by Stacey Jay
“All right.” I cup his face in my hands, willing him to stay with me with my sexiest sex eyes. “I’ll call you Tucker,” I whisper. “I’ll call you baby. I’ll call you He-Man Master of My Vagina. But you’ve got to get up and move. Now.”
It’s like he’s been Tasered. His abdominal muscles clench and his arms move and his knees slide through the singed grass and a minute later—with a little help—he’s on his feet. His arm lies heavy around me and I feel at least fifty of his two hundred and whatever pounds bearing down on my shoulders, but he’s up.
“We’ve got a fairy escort back to town,” I hiss. “Think you can walk two miles?”
“I can walk to . . . New Orleans,” he says, voice only slightly slurred.
“Good. Because if you fall down before we get there, you won’t be getting up again,” I whisper. “The fairies will kill us.”
“I’m not falling down.” He takes a stiff step forward and then another, gait growing smoother as we cross the clearing to where the fairies hover beneath a peeling cypress. “I’m Tucker, Master of Your Vagina.”
My laugh sounds slightly hysterical, but only slightly, which is pretty good given the circumstances.
Six weeks later
It’s the perfect day for a wedding. Eighty degrees, with a pale October sky overhead and a breeze blowing through the live oaks, keeping everyone cool in their Sunday best. The wide drive leading up to Camellia Grove is dissected by a blue runner a shade darker than the sky, lined on either side by rows of white wooden chairs. The columns on the plantation house at the end of the drive are strung with blue and white ribbon, and explosions of hydrangeas in antique copper kettles sit at the end of each row of chairs.
There are a lot of chairs. Half the town has turned out. People mill around the drink tables with mimosas or Cokes in hand, visiting and laughing, ordering children to “go play” until it’s time for the service.
Until I have to walk down that aisle and do what I’ve promised to do, no matter how much I wish I could run home and hide under my bed until this is over.
“You go play, too,” I say, giving one of Deedee’s braids a nervous tug. Her hovering is only making me more anxious.
“But I’ll get my dress dirty.”
“You’re a kid, you’re supposed to get your dress dirty. No one’s going to care.”
“I care. I’m the flower girl.” She stands up straighter and sticks her nub of a nose in the air, pretending she’s not watching as two girls about her age walk by holding hands, talking very fast about cake.
Deedee’s doing fine in school, but she hasn’t been getting along with some of her old friends. Apparently, third grade is the time when girls start the cliquey, tormenting-each-other-for-fun thing these days. Sad. I think it was at least fifth grade when I was in school. Maybe sixth. And I always had Caroline.
Caroline . . . whose dying face I’m beginning to think it’s okay to forget. Maybe she’d even want me to forget. No matter how we fought as teenagers, she loved me. We were good sisters. And good sisters don’t wish suffering upon each other.
Deedee made some noise about wanting to adopt a baby sister last week—observing that we have enough room now that we’ve moved in with Tucker. I gave her the evil eye and reminded her that we already have a cat. An insane cat, that would probably eat our baby if we were crazy enough to get one. I almost warned her not to get too comfortable at Tucker’s house, either, but I didn’t. She’s been through enough. I want to give her at least the illusion of stability. I don’t plan on saying a word about leaving Donaldsonville until the day we pack the armored moving van.
Six more months.
Six more months of proving myself as a foster mom and I’ll be able to adopt Deedee and whisk her away from all the deadly drama. Until then, I can’t take a foster kid out of state. And I can’t let down my guard. And I can’t let anyone know that I’m planning to get as soon as the getting’s good.
“Can I have another Coke?” Deedee asks.
“You already had a Coke.”
“So? I’m still thirsty.”
“You don’t need another Coke.” I stand on tiptoe to see over Dom’s and Dicker’s heads. They’re camped out by the booze table, too. It’s good to see them enjoying themselves—especially since I wasn’t sure they’d be on board with these particular nuptials—but I hope they won’t be too smashed by time for the ceremony. Dom is one of the groomsmen.
“Why not?” Deedee whines.
“Too much sugar.” I lean to the left and the right, but there’s no sign of the man I’m looking for, the man who promised to come talk me down from the ledge before the ceremony.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” I ask.
“That’s your third mimosa, ain’t it? Haven’t you had too much sugar?”
I shoot her my best I-am-not-amused look. “I can handle it.”
“So can I.”
“Why don’t you put Gimpy in his basket and go play?” I ask with a tight smile, giving her braid a firmer tug. “I can keep him out of trouble.”
“No you can’t. You have to concentrate.” Deedee hugs the Gimp tighter. He growls and slits his eyes, but doesn’t make any move to jump out of her arms. He’s been like a furry growth on her side lately. He even let her tie a white bow around his neck this morning to match my dress.
It would be sweet. It was sweet, until I found him in her room last night, trying to eat one of her braids while she was sleeping. Seeing him crouched over her little body in the moonlight streaming through her window . . . disturbed me. A lot. Enough to lock him up in the old chicken coop behind Tucker’s house for the night, and to start thinking about who might take in a deranged animal when it’s time for Deedee and me to hit the road.
I love Gimpy, but I love Deedee more.
“And I don’t want to leave him with someone who’s doing drugs.” Deedee glares at the drink in my hand. “I’ll be in charge of him today.”
Man, do I love her. I also love Donaldsonville Elementary’s “Say No to Drugs” program, which has turned her into a pain in my ass every day around beer thirty.
“That’s probably a smart idea,” I say. “Why don’t you go be in charge of him over there? In the grass. While you play.”
“I don’t—”
“Play!”
Deedee huffs and rolls her eyes. “Fine. But I’m going to play in the garden. Grass smells.” She stomps away with the Gimp in her arms.
“Love you,” I call after her.
“You, too,” she grumbles, sticking her tongue out over her shoulder.
I wait until she’s through the garden gate before tipping my glass back, letting the other half of my mimosa fuzz down my throat. I drop my empty glass on the booze table and circle around the rows of chairs, waving to everyone who calls out a greeting, but not stopping to talk. I can’t smile and chat with people with that light in their eyes, that weird light people get when they’re looking at a woman wearing a wedding dress.
I stop, scanning the crowd, but there’s still no sign of Tucker. Where is he?
I should never have agreed to this. I should have worn my brown pantsuit. Even a simple wedding dress—white, sleeveless sheath that ends above the knee, with a blue sash at the waist to match the flowers—is too much wedding dress.
I feel like a virgin being offered for slaughter. I feel like I’m going to puke. I feel like—
“Drink?” Fern’s voice comes from behind me, so close the heady scent of Le Male engulfs me in its manly fog. A second later, a fresh mimosa floats over my shoulder.
“I’ve already had three.”
“Then you better drink up. You’ll want at least four in you before the ceremony.”
I take the glass, gripping the stem tight as he comes to stand beside me, staring out at the assembled witnesses. “If I’m too wasted to remember my lines it’s your fault.”
Fernando laughs. “All you have to remember is the last part. That’s th
e important part. It won’t be legal until we hit city hall in New York tomorrow, anyway, so . . . no stress.”
Then why do I have to do this? I want to ask, but I know why. It doesn’t matter that gay marriage is still illegal in Louisiana. Fern wants a ceremony here in town with his friends and Abe’s family, he wants to start his new life out in the open with a celebration, and he wants his best friend to officiate.
“Thanks for doing this,” he says, nudging me with his hip. “I appreciate it.”
“I’m honored you asked.”
“I’m honored you said yes.”
“So much honor.” A strained silence falls, but I smile through it. I’m not sure Fern and I will ever have the easy relationship we once had, but we love each other and when it came down to choosing grudge or forgiveness, there was no choice to make. My grudges these days are reserved for people who’ve tried to kill me.
“You look smoking,” he finally says.
“You, too.” He’s more than smoking. He’s elegant and poised and completely stunning. The man was made to wear a tux.
“I love that dress.”
“You should, you picked it out.”
“Somebody needed to wear a dress,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like a wedding without a dress. I bet you’ll get that proposal out of Cane today. I can feel it coming, like a zit ready to pop.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“But evocative.”
“Right.” I cover my awkwardness with a long drink. No need to tell him that Cane already proposed about a week ago. Or that I said no.
He was asking for the wrong reasons. His mom handled Abe’s highly unexpected coming out better than I thought she would, but I can tell Cane is feeling the pressure. With Amity infected and Abe marrying another man, Cane is the last chance for grandbabies and he’s pushing forty. He’s desperate for a family, but I’m not sure he’s desperate for a family with me. No amount of talking seems to be able to make things right between us, and he’s been . . . distant. But then, so have I.
There are things he still doesn’t know about my life, that he can never know. The secrets I have to keep color things between us.
Then there are the things that I’ve done . . . Things I did a week or so after dragging Tucker through the bayou—caving under his seductive pressure—and that I’ve continued to do on a very regular basis despite the fact that everyone in town, Deedee included, still thinks Tucker’s my cousin. My friends, even Cane, believe I moved into Tucker’s two-story house so Deedee and I could have our own bedrooms, more living space, and a yard for her to play in. Bernadette is the only one who even suspects there’s something fishy going on, and she’s too excited about being a surrogate grandma to Deedee to say anything.
But it doesn’t matter what the town thinks. In reality, I know I’m involved with Tucker. It’s more than sex, and I wouldn’t have let that happen if I loved Cane the way I should. At the very least I’d feel guiltier about it than I do.
But I’m not drowning in guilt. I miss Cane, and I’ll always love him, but I’m also . . . happy. As happy as possible considering at any given moment a part of me is expecting to be murdered.
The Big Man swears the explosion was an accident. He says he gave the order to remove the bomb after we chatted in the lab, but that the guy in charge of disarming bombs was busy being eaten by a pixie-infested gator at the time.
Nobody’s fault. Just bad luck. The Big Man gave us replacement Harleys by way of apology—his and hers 1984 Harley FXRTs in red and black, great engines, ride like badass tractors—and everything is allegedly fine.
But Tucker and I still sleep with guns by the bed. He still plans to spend the next six months hoarding shots—enough to keep us from going venom mad until we figure out how to make our own—and I still hang iron netting over Deedee’s door at night, adding an extra barrier against any fairies that might make it through the gate.
So far it’s been a quiet fall. The fairies are too busy fighting for control to mess with me, the Big Man has rounded up most of the pixies, and the team investigating the new species should be wrapping up their fruitless investigation any day now.
Jin-Sang never did explain why Cane and I were supposed to lie about the pixies. By the time he called, the lies were already told and he was no longer my supervisor. According to the rumor mill, he was spectacularly fired during a four hour meeting at the FCC central office. No one knows why—and he refused to dish—but it gave me a good excuse to hand in my resignation. I said I was tired of supervisors coming and going and that I wanted to spend time with the little girl I’m hoping to adopt. No one batted an eye. They simply wished me well and sent a new recruit to pick up my official orange vest and sample-collecting kit.
Things could be a lot, lot worse.
Still, it feels like danger is perpetually hanging over my head, a two-ton weight on a fraying rope. Even today, when the sun is bright and my friends are happy and my tummy is gurgling with good champagne, something feels . . . not right.
“You okay?” Fern asks.
“Nerves.” I force a smile. “Why am I the one who’s nervous?”
“Because you’re giving away your best friend.”
“Which is not fair.” I lean into him as he puts his arm around me. “I shouldn’t have to give you away and marry you. Entirely too much responsibility.”
“I know, but I appreciate it,” he says. “Thanks for being my friend.”
“I love you.” I wrap my arms around him, squeezing tight. “I wish you only good things.”
“You too, girl.” Fern sniffs and pulls away with a breathy laugh. “I better go hide out in the front hall. Cane called. He should be getting here with Abe any minute.”
“Okay.” I give him a thumbs-up as he backs away. “I’ll get Deedee and have Dom tell Barbara all systems are go.” Barbara Beauchamp still isn’t speaking to me—despite the fact that she’s Fernando’s wedding planner, a gig she’s picked up to afford the lifestyle to which she is accustomed—but that’s fine. I don’t enjoy chatting with people who once slept with people I’m currently sleeping with.
Hm. Maybe that’s why Tucker is MIA. Maybe he’s hiding from Barbara, who, a month after he stopped calling, still hasn’t gotten the hint. The last time he ran into her at the liquor store, she grabbed his crotch.
“Crotch,” I mumble as I slug back the last of my mimosa and head off to the garden to grab the flower girl and her cat.
I’d like to grab Tucker’s crotch. A quickie in the bathroom—skirt up around my waist, Tucker’s fingers digging into my hips while I brace myself on the sink—would really take the edge off. It would be good. Sex with Tucker is always good. The man is quickly becoming my drug of choice.
I keep an eye out for him as I give Dom the message, but there’s still no sign of “my cousin.” If he doesn’t show up soon he’ll miss the wedding. Fern won’t care—he’s not a fan of Tucker, thinks he’s too pretty to be trusted—but I was looking forward to seeing him in his new black suit.
But the only black suit I spot on the way to the garden belongs to an FBI agent. Howard. He rolled into town a few weeks ago with a letter from Hitch that said everything was under control, that I should sit tight and stay quiet and he’d be in touch when it was safe. It also said thank you, and that he and Stephanie were good and having a boy.
It was a nice letter. And only the tiniest bit painful.
“Howard.” I lift a hand as I walk past. Howard nods, but doesn’t say a word. He’s the quiet, crusty type, a fortysomething man whose skin seems to constantly be flaking. But for an FBI agent he’s not too bad.
At least he’s not my ex or having my ex’s baby. Both pluses.
Inside the garden, the air smells of roses past their peak; a sweet, slightly rotten scent that is, nevertheless, kind of nice. There are other things blooming too—pansies and orchids and a patch of burnt orange calla lilies that make me wish I could have convinced Fern to go with a more autumnal color
palate for the wedding. I don’t know when he developed such a love for baby blue. Maybe it’s Abe’s favorite.
Big, bad Abe, the chief of police, has an abiding love for baby blue. The thought makes me smile.
“Deedee?” I call. “It’s time. You ready?”
No response. The garden is quiet. Almost unnaturally so.
“Deedee?” More silence. My smile fades as I move deeper into the garden, past water features and empty benches, sticking to the path. Deedee wouldn’t veer from the path. She grew up here. Fear of stepping on Miss Barbara’s plants was ingrained in her right along with fear of god and strangers and fairies.
Fairies.
“Deedee!” Hysteria creeps in, and my walk becomes a jog. The plantation is close to the gate—only a couple hundred meters away. If a fairy were going to slip through and attack, this would be the place to do it. They wouldn’t have to fly through the iron grid work in town, just slip through the bars. Grandpa Slake could have done it. He’s dead, but one of the older fairies could probably survive inside the boundary, too. I should never have let Deedee come here. I should never have let her go off alone.
“Deedee! Answer me! Answer me right now!” My words end in a gasp for air as I reach a fork in the path. I take the one that curves to the right, back around to the house. Maybe she decided to go inside. Maybe she had to use the bathroom or something. Until recently, this was her home. She’d probably feel comfortable—
There! A puddle of blue on the paving stones. She’s sitting cross-legged just outside the kitchen, neck bent, petting the cat in her lap. I let out a ragged breath and press a hand over my heart.
“Jesus, Deedee,” I say as I cross the few feet left between us. “Why didn’t you answer me? I was scared to—”
She lifts her tear-streaked face and my anger evaporates. She’s crying. Hard. Full-on eye leaking with a side of runny nose. “What’s wrong?” I squat down beside her, smoothing her braids away from her face. “What happened?”
“I . . . I miss my mama,” she says, shoulders shaking with a fresh round of sobs.
Oh, man. I knew this was going to happen. I should have trusted my instincts and told Fernando Deedee was going to stay with Bernadette during the wedding, no matter how thrilled out of her goddamned mind Deedee was to be the flower girl. It’s too soon for her to be back in the place where her mother was murdered.
