by Angie Fox
And if he was going to protect me from unseen dangers, he could at least make some wedding favors while he was at it.
“It can’t be worse than switch stars,” I told him. Handling them had taken years off his life. He’d grabbed an ice monster for me, he’d dealt with blood and guts and demon spittle. But a little tulle seemed to be his kryptonite.
If only our enemies knew his weakness.
He really did look miserable.
“Okay.” Far be it from me to cause him undue pain. “Why don’t you take off?” I asked. He wasn’t doing any good here. And yes, my powers did feel strange, but I wasn’t in any immediate danger. Besides, “I’ve got the Red Skulls.” I gave him a small smile.
He looked from me, to the tulle in his lap, to the schedule boasting events like flower headdress weaving and a ribbon tying party.
“I’m out of here,” he said, lightning fast as he stood. His griffin nature let him move a hair quicker than other men. I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to it.
He kissed me on the head and was out the door before the tulle on the seat next to me stopped fluttering.
Typical man.
***
After a half hour of wrapping bonbons into little tulle squares, I changed my opinion.
He was a smart man.
I struggled to twist the top of the little bag while trying to tie a thin silk ribbon around it. I slipped, and the side of my hand crushed the bonbon. Gah. I’d never been good at crafts.
“Just eat it,” Grandma said.
“No.” I’d already polished off the last three. Pretty soon, my mom was going to notice. No doubt she’d counted and catalogued every last bonbon.
It was like a sweatshop. As soon as I’d finish a stack, mom was ready with more tulle, more bonbons.
Wrap. Twist. Tie. Repeat.
“I don’t know why we’re out of bonbons already,” Hillary fussed.
I pretended not to hear.
Wrap. Twist. Tie. Crush the bonbon slightly.
Good enough.
Hillary stiffened as Ant Eater held up her bonbon favor bag. She’d double wrapped it to look like testicles. Lovely.
“Candied nuts!” Luna hollered from the back, which had Creely grinning, and okay—me, too.
“Hold on. I’m coming!” my mother said, clacking over to Ant Eater.
She frowned when she saw Ant Eater’s creation. “No, no.” She took it gingerly between two fingers and held it up for the room, “Almost, but you see, we only want one ball in the sack.”
“I prefer two,” Ant Eater told her solemnly.
Hillary twisted her lips into a tight smile. “That’s not how they’re made.”
Ant Eater raised both brows. “Have you seen any lately?”
That’s it. “One ball,” I said, standing and confiscating Ant Eater’s treasure. “It’s my wedding, and I want a one-balled affair.”
The biker witches snickered, which was better than them rebelling.
“That’s right,” Hillary said, unsure of exactly what we were talking about.
I found a seat next to the gold-toothed biker witch. “I thought you were going to behave.”
Ant Eater took her favor back. “I didn’t think you’d be having a one-balled wedding,” she said, untying the bag and popping a bonbon into her mouth. “I know Dimitri’s not going to go along with that.”
“Ew. No comments about the groom, please. And stop tormenting my mom.”
“Come on,” Grandma said, “she’s begging for it.”
I glanced up. Hillary was in the back, inspecting a triple-balled creation of Frieda’s.
Exactly who had she been dating?
“When are you going to set an example?” I asked Grandma’s second in command.
Ant Eater ate her other bonbon and stuffed the tulle into the couch cushions behind her. “When were you going to tell us about the creepy observatory you found?” she asked, chewing.
I stiffened. “Who told you about the occult room?”
She smiled, showing chocolate teeth. “Pirate mutters a lot.”
Unfortunately.
“I was going to tell you all when we had time.” I glanced at Grandma. “And when you weren’t drinking tea.” It’s not like I was holding it back.
Mom shrieked. All three of us craned our necks around. The bald witch was trying to walk the length of the room balancing an antique mantle clock on her head.
“Luna!” I gasped.
She startled and the clock fell. Frieda caught it at the last minute, but that wasn’t the point.
“Control them,” I ordered to whoever would listen.
My mom gasped again, and I saw that someone had added Mike, the randy policeman to the bachelorette party schedule.
Not that I was against Officer Naughty, but—
Ant Eater stood. “Listen to me, missy—”
“No,” I said, drawing close. “You listen to me. Mom might not do things the same way we do—or anyone for that matter—but she’s rented us an incredible old mansion, she’s doing her very best, and you have to respect that. And her.”
Grandma sighed. At least she looked guilty. “We tried, Lizzie. You saw us try.”
“Try harder,” I told her.
“Hey,” Creely nudged me, “anybody up for some tea?”
I gave her a sour look. “You can’t get my mom drunk every day.”
The engineering witch had to think about that one. “Why not?”
Poor Hillary was busy fixing her schedule board, scrubbing like she was trying to dig through it with her eraser. I made my way over to her. “You doing okay?”
Her mascara was smudged and there were faint circles under her eyes.
“My society friends will be here in a few days. We don’t even have half the wedding favors we need.” Her voice went up a pitch. “And I can not have a stripper in this house.”
“That’s fine,” I said, resisting the urge to rub her back a little. We didn’t really have that kind of relationship. Which was sad when I thought about it.
“You need to help me. You need to support me.” She started in on the board again. “And I’m beginning to suspect your new friends are seriously unbalanced.”
“I’m not going to argue with you there,” I said.
Ant Eater had Grandma in a discussion over in the corner while the rest of the witches had taken it upon themselves to start up an arm wrestling tournament.
“They’ll stick to the schedule. I promise.”
She let me take the eraser from her hand. “It’s the only way I’ll survive this,” she said, making an attempt to smooth her hair.
Planning. Order.
I’d helped her keep it that way for most of my life.
And I could do it now.
“Give me a hug,” I said, not allowing her much of a choice. I could feel her relax and was about to claim a small victory when the doorbell chimed. Three long bongs sounded throughout the downstairs.
Hillary drew back, sniffling a little. “I wonder if the band is here early. That would be nice,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with the tips of her fingers.
“Nope,” said a biker witch, who had leaned back dangerously far in her chair to peer past the curtained front window. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the Greeks.”
Bong.
Bong.
“That’s impossible,” Hillary said, frantically checking her schedule, “they don’t arrive until tomorrow night’s ouzo and olive bar reception!”
Frieda leaned over to take a look. “Well, there are twenty or so of them outside.”
“And no one is opening the door,” I said, hurrying for it.
Bong.
“Twenty?” Hillary would have shrieked if she weren’t about to hyperventilate. “It should be five. Dimitri’s sisters, their godmothers,” she ticked them off on her fingers like that would change anything. “…some nice man who wrote to say he’s lactose intolerant…”
I opened the d
oor to an invading army. They’d taken over the porch. And the steps. And the driveway beyond.
“Lizzie!” Dimitri’s younger sister, Dyonne, wrapped me in a hug. His other sister, Diana, had me from the side.
Some old Greek woman joined on in the other side. And a guy with a mustache behind her.
It was a big, fat Greek sandwich. And Frieda had it wrong. There weren’t twenty random relatives outside the door. There had to be at least thirty-five.
Chapter Eight
Holy Hades. What were they doing here?
“Dyonne!” I clung to Dimitri’s spritely, shorthaired sister while Diana let me go enough to kiss me on both cheeks.
“Traditional Greek greeting,” Diana said, “grab whatever part you can get.”
I grinned. “As long as you left Zeus at home.” He was a monstrous horse. Diana liked to ride him in the house.
She laughed, tucking her long, dark hair behind her ears. “I’ve mellowed out a little.”
“She’s lying,” Dyonne said proudly, finally letting me pull back.
Hey, who was I to judge? They’d lived their lives under a demon’s curse, knowing they’d fall into a coma when they reached the age of twenty-eight and die twenty-eight days later. While some people—most—would have responded by withdrawing, these two had gone out of their way to eke every bit out of life.
Dimitri and I had saved them, but it was up to them to make a new life for themselves.
“Glad to see you haven’t lost your edge,” I said.
“Don’t speak so soon,” Diana’s coin earrings dangled as she snuck a glance at the mass of relatives behind her. “We were trying to escape early.”
“Before the new clan followed us,” Diana added.
“You might want to work on that,” I told her as assorted relatives started pushing past.
Diana leaned in close, her hair brushing my shoulder. “They caught us at the airport. While boarding.”
“We tried to call,” Dyonne added, “but nobody had an international cell phone. And then, by the time we got here, it was all we could do to rent a bus.”
I glanced past the crowd to see a gray rental coach with its luggage doors open. The poor driver dragged suitcase after suitcase out of the bottom, aided by several muscular Greek men, jockeying for position.
Oy vey. “I see you still have your suitors.”
The strongest females ruled Griffin clans, and since Diana and Dyonne were the only ones left of their particular line…
It didn’t hurt that when I’d killed the demon who was cursing them, they’d absorbed the power of generations of griffin leaders. Pretty much every leader who had succumbed to the curse over the centuries.
So now, they had beauty, power and their whole lives ahead of them—not to mention a bunch of griffin warriors intent on wooing them.
Dyonne’s short-cropped hair fell in layers around her eyes as she watched the men. “I told them whoever unloaded the most got to sit next to me tonight.”
“We should have used them for the tulle bonbons,” I said to myself.
Diana gave me a quizzical glance, but she didn’t question.
This could be fun.
“Dimitri is off somewhere,” I said. “I don’t know where he is…or what he’s doing.”
Dyonne grinned. “I think I know.”
Before I could grill her, I felt a pinch on my arm. “She is too skinny. You, too.”
“Ow.” I yanked back and turned to see a heavy-set woman wearing a white tunic outfit and plenty of gold jewelry. Her coal black hair was teased high on her head, and if I wasn’t mistaken, she had a slight mustache.
Diana wrapped an arm around the woman, as if guiding her to give me a little more personal space.
It didn’t work.
“Aunt Ophelia,” she said, “meet Lizzie.”
“Aunt?” I asked. The women in Dimitri’s family had perished from a curse.
Diana caught my confusion. “Ophelia is from our new clan. When we joined, we gained about a dozen aunts and twice as many uncles. All unrelated, although you wouldn’t know from the way they treat me.”
The woman leaned in close. Way close. Her face was severely angled, softened by age, and her eyes were a striking shade of gray-blue. “Blessings on you, and may you have a dozen children.”
I tried to laugh. But a dozen kids? “I have enough trouble with my dog,” I told her.
“Ha!” She barked out a laugh, before it died on her lips. She brought a hand to her chest. “She understands me?” she said to Diana. Then turning back to me. “You there, you know Greek?”
Before she got too excited for me, I had to admit. “It’s a demon slayer power.” I could decipher languages.
It was most handy with ancient demonic texts, but hey, I’d use it where I could.
Wait. I turned to Diana. “Your new relatives know I’m a demon slayer, right?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “Who doesn’t?
Hmm…with a sinking feeling I realized I had more in common with a bunch of shape shifting griffins then I did with the woman who’d raised me.
I only hoped they wouldn’t say anything to my mom until I had a chance.
In the mean time, Aunt Ophelia was studying me like a prized goat. “This is good,” she said, fluffing my hair, examining the cloth of my dress between her fingers. In a minute, she would start checking my teeth. “You will have no trouble when you come to live with us.”
“Er,” I said, both glad and worried she’d overlooked the state of my dress, “I live here.”
“My nephew Izzy is going to marry Diana,” she said confidently, as if I hadn’t spoken.
We’d see about that.
“Hello!” Mom said, drawing up next to me. She had that pasted-on smile that said she was about one second from a panic attack.
At least most of Dimitri’s relatives had made it into the foyer, and into the hallway, and okay—it was getting a little claustrophobic in here. Plus, it didn’t help that they were watching us.
“Mom, this is Dimitri’s Aunt Ophelia. And his sisters, Diana and Dyonne.”
Mom seemed to take comfort in the routine introduction, until Aunt Ophelia took over. “And this is Gelasia, Eugenia, Antonia,” she said, pointing them out one-by-one. There were older aunts and uncles, some younger twenty-somethings, no kids. “Antony, Tony, Milo, Argo, Tony, Nick, Tony, Antonio…” She pushed through the crowd to cup a good-looking guy by both cheeks. My handsome son, Antonio.”
He smiled widely and let her do it, even though he carried four suitcases stacked in his arms.
“He belonged to my old clan, but when I married his step father, he was a loyal son and came with me,” she told my mom proudly.
“Oh. My,” my mom said, no doubt thinking Ophelia was one slice short of a baklava. “If you’ll please follow me this way,” she said, breaking away to guide a few of the Antonio’s up the stairs. She paused part way up. “I look forward to meeting each and every one of you. Some of you will find your names on the doors. If not, then, you can choose your own room on this floor or the third floor.” She raised a warning finger. “Be sure to inform me so that I can make name plates for you.”
A bunch of the Greeks stormed the steps after her, ready to claim their spots, while others began cozying up to biker witches. An older man—Tony?—broke out a bottle of ouzo.
He grinned proudly, his cheeks red. “Want to know how I smuggled it through?”
The biker witches whooped.
Talk about a universal greeting.
Diana hugged a startled Ant Eater while I caught up with Grandma. “I wish you spoke Greek,” I told her.
“In a minute,” she said, as Sidecar Bob wheeled into the room, his mouth split in a grin as he held a homemade marshmallow launcher.
How very biker witch.
He dug a jar of what looked like pink marbles out of the bag on the back of his chair. Of course, I knew better.
“Watch this,” he sa
id, dumping the contents into the launcher. “Fire in the hole!”
I winced as Bob pulled the trigger and fired a shot across the foyer.
Gasps erupted from the Greeks as it exploded in mid-air. Aunt Ophelia shrieked. Caustic smoke filtered over the room as flakes of glitter rained down. They felt cold to the touch, and—oh no—“She’s shifting!”
This was not a threat. There was no danger. But try telling that to Aunt Ophelia.
Claws erupted out of her hands and feet. Her tunic tore in half as a thick lion’s back emerged. Red, orange, and silver feathers cascaded down her shoulders and spine and formed wings as her bones snapped and re-formed.
And she grew. Huge. She was as big as a truck. Her blue eyes glowed as she turned to me and snarled.
Ant Eater stood next to me. Staring. “At least she’s still in the foyer.”
Yes. Well. “Is that good or bad?”
“I don’t know,” she said, refusing to take her eyes off the beast.
Aunt Ophelia snarled and rose to her full height, her head clinking against a wrought-iron chandelier.
“Somebody stop her,” I gasped, envisioning an Aunt Ophelia-sized hole in the wall. A staircase reduced to tinder. Hillary in a dead faint.
The elder Tony scratched his chin. His other hand held a half-empty bottle of ouzo. “You want me to shift too?”
“No!” One griffin was enough. “Talk to her,” I pleaded. “Reason with her. It was just a translation spell.”
“That is unfortunate,” he said as Aunt Ophelia let out a bellow.
Oh, my God. It hadn’t really hit me until that moment. I had a house full of griffins.
Ophelia’s son Antonio came walking down the stairs. He did a double take when he saw his mom.
“Can you help her?” I asked him.
He winced a little as she slid her claws over the tile floors, trying to get her feet under her. “Really, Uncle Tony,” he said, “I know she’s wanted to stretch her wings, but she could have waited.”
Tony shrugged. “They scared her.”
“Congratulations on your wedding,” Antonio said, as if that were the most important thing right now.
“Thank you,” I said automatically. Aunt Ophelia wasn’t shifting back. And it’s not like we could get her out the door.
