How to Kiss an Undead Bride
Hailey Edwards
Copyright © 2019 Black Dog Books, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Edited by Sasha Knight
Proofread by Lillie's Literary Services
Cover by Gene Mollica
Tree of Life medallion drawn by Leah Farrow
Contents
How to Kiss an Undead Bride
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
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About the Author
Also by Hailey Edwards
How to Kiss an Undead Bride
The Beginner’s Guide to Necromancy, Book 7
Groom? Check.
Dress? Check.
Cake? Check.
More cake? Double Check.
Even more cake? Triple check.
(Seriously, who left Lethe alone with Grier's credit card?)
Anything that can go wrong has, but all the deposits have been paid, and the menus are set. Mostly. There's always room for more cake, right? All that's left is for Grier and Linus to exchange vows and set off on their honeymoon. Their happily ever after awaits, so close they can taste it.
No.
Wait.
That's probably just more cake. Frosting gets everywhere.
Anyway, there's also murder, arson, and general mayhem. This is what happens when two potentates marry. Just cross your fingers they survive exchanging vows, and that the knot they tie doesn't turn into a noose.
One
Years of waiting, of planning, of taste-testing, had all boiled down to this moment.
“This is the one.” Lethe crammed a perfect square of vanilla sponge cake filled with pastry cream and raspberry jam into her mouth. She had already licked off its marzipan frosting. “Or maybe this one.” A second sample vanished into the black hole of her stomach. Her eyes rolled closed as she made highly inappropriate noises that made me snicker. “Do I look like I’m on a beach? I feel like I’m on a beach. This cake is a beach in my mouth.”
All the orgasmic swaying jostled the yellow parakeet on her shoulder, and Keet cranked out a breathy beep-boop like the good little robot he was pretending to be since they started watching the Transformers movies together.
Leslie Dunn, the head baker at Mallow, let out a small gasp. “The cake is dry?”
“Wha?” Globs of frosting painted Lethe’s mouth, the lone survivors of the cake massacre. “Ish tropical.”
“Oh, yes.” Leslie brightened, her relief clear, when Lethe began moaning around a second helping. Of that cake, anyway. She had to be up to seven or eight total. “It’s coconut cake filled with passion fruit curd then frosted in coconut rum buttercream with toasted coconut flakes.”
That sounded delicious. Too bad I didn’t get a taste before Lethe swiped my sample.
“We’ll take it.” Lethe licked her fork but left crumbs she allowed Keet to peck in jerking motions while making mechanical whirring noises. “It’s not bacon, but it’s a solid number two on my list of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth.” A wicked smile on her lips, she twirled her utensil. “Maybe a solid three.”
“Lethe.”
“What?” She leaned in, her voice a whisper. “Hood is a tall man.” She tapped the back of my hand with her fork, the tines denting my skin. “Let’s just say, he’s…proportional.”
Brow pinched and lips parted, Leslie whipped her head back and forth between us. Lethe’s unapologetic use of my money to buy herself cake must have confused the poor woman. That or her breakfast meat innuendos. It was hard to tell.
“I thought that you two…” Leslie searched the meticulous notes she kept on her tablet, hastily flipping from screen to screen. “You always book under Kinase. Lethe Kinase.” She held tonight’s appointment up as proof. “You mean you’re not the happy couple?”
Human flashed above her head in neon lights. Otherwise, she never would have made such a basic mistake. The Society, not to mention the entire paranormal population of Savannah, was salivating for an exclusive invite to the Woolworth-Lawson wedding, what some promised would be the wedding of the century. Fine, there was no neon. But Woolly’s laughter caused the lights to blink, so the effect was the same.
I shot the overhead fixture a pointed look, which had little effect, and counted on Leslie to assume the old house suffered from bad wiring. Humans tended to think electrical before spiritual, and that worked in our favor.
“Lethe is my best friend and my matron of honor,” I explained, happy to redirect her from the flickering light show. “She and her stomach are here to provide moral support. They also make all my wedding-related appointments.”
Thirty-one months, one week, four days, and probably five or so hours ago, I presented Linus Andreas Lawson III with a bread tie studded with pocket lint and asked him to marry me.
That had been the easy part. Everything that came after…let’s just say I wasn’t one of those life is a piece of cake people. Unless the cake had been run over by a delivery truck a few times, scraped off the asphalt, and mounded into a cakelike form that left gravel in your teeth with each bite.
Traditionally, the groom and his family planned the wedding. All the bride had to do was pick a dress and show up ready to say her vows. But his mother was the Grande Dame of the Society for Post-Life Management, and she had her hands full with the myriad programs she had established in the wake of the Siege of Savannah to restore the city to its former splendor.
Even with help from the Woolworth Foundation, which I established to lend aid to those in need, poorer neighborhoods still bore scars from the damage Odette Lecomte and Gaspard Lacroix had inflicted during the vampires’ short but bloody tenure.
With no other family to speak of, Linus would have gotten stuck planning his own wedding down to a reception that wouldn’t insult the gwyllgi in attendance. I couldn’t dump it all on him, not when I had so many human friends used to the reverse being true—the bride’s family footing the bill—who were willing and eager to lend us a hand. Or a mouth, in Lethe’s case.
And, since I had been the officially recognized Potentate of Savannah for exactly three days, I had to ensure any factions within the city who wanted to attend the wedding received an invitation and special consideration for their dietary needs as well as preferential seating to ensure no bad blood got spilled on The Big Day.
Already the Society gossips were salivating for every juicy wedding tidbit they could sink their teeth into. That’s why I chose a human baker. To cut down on leaks. To prevent the cake from being splashed across the papers the day before the ceremony. To guarantee the reveal was worth the wait.
Recovering from her faux pas, Leslie tapped her pen on the tablet’s screen. “Does that mean you prefer the coconut cake as well?”
“Not for the big cake, no.” I snorted at Lethe when she glared daggers at
me. “Instead of a groom’s cake, I’m having a matron of honor cake.” Linus ate more these days than he had when we first met, but an entire cake would be wasted on him. The weirdo didn’t have one sweet tooth in his head. The matron cake was his idea. “You can make it in the coconut.”
Beside me, Lethe did a little dance on her stool, almost knocking me off mine.
Feathers rustling while she wiggled under him, Keet spread his wings in jerky motions. “Vroom vroom.”
Fiddlesticks.
Braced for chaos, I kept an eye on him, expecting him to tear off through the air like a race car on a dirt track at any moment now that he had “transformed.” Probably into Bumblebee. He lost his mind when that robot got screen time. But it appeared we were in luck. The cake crumbs must be weighing him down, because he didn’t budge.
“Excellent choice.” Leslie’s eyes brightened with the promise of another sale. “Have you made your selection?”
“The big cake will be champagne cake with strawberry buttercream filling and champagne frosting.”
Champagne was fancy-pants, and that’s what counted in the Society. To them, events were all about the expense, the prestige, and the exclusivity. Our friends would be the only guests who caught the reference, but I couldn’t resist a nod to Linus and me with the strawberry filling. A subtle rebellion that declared this occasion wasn’t all about them, but about us too.
“Another excellent choice.”
“The bride’s cake,” I continued, “will be the banana cake with peanut butter cream cheese filling and dark chocolate ganache frosting.”
“The…bride’s cake?” Leslie hesitated, poised to add to the order. “That’s different from the big cake?”
“Yes.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “The big cake is for the guests, about three hundred of them. The matron’s cake should be four or five tiers.” Leslie’s eyes bulged. “And my cake should be a modest two-tier affair.” I elbowed my bestie to get her attention. “I’m not sharing.”
“Neither am I,” Lethe warned, as if I expected her to save me a slice. “If you want beach cake, you better order two.”
The poor baker cleared her throat. “I apologize, but I’m confused. Again.”
This was our second tasting, and I still favored my original picks. Lethe favored…whatever was in front of her and within easy reach. As would most of our guests from her side of the family. Volume mattered more to them than pesky things like flavor or presentation.
“The big cake is the centerpiece.” I broke it down for Leslie. “It’s the one my guests will be eating and taking pictures with and talking about for years to come.” Or decades, since necromancers were long-lived. “That’s the one you get to go hog wild decorating to match our theme.”
As a nod to Maud, I had chosen country garden as my theme. Not original, but a classic. The pictures would hold up over time much better than any modern trends.
“Okay.” Nodding, she scribbled notes. “What about the other two? Should they be ornamental as well?”
“Yes.” I pushed a crumb around on my plate. “The bride’s cake and MOH cake will be served alongside the big cake. The two smaller cakes can be muted versions of the big cake so everything matches.”
“Okay.” She kept nodding, kept scribbling. “Three cakes total?”
“I would feel better about six,” Lethe mumbled around a cube of devil’s food cake. Done with the hard choices, she had moved on to eating every single bite Leslie had brought with her. “Mom is coming, and she’ll bring at least six friends with her. Plus Midas.”
Friends meant bodyguards. Her mother was alpha of the Atlanta gwyllgi pack, and her brother was now its beta. He had stepped into the role after Lethe decided to remain in Savannah and start her own pack.
A single gwyllgi cost double the per-person catering fee, which is why they would have a separate buffet while the other guests stuck to a more traditional menu.
Hmm.
Were cake buffets a thing? If not, they should be. Maybe I could kickstart that trend?
Setting that aside for later contemplation, I gave Leslie my full attention. “How many samples did you bring today?”
“Six of your top picks from last time and six new flavors.” She read the combinations off to refresh my memory. “Twelve in all.”
“Okay.” I lowered my hands, smoothing my damp palms across the counter and ignoring the sweat marks that came from imagining the debt I was about to incur. “You’ve got the sketch and the flavors for the big cake now.” Pretty sure I heard my debit card weeping in the next room. “Go ahead and make me three-tiered cakes out of the eleven other samples to be served at the reception.”
Heart palpitations, here I come. Who knew weddings cost so much?
“Eleven is an odd number,” Lethe protested on her way to pour herself a glass of milk. “I say twelve baby cakes.”
I wished I could reach her with my foot to kick her in the shin. “That would give us thirteen, still odd.”
“Thirteen is lucky.” The milk in her glass half gone, she brought the carton back with her. “Trust me.”
“How about this?” I slid off my stool. “You two iron out the details. As long as the big cake and the bride cake are as requested, because I am not sharing my peanut butter cake, Lethe, I won’t nitpick the rest.”
“Vroom?” Keet cocked his head, twitching his feathers. “Vroom?”
“Come on, Keetimus Prime.” I offered him my finger, and he hopped on. “I’ll put you up so you can digest.”
“He prefers Keetatron, thank you.” Lethe wiped off her milk mustache with her thumb. “Do you feel better now that you’ve yelled at me?”
“A little.” I rubbed over Keet’s ear holes. “Ranting helped.”
“You can’t let this wedding stuff stress you out.” Lethe claimed my stool, right in front of my picked-over plate. “Let me be all matron-of-honorly. You go relax and think happy bridal thoughts.”
Any happy bridal thoughts made relaxing impossible this close to The Big Day.
The front door opened as I rounded the corner, and Neely bustled in cradling a black silk garment bag that dragged four or five feet behind him. Cruz followed, wheeling a steamer his husband had convinced me to buy, not just for the wedding, but all the events that came after.
Ugh.
“Hey, gorgeous.” He shook the bag at me. “Guess what’s in here?”
“My dress?”
“You said that with as much enthusiasm as Cruz shows dinner theater.”
“Oh. My. Goddess.” I gasped and fluttered my free hand at my throat. “Is that my dress?”
“Ingrate,” he huffed. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“I gave you a black card for fashion emergencies, and I let you pretend I’m a life-size Barbie doll?”
“All right, sassafras.” He looked me up and down. “Keep up the attitude, and see where it gets you.”
Living up to my maturity level, I stuck my tongue out at him. Keet, who had been known to join in, drooped on my shoulder, too full to squeeze out a single boop.
Neely shot out his arm, and for a split second I was convinced he was making a grab for my tongue, but he pinched my side instead. He got maybe a quarter inch of skin that desperately wanted to be a love handle when it grew up. “How do you keep losing weight the way you eat?”
Explaining to him how Linus and I were experimenting with how much of his blood was required to keep me running optimally was personal. The potentate gig had thrown me all out of whack. The bond I shared with the city burned more than psychic energy, but we hadn’t figured out the right balance yet. Good thing Linus was a pro at blending strawberry smoothies heavy on the Vitamin L.
“I’ll eat an extra churro before, during, and after each meal until The Big Day.” I crossed my heart with a fingertip then secured a dozing Keetatron in his cage. “Promise.”
“See that you do.” He pursed his lips. “I don’t want to call Javier back for ano
ther round of alterations.”
Javier was a fantastic tailor. He was also a fangtastic tailor. Newly turned, he had trouble when he pricked me and my retinue while pinning us. He kept popping dental erections, which made everyone uncomfortable no matter how apologetic Javier was after slapping a hand over his mouth.
“Lethe and I had the final, final cake tasting today, and we’re doing the final, final, final tasting for the menu in two days.”
Seven days until Linus Lawson became Linus Woolworth.
Seven teeny, tiny days, and my happily-ever-after could begin.
I could hardly wait.
“I know that look.” Neely spoke to me but fluttered his lashes at Cruz. “Daydreaming about your man?”
Slow heat spread in a prickling wash across my cheeks. “No?”
“What would you say if I told you that your dress wasn’t the only thing the tailor had waiting for me?” A mischievous smile crinkled his eyes. “What if I told you I sent Linus upstairs not five minutes ago with his tux?”
Squirming in place, I fought against the temptation. “Isn’t it bad luck for the bride to see the groom before the wedding?”
Neely shot me a saucy wink. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Two
Woolly, as it turned out, was a bit of a traditionalist. Each step I took up the stairs creaked to the point I worried about boards snapping, even ones that hadn’t squeaked since I moved in as a child. She was tattling on me, and I had had about enough. “Stop it.”
The old house slanted her steps in a way that promised to send me slipping down them like I was running up a freaking kiddie slide at the park.
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