“I can’t wear yours,” she protested.
Eyebrow’s high, I smirked. “I can ask Lucy for hers. She’s sitting with Ellasbeth.”
Ray winced, her eyes flicking to the shifting walls as if able to see the large glen beside the river where her mother had last stood upon the earth. The last I’d looked, Lucy was sitting directly between Ellasbeth’s stately snobbery and my mom’s loud refusal to let anyone think Ellasbeth was better than she was. Takata was enjoying himself immensely, sitting back and watching the show before the show, as it were.
“Ahh, I’ll wear yours, thanks.”
My heart almost broke from happiness as she all but flopped onto a linen-covered bail of straw and I carefully used my hairpins to fix it among her elaborate braids. Ellasbeth was not happy, making no bones about her disapproval of Ray’s marrying a Rosewood baby, even if that baby had grown into a powerful demon who’d turned his thoughtful studies into researching aura mechanics. The field was relatively new and massively funded by an ever-decreasing but desperate segment of the old undead. It had never occurred to me that Ray might marry one of the kids that Trent and I had saved from Ku’Sox. Funny how things worked out.
But I think Ellasbeth’s disapproval stemmed more from the coming lack of grandbabies than from Keric’s being a demon. While elves and demons had finally learned to live together—in part because their new Goddess was a demon and she wanted it that way—the biology remained static. There’d never be a successful demon-elf pairing. The magic fought the science, and the science undermined the magic. There were some things, apparently, that even a crazy Goddess couldn’t fix.
Ray wound her fingers around themselves, fidgeting as she looked to the billowing drapes and the coming sunset. “Maybe I should’ve asked Loo to ride with me. Mom looks ticked.”
Mom meaning Ellasbeth this time, and I sighed, fixing her hair and knowing it would be the last time ever. “She’s not mad at you, she’s mad at my mom. To tell you the truth, I think Lucy likes sitting between them. If she can keep them from throwing curses at each other, then she can convince a hanging judge that the sun is black and the moon is green.”
Ray snorted, reminding me that under the finery and glam, she was the same little girl I’d spent the last twenty-seven years helping Trent and Quen raise, putting Band-Aids on cuts, making unexpected cupcakes at dawn before school, cheering from the stands in the rain, and drying tears when a boy was mean—missing her when she was with Ellasbeth. If that wasn’t being a mom, then nothing was. It had been glorious, even if Trent and I had never made it official. With Ray getting married, it felt as if a tie between us was being cut.
“I’m so glad you’re standing with my dad,” Ray rushed on, and I kept arranging her hair, knowing she needed soothing as much as that flaky horse did. “I can’t imagine Ellasbeth doing it.”
I laughed, but it sounded almost like a cry. “Me either.” I had to stop. I had to let her go. “Go on. You need to lose yourself in the woods. Keric knows where you’ll be, right?”
She stood, looking like grace given substance, breathless with action and promise coiled up in her, ready to be loosed on the world. “Yes. If you see Al, tell him if he doesn’t wear the pelt, I will turn his ears into snakes.”
I nodded, my hand trailing from her as she paced quickly to the back of the pavilion and slipped into the twilight. “Hi, Ivy!” she called, already out of my sight but heavy on my mind. “Jenks, your kids are butt-hats!”
“Yeah? Tell me something I don’t know, short stack!” Jenks shouted, and I spun to the makeshift door. Ivy? The sun was still up. I hadn’t expected her to make it until the reception when Nina could come with her.
Pulse fast, I wiped my eyes as she walked in, gray about the temples, wrinkles about her eyes, but moving as slinkily and smoothly as always. She made the fifties look good. Really good. “You made it!” I said, glancing from her to the saddle. I had to finish up and get out of here. I needed to be on the hill overlooking the glen by sunset, and it was almost that now.
Eyes glittering, Ivy pulled me into a quick, heartfelt hug. My eyes closed as the scent of vampire incense and contentment washed through me. Okay, maybe I needed some soothing, too, and I smiled as I pulled back, thinking she looked better than great. And she’d made it before sunset. I’d thought she’d be too busy.
“Rachel, you are as radiant as Ray,” she said, and Jenks hovered between us, his silver dust graying about the edges. He was due for another rejuv charm, but was resisting.
“You mean wild,” the pixy said. “Love the hair, Rache.”
I touched it, not caring that I’d ruined the elaborate upsweep by taking my cap off. It was frizzing already, and I took the last of the pins out. Trent liked it better wild anyway. Though I’d not seen or heard the Goddess since Newt had become her, Jenks said mystics still coated me from time to time as she turned her thoughts my way. I knew every time she did because my hair became impossible. It happened a lot, and maybe that’s why my life had been so perfect.
“You said you couldn’t make it until after sunset,” I said.
Ivy smiled as if knowing something I didn’t as she made kissy noises at Red and petted her soft nose. “Nina told me to leave. Apparently I was fidgeting. Getting the office excited.”
Jenks snorted, and I thanked him when he dropped a pin into my hand.
“Nina keeps them in line better than I do anyway,” Ivy said, eyes wistful. “The old ones don’t like me much. Not like before.”
I can’t imagine why. Ivy and Nina had flipped the vampiric power structure. Not a week went by without a protest or incident, but it was contained within the vampires, living and dead, and the world was content to let them figure it out.
“They just don’t know you like we know you, Ivy,” Jenks said, darting back when Ivy idly threatened to smack him. It was an old game that neither tired of.
“Nina will make the reception, won’t she?” I asked as I went to drop the saddle pad on Red. The music had shifted, both the baying of the dogs and the quintet. I was going to be late. No help for it now.
“She wouldn’t miss it.” Ivy held Red’s head as I placed the saddle, and my lace rustled as I leaned to bring the cinch up. It was good to see Ivy out of the office. Being the head of Cincy’s I.S. had taken her out of the church about the same time I’d given up trying to be two things and moved in with Trent, though to be honest it was the girls’ pouting that moved me more than Trent’s heavy sighs. But all things change, and we both loved our lives.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Ivy whispered as I leaned into Red for leverage to tighten her cinch. “You deserve this, and I wanted to be here to see it.”
“Yeah, it’s your big day!” Jenks said, wings clattering. “Make-it-or-break-it time!” he said, gyrating wildly. “Time to crap or get off the pot!” he added, and Ivy shot him a look to shut up.
Excuse me? My motion to cinch Red’s saddle hesitated. “I suppose,” I said. I’d miss Ray, but Trent and I had been empty nesters before when both girls had been at school.
“He means this wedding is a big step,” Ivy said, glaring at him. “The demons and the elves formally joined and their war officially ended.”
“It took me forever to convince Dali to help with the vows,” I said, glad the grumpy demon had finally agreed to it, threats and promises aside.
“Tink’s last will and testicles, you should have been there, Ivy,” Jenks said, and Red flicked her ears, threatening to snap if he got any closer. “She laid down the law. Started every other sentence with ‘Look, you,’ and had a list a mile long just to get him to come.”
“You do what you have to do,” I said, smiling. Al had been there, and I swear I’d felt Newt’s laugh in my mind. I was smart enough not to tempt fate with trying to contact the Goddess directly. Newt was gone but not dead, her spirit showing itself when elven magic spun out of control and into something unexpected and not always nice.
“Jenks . . . ,” I protested a
s he teased Red, but Ivy just smiled and shrugged. Seeing Ivy happy was all I’d ever wanted, and she was happy. What would happen when she died was anyone’s guess, which was probably why Ray was an expert in auratic physics and Lucy had focused on business law with a heavy slant toward vampiric living wills and trusts.
“I still say I should be with the elven emissary and Dali in the woods wearing this rag,” a low, cultured voice with a hint of a British accent said, and I started, not having felt Al pop in. “My God, it still smells like wolf. You’re looking well, Ms. Tamwood.”
Ivy’s eyes slid to Al as the demon brushed at the wolf pelt he wore over his extravagant suit. It almost rivaled Takata’s in marks for “Look at me! I don’t care that you’re staring!” the fabric almost glowing from silver threads and dark dyes.
“And you look ridiculous,” Ivy said, making Jenks snort in agreement.
“It is the required uniform.” But still, he winced as he took off his hat and hunched, pleading with me. “Rachel, love, talk to Ray. Tell her this is undignified. It’s a wolf skin, and not a very big one. She said she’d turn my ears to snakes if I took it off.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have taught her that curse,” I said, remembering getting that call at three in the morning. It was the last sleepover Ray had been invited to. Mothers of fourteen-year-olds have no sense of humor.
“She listens to you!” Al protested, and Ivy let go of Red when the horse got a whiff of Brimstone and tossed her head.
“Al, just wear it,” I said. “And get your ass back out with the wedding party. You’re going to make them late coming in.”
“I will not,” he said stiffly, frowning as Ivy gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Quen has my steed. I have plenty of time to pop back. Listen, they haven’t even found her yet.”
It was true. The hounds still bayed, and I shivered. I’d asked Trent to forgo that part, but Ray had insisted. The dogs wouldn’t be allowed to follow them back to the glen, though.
“See you at the reception,” Ivy said, turning to stand right in front of Al until he moved out of her way.
“Damn cheeky vampires,” he grumbled as he moved. “Thinks she owns the world.”
I soothed Red before reaching for her bridle. “She’s in love,” I said softly. “She does own the world.”
Al was silent, and I turned to see him staring at me, the wolf pelt hanging half off his shoulders. “You took your hair down,” he said, his voice shifting, deeper and less flamboyant. “Is that for your elf?”
“No.” The pelt was slipping off his shoulder, and I stood before him and tugged it straight. “Jumoke’s kids took Ray’s cap, and I gave her mine.” He wasn’t jealous—not really.
“I suppose if you have stood with him this long against all the forces of nature opposing you that you’d be afraid to do anything . . . else?” Al said, his tone rising in question at the end.
Jenks’s wings clattered in warning that I was going to be late, but it was Al who grimaced. “I’m not afraid of anything except missing my cue,” I said. “Will you just wear the pelt?” I grumped as I adjusted it. “It’s only for an hour. Pretend that it’s a job. I’ve seen you wear worse.” A horn blew, and I frowned. Damn it, I was late.
“It’s undignified!” Al moaned, his usual mood restored.
Jenks’s wings shivered against my neck. I hadn’t even felt him land. “This coming from the demon who let a live Tyrannosaurus rex eat him so he could blow him up from the inside during the last ten minutes of the film?”
Al frowned. “I do my own stunts. It was in the script.”
Which was true. Al had five Oscars to his credit and had produced and directed movies that had earned twice that many. As he had said, Al did his own stunts, and the dinosaur had been real, reengineered from old DNA using sophisticated magic and some of Trent’s more illegal machines. The one they didn’t blow up was on loan to the San Diego Zoo.
“Can you get me tickets to the premiere of Mesozoic: In Time, No One Can Hear You Scream?” I asked, and when he winced, I shook my head. “Wear it, big man, or I’ll change something other than your ears to snakes.”
He leered, making Red’s ears pin back. “How do you know someone hasn’t beaten you to it?”
“Al!” I shouted. “Wear. It.”
Sighing, he tugged it back into place. Jenks was laughing, his dust looking gray in the lamplight, and I hustled forward to adjust the pelt before Al could take it back off. “He looks like a Neanderthal in Armani,” Jenks said, laughing merrily.
“It’s not that bad!” I soothed, pulling Al down to kiss his cheek and make his ruddy complexion shift even redder. “You look like the big bad wolf. Now go. I have to meet Trent and Quen on the hill.”
“Quen is with the hunting party, and if it wasn’t for Ray, I’d never do it.”
“Then I have to meet Trent. And she loves you. Go!”
Grumbling, Al backed up, but he hesitated before he winked out, a familiar, crafty glint to his expression as he took a breath and his eyes opened wide.
“Tink loves a duck,” Jenks said loudly. “I think Brimstone breath just got an idea.”
“Yes!” Al exclaimed, and Red bobbed her head, agitated when the demon was suddenly coated in shimmery silver ever-after. “I have an idea!” he cried again, his voice distorted as the energy field fell away to show that Al’s silver-threaded overdone finery was gone, replaced by thick boots trimmed in fur and an elegant coat with shadings of tree and field. The wolf pelt worked with it, especially in the graying light and the smell of horse, and I smiled. “If I’m to be a huntsman, I will be a huntsman! They will tremble in fear, and that whiny Keric will think twice about stealing my beloved Ray!”
“Go get ’em, Al,” I said, weary as he jumped and his shiny afterimage fading to nothing.
Jenks snickered as he took to the air. “I think you might have just birthed the idea for his next film.”
“Just as long as he leaves me out of the credits. I got hate mail for three whole years the last time.”
The dogs’ song shifted, and I looked at the graying walls of the tent. I had to go. “Come on, Red,” I coaxed, and she obediently took the bit, noisily moving it around until it felt right.
“You’re late,” Jenks said, helping enormously, and I led the horse over to the mounting box. I normally didn’t need one, but I normally didn’t ride wearing twenty pounds of lace. Red didn’t like it, and she shied.
“Hold still,” I muttered as I swung my leg over. Red squealed, and I pulled her in tight, bashing my chest against her as I lurched on. We spun in a tight circle, and breathless, we came to a halt.
There in the flickering light of the gas lamps was Trent. He was sitting atop Tulpa, a bemused expression on his face as he took in my hair, the mane of it going everywhere. “I thought you were going to wear it up?” he said, and I flushed.
“Jumoke’s kids hid Ray’s cap, and I gave her mine,” I said, thinking he looked fantastic in his father-of-the-bride finery. My God, Ellasbeth would be kicking herself tonight.
“Quen decided to stick with Al to keep him from going out of bounds,” Trent said, gesturing for me to hurry up. “It’s just us on the hill, and you’re making us late.”
“So I heard,” I muttered, meaning about three different things. My pulse quickened as the horns sounded again, closer even as the dogs’ singing became faint. Tradition said the bride and groom were to come in with the groom’s parents and the bride’s protector. It was only after the vows were spoken that the bride’s parents joined them. I thought the ceremony uncannily like the pixy’s tradition of stealing the bride when there wasn’t enough dowry.
“I don’t think we can make the hill, but we can hide at the edges of the glen,” he said, and I nodded, bringing Red around and heading for the back door. My heart was pounding, and I thought it silly that he could still do this to me. He was a little wider across the shoulders with maturity, and the first hints of silver were in his hair, but you had
to look close. The stress of maintaining his species-friendly industries was taking its toll, but he’d made his way back from almost nothing even with me beside him. It felt good.
“Rache, if you’ve got this, I gotta go,” Jenks said, and he darted off before I could raise my hand in acknowledgment.
Tulpa bobbed his head as we came alongside, and Red gave him a look to behave. The stallion was ancient by horse standards, the father of five of her offspring.
“Ah, you haven’t seen my cap, have you?” Trent said, and I realized my being late wasn’t why he’d come back down.
Leaning across the horses, I gave him a kiss, pulling his cap out of his back pocket at the same time. “Want me to pin it to you?” I said saucily as I put it into his hand.
Trent blinked at it, then leaned forward to hold the fluttering drapery out of our way. “I had it all the time?” he muttered, then dropped it on his head, looking heartstoppingly charming.
I took a clean breath of the sunset-gloomed air, bringing Red back under my tight control when she tensed, wanting to run and leave the noisy throng. It was sunset, and I stifled another shiver when the approaching party called and the assembled guests answered them with their own horns, guiding the wedding party in. The faultless sky had shaded to black in the east, pink and blue in the west. Birds took flight at the noise, and I settled more firmly on Red. Maybe the elves had something here.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” Trent said as he pointed out a sheltered spot where we could watch from under the trees and still be unobtrusive. “I don’t know if I’m coming or going today.”
Beaming, I shifted a strand of hair from his eyes as the horses walked to the edge of the glen. We’d been noticed, but everyone was focused on the empty space between the chairs and the river where the ceremony would take place. “I’m happy for you. I know this means a lot. That Ray have a traditional elf wedding, I mean.”
The rims of his ears reddened, and he gave me a sidelong look. “It’s that obvious, is it?”
I angled Red closer and let my head drop against his shoulder. It was awkward, but I made Red stay there for at least a few paces. He was happy, and that made me happy. If not for that dumb tradition about ruling elves needing to marry someone fertile, he might have had a wedding himself, chased his bride down among the trees, defended her against her parents, and triumphantly brought her home to his family. But it didn’t matter. I had everything I could ever want.