He downed the whiskey with one large gulp and slid off the bar stool. “Time to have some real fun.”
I had a gruesome vision of poor Smith wearing a leather bondage suit. “You can’t leave yet.” I dogged the judge toward the door. “We need to go over the vows for tomorrow.”
“Already done.”
“What about the reception?” I grabbed his arm and held tight.
He tried to shrug me loose. “What are you doing?”
“You don’t know where you’re supposed to sit.”
“I don’t care.”
“But I do. Let’s go back to the kitchen where I’ve got my iPad. You can take a look at the seating chart and I’ll show you—”
“Let go.” The deep, guttural voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
Cold horror washed through me and the air lodged in my chest. My gaze shot to Landon, but he looked as surprised as I felt.
Because the voice hadn’t come from him.
My mind raced. Aunt Bella?
Maybe. Hopefully.
My head snapped around. My gaze traveled through the dimly lit room. Other than the bartender, who seemed oblivious to what was happening, there was no one else there.
My grip on Landon tightened, and he tried to pull free. “Release me,” he growled.
“I can’t.”
“Nonsense. Just loosen your hand.”
“No, really. I can’t.” My fingers contracted of their own will, desperate to cling to something, to fight for survival against the panic punching through me.
Coldness slithered over my feet. I glanced down to see dozens of deadly reptiles circling my ankles. My calves. My knees.
Snakes. Honest-to-goodness snakes.
“What the hell?” Landon’s voice echoed and my head swiveled sideways in time to see he had his own troubles. The serpents surrounded him too, moving higher, winding tighter.
My ribs seemed to cave under the viselike pressure, and I fought for a breath. Then it felt as if someone yanked the floor out from under me and I started to fall.
My head slammed against the hardwood and bright specks of light exploded behind my eyes. I felt a quick nanosecond of hope. Smith was right outside. He would see what was happening and call Cutter and—
The speeding train of thought shattered as pain slashed through me. And then everything went black.
24
Aunt Bella had the hairiest feet I’d ever seen.
That was my first thought when I finally blinked away the fog and managed to focus my bleary eyes on a pair of long, wide feet sprinkled with coarse black hair. My gaze snagged on the stubby toes tipped with jagged nails, and I knew what I was getting her for her birthday.
A gift certificate for a pedicure.
I held tight to the hope. Aunt Bella I could deal with. Or Aunt Levita. Or even Portia or Monique or Hester, or any of my other cousins. They were evil, but they were my evil. My family.
If only.
This was something infinitely worse. I could feel it in the churning deep in my stomach. I summoned what little strength I had and tried to lift my head, but it throbbed relentlessly. I blinked a few more times against the grittiness in my eyes. “Where am I?” I rasped, my tongue thick.
“A basement in the Bayou City,” came the deep, guttural voice from last night.
The words sank in and I became acutely aware of the stiff chair where I sat, my arms behind me, my feet attached to the wooden legs. An icy slickness bound my hands and ankles. The sensation moved and a wave of ickkkkk rushed through me, along with a replay of those few frantic seconds before I’d passed out at the restaurant.
I was tied up with several very lethal-looking snakes.
Fear squeezed the air out of my lungs. My head snapped up, and I drank in the scenery along the way—hairier calves, thick knees, khaki shorts, and a powder-blue sports shirt—
“Grandfather?” I croaked.
“You’re awake.” Gramps had gray hair, tanned skin, and a relieved expression. “Thankfully.”
Panic receded enough for me to drag air into my lungs. Like, I know my gramps was the ultimate Evil One, but he really wasn’t all that bad a guy. Maybe to the millions of poor souls who’d faced off with him and lost, but to his grandkids he was just Pop-Pop, who’d never missed a birthday—a card and a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill—or a special occasion. He’d even taken me to Disneyland once. Sure, I’d been fully grown at the time, since he’d done it right before retiring for the PGA, but still. It had been the thought that had meant the most—plus I was a sucker for a good roller coaster.
Bottom line, as the proverbial Devil he’d been hell on wheels in his day, but as Pop-Pop? Not so much.
Or so I’d thought.
The past two weeks rushed at me—the bloody mirror, the invisible noose, the spiders—and the panic washed back in, drenching me in a wave of disbelief. “You’re the one who’s been threatening me?”
“Threatening you?” He looked at me as if I’d grown another head. “Why, I haven’t done any such thing. Though I did technically kidnap you last night.” Guilt seeped into his voice. “But that wasn’t on purpose, mind you. I had no intention of nabbing you. I wanted Judge Parks. You just happened to be holding on to him. I told you to let go,” Gramps accused, reminding me of the unearthly command I’d heard last night.
He walked over to a putting green that had been set up in the middle of a concrete room with bleak gray walls. There were several old-fashioned torture devices as well, including a boiling cauldron of oil in the far corner and a dark-robed figure who stood, somber and frightening, a paddle in his hand as he stirred the menacing pot.
“I don’t understand. Why would you want to kidnap Landon Parks?”
“To stop the wedding, of course.” He pointed away from the torture devices to a far section of the room that looked more like a man cave than a dungeon. A monstrous flat-screen TV filled one wall and a bar area occupied the corner. Judge Parks sat on a black leather sofa, his gaze hooked on a football game. “Landon there has to perform the ceremony for it to be legitimate both Down Under and here. No Landon, no wedding. It’s so simple, but brilliant. I’d been avoiding all the wedding preparations, thinking that if I didn’t show, Lillith would cease all this nonsense. But then she proceeded with the rehearsal dinner last night, and I realized it wasn’t enough that I boycott the damned thing. That’s when I thought of Landon and how she wouldn’t be able to get married without him. So I snatched him, and here we are.”
“Let me get this straight.” I blinked, desperately trying to clear away the remaining cobwebs and focus. “You’re against the wedding?”
“Of course. Why would I want my daughter to marry a weasel like Samael?” He pulled a driver from a nearby bag of golf clubs and lined up his shot on the putting green. “He’s an idiot.”
“But it was your idea in the first place. You specifically said you would hand over control of Hell if one of your daughters married a chief.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think your mother would choose the most contrary, defiant, backstabbing one of them all.”
Okay, so, like, hadn’t he just described every demon in existence?
“She was supposed to pick Argeniou or Syrialish or any of the top-tier leaders,” he went on. “But Samael?” He snorted and grabbed a golf ball. “He’s short. And he’s got beady eyes. And he looks like a rodent.”
“Maybe he can find a better-looking body for the ceremony?”
“And he completely defied me back in Egypt when he enslaved all of those Israelites. I told him it wasn’t the right time. I told him to let the people go and show ’em he wasn’t such a bad pharaoh, but noooo. He refused to concede. Instead, Moses played the hero and gained their trust, and bam, good wins again.” He pointed the driver at me. “Samael is a control freak. He never considers another perspective, even when it’s a direct order.” He practiced his swing. Once. Twice. “I punished him for a thousand years,
but it did nothing to curb his control issues. He’s not reasonable enough to rule Hell, and he certainly isn’t good enough for your mother.” He swung a third time. The ball went spiraling toward the hole with practiced control. Plop. “This wedding can’t happen.”
I remembered my mother leaning into Samael and that fleeting moment when I’d felt the intimacy between them. “What if she loves him?”
Gramps’s head snapped up. His eyes fired a bright red. His lips pulled back and his teeth sharpened.
Whoops. “What I mean is, what if she lusts after him?” I know I said my gramps isn’t a bad guy, but I’d never really seen him upset. Like now. “Speaking from personal experience, lust is a mysterious thing. When it’s really powerful, there’s simply no accounting for tastes. It’s chemical. Maybe they have great chemistry.”
His eyes cooled and his features softened. He shrugged. “She can spend as much time with him as she desires. She just can’t marry him.” He smacked another ball. “I never should have advocated this matrimonial business in the first place. From this moment on, weddings are forbidden among demons.”
Oh, no, he didn’t.
The past two years of searching and hoping rose up inside me and the words poured out before I could think better of them. “But you can’t do that!” I was on my way to finding my One and Only, and when I did, I wanted a traditional I do, complete with big centerpieces and a monster cake. I deserved it. “Is it really fair to ban all weddings when it’s just this particular one that you’re dead set against?”
“I don’t care about being fair.” He waved his golf club at me. “I don’t want your mother to marry Samael. That’s why Landon will stay right here until this bunch of nonsense is over with.”
“What about me?”
“You’re free to go.” I stared pointedly at the snakes binding my legs to the chair and he waved a hand. The snakes loosened and slithered away.
I rubbed my sore wrists and my gramps actually looked embarrassed. “You kept slumping over.” He shrugged. “Bob here had to do something to keep you from sliding to the floor.” He motioned to the robed figure with the paddle. Bob nodded and kept stirring.
“So he’s not going to torture me?”
“He’s not here for torture. He’s here for nostalgia. I adore golfing, but living out of a suitcase is hard. I bring Bob and the toys along because they remind me of home. They also come in handy when I don’t get good room service, but that’s another story.”
“Replay!” Landon shouted from his corner before settling back, a beer in one hand and a bowl of popcorn in the other.
Reality slammed into me and I realized that two weeks of careful planning was about to go to Hell in a handbasket, and I was going down with it.
“So that’s it?” I pushed to my feet and caught the edge of the chair when the floor seemed to tilt. “You’re just going to hang out here and hold Landon hostage?”
“That’s the plan.” Gramps bypassed the torture devices and headed for the man cave.
I followed on his heels. “Why not just tell ma that you hate Samael?”
“And admit I made a mistake?” Popping the top on a beer, he took a long sip. “I was the one who advised her to marry in the first place. I just didn’t think she’d pick such a loser.” He shook his head. “No, from this moment on, I decree that weddings are completely forbidden. Anyone caught engaging in one will be sentenced to servitude Down Under.”
Which meant I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
I thought of Cutter and the way he’d looked at me those few seconds before he’d kissed me. As if he’d wanted more than just a kiss from me. More than just a touch. More.
I blinked against the sudden burning in my eyes, but the tears came anyway, spilling over onto my cheeks, coursing down my face. A sob burst past my lips and my grandfather’s gaze swiveled toward me.
“W-what are you doing?” He looked horrified.
“It’s called crying,” I said between sobs.
“I know that.” He waved a nervous hand. “Why are you doing it?”
“Because,” sniffle, “I’m upset,” sniffle, sniffle. “My life sucks.” The emotional wall that I’d bricked around my deepest, darkest fears cracked, and suddenly the words spilled out before I could stop them. “Everything sucks. My mom doesn’t really like me. And my family is crazy. And I spent last Valentine’s Day all by myself. And now the only thing I’m actually good at—my business—is about to be ripped away because you hate Samael and—”
“Stop,” he cut in. “Just stop all the crying.”
“Okay.” But the tears kept coming.
“I mean it.” He went from mortified to angry in a heartbeat. “I order you to stop right now.” His eyes fired a bright, vicious red and his teeth sharpened again. “Otherwise I’m going to banish you from this realm.”
And there it was. My worst fear. Forget failing my mother. I was being banished. Right here. Right now.
No more weddings.
No happily-ever-afters.
No Cutter.
The truth crystallized and the tears came harder. Faster. “Fine,” I cried. I was going down anyway. What was the point of fighting it? I was through being worried and terrified. Through. “Just do it. Get it over with.”
“I will.”
“Go ahead.”
“I will. I really will. That, or I’ll let Bob take over and torture you until you stop all that blubbering.”
As if on cue, Bob held up the paddle. A few drops of oil sizzled and popped on the floor.
“So do it.” I stiffened. “Boil me in oil. Ban me from this realm. None of it matters because when I don’t show up, my mother will go ahead and do it herself. Don’t you see? It’s hopeless. I’m doomed regardless. And I never even got to find out if he’s The One.” The last word caught on a wail and the sobs came, racking my body and stirring a look of pure terror on my grandfather’s face.
“Stop,” he begged, his voice more desperate than depraved.
“I—I can’t. It’s just that it’s been so stressful trying to do everything and now it’s all ruined and my life is pretty much over and—”
“Don’t worry about Bob,” he cut me off. “I was just trying to scare you. I won’t let him boil you in oil. And I won’t banish you.”
“But my mother will still hate me and I’ll never find true love and—”
“I’ll go to the wedding. Just stop. Stop.”
His plea finally registered through all the doom and gloom and I sniffled. “Really?” He nodded and I wiped frantically at my cheeks. “What about Judge Parks?”
His mouth drew into a tight line. “Don’t push it.”
Where I would have backed off before because, hey, we’re talking timeless evil, I now had an entirely different perspective on things. I’d faced the absolute worst a few moments ago and won. Which meant I wasn’t backing down.
I walked over to the sofa and sank down next to Landon, much to the surprise of both men.
Gramps narrowed his gaze. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Making myself comfortable.” I propped my feet on the coffee table and snatched the bowl of popcorn out of the judge’s hand. “I might as well spend my last few moments right here with the two of you, because Mom is sure to banish me when I show up without the judge.” I reached for the remote control and switched the channel to TLC. The latest episode of Say Yes to the Dress blazed across the screen. “I just love this show. They’re running a marathon right now. The entire first season back-to-back, which means we get to watch fourteen whole episodes—”
“He’ll go,” Gramps cut in. “We’ll both go.”
I grinned. “Smart man.”
25
“Where in Hades have you been?” Blythe demanded the minute I finally walked into the foyer of the Bell Tower, my grandfather and Judge Parks in tow. Unfortunately, I’d been unconscious for most of the day. When I’d finally opened my eyes and stood up to Gramps
, the sun had already set. “The wedding was supposed to start five minutes ago. Your mother is about to pop an artery.”
“I got tied up.” I thought of the slimy snakes slithering around my hands and feet thanks to Gramps.
And the mirror? The noose? The spiders?
Someone else had been responsible.
But who?
“Where’s Azazel?” I blurted.
“We have to get started,” Blythe rushed on, obviously scared and flustered and ready to bail.
I so knew the feeling.
“Your mom already zapped the beverage manager for not bringing in enough preceremony cocktails and she started a fire in the bridal suite and—”
“Where is he?” The screech flew out of my mouth, surprising both of us.
“I told him he was only invited for the reception and sent him out to the car waiting at the curb just like you said.”
“How long ago?”
“About ten minutes, I think.”
“You think or you know?”
“I know. That is, I think I know.” She shook her head. “Give me a break. It’s been crazy around here. George got bit by Cerberus and was late picking up a bunch of guests.” She motioned to a robed George, who stood in the corner, a white bandage covering half his arm. “Luckily we have a few doctors in the house.”
Possessed doctors, but who was I to argue semantics?
“That idiot dog,” my grandfather growled. “He should have saved it for the groom.”
“Zip it.” I glared at Gramps. “Or I’m telling everyone that you freak at the first sign of tears.”
He opened his mouth, but then snapped it shut again. His eyes flashed red before cooling to a deep, fathomless black that scared me almost as much as the bright crimson.
I snatched a boutonniere from a nearby table and pinned it on Judge Parks before grabbing another and turning to my sour-faced grandfather. He started to protest and I poked him. Just to keep the current balance of power intact.
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