"Whew!" Lanie said, wheeling over to join them. "That was a close call."
"You weren't in there, were you?" Angela said, laughing.
"I was on the sidelines, just for appearances' sake. I was mostly worried about Phill getting tackled and someone ripping the bouquet away before she got a good grip on it." She smirked.
"You didn't help things along, did you?" Maurice asked, restraining his chuckles.
"My hands were firmly on the wheels of my chair the entire time." She held her hands up in the air, wiggling them so the multicolored nails decorated with rainbow sparkles flashed in the gymnasium lights.
"It's not your hands I'm worried about," Angela said.
"Hey, playing pseudo-cupid is my job," Maurice said. He flew over to Lanie and held up both hands, and she high-fived him with her pinky against his palms. Even braced, with his wings fluttering fifty miles an hour, her light tap sent him scooting backwards about a foot. The three grinned at each other while Jon-Tom and Jeri got Will and Phill arranged for the ceremony of placing the garter.
Phill wore a tea-length dress of green lace in multiple layers. She obligingly tugged the hem up past her knee as she sat down in the chair Jerry and Jon-Tom brought over. Will knelt in front of her and twirled the garter on his finger a few times, earning laughter from the wedding guests. He pretended to struggle to get it over the heel of Phill's shoe, even though it wasn't more than two inches high.
Will's grin faded, the higher he got the garter up Phill's leg, until he looked positively mesmerized by the time he got it up to her knee. He gently tugged her hem down over the garter, stood, bowed, and offered her his hands. Phill moved like she was in a dream, slowly rising to her feet, closing her eyes long before she leaned in to let Will kiss her.
Maurice held his breath as their lips met.
"Uh oh," Lanie muttered, and grabbed her wheels. "There's--"
The lights went off as a gust of magic wind blew through the gymnasium, moving outward from the center of the vortex that was Will and Phill, locked in each other's arms. Maurice yelped as tidal waves of sparks of every color in the magical and Human spectrums gushed outward from them. Winkies appeared from what was probably a thousand miles around to dance and spin and toss their magic into the mix.
Wedding guests shouted and stumbled around in the pitch blackness. Some laughed. And the magic-infused maelstrom continued.
"They can't stop!" Angela called through the ruckus. "We have to get them apart. Lanie, can you help?"
Maurice whistled as streamers of visible power shot out from Lanie's head, through the half-blinding light show, and wrapped around Will and Phill. He and Angela pushed against the current that tried to swirl them away, to reach the two who were locked together in a kiss that conceivably could last through the end of time and out the other side into eternity. Good for Will and Phill, but probably uncomfortable for anyone locked in the magical fallout that would result.
Angela, Lanie, and Maurice reached Will and Phill almost at the same time. Maurice laughed bitterly as he saw the thin streamers of his own reduced magic, wrapping around Will's wrists to try to pull him free of Phill, open his tight-clenched embrace, do something, anything, to break the connection. Angela tried with hands as well as an interesting, kaleidoscopic tangle of strands of power that Maurice likened to seaweed drifting in every direction in the ocean current. Lanie's power flared and then faded gradually as she applied her physical arms to yanking on the two of them.
"We need more help," Angela called.
"Duh!" Maurice pulled back, physically and magically--what good was he doing, anyway?--and shouted with all his strength, to the point it made his head throb with a hollow sound. Lori, Harry! We need you. Emergency! Now!
The splits in the air as Lori and Harry came through a dimensional slide were visible as bright flashes. Harry grabbed Will and Lori grabbed Phill, each around their waists. Lanie and Angela worked on loosening their hands. Maurice decided he could at least slip a wedge between their lips. For added measure, he made the magical field taste nasty, inserting rancid fish oil into the mix.
Will's eyes came open first, then Phill's. They blinked, they pulled back a fraction, started to grimace, reacting to the taste, then their eyes flared with new heat and they shifted their embrace.
That pause was just enough. Maurice shouted "Now!" and slid a sheet of aluminum foil between their lips, taking advantage of the slight pause in the suction of the kiss. Angela and Lanie pulled Will's and Phill's wrists away from each other's bodies. Lori and Harry yanked hard.
They came apart with a pop that was nearly deafening, and made the punch bowls and their glass ladles chime.
"The hotel!" Lori gasped. "Follow me." She staggered backwards into another dimensional slit, dragging Phill. Harry snagged Will and followed her.
The slit closed with a flash of crimson and green light that left after-images on Maurice's retinas. He rubbed his eyes hard, and when he opened them, the lights had come back on in the gymnasium.
"Okay, that was interesting," Lanie said. "Are they going to be okay?"
"Forget about them." Maurice gestured around the gymnasium. Guests looked at each other with those peculiar half-grins and glances that clearly said, Did you see that? If you deny it, I'll deny it, which, he realized, were quite common in Neighborlee. "What are we gonna do about this mess?"
"Be grateful there were no chairs and tables for people to fall over, and it didn't last long enough for anyone to panic," Angela said.
"True." Lanie sighed and looked around. "It's the same old Neighborlee brand of convenient amnesia. People are explaining it away already." She gestured at a knot of high school girls clinging to each other, whispering and giggling. "There's always something weird going on, and easy explanations. Correction--usually an easy explanation. Excuse me." She wheeled away, cutting off Officer Gordon Priebe, a hulking man who had stuck a boutonniere in his uniform to dress it up for the wedding.
Lanie had described Gordon to Maurice as a big marshmallow inside a Godzilla-with-a-shave exterior. He was on duty and had gotten permission to attend the wedding as long as he kept in contact. Gordon was also a member of Lanie's Star Trek club, and had been involved in the ruckus two years ago, when that dimensional enemy had tried to break through underneath Neighborlee, creating time slides, and draining people of energy.
"Did Gordon see anything?" Angela asked, when Lanie and the officer parted, he headed out of the gym, and she returned to join them.
"No, but he felt something. He's getting a little more sensitive to things in the last year or so. He can feel when something is ordinary weird, and dangerous weird, and out-of-this-world weird." Lanie shrugged. "It helps to be a Trekker. Your brain is already stretched a little bit, so it's easier to wrap it around new ideas. And no, Gordon isn't going to report it to the Chief. He figures it'll all just be gossip and harmless stories by this evening, and nobody will even care in another week."
"Good old Neighborlee protects its own once again," Maurice muttered.
"Then all we have to worry about is Will and Phill," Angela said. She gestured at the refreshment table. "Tomorrow. We are at a wedding, after all."
Sunday, December 23
"Think we'll ever kiss like that?" Maurice said, as he and Holly slowly skated on the ice that hung in midair over the town. "What?" he said, when she laughed.
"When we kiss, I want to keep kissing. I don't want to blow out the entire power grid of the town and then pass out and lose the entire day." Her smile turned wistful. "Or night."
"True." He shifted his hold on her, unlinking their arms so he could wrap his arm around her waist and draw her closer against him. "It's just...the look in their eyes, in that split second when we were trying to pull them apart and it seemed like they were coming up for air. It was like 'Yeah, this is it, what I spent my whole life looking for.' Kind of made the misery worth it. And I'm messing up what we've got, right?"
"No. Not really. I think about
how long we have to wait until we can be together for real. And I wonder sometimes if this is just a dream after all." Holly tipped her head to rest on his shoulder as they skated lazy circles above the town square, where children dressed in red and green built enormous snowmen almost tall enough to reach up to the ice hanging high above them. "Sometimes, when I'm awake...I get fragments of memories of...this."
"You think? Maybe the spell is wearing thin, or at least shifting a little bit?"
"Since you're the expert on magic, not me, I have no idea." She laughed when he groaned and looked away, his face burning with embarrassment.
"The thing is, Will was looking for answers for me, since I'm denied access to some major Fae information sources." He shook his head and tugged his arm free, catching hold of her hand and spinning her around in a pirouette that shot off sparks where her skates touched the ice.
Holly laughed. As the spin slowed, she grabbed hold of him, jolting to a stop, nearly pulling them both off their feet. Laughing, they kissed. Soft, quick, sweet kisses that sent rainbow-streaked sparks shooting off from them in all directions and pierced the ice below them.
"We better stop before we melt through," Maurice whispered, and kissed Holly again.
"In answer to your question." She sighed in contentment as he wrapped his arms around her and tucked her head under his chin. "I like every kind of way we kiss. And I kind of feel sorry for Will and Phill."
"How?" His voice cracked with incredulity.
"That kiss...it's kind of like a fuse finally broke. Or maybe it finally opened up. They've been coming to Neighborlee for years, best pals, but they never realized what I saw in that kiss--they're meant to be together. They won't be whole without each other. They have to fight against anything that comes at them, to stay together."
"That's exactly how I feel about you, Holly Berry, but I don't have a clue how we can get around this big problem," Maurice whispered, and pressed a kiss into the top of her head.
"I'm glad you have this problem."
"Huh?"
She laughed and snuggled even closer, if that were possible. "If you weren't under exile, if you weren't shrunk down and invisible to most people, would you even have come to Neighborlee, much less noticed me?"
"Hey, now that's not-- Well, yeah, I guess it's a fair question. And yeah, even though I thought I was a crusader for the little guy, I guess I was a little shallow." He oophed when she poked him in the ribs with two fingers. "Okay, a lot, mega-shallow. I probably wouldn't have, the way I was before."
"Just think of yourself as a world champion runner, the fastest man in the world. You broke your leg, and now you have to limp along with a cast, and you're finally seeing all the scenery you raced past without looking."
"You're more than scenery, Holly Berry."
"I just can't help wondering..." She sighed and shook her head, and pressed her face against the fuzzy front of his sweater.
"What?"
"Maybe...maybe you're not there when I'm awake because when you get free..."
"There's not enough magic in the entire world--both worlds, Human and Fae--to make me forget you when my exile is over and I'm back to normal. They could only change my body and limit my magic, but they couldn't change my head and my heart." He pushed her out to arm's length and lifted her so she stood on her toes and had to meet him eye-to-eye. "I had to change my own head and heart, Holly Berry, and nothing will make me forget you or walk away. I promise." He swallowed hard. "If I have to, I'll give up all my magic, I'll give up my long life and live a Human lifespan, so I can stay here with you. I swear."
"Really? You'd give all that up? For me?" Tears sparkled in her eyes, turned gold and silver and green, and didn't fall.
"Sweetheart, who says I'm giving up anything? Seems like I'm trading up, big time." Maurice shook her a little, and when she laughed, her voice a little broken, he drew her up tight against him. They kissed until streamers of light shot out from them in all directions and the icy fantasy version of Neighborlee melted away.
* * * *
Holly opened her eyes, curled up in her bed, and sighed, feeling Maurice's arms tight around her and his kiss warm and soft on her lips.
Her eyes popped open as she realized she did remember him, everything about their dream. Gasping, feeling her heart racing, she sat up and looked around. Her bedroom looked entirely too normal. It was Sunday morning, December twenty-third, and she remembered...
What did she remember? Sighing, she closed her eyes and lay back down. Whatever it had been, whatever she had been dreaming when she woke up, it must have been incredible. She could almost cry from the sense of tearing loss. And yet... She smiled and wrapped her arms around herself. Maybe she would have the same dream tonight, when she went to bed?
* * * *
"Lori? Are you there?" Brick pounded on the door of Lori's hotel room. He gave himself points for waiting until eight in the morning, so he wouldn't disturb the other guests in the Neighborlee Arms. Or rather, not disturb them too much.
He had haunted the hotel dozens of times each day since she vanished, hoping to catch sight of her. It had taken almost that much time begging, bribing, threatening, finally pleading on his hands and knees, before he found the one person on staff who pitied him, and had seen him with Lori and thought they made a good couple. That person had called last night and reported that Lori and another male guest had brought Will and Phill in and were holed up in their rooms, taking care of them.
Brick was reassured, knowing Lori was busy taking care of Will and Phill. He had heard about the light show and power outage and something strange happening at Jeri and Jon-Tom's wedding. He was also worried. Who was the other guest at the Neighborlee Arms, who knew Lori well enough to team up with her to take care of Will and Phill? He kicked himself a dozen times over for not attending the wedding. He could have caught up with Lori there.
Who was this man Lori had met up with? Brick imagined Lori being so hurt by his stupid jealousy, she had turned to someone else for comfort. He couldn't imagine her doing it just to punish him.
"Yeah, and how did you come to that conclusion after accusing her of only being after your money?" he snarled, even as he clung to that belief. He raised his fists and pounded them against her door again. "Lori? Please? Talk to me?"
She was there. She had been there all night. Brick's contact at the hotel assured him that she hadn't left.
Of course, that really wasn't much assurance, considering how Lori had vanished into thin air when he was with her.
"Do you mind?" Lori whispered loudly--from the room across the hall and one door down. She glared at him, when Brick could only whip around so fast he nearly fell off his feet, and stared at her. "There are people trying to sleep. I have sick people here."
"Lori. I've been worried sick about you. I'm sorry. I was a total jerk. I shouldn't have said it. I shouldn't even have been thinking what I was thinking." Brick stumbled down the hall and grabbed at the hand that held the door open.
He wasn't ashamed to admit that he looked over her shoulder, into the hotel room, and saw Phill sprawled across the bed, white-faced, with a green Neighborlee Arms monogrammed washcloth on her forehead. And no one else in the room.
"You're right, you shouldn't have." She sighed, and some of her sternness faded. "And I'm to blame for some of that."
"No--"
"I've been keeping secrets from you. Big secrets." Lori rubbed at her face with the hand Brick wasn't holding. He gave himself points that she didn't tug her hand free. Or worse, slap him with it. "We need to talk. But I'm busy with Phill."
"I heard a little about the wedding yesterday. How is she? How's Will?"
"If you could help Harry with Will, that would be great. I think they'll both be awake soon, and hopefully sitting up by lunchtime." She shook her head and glanced over her shoulder at Phill. "I've never seen anything like it before."
"What happened?" He offered an apologetic grin. "Or is that something I shouldn't as
k?"
"You should be able to ask and get honest answers," she said softly. "If we're going to...to make anything of what we've built up between us these last few weeks, we have to talk. But later, okay?"
"Sure. You got it. Anything you want." He looked up and down the hall. "Umm, you said to take care of Will? Where is he?"
"I asked you to help Harry with Will. And he's in the next room." She pointed up the hall. A tiny spark shot off the tip of each finger of that hand. "Harry will be expecting you. In fact, I think he's kind of relieved. He has someone he needs to take care of."
"Can I ask who Harry is?" Brick took one step backwards, heading for Will's room.
"Harry is from the same place Will and Phill and I are from. And from what I've picked up, he's on the verge of being head-over-heels with someone who lives here in Neighborlee."
"If that's your diplomatic way of telling me I'm a moron for being jealous, thanks."
"I don't let anybody call the man I love a moron," she said, trying to be stern, but only managing a teary, trembling smile.
"Did you say--" Brick stepped back toward her. Lori stopped him with two fingers pressed against his lips.
"We'll talk tomorrow. All day. I promise. Now go help Will."
"Ma'am. Yes, Ma'am." Brick saluted, earning a giggle from her, and hurried down the hall.
The door opened when he was two steps away. He realized he had seen Harry before, when he was driving around with Lori. Harry looked up from where he bent over Will, pulling back one eyelid. He grinned and nodded to Brick.
"You're saving my life. Bethany's been waiting since last night, and I hate leaving poor Will alone like this. Thanks." The jacket that had been lying tossed across the other bed, and the shoes that had been on the floor on the other side of the room, suddenly appeared on Harry. He grinned when Brick's mouth dropped open. "Lori says you're getting the full truth treatment tomorrow, so I figure, save myself some time. Thanks!"
Have Yourself a Faerie Little Christmas Page 21
