by Sarah Kuhn
“The ivory will be acceptable,” Carol corrected, her teeth gritted. Her index finger resumed tapping on the Sprite can. “And barely so. The lower end of acceptable, one might say.”
Her voice had taken on a new cast, a different cadence. There was an edge to it that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t quite rage, but it was teetering toward something on that spectrum.
Interesting. Could the puppy be here, and we just weren’t picking it up on the scanner? And was it about to make Carol go full Cakezilla? I decided to push her a little bit more.
Aveda Jupiter might not be a comforting presence. But she sure as shit knows how to push people’s buttons.
“That sounds terrible,” I said. “You’ve probably been dreaming of that rose-tinted cream since you were a little girl—”
“Or since her last wedding,” Gwen muttered under her breath.
“—and now you have to settle. Who wants to do that on the most important day of her life?”
Carol nodded, that spark flashing in her eyes again. “Tell me about it. I’m going to have to look at that half-assed ivory all the time in my memory scrapbook.”
I leaned forward, trying to match her vehemence. “And every time, you’ll be reminded of—”
“Of what a fucking failure my entire stationery strategy was,” Carol hissed. “The rose tint was so different, so unique, so Carol, and now it’s just . . . just . . .”
“Ordinary,” I said.
“Ordinary,” she spat out, as if it were the worst curse on the planet. “Fucking ordinary.”
I sneaked a surreptitious look at Scott. He’d sidled up behind Carol and Gwen and was scanning the area right next to their heads. Carol was too wrapped up in her rant to notice and Gwen was too busy trying to comfort her. Scott met my eyes and gave a small head-shake. Nothing yet. But Carol’s rage was definitely festering. There was something going on there. Come on, puppy. Show yourself.
“Ordinary,” I repeated. “That’s almost worse than having an awful, Pinterest-fail wedding, isn’t it? Having one that’s just—” I made an exaggerated snooze face, as if I was about to fall asleep. “—boring.”
“That’s totally worse!” shrieked Carol, the spark in her eyes flaring into complete anger. She smacked the Sprite can, sending it flying across the room. Gwen ducked out of the way, and the can smashed into the wall, narrowly missing a few unicorns and sending an eruption of soda fizz everywhere.
“Annie,” Scott said. His voice held a note of warning.
I ignored him. I was on the brink of something, I could feel it.
“Calm down, Care,” Gwen said, her eyes pleading. “At least you found a dress you really love—”
“Don’t get me started on the dress!” Carol screamed.
She leapt to her feet, the flash of anger in her eyes flaring. She slammed both hands on the desk and glared at me, as if it was all my fault.
“You love the dress!” Gwen protested weakly.
Carol’s head swiveled to look at her, like something out of The Exorcist.
“But . . . I . . . need . . . undergarments!” she bellowed.
I jumped to my feet, slammed my hands on the desk, and matched Carol’s wild-eyed glare.
“Look at me, Carol!” I demanded. “Look at me and tell me what you mean by . . .”
Had she really just said undergarments?
Carol’s head swiveled back to me. The rage was practically rolling off of her now, fanning out in a pissed-off aura. I jerked my head frantically at Scott, who’d moved to a different area of the room. He was staring at Carol with a strange, blank expression on his face, as if she had just shared something particularly captivating.
“Scott!” I barked.
He snapped to attention, his eyes clearing, and rushed toward us with the scanner.
“The dress,” Carol huffed out, her breath wheezing fast and furious little gasps between each word. “The dress won’t fucking hang right unless I have the right undergarments!”
BEEP BEEP BEEP! screamed the scanner. Fucking finally. I was so engrossed in my questioning of Carol, the sound startled me and I jumped.
And that’s when Carol threw herself over the desk and directly at my face.
I jumped out of the way and she crashed on top of the desk, unseating a whole file cabinet’s worth of papers, her arms flailing.
“Annie!” Scott yelled.
“Get back!” I barked at him. “And get Gwen—”
But he was already on it, hauling a screaming Gwen out of Carol’s way. Carol recovered and scrambled over the desk, but now I was ready for her. I dodged left, dodged right as she lunged for me, her movements clumsy, her breathing labored. She clearly didn’t have any experience fighting, so what was she doing?
Or what was the puppy demon making her do?
“Mass-produced underwear is a scourge!” she screamed. “The correct wedding look starts with the foundation and that means custom fucking lingerie!”
I dodged her again, then slipped under her flailing arm to position myself behind her.
“You can find plenty of that in San Francisco,” I said firmly, slipping one arm around her shoulder and the other under her armpit. “So what’s the problem?”
“It’s not right!” she screamed. I felt spittle splatter onto my arm as I subdued her, forcing her arms into an upright position so she couldn’t get at me. “It’s not right!” she repeated. “It’s new. It’s new and IT’S! NOT! RIGHT!”
I positioned a knee against Carol’s back and—with a little help from my telekinesis—slowly lowered her to the ground. She twisted in my grasp, attempting to get free, but it was no use—I’d practiced this hold hundreds of times during self-defense training with Lucy. And my telekinesis only sweetened the pot.
“Gaaaaahhh!” Carol screamed in frustration, thrashing around in my grasp.
“You calm down!” I growled. “We’ll find you some damn custom-made underwear. Just calm . . . down.”
And just like that—she did. Her body slackened like a puppet whose strings had been cut and she went limp against me.
What in the world?
I checked her pulse. It was slow and steady. She was unconscious, but still very much alive. Rose chose that moment to burst into the room.
“Aveda . . .” she said. She looked around, taking stock of everything. Me cradling unconscious Carol on the floor. Scott consoling the now sobbing Gwen in the corner. Sprite dripping down the wall in sticky rivulets. And the unicorn mob, still staring at us with beady, painted-on eyes. “We heard screaming,” Rose continued. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. I frowned at Carol’s inert form, willing it to tell me something. Anything. She remained stubbornly unconscious.
Only one thing to do, then. Because Carol actually had done what I’d hoped she would: she’d given me a clue. Or at least part of a clue. And it was up to Aveda Jupiter to make it into a whole fucking clue.
I squared my shoulders and spat out a completely improbable phrase. “I think I have to go talk to Maisy about custom underwear.”
CHAPTER TEN
I’M NOT SURE what I expected out of yet another visit to Pussy Queen, but it definitely wasn’t the sight that greeted me when I flung the doors open and stalked in.
Maisy had dismantled all of her displays and created one massive new monstrosity next to the dressing room area, just a few feet away from the portal. Three mannequins were grouped together and sported various white lacy lingerie concoctions and veils on their heads. The one in the middle had a hand raised, an artful crumple of orange and red tissue paper resting on her palm. Like a flame.
“Is that supposed to be me?” Evie gasped, trailing in behind me.
“I think my white board version was better,” Bea said.
“It was really artistic, Bug,” Scott
said.
I’d called HQ on our way to Pussy Queen and asked Evie to join me on my fact-finding expedition. Bea had tagged along—I’d suggested she start following Evie around and monitoring her every mood. Just to ensure Evie stayed relaxed. Meanwhile, Nate had gone to the hospital to check on Cakezilla Carol, who had drifted back into consciousness right before being taken to the ER. She was undergoing a series of tests to make sure nothing was seriously wrong. We’d scanned the bakery again, but the puppy was nowhere to be found.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Maisy trilled, sashaying up to us and gesturing to her display. “I’ve had so many brides-to-be coming in the past few days, most of them newly engaged.” She beamed at Evie. “You’ve really started a trend.”
Evie blushed and shrugged, fiddling with her engagement ring. Hmm. We needed to get her proper media training. If she was going to be the star of the wedding of the year, she had to learn how to work that shit.
“New libation,” Dave said, shuffling up behind us. He held out an old, chipped Sunny Side mug filled to the brim with murky-looking liquid. “Wisdom can only be attained when the glass is full.”
“I’ll leave it full, then,” I said, holding up a hand. “No thank you.”
“Dave!” Shruti rushed over to us and rested a hand on his shoulder. “It’s great that you’re being proactive, but we’ve talked about using the nice glasses for drinks—remember?”
He frowned at her as if he wasn’t quite processing her words through his stoned haze.
“I am alone on the path once again,” he said, his face morose.
“You’re not alone, I swear,” Shruti told him. “I know you miss the Sunny Side regulars, but Maisy said she’s going to do a special promotion featuring your brunch mimosas—maybe some of your old customers will stop by.”
“I am no longer what I once was,” he responded.
She sighed and patted his shoulder. “I know adjusting to new things is hard. But you’re doing fine. Why don’t you go test out some recipes?”
“Is he getting better or worse?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow as Dave shuffled off. “Or is he just always stoned?”
“Hard to tell,” Shruti said, with an elegant shrug. Today her hair was shoulder-length and wavy with glamorous side-swept bangs. “I think he really misses the Sunny Side, you know? He’s feeling a little lost in life, and getting used to his gig here is an ongoing process.”
“He’s trying to reinvent himself,” Maisy mused. “I can relate.”
“Maisy,” I said, trying to get us back on track, “your new display actually relates to what we need to talk to you about.”
“We know you stock bridal lingerie—” Evie began.
“An extensive collection,” she chirped.
“—but do you ever do anything custom?” I asked.
“Hmm.” She tapped a flaky gray finger to her chin, her glowing eyes narrowing. “I of course do alterations so everything fits the body perfectly, but custom from scratch? I haven’t delved into that particular arena. I’m not sure my sewing and design skills are up to par yet. Though that is certainly something I’ve considered using to expand my business: sexy, one-of-a-kind pieces for the unique bride.” She grinned at Evie. “Maybe you’d want to model a sample look? We could Snapchat the shit out of that.”
“Um, no, thank you,” Evie said. She looked a little nervous. I gave Bea a subtle nod. She nodded back and focused on Evie, her eyes practically boring holes in the back of her sister’s head. Evie’s shoulders relaxed.
“Have you sold anything to a bride-to-be named Carol—Carol Kepler?” I asked.
“That name doesn’t ring a bell, and I’m usually quite good at remembering the specificities of my clientele, but I can check my sales records,” Maisy said, bustling over to the register.
I watched as she shuffled through some papers, studying them carefully, and replayed the scene from earlier in my mind. The way the rage had sparked in Carol’s eyes, then flared as Scott approached with the scanner.
“Did you try that guiding spell you’ve been working on?” I asked him, remembering the strange, blank expression that had overtaken his face for a moment. “Were you able to grab on to the puppy in the air or . . . ?”
“Not exactly.” He frowned, looking contemplative. “I was getting ready to put the spell in motion when Carol started to freak out, but then . . . something weird happened in there. It was a split second thing, and I’ve been trying to figure out what it means. I can’t remember it exactly because everything happened so fast, but . . .” He paused, his eyes wandering to the ceiling, trying to call up the memory. “Right before the scanner beeped, I swear there was this moment where I felt connected to the supernatural energy in the room.”
“Like you mind-melded with the puppy?” I said.
“Sort of.” He paused again. “When I’m prepping to do a spell, I start by reaching out with my mind to access those Otherworld magics—and yes, Bea, you’ve told me before that that sounds like ‘some totes mumbo-jumbo-laden pseudo-mysticism.’” He gave her an indulgent grin.
“Well, it does, though,” Bea muttered.
“Anyway, as I was reaching out this time, something brushed up against my mind. It was fast, but I’m pretty sure it was whatever was affecting Carol, which we’re hypothesizing is the puppy—and in that split second, I could sense what it was feeling, what it was thinking.”
“It was thinking?” Bea said, quirking a skeptical eyebrow. “Because when we were dealing with puppy demons on the regular, they never seemed smart enough to come up with a plan beyond ‘I want to shove everything in the immediate vicinity into my piehole.’”
“That’s the thing—that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” he said. “This puppy seems to have thought patterns that are more complex than usual. I mean, the fact that it has thought patterns at all—”
“Would you say it’s, like, sentient, even?” Bea said. “Because a sentient puppy demon has the potential to be frakballs terrifying.”
“Tentatively, I guess I would,” he said, giving her a wry smile. “Which I know is never good enough for your and Nate’s classification system, but it was definitely in distress and it definitely wanted something. It was thinking about how it could get it, how it could—”
“What did it want?” I interrupted. “Undergarments?”
“Maybe,” he said, shaking his head in frustration. “Like I said, it was so fast.”
“Well, what do we think it wants?” Evie said. “What’s the endgame of making people pissed off at totally weird moments?”
“Maybe it’s just flitting around wanting random shit,” Bea said with a shrug.
“And yet . . .” I squeezed my balled fists tighter, willing myself not to cram my nails in my mouth. “There is something about what this puppy demon’s been doing that doesn’t seem completely haphazard.”
“How do you mean?” Evie asked.
I chewed on my lip, nearly drawing blood. Argh. My fidget impulse was trying to swap gnawing my lip in for biting my fingernails. I wasn’t a dog; I should be disciplined enough to not chew on anything.
“In the past,” I said, thinking it over, “when an incorporeal puppy demon has presumably been on the scene, several people from that incident have reported ragey feelings. Which also seemed to be what happened in the bridal tent with Evie and the redhead Bridezilla. But in Cake My Day, it only targeted one person. Carol. And—”
“—and it targeted her repeatedly,” Scott said, finishing my thought for me.
“And all three people who have experienced puppy demon rage recently have something in common,” I continued.
“They’re all brides!” shrieked Bea. “Well. Brides-to-be.” Her brow furrowed. “But if it is targeting a specific kind of person on purpose, then back to Evie’s question: What’s the plan? Why? What does a lost puppy demon w
ant with a bunch of human women who are obsessed with table settings and flower arrangements?”
“Hey!” Evie protested. She poked Bea in the arm. I was pleased to see that the tension seemed to have left her body entirely. “Kind of a sweeping stereotype right there.”
“Sorry, hashtag ‘not all brides,’” Bea said. “And anyway, the blame really should be put on the wedding industry and, like, society for stressing ladies out and giving them a bridal complex, all in the name of attaining some imaginary ideal of perfection.”
“You may not have a bridal complex, but you are still a bride, Evie,” I said. “The most high-profile bride in the city, in fact.” I studied her, the wheels in my brain turning. She shifted uncomfortably. I probably had my Idea Face on again. “What if we use this knowledge and try to draw the puppy out?” I continued. “I mean, we could try to stalk every bride-to-be in the city and see where it turns up next—”
“But like Maisy said, there are a lot of brides-to-be right now,” Shruti piped up. “I’m booked solid with vintage dress consultations for the next three weeks, and Maisy can barely keep that bridal lingerie she’s pushing in stock. You’d need an army to keep track of all of ’em.”
“And if we draw it to us and isolate it, maybe we can take it down entirely,” I said.
“Or at least find out what it wants—what it ultimately wants, beyond dresses and underwear and such,” Bea said.
“Yes,” Scott said. “And when we get back to HQ, I’m going to see if I can work a component into the guiding spell that might allow me to connect with the puppy more properly. To actually mind-meld with it in a way, see if I can sense what it’s feeling.”
“You’re both very concerned with the wants and needs and feelings of a faceless energy force that keeps trying to kick our asses,” I said.
Bea shrugged. “We’re the givers on this team.”
