Page 7

7

T ess

Wednesday: Wedding minus 10 days

L uckily, the problem at work turned out to be only a faucet leak. After I had a laugh and a chat with Eleanor about how to word phone calls, so her boss didn’t freak out, I fixed the faucet.

Jack went through the connecting door from my shop to his office to make some calls to the vast network of people and supernaturals he knew, to see if he could learn anything helpful about Fae trials.

We weren’t very busy, so I went into the back to focus on wedding details while Eleanor held down the fort. She normally only worked part time, but she was helping me out in the pre-wedding weeks. I was thrilled she’d stayed on after she got married. My attempts at hiring more help never ended well.

Not as bad as the high school’s attempts to hire a new science teacher, but still not good.

The afternoon went by too fast for the number of details I needed to cover, but my best friend Molly called and helped talk me down off Stress Mountain.

“I’ll be there Monday! I wish it could be sooner, but I can’t get out of this contract,” she said.

Molly and her indie rock band, Scarlett’s Letters, were zooming up the charts, and more and more venues wanted them, which was amazing for her, but, I admit, a little sad for me. She and I had never spent so much time apart as in the past couple of years, and I missed her terribly. Weekly video chats were great but didn’t make up for in-person Molly time. She’d been my best friend since the first day of kindergarten and my staunchest support after my “gift” manifested, and nobody else wanted anything to do with me.

Hard to want to be close to somebody who could see how you’d die from a simple touch, I guess, but it had left me devastated, frightened, and alone, except for Uncle Mike, Aunt Ruby, and Molly. Luckily, some weird magical grandfather clause kept me from seeing the deaths of anybody I’d ever touched before the ability showed up.

When I saw Jack’s first death, it was horrible enough. If I’d ever seen Molly’s death—and being plain vanilla human, she’ll only have one—it would have destroyed me.

I filled Molly in on the town charter renewal, Mrs. Frost, and the troll, and had to listen while she laughed for a full minute. “I’m sorry, Tess. I know it’s a lot, and it’s awful. But man! Dead End never changes. The problems just get worse and worse and?—”

“Yeah, I hear you.” I had to laugh a little myself. It was that or curl up in a ball and hide beneath my desk.

“See you soon, my beautiful bestie, soon to be bride! Love you!” And Molly was gone.

Eleanor opened the door to the kitchen/office. “Hey, Tess, it’s slow. Do you want to close up now, at five, instead of waiting till six? That way, we can get some dinner before the town hall meeting?”

I groaned. “Right. The town hall meeting.”

Jack walked in behind her. “Okay, ladies. News. I learned absolutely nothing, except that once a Fae queen sets down a Bargain, there’s no way out of it, and we already knew that. Also, nobody has been able to talk Mrs. Frost out of competing.”

“But what if it’s dangerous?” Eleanor sounded appalled. We’d told her all about it, of course.

“It may be, but the Fae are usually pretty straightforward about challenges. Their severe but incomprehensible sense of honor demands it. And let’s be honest: we don’t have anybody better at archery in town.” Jack shrugged. “Susan set up the target and held tryouts all afternoon with the bows and arrows provided, and lots of people tried, but nobody came close. Actually, that’s not quite right. Little Lily McKee was pretty good.”

“She’s an archery champ at her summer camp,” I said. “Camp Whoozeewampus, or something like that.”

Jack blinked. “That’s quite a name. Anyway, she was good, but nowhere near Mrs. Frost, especially Mrs. Frost with her new eyeballs.”

Eleanor laughed. “Nothing like having a former head priest from Atlantis using his magical mojo on your cataracts.”

“She still asks me sometimes if Alaric wants to get in touch with her friend to buy pigs and start a farm.” I shook my head but had to smile.

Jack laughed at the idea of the dangerous, terrifying Alaric, the most powerful magic wielder Atlantis had ever known, raising pigs.

“Okay,” I decided, pushing all the wedding paperwork aside. “Dinner, town hall, maybe a nap? And then our midnight rendezvous with part one of our exciting week of random nonsense a Fae queen is forcing us to do.”

“Can we have pizza?” Jack was already pulling out his phone. He had Judd’s Pizza on speed dial.

Three hours later, at eight o’clock, we walked into the packed auditorium for the town hall meeting.

“I told you we should have left earlier,” I whispered, knowing Jack would hear me even over the crowd.

“Really? So we could spend even more time here?” He raised an eyebrow and gave me a sardonic look.

Good point.

Deputy Andy Kelly waved us to seats in the front row next to his and Susan’s.

“Hey, Andy. Where’s Lizzie?”

Lizzie Underhill was Dead End’s newest deputy, the one whose salary was paid for by Jack’s donation. She was also a werewolf with some issues, but we didn’t talk about that.

“Somebody had to be on duty while the rest of us were here,” Andy muttered. “I can’t believe we’re at it again. I’m awfully tired of the Fae.”

“Don’t let them hear you say that,” I warned. “Where’s Charithra?”

He brightened. He and Dead End’s new veterinarian, Dr. Charithra Kumari, were definitely a thing. I really liked her, so I was happy for both of them.

“She had to babysit a sick cheetah cub for Mr. Ermintrude until the wildlife rescue organization can arrive tomorrow to get her.”

Sherlock Ermintrude rescued wild and exotic animals from misguided people who’d acquired them as “pets,” and then were unhappy when little Spot took a chunk out of their arm or peed on the couch to mark their territory. And Sherlock didn’t confine his methods to the strictly lawful, but nobody cared, because cheetah-napping a cub from some idiot who’d kept her in a cage in his living room was absolutely the right thing to do.

“Shh!” Susan hissed. “Here’s Mayor Ruby.”

Sure enough, the crowd was quieting down as my Aunt Ruby walked onto the stage, clutching a pile of papers.

“Settle down, everybody,” she said, her stern mayor face on. “I know most of you have probably heard this, gossip being what it is, and I saw the Dead End text chain lighting up like fireworks at the Fourth of July, but here’s what we’re facing.”

She outlined the situation but had to pause a few times for loudly expressed outrage.

“I know. I know. But the Fae gave us this charter in the beginning. It encompassed all of Black Cypress County, which is mainly Dead End and the swamp.”

“Speaking of which, I wonder where the troll is?” I whispered to Jack, but he shushed me.

“Tonight, at midnight, Mrs. Frost will compete in archery against an immortal Fae warrior who has probably been expert with bow and arrow since childhood,” Aunt Ruby continued.

“Our Mrs. Frost will kick their immortal butt!” Rooster shouted from across the aisle from us. “And if she doesn’t, I’ll kick their actual butt!”

Rooster was a seven-feet-tall, four-hundred-pound block of solid muscle. He was a mostly retired smuggler, had a terrifying scowl, and despite all that, he was one of the sweetest people I knew. If he said he’d kick somebody’s butt, though, that somebody was in serious trouble.

“Let’s hear from our champion,” Aunt Ruby said with a flourish. She was much better at dramatic pronouncements than I’d known before she took this job.

Everyone in the auditorium stood and cheered as Mrs. Frost toddled onto the stage.

And we cheered.

And we cheered.

And we cheered.

Because it took her a long time to make it to the middle of the stage with her walker.

“I went home and counted up my medals before my nap,” she said into the microphone after Aunt Ruby adjusted it to be much, much shorter. “Over the years, I’ve won one hundred and thirty-nine medals for archery, even more than for my baking.”

Applause thundered through the room.

“Tonight, I plan to make it one hundred and forty!”

The cheers were loud enough to blow the roof clear off the building.

“It’s not quite nine, and the competition is at midnight in the town square. So, Mr. Frost and I are going to go home and sit out on our front porch for a spell.” She raised her chin, but I was close enough to see the slight tremble in her lips. “Just in case it’s the last chance we get to do it. We don’t know what they have planned for us, but we’re going to win. Dead Enders never quit!”

The standing ovation lasted a long, long time as Mrs. Frost made her way offstage. When Aunt Ruby stepped back to the podium to close the meeting, several hands shot up.

“Oh, do we have new business?” Aunt Ruby looked like she might close the meeting anyway, but then she gave a little shrug and pointed. “Sapphire?”

Sapphire Penn, editor and owner of the Dead End Gazette, shot to her feet. Her hair was rainbow colors instead of her usual blue, and she had a few new piercings in her ears. She was effortlessly the kind of cool I could never aspire to, only admire.

“Yes, Mayor. The real question everybody wants to ask is this: Which wedding dress did Tess pick?”

Everyone in the room turned to stare at me. To my utter dismay, several women stood up holding wedding dresses in their arms.

“Mine!”

“No, mine!”

“Nobody would want to wear that ugly dress, Mabel. It was even ugly clear back in the 1972, when you wore it!”

When a wave of wedding-dress carrying women started toward me, Jack grabbed my hand, and we ran.

We barely made it out of the auditorium’s back door unscathed. Jack propped a heavy wrought-iron bench against the door, so nobody could open it, and gave me a wild-eyed look. “Listen. The offer to elope is still on the table. I’m begging you. Everybody in town is going nuts over this wedding!”

I crossed my arms. “Jack Shepherd, if you ever want me to bake anything for you again in your life, you’ll drop the eloping idea. I want my family and friends there, and I want the whole shebang.”

He picked me up, held me close, and kissed the stuffing out of me. “Then the whole shebang you get. Did I mention today that I love you, Tess Callahan?”

Turns out, he had.

But I was always happy to hear it again.