by Faith Hunter
I stepped from the limo, muttering just loud enough for my honeybunch to hear. “Poor delicate little ol’ me, needing all you big strong fighting folk to protect me.”
Apparently, I still spoke loud enough for vamp ears. Thema made an indelicate snorting sound.
“Be safe, my love.”
“I promise.” I think we both knew I didn’t know how to be safe, but for this man I would try. Inside, I crashed and slept like a log, waking just in time to check on security protocols for Jodi and Wrassler’s formal nighttime wedding.
CHAPTER 14
He Made the Sign of the Cross, and No One Caught on Fire
I woke two hours before the wedding in half-form, which was unfortunate. I liked my half-form for battle or sparring, but not for fancy events with friends. I had wanted to be human-shaped for the wedding. Dang it.
Lying in the sheets, I called on Beast for help, but she ignored me.
Fortunately, I had no active part in Jodi and Wrassler’s wedding. I wasn’t a bridesmaid or groomsman, where my shape and pelt would call attention to me instead of the happy couple. I was a guest, which meant no one would be asking me to be all queenly, and that suited me perfectly. I could be a fly on the wall with no problem.
I got up and showered, did what few girly things I needed to in this form, and pulled on a robe and squishy slippers. Unexpectedly, without knocking, Quint was in my room giving orders. “Sit,” she said, and pointed to a small chair in the narrow bathroom. I sat, and she began to tell me what I needed to know about the big event. She started with the basics. “This is a white-tie wedding. White tie is also known as full evening dress. It’s the most formal, most traditional evening dress event in all of Western civilization. Put your hands down. I’m braiding your hair.”
I wasn’t used to being given orders, but Quint’s tone had me obeying. Instantly. It was eerily like the tone used by the house mothers at the Christian children’s home where I grew up. I sat, silent and unmoving, as she worked.
White tie wedding was explained to me by Quint in excruciating detail as she braided my hair into ten differently sized and differently directed plaits. Though I hated someone I didn’t know touching my hair or braiding it, I would have to get used to it eventually. Might as well be tonight. I held in my sigh as she worked and tried to pay attention.
She was full of info on etiquette and protocol and the way things must be done. And she had said the words as if they were a title while clipping the braids into an elegant bun-type thing that I’d never have managed without her. Quint then applied my makeup, putting glittery stuff on my cheeks and mascara on my lashes. She painted my Beast-fingernails scarlet. Beast was purring at the attention. If I was honest with myself, it felt kinda nice to be fussed over. Not that I’d ever say it aloud.
While my nails dried, Quint began to pull evening wear from the closet, all made by Madame Melisende for this one event and brought here at some point over the last day or so. Because they hadn’t been there before.
Careful not to mess up her handiwork, I sat in the corner chair and let Quint display and describe dresses, and tried not to sigh a long suffering note. I hated clothes stuff. But after the first red scarlet silk dress, no matter what she said, I gave the same answer.
“Scarlet silk, cross shoulder, low back,” Quint said. “Slit up the leg so you can wear a thigh blade.”
“Currently, I’m pelted on my back, shoulders, and my upper legs. It will show something odd, improperly pelted, will ride up, and itch. No. Next.”
“Gold velvet, long-sleeved, bottomless pockets for reaching a weapon in a thigh rig.”
“Ditto. No.”
“Black silk—”
“Ditto. No.”
“Crimson sheath—”
“No.”
After the fifteenth dress, I said, “How many more do you have?”
“Your modiste created twenty-four dresses for you to choose from tonight.”
“Twenty—” I scowled at Quint. “Screw all that evening dress crap. With all the eating I’ve done in the last few days, I’ve put on a few pounds, all muscle, and my shoulders will make any dress look stupid. Same with the pelt. Everything will itch. Nope, nope, nope. No dress. Pull out my scarlet leathers.”
“Your majesty—”
“My Queen or Jane. I hate majesty.” I crossed my arms over my meager chest.
“But—”
“No buts. Help or get out.”
Quint didn’t scowl or frown. Her expression didn’t change. Even her scent was unchanged. Quint had no emotional reaction to my statements at all, even when I was snarly. She pulled out the scarlet leather armor, hung its hanger on a hook, and held one hand out to me, palm up. She made a little Get up gesture. I stood. She yanked off my robe.
I almost flinched. Fortunately I was wearing undies, but I wasn’t used to anyone seeing me unclothed in half-form. I didn’t like people looking at me. I glared at her. She ignored my reaction.
She walked around me, eyeing me clinically, evaluating. “You’re right. No dress would do you justice.” She shook her head. “You are magnificent.”
A weird feeling trickled through me, uneasy, surprised, uncertain. As far as I could tell, Quint wasn’t lying. Magnificent? Steeling myself, I looked in the mirror for more than just a glance.
Tonight’s half-form consisted of the shoulders, legs, arms, and knobby hands of my half-Beast, with a more muscular human torso, tiny waist, narrow hips, and human feet. I had a long neck, my human face and head, with cat ears up high and hairy, poking through the fancy black braids like golden furry ornaments. I frowned. I looked like a cat version of Jessica Rabbit. Or a boobless and hairy Barbie doll from the fifties. Not . . .
Magnificent? Me?
Quint stretched the armor out on the bed, unfastened all the belts, buttons, zippers, and securing mechanisms, and began belting it in place on my body, cinching the straps for a perfect fit. She knelt in front and offered a new pair of convertible dress boots for me to slip my feet into. And then she began to add my weapons, mostly the ceremonial stuff, starting with my sword and the sterling and wood stakes, and ending with Bruiser’s gift, the Mughal blade. Its curved scabbard rested at my hip, the shape somehow following around my side, the stone handle near my waist.
My gold gorget went on last over my gold nugget necklace and the armor, along with two matching snake arm cuffs that once had held magical workings and had belonged to vamps. Both of which had been beheaded.
In record time, I stood looking at myself in the mirror. Beast peeked through my eyes to see too, and the golden glow of her presence was . . . Magnificent? Holy crap.
Beast is best hunter, she thought at me. Beast is beautiful and dangerous but needs killing teeth to go with claws.
Mmmm. Not tonight, I thought back. I like the human face.
Quint and Beast were right. And . . . just . . . wow.
Quint stood on the chair I had been sitting in. Rising up behind me, she lifted her arms and placed le breloque on my head. It snapped into place, tight—too tight.
I hadn’t planned to wear the crown, but Quint hadn’t asked me. Now there was no getting it off. Every time it snapped into place, I was afraid it was stuck there for good, but when it was ready, it came off just fine. I had to keep reminding myself of that. Stupid crown.
We headed to HQ to probably get in everyone’s way and make people stop what they were doing to accommodate the queen. Tough. I was going to stick my nose into everything.
* * *
* * *
The ballroom was stunning. The smell of smoke was gone. The magic that hid the damaged ceiling was holding up, security was on high alert to keep anyone from throwing spells or fireballs, so the room and HQ itself was likely safe. A string quartet was playing quiet strains. The flowers smelled sweet, as if just picked, the linens had all been replaced. There was a dark rose carpet down the center aisle between the chairs. Yeah. Perfect.
The wedding was scheduled an
hour after dusk, and the guests started gathering half an hour early, seated by HQ’s security guys, who were Wrassler’s best friends and “dudes of honor,” as he had started calling them. An excited hushed murmur underlay the stately silence as the guests were ushered in.
I stood in a dark corner, Quint at my side, an unexpected and uncomfortable presence. Quint was wearing a ball gown, but even an untrained eye could see the weapons bulging here and there. Together we watched everything, my bodyguard ready for anything. At least she wasn’t a chatterbox.
The first half hour, as guests arrived and were seated, went off like a charm. No one tried to drink down a human, no vamps issued challenges or cut one another to a bloody death.
The officiant arrived. Since the ceremony wasn’t being held in a Catholic church, which would have allowed her to have a Catholic priest, Jodi had chosen an aging Episcopal priest, Father Juan Ramirez. He was probably the first priest of any stripe or denomination to enter the Council Chambers of the Mithrans of New Orleans without holding up a silver cross and being followed by a mob carrying torches. Father Juan was insanely curious—and nonjudgmental—about vamps, so that helped. He shook every vamp’s hand, he made eye contact without fear of being rolled, and he made the sign of the cross, and no one caught on fire.
The vamps were equally interested in the priest. As they entered, their eyes found him instantly and followed his every move. If vamps still wrote journals, I guessed everything about the wedding and Father Juan would be immortalized for posterity.
I figured all that was a step in the right direction of peace and harmony between other paras and humans. Not that I wanted to use this ceremony as part of the peace efforts. That was a Leo thing to do, and even the thought made me uncomfortable. Pulling my mind away from Leo’s multilayered plans, I went back to studying the crowd from my shadowed corner.
The vamp and blood-servant groomsmen were all wearing black dress coats with tails, white shirts, piqué waistcoats, and white bow ties worn around standing collars in the wing-tip style. They properly finished it off by wearing high-waisted black trousers and patent leather oxfords, or court shoes.
Some of the warriors in the crowd wore orders insignia and medals. Others in the crowd wore top hats, white gloves, white scarves, pocket watches, and orchid or rose boutonnieres.
I had spent so much time around fashion-conscious vamps that I knew what all that crap meant. Not that I admitted as much to my new bodyguard / fashion consultant.
Every single male was resplendent, especially Bruiser. Holy crap. He looked great in that formal getup. And when Koun entered . . . Even with my more human nose, I could smell Quint’s interest. She thought he looked hot. He seemed oblivious to her interest.
The women were in full-length ball gowns or evening gowns in all the colors of an artist’s palette, all wearing evening gloves past the elbow and carrying small handbags. They wore expensive faceted stone jewelry, and there were glittering tiaras here and there.
The bride’s side was filled with family and cops and local witches. All the city’s witch clans had been invited. The cops, both men and women, all wore full dress blues, their plus-ones in off-the-rack gowns and shoes, but just as fancy. I nodded at Sloan Rosen, Jodi’s second-in-command, and took in his plus-one, a very pretty, very curvy woman who clearly had the former undercover cop wrapped around her finger.
The groom’s side was filled with vamps and blood-servants. All the vamps were perfect, of course, and the vamp scents were completely pacific tonight: no blood, no sex scents, the air redolent of herbal and floral scents, and a little red-peppery with excitement. Oddly enough, even the vamps were jittery with anticipation, most of them actually breathing. Weddings were rare in the vamp world and usually made for clan or monetary purposes, seldom for love. A human wedding, a love match, in HQ was a first, and vamps who lived so long seldom got to experience new things.
Derek stood at the back of the room wearing a tux, a weapon, and a headset, talking with the security detail. He nodded at me, looking way hotter than I expected. I gave him my most regal nod back, and that made him grin as if he’d caught me playing dress-up. I sorta felt as if he had. Alex was in comms. Eli was making rounds through HQ and the grounds, keeping us all safe.
Across the room, three arcenciels in human form were dressed in silky, fluttery gowns that matched their dragon colors, the fabric moving in an unseen wind. I hadn’t known the three were invited, but Storm, Pearl, and Opal sat together whispering and were quite well behaved for young rainbow dragons. So far.
And then Wrassler—Homer—entered, which meant the ceremony was about to begin. The big guy was stunning in his black tux and tails. His groomsmen and women gathered at the front in a line behind him, including Bruiser, who put everyone to shame in his formal wear. Two security groomswomen wearing black ball gowns with white collars, like the tuxes, took their places. Gee darted in and took a place at the back of the room. Not a groomsman, but I wasn’t surprised he was here. He had the red striped lizard on his shoulder, its tail around his neck, and the arcenciels turned and stared at the misericord, as if they felt him enter.
Rick LaFleur took a seat, alone, on the bride’s side, his face aged and his hair stark white. I reined in a jolt of shock. My old boyfriend, and Jodi’s one-time partner in the woo-woo department, had been through some hard times. He had aged; were-creatures weren’t supposed to.
As if he felt my gaze, he turned his head and found my eyes in the soft light. Holding my eyes, his lips quirked up on one side, and he inclined his head as if in recognition of all that had happened between us, and in our worlds, since we met. He had changed and grown, yet Rick—the player of yesteryear—had no plus-one, which seemed sad. I wanted Rick to be happy.
Deon appeared at the back of the room, a checklist in hand, giving quiet orders through a headset. He was wearing black too, though his jacket had no tails and was covered in sequins. He gave me a stern look, the expression on his face reminding me of the housemothers in the children’s home where I grew up. I might be the Dark Queen, but that look still sent a shock of fear through me. He stabbed a finger at me and then pointed to my chair. I sighed and followed orders, Quint fading behind a column near my place. The moment I sat, Jodi’s mother was escorted down the aisle and took her seat at the front. The murmuring voices went silent.
The quartet’s music grew louder. Bridesmaids wearing jewel-toned gowns began to pace down the aisle in that odd step-pause-step gait. Some were witches, some were human, some were cops. Two were men, wearing cop dress blues. The parts of Jodi’s life that she had tried so hard to keep separate and secret had merged over the last couple of years; all her friends were here to support her, regardless of job or paranormal classification.
When Jodi stepped through the doors, everyone stood. The wedding march began, the quartet amplified through speakers. I started tearing up. My petite friend looked freaking gorgeous. Her dress was a heavenly cloud of pure white silk with tiny pink rosebuds made of rose quartz sewn into the heavily embroidered cloth. She had one of those long train things in pale pink and a veil made of net; both were sewn with pearls. She found Wrassler’s eyes and smiled, and he teared up too. The scents in the room were suddenly almost overpowering as Beast peeked in.
Jodi started down the aisle. She walked alone, no father or father figure to give her away, which I figured she intended. Jodi wasn’t a woman who would have cared for being handed over like property.
She reached the front of the ballroom, and Wrassler took her hand. Both of their faces were glowing with happiness. They wavered in my tears.
I had never been to a wedding. It was so cool, so amazing. I hoped the house I had bought them on the edge of the Garden District was a sufficient wedding gift. It was tiny, but it was adorable and fully refurbished. No way could Wrassler and his cop bride live at HQ. And no way could Wrassler, soon to be admin head of all NOLA security, be far from the protection detail that would keep them safe.
; I hoped they didn’t mind me masterminding their lives. Wrassler was used to such things, but I figured Jodi would make a stink about it even with a free house to lure her in.
The wedding march ended. Everyone sat. Gowns rustled, bodies shifted on the chairs. The scent of vamp excitement rose even higher. Behind me, the arcenciels began to glow.
“Dearly beloved,” Father Juan said, beginning the ceremony, which went on a long time and involved a lot of kneeling, which had to hurt Wrassler’s stump above his prosthetic leg. When they spoke their vows, Homer’s voice shook. Jodi’s was clear and ringing. Jodi’s mom cried. The bridesmaids cried. The vamps cried. The three arcenciels cried. Gee and his stupid little red flying lizard cried. The visiting witches cried. I cried. Fortunately Quint had applied waterproof mascara to my lashes, so it didn’t matter. Much.
The ceremony was beautiful. The vows were passionate.
After, Jodi and Wrassler kissed and were announced as spouses.
Everyone applauded and cheered and threw rose petals instead of rice or birdseed as the happy couple raced down the aisle, the maids and groomsmen behind them.
It was perfect.
I met Bruiser’s eyes at the back of the room, and my breath caught at the expression in his eyes. He mouthed, I love you.
I said it back to him.
And then he was swept away, and the room was quickly rearranged by the caterer and set up for dining and dancing. Deon and his staff began bringing in food. Everyone found their table to eat their weight in shrimp and lamb pops and boudin and sausages and entire tubs of steamed crawfish and corn on the cob and platters of cheese and fruit and veggies and dozens of loaves of bread. Later we all ate pieces of the cake that stood four feet tall. I loved every moment of it and ate enough that I had to loosen the waist of my armored leathers.
The vamps didn’t drink down anyone, the witches didn’t turn anyone into a toad, and the arcenciels didn’t make a scene. The alcohol disappeared by the buttload. And the first dance was fabulous, tiny Jodi in big Wrassler’s arms.
