by Angie Fox
Hillary was going to think I was some kind of wild child when all I’d wanted was a half-hour alone with my fiancé.
Why did I even care what she thought?
Because she was my mother.
Frieda and Creely made a break in the line for us and we headed for the house.
Dimitri, smart man that he was, had rescued my light. He flipped it on to guide our way. He wrapped his other arm around my waist. “You okay?”
“For now.” I couldn’t guarantee anything once my mom got a hold of me.
The fog hadn’t let up a bit. Still, we definitely knew the direction the search party had taken from the house. “I notice none of your relatives barged out after us,” I said. The Greeks must be lovers, not fighters.
He glanced down at me. “They’re here? Good.” He let out a huff. “I asked my sisters for help with some clan business.”
“Well, they certainly brought the clan.”
His flashlight beam jerked. “What do you mean?” he asked.
He’d find out soon enough.
“When are we ever going to be alone?” I asked him under my breath, very aware of the parade behind us.
He gave me a slight squeeze. “Think of the honeymoon.”
Yes, the surprise honeymoon. Dimitri had refused to tell me where we were going, only that it would blow my mind.
Frankly, that could mean anywhere, as long as Dimitri was with me. But right now, I needed some good news, or at least a goal to get me through to the wedding. “Tell me where.”
He turned to me in surprise. “You really want to know?”
Yes. No. “Maybe.” I could cling to the fact that going somewhere magical with this man. “Give me a hint,” I said as he led me around the sage plants and up the back porch steps.
He drew a hand down my arm, leaving goose bumps in his wake. “Far, far away,” he said, glancing back at the witches breaking through the fog.
He nuzzled my cheek. “Soft beds. Ocean views. Me naked.”
“With a rose between your teeth?”
“That can be arranged.”
I gave him a soft kiss on the shoulder.
Hillary cleared her throat. That’s when I noticed she’d bypassed our little tête-à-tête and was holding the back door open for us. Dang. I could use her as a super spy demon scout—if she knew I was a slayer.
“Remember you are rooming separately until the wedding,” she said to Dimitri. Probably to me as well.
He stiffened, and for a moment, I thought I was about to have another battle on my hands. I squeezed his shoulder and leaned up to whisper in his ear. “Let it go.”
His gaze was hard, his jaw granite. Hell, he was probably grinding his teeth. But he held back. For me.
“Thank you,” I wound my fingers with his as we entered the kitchen.
“You’re welcome,” Hillary replied behind us.
It was just as well.
He escorted me up to our rooms. I needed another shower. And to snuggle with him.
He ducked his head and gave me a long, slow kiss, then pulled back with a mock stern expression on his face. “Think honeymoon,” he said, before he turned away, the muscles in his broad back flexing as he headed across the hall.
***
I retreated to the bathroom for a long, hot shower. Afterward, I rubbed on some jasmine scented lotion and slipped into a sexy silk nightgown.
When I closed the bathroom door behind me, Pirate was curled up on the bed. He stood when he saw me. “Oh, no. You’re going to kick me out, and I’m going to have to sleep on the sofa again. Or the floor. I hate the floor.”
“Relax,” I said, running my fingers through my freshly washed and combed hair. “It’s only us tonight.”
“For real?” He asked, leaping over the comforter he’d bunched up on the bed. “Because as your dog, I have to tell you I expect equal attention. Remember how we used to lay in bed all night, reading books and eating popcorn? We could do that.” I sat next to him on the bed, and he immediately rolled onto his back. “Or how about we lay in bed and you rub my belly and tell me stories about your day?” I scratched the soft fur on his stomach, and he gave a happy wriggle. “Oh yeah. That’s the ticket. Oh, Lizzie, I needed this.”
He’d started to kick his back leg in tune with my scratches when there was a knock at the door.
Pirate flipped over onto his feet. “Aw hell.”
“It might not be Dimitri,” I told him, secretly hoping it was. My body screamed for round two. I was certainly ready.
“Um hum,” my dog said. “See? No matter how loyal I am, this is what happens.”
But I was hardly listening. My gorgeous, wonderful, adventurous man was going to get us caught. Again.
“Couldn’t resist, could you?” I asked, opening the door.
But instead of my dream man, I found a very unhappy Hillary.
She’d changed into her version of loungewear—a matching velour outfit with some kind of a designer label on the sleeve.
“I’d like to see you downstairs, please,” she said, her voice clipped, her fingers white on her clipboard.
“Can it wait?” I asked. I was all for planning emergencies, but not at eleven o’clock at night. Besides, I’d somehow managed to hold on to a nice, post-nookie mood. I didn’t need to hear about placemats from a woman who was obviously annoyed with me.
“Now,” she said, in a tone she hadn’t used since I was a teenager.
I held back a sigh. She was lucky she was my mother.
Pirate turned in a circle and settled back in while I found my matching silk robe. “I’ll keep the bed warm for you.”
“You’re a good dog,” I said, closing the door behind me and following my mom down to the kitchen.
Lo and behold, the biker witches had turned in early. The Greeks, too. At least I’d be close behind. Hillary was not a night person. I went straight for the pantry by the refrigerator, thinking I might get some crackers. Or maybe Hillary had ice cream—when she turned on me.
“I can’t believe you were outside—naked—sleeping with Dimitri!”
Oh, God. Just like that, I lost my appetite. I turned to face her.
Her cheeks were flushed, her expression hard.
“Okay.” We might as well lay it out on the table. “I’m an adult. He’s my fiancé, and we were supposed to be alone.”
I was thirty years old, for goodness sake, old enough to be able to have a private moment, or three.
Hillary gripped her clipboard. “I have five days worth of parties and after parties,” she said, pounding her finger against her finely tuned, color-coded notes. “I have ribbons that match napkins that match plates. I am killing myself. For you. To give you the perfect wedding. And what do you do? You sneak off and do vulgar things in my garden!”
Because I’d asked for artisan placemats, bonbon making parties and a three-ring circus. “This isn’t about me.” None of it was. “This is about you getting ready for your country club friends.”
She wasn’t even insulted. “How are you going to come back to Atlanta and live a good life if you don’t impress these people?”
“Newsflash mom. I’m not going back!”
She looked like I’d slapped her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Yes, you’re in love, but Atlanta is your home.” All the color drained from her face. “You’d better not do something insane, like move to Greece. Is he putting these notions into your head?
Like I didn’t have a thought of my own. “Maybe if you got to know him, instead of picking fights with him, you’d realize he’s not like that.”
She snorted. “It’s hard to talk to him when you always have a hand down the front of his pants.”
“That’s not fair,” I snapped.
“You want to know what’s not fair?” I’d never seen Hillary snarl. But she quickly hid it. She took one deep breath, then another. She set her clipboard down on the kitchen island behind her, held up her hands like I was the one attack
ing her. “I tried so hard to have a baby,” she said evenly, controlled. “When I adopted you, all my dreams came true. I simply wanted to give you a good life, to have a perfect daughter. And you fight me at every turn.”
I wasn’t fighting. In fact, my problem was that I hadn’t pushed back for the majority of my life. I stewed in silence, which didn’t help anybody. It was only when I came into my powers that I began to realize I didn’t have to be the person my mom wanted me to be. I could be me.
The biker witches had given me that gift. They may have dragged me to it, kicking and screaming, but they taught me to let go, to make my own choices, to believe in myself. I didn’t live my life afraid anymore. I knew who I was.
In fact, if I had any sort of guts, I’d tell Hillary I was a demon slayer. She needed to know. And now was the perfect time.
My heart sped up and my voice caught in my throat.
“Mom—”
There was no going back.
“Wait.” She set down her clipboard with a sigh. “I know we’re both under a lot of pressure with this wedding, but you’re my daughter, and I’ve been dreaming about this for so long.” She took a deep breath. “Now, let’s both try to smile. I have a surprise for you.” She walked to the large closet by the back door. “I was going to save it. I should.” She drew a clear garment bag out of the closet. “But I don’t know what you’re going to do anymore.” Inside, was a wedding dress.
Mom, I’m a demon slayer.
“This was my dress. I’d like you to wear it,” she said, as more of a fact than a request.
Disappointment welled up in me. I wasn’t sure if it was from the lost chance at a confession, or that I was going to have to let her down again. “I have a dress,” I said. I loved it. It was so me.
She closed her eyes, as if she’d expected this particular failure, too. “This dress is couture,” she said, unzipping the bag and holding up an off-white gown with one long, elegant sleeve and one arm left bare.
“You’re missing a sleeve,” I told her.
“That’s the style,” she said, proudly.
She turned it around and showed me a waffle-like design on the back. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before and like nothing I wanted to wear.
“Thank you, mom. I’m honored.” I was. I really was. “But I want to wear my own dress.” Maybe a few years ago, before I’d broken free, before I’d learned to stand up for myself, I would have bowed under the pressure to give up my gown. But not anymore.
The sadness in her expression nearly broke my heart.
But it didn’t break me.
“We’ll think about it,” she said, as if we hadn’t settled it already.
I couldn’t do this anymore. “I need to get to bed.”
“Well, that’s true,” she conceded. “You don’t want bags under your eyes.”
As if that were my biggest problem.
I gave her an awkward wave goodnight and headed out of the kitchen.
I’d lost my chance to give her the truth. But in a way, I think I’d given her all the truth she could handle for one evening. There was nothing for me to consider. This was who I was. She needed to accept me.
Or maybe I was taking the easy way out—only giving her the truths that I had to—leaving out the ones that were soul-deep.
It would come to a head sooner or later, if only I could find a way to make it easier.
Chapter Eleven
The next morning, I woke up with bags under my eyes. The tragedy.
Of course I hadn’t slept well. I just wanted this week to be over. My dog was nowhere in sight when I made it out of the bathroom.
“Pirate?” I asked, noticing the hall door was slightly open.
Sure, he never liked to sleep in, but he usually let me know when he was going to wander.
I slipped on a pair of yellow wedge heels that went with my daisy print sundress.
“Little dog?” I asked.
I opened the door to peek out into the hall and almost ran smack into Creely, who wore leather pants, a zebra print top and was carrying her own version of Hillary’s clipboard. “Oh, good. You’re awake.”
“What are you doing?” I asked, almost one hundred percent sure I didn’t want to know the answer.
She raised her brows, a Kool-Aid green lock of hair falling in between them. “You said you wanted us to play nice. We are. Now, I want to go over some options for the post-wedding kegger.”
“Absolutely not,” I said, stepping out into the hall. “You said you were going to listen to my mom.”
Hopefully better than I listened to her.
“We tried.” She shrugged. “Now we’re going to do it our own way.”
“What about me?” I’d asked them to get along.
She shot me a quizzical look. “You’re just the bride.”
And here I thought this wedding was about what I wanted. I don’t know why I kept clinging to that notion.
The doorbell rang downstairs, and Pirate let off a frenzy of barking. So that’s where my dog was.
Creely kept talking. “Don’t worry. We’re going to do the reception up fancy, with clear plastic glasses and whatnot, but I tell you, it’s going to be a bitch to get a beer truck up the hill out front.”
“Hillary will have a heart attack,” I said to her, and myself. I said it slowly, so she would understand.
I started to walk around her, to check out who was at the door. Because, let’s face it, Creely wasn’t budging.
“Neal is getting his old hair band back together,” she said, in true biker witch style.
“Neal?” I gaped. Grandma’s off-again, on-again, hippie lover Neal? “She can’t behave around him.”
“Says the woman who banged a griffin in the fog.”
Lovely. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
She shrugged. “Neal’s band is good. At least, they used to be.”
Creely angled her clipboard away from me but not before I saw the note to stop by the dollar store for balloons and slip-n-slides.
“I’m not going on a slip-in-slide.”
She gave me the “duh” expression. “It’s for after you and Dimitri leave. We’ve got to do something to the Electric Slide.”
I couldn’t believe this. “How about you do the dance,” I said, heading for the stairs, “like normal people?”
She laughed like I was making a joke.
The door opened, but I couldn’t see who was arriving. I glanced back at Creely. “Don’t think you’re off the hook.”
She merely grinned.
When I reached the foyer, mom was closing the door.
“Who was that? I asked. My mentor, Rachmort, was due to arrive today, although he’d probably be in the foyer if it were him.
“It was no one,” my mom said airily.
She looked a little too innocent for my taste, like Pirate after he broke into my last box of Girl Scout cookies. “Mom…” I prodded.
She waved a hand. “It was a mistake. I fixed it.”
Dimitri walked in from the hall. “I saw the UPS guy leaving. Did you get your dress?” He stopped, checking his watch. “The tracking said it was supposed to be here by ten.”
No. She wouldn’t. My insides hollowed, and I felt myself begin to shake. “Mother, what did you do?”
“I’m taking care of the details for you.” She drew up her defenses. “We agreed you’d wear my dress,” she said in a rush, as if were the most obvious thing in the world.
Only I did not agree to anything of the sort, and oh my God—she sent back my dress. I rushed past her and threw open the door. The truck wasn’t even a blip on the winding drive and my dress was gone. Vanished. Kaput.
I spun to face her. “What were you thinking?” I yelled, the words burning my throat. “This is my wedding,” I advanced on her. “That was my dress!”
She brought her hands up to her chest as if I’d struck her. “You didn’t see it. It was plain.”
“It was
mine!” I screamed.
She backed up. “It was short,” she said, stammering, her gaze searching for anything but me. “This wedding is going to be a production and your dress has to live up to that. The one you picked out was a dress for cocktail party.”
“Get it back.” I ordered.
She brought a hand to her chest. “Lizzie, I—”
“Get. It. Back.” I repeated.
My head was going to explode. Dimitri stepped up, but I held out my hand before he got any closer. I didn’t want him to make this right, unless it meant getting my dress back.
“This ends now,” I told her. “I’m not a prop in a show to impress your friends. I’ve gone along with the teas and the planning and all of this production that I didn’t ask for and I didn’t want. All I wanted was to wear my dress, and you fucked that up. I’d rather walk down the aisle naked than wear your dress.”
I spun and ran straight into Dimitri. Dammit. I was shaking. I tried to pull away, but he caught me. “Hey,” he smoothed my hair out of my face, “listen to me. I’ll get it back for you if I have to fly out and land on top of that truck.”
My throat felt tight. “Thanks.” We should have just gone to Vegas, done it biker witch style.
Dimitri pulled out his cell phone and started the tracking process.
And if that didn’t work, I wondered if Dimitri was serious about shifting and hijacking the truck. That had to be illegal on about seven different levels. I still wanted him to do it.
Ophelia came from the sitting room, not doubt drawn by the noise. “Oh, my.” She wrapped both hands around my arm. At least she cared. “We can fix it for you, kopelia mou.”
Maybe. I hoped. “Do you know someone at UPS?” I asked.
She patted my arm. “No. I’m sorry, dear. But we have a gift for you that will make you feel so much better.”
She’d obviously never had her wedding dress replaced.
“This way,” Ophelia said, guiding me into the sitting room, where the Greeks had erased Hillary’s white board and instead used it as a place to keep score for their Biriba tournament.
Good.
“Come, come,” Ophelia said to the biker witches gathering at the fringes of the room. “This is for everyone.”
