiled and presented the beautiful golden-brown feather. My gaze darted to it and then back to him. I shot my cousins a questioning look, and both of them responded with a shrug.
They were no help.
My mind whirled. There were so many dots I had to connect, lines to draw. But the first thing I had to know was who the heck the raccoon was.
The raccoon gathered his cache and dropped it on my dresser. “You smell funny, Pepper. Have you been digging in trash?”
I laughed. I smelled funny. That was rich. Here I was talking to a trash panda about scents. This from the creature who’d not only been swimming in the Potion Ponds but who had also managed to scale the mountain up to the hillbilly giants who lived outside Magnolia Cove.
“Well actually,” I said slowly, “I haven’t been digging in trash, but a funny thing happened to me.”
He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “What’s that?”
“Well, I’ve had a little bit of a memory issue.” I pointed to Cordelia and Amelia. “So have they. It’s crazy, but we’re all feeling a little off and to us, everything seems a bit…different.”
He cocked his head. “How different?”
“Well…” How to put this delicately? “For one thing, I’m wondering what happened to Mattie?”
His gaze narrowed. “Mattie? The cat?”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s the one.”
He shook his head. “You don’t remember?”
I shrugged. “Call me crazy.”
The raccoon rubbed his forehead. “You must’ve been hit hard by something to not remember what happened to her.”
“You could say something like that happened.”
“I’m not sure how you could’ve forgotten,” he said slowly, “but Mattie died.”
My chest constricted. My heart seized. “What? What do you mean?”
He moved the trinkets around on the dresser, organizing them by size. “I really hate to go into it, but you remember Mattie died to save me. So that you and I could be together. It was okay. Mattie was okay with it, remember?”
I couldn’t exactly say no, now could I? I cleared my throat and knuckled tears f
rom my eyes. “Sure. Of course I remember. She died so we could be together.”
And who are you?
I clenched my fists. All I wanted was to call Axel and cry on his shoulder. I wanted to beg him to make everything right. He had magic. A lot of magic. So much magic that maybe he could make all of this right. Maybe he could fix it.
I had to get out of here.
Luckily for me, Amelia must’ve seen the devastation on my face, because she stepped up. “So, Mr. Raccoon.”
He cocked a brow. “Yes, Amelia? You want to challenge me to a game of checkers so you can lose?”
An uncomfortable laugh escaped her lips. “No. Not exactly. But that does sound like an interesting challenge.”
“It is but only for me,” he said. “I like watching you lose.”
Red bloomed on her cheeks. “I’m not sure about that.”
“I am,” he said.
Cordelia raised her hand to stop all the silly conversation. “Raccoon, what’s your name? We’ve all forgotten. Can you just spill it?”
Dead silence filled the room. The raccoon’s gaze swept across us. “Now that I think about it, all of you smell different. What’s going on?”
I shrugged. “It’s hard to explain.”
“I’ll cater to you this time. But now you have me worried. Are you trying to get me to say my name so you can work a spell on me?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
The raccoon slowly picked up the feather. “I don’t believe you.”
Quicker than I could blink, the critter shot a stream of magic from the feather, aimed straight at me.
I jumped to the bed, barely dodging the magic. “Stop it!”
“What’d you do with Pepper?” he yelled. “Where is she?”
Another bolt of magic ripped through the room. This one was trained on Cordelia. She raised her hand and suspended the stream.
I took aim at the raccoon and fired off a magic bubble at him. He turned to scamper back out the window, but my balloon caught him before he could escape.
“I’m telling Betty,” he yelled. “You’ll never get away with this. What did you do with her? Where’s Pepper? Wait until the town finds out who you are. You’ll be strung up! You’ll be drowned!”
