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18

T ess

Wednesday: Wedding minus 3 days

I sat down in a wooden pew and carefully banged my forehead against the hymnal in the rack in front of me.

“No, Lorraine. Absolutely no animal print decorations for the church.”

“But—”

I groaned. “No! I don’t care that Jack is a tiger shifter. We’re not turning the church into a cut-rate Elvis wedding chapel!”

“What about tiger lilies?” Eleanor, my formerly favorite employee, asked me with a straight face.

Wait.

Too straight of a face.

“Are you guys … are you punking me?” I couldn’t believe it. With everything else going on, and the danger of whatever we’d have to face that night from the Fae, my Aunt Ruby and her evil buddies were punking me.

About my wedding.

Aunt Ruby couldn’t answer, because she was bent over laughing. As were her two partners in crime.

“Oh, sure,” I muttered. “Tess, we’ll help you out. Tess, we’ll take care of everything. Now, I’m not under enough stress that you have to terrorize me with animal print? That’s it. I’m done.”

I stood and walked down the aisle toward the door. I was mostly kidding.

Mostly.

“Tess! I didn’t raise you to be rude,” Aunt Ruby began, but Lorraine cut her off, still laughing.

“Ruby, don’t even try that. The poor girl is right. We need to shape up.”

“If you can keep from torturing me for twenty minutes, I’ll buy you lunch,” I told them over my shoulder, but I kept walking.

I had so much to do that my lists had lists. Only three days left, and we hadn’t heard from the Fae, and …

I stepped out onto the porch to see Rhys na Garanwyn and his full complement of followers.

“What’s the deal, your prince-ship? Can’t go anywhere without your minions?”

His charming smile slipped. “I beg your pardon?”

“Yes. You should beg my pardon. I’d think an important royal person such as yourself would have better things to do than hang out in Dead End and torture the mortals. Especially when one of us—me—is trying to pull off a wedding in three days.”

He narrowed his unfairly beautiful eyes. “Why are you being rude to me? You invited a troll to your wedding! How can you be nice to a troll, but not to me?”

His obvious astonishment ended my grumpy mood instantly. The poor guy really couldn’t believe anybody would prefer a troll’s company over that of his beautiful self.

“Well, beauty isn’t really beautiful when it’s only on the outside, is it? Think about that!”

Behind me, I heard my three flower girls gasp.

“Tess, don’t annoy the scary Fae prince,” Eleanor said in a stage whisper.

“Yes!” Rhys pointed to Eleanor. “Listen to her! I’m scary!”

“Okay, sure. You’re so scary. Ooh! I’m scared.” I waved my hands around and pretended to shudder, realizing somewhere beneath my bravado that he really could squash me like a bug, but not caring.

I’d had enough of these Fae playing with our lives.

“Just spit it out. What do you want? Are you here to tell me which of my family members you want to put through something awful next?”

His face had grown colder and colder as I talked. When I paused for a breath, he leaned forward on his horse.

“Fine. That’s how you want it? Fine. This Challenge was to be for three Champions of your choice, but now I think four would be better. I assign the four of you to meet our Champions at midnight tonight at the entrance to the maze for the trial of Alliance. Be there and triumph, or your town will be no more.”

“What maze?” Aunt Ruby asked.

“Very dramatic,” I muttered.

“I don’t really have a good sense of direction,” Eleanor said worriedly. “Maybe you should pick someone else.”

“What maze?” Lorraine demanded.

The Fae prince raised his arm and pointed to the town square behind us. My stomach sank, because I guessed what we’d see even before I turned around.

Never had I hated so much to be right. Because directly behind us in the town square?

Was a giant, nine-foot-tall hedge.

And I was guessing the maze was inside that.

“Might have been a good time to keep my mouth shut,” I muttered, waiting for his snarky reply.

But he and his minions were gone.

“I’m really, really tired of the disappearing act.” I looked at my flower girls, the women who’d known and cared for me all my life. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I’m just so stressed, and it all came boiling out.”

“Don’t worry about it at all,” Aunt Ruby said, giving me a quick hug. “If we hadn’t been picked, we would have felt left out after Jack, Mike, and Shelley all got to play.”

I smiled a little. “Thanks, Aunt Ruby.”

Lorraine blew out an enormous sigh. “I guess we need to make a plan and figure out what we might need to approach a magical hedge maze as a four-person alliance.”

“Lunch,” I said glumly. “Let’s at least not do this on an empty stomach.”

We went to Beau’s for lunch, because why not? At least half the town was there to help us strategize. I even got to tell everybody I had my wedding dress, so they’d quit offering me theirs.

We ate and planned and ate and strategized. Molly, Jack, Dave, and half the swamp commandos showed up to help, too.

But we four presented ourselves at the front of the maze at midnight. All of us wore backpacks with a few essentials, but only three of us wore orthopedic shoes.

When Queen Viviette showed up and started proclaiming, I was glumly wishing I’d worn orthopedic shoes, too.

This could be bad.