My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

by L. A. Banks

  "I'm not seeing people right now," I told him, as I took off the pants and passed them over. "Or else you'd have a shot, you charmer."

  Yanof sniffed, muttered something else, and toddled back into the shop.

  "Billy," I said. "You think Georgia would have Fought that thing last night?"

  "Yes," he said, without a second's hesitation.

  "She going to be upset that you did it?"

  "No."

  "Even though some folks got hurt?"

  He blinked at me. "No."

  "How do you know?" I asked.

  "Because . . ." He shook his head. "Because she won't. I know her. Upset by the injuries, yes, but not by the fight." He shifted to a tone that he probably didn't realize was an imitation of Georgia's voice. "People get hurt in fights. That's why they're called fights."

  "You know her well enough to answer serious questions for her when she isn't even in the room, man," I said quietly. "You're ready. Keep the big picture in mind. You and her."

  He looked at me for a second and then said, "I thought you'd say something about love."

  I sighed. "Billy. You knob. If you didn't love her, you wouldn't be stressed about losing what you have with her, would you."

  "Good point," he said.

  "Remember the important thing. You and her."

  He took a deep breath and let it out. "Yeah," he said. "Georgia and me. The rest doesn't matter."

  I was going to mumble something vaguely supportive when the door to the Fitting room opened and an absolutely ravishing raven-haired woman in an expensive lavender silk skirt-suit came into the Fitting room. She might have been my age, and had a lot of gold and diamonds, a lot of perfect white teeth, and the kind of curves that only come from surgery. Her shoes and purse together probably cost more than my car.

  "Well," she snapped, and put a fist on her hip, glaring first at Billy and then at me. "I see you are already doing your best to disrupt the ceremony."

  "Eve," Billy said in a kind of stilted, formally polite voice. "Um. What are you talking about?"

  "For one thing, this," she said, and flicked a hand at me. Then gave me a second, more evaluative look.

  I tried to look casual and confident, there in my Spider-Man T-shirt and black briefs. I managed to keep myself from diving toward my jeans. I turned aside to put them on, maintaining my dignity.

  "Your underwear has a hole," Eve said sweetly.

  I jerked my jeans on, blushing. Stupid dignity.

  "Bad enough that you insist on this. . . petty criminal taking part in a ceremony before polite society. Yanof is beside himself," Eve continued, speaking to Billy. "He threatened to quit."

  "Wow," I said. "You speak Sloboviakstanese?"

  She blinked at me. "What?"

  "Because Yanof doesn't speak any English. So how did you know he threatened to quit?" I smiled sweetly at her.

  Eve gave me a glare of haughty anger and defended herself by pretending I hadn't said anything. "And now we're going to have to leave out one of the bridesmaids. To say nothing of the fact that with him standing up there on one side of you and Georgia on the other, you're going to look like a midget. The photographer will have to be notified and I have no idea how we'll manage to re­arrange everything at the last moment."

  I swore I could hear Billy's teeth grind. "Harry," he said, in that same polite, strained voice. "This is Eve McAlister. My stepmother-in-law."

  "I do not care for that term, as I have told you often. I am your mother-in-law," she said. "Or will be, whenever this ongoing disas­ter you've created from a respectable wedding breathes its last."

  "I'm sure we can work something out," Billy assured her, his tone hopeless.

  "Georgia is late and is letting the voice mail answer her phone— as though I needed something else to occupy my thoughts." She shook her head. "I assume the lowlifes you introduced her to kept her out too late last night. Just like this one did to you."

  "Hey, come on," I said, careful to keep my tone as reasonable and friendly as I could. "Billy's had a rough night. I'm sure he can help you out if you just give him a chance to-"

  She made a disgusted sound and interrupted me. "Did I say or do something to imply that I cared to hear your opinion, charlatan? Lowlifes. I warned her about folk like you."

  "You don't even know me, lady," I said.

  "Yes, I do," she informed me. "I know all about you. I saw you on Larry Fowler."

  I narrowed my eyes at Eve.

  Billy's expression came close to panic, and he held up both hands palm out, giving me a pleading look. But my hangover ached, and life is too short to waste it taking verbal abuse from petty tyrants who watch bad talk shows.

  "Okay, Billy's Stepmom," I began.

  Her eyes flashed. "Do not call me that."

  "You don't care to be called a stepmother?" I asked.

  "Not at all."

  "Though you obviously aren't Georgia's mother. Howsabout I call you trophy wife?" I suggested.

  She blinked at me once, her eyes widening.

  Billy put his face in his hands.

  "Bed warmer?" I mused. "Mistress made good? Midlife-crisis by­product?" I shook my head. "When in doubt, go with the classics." I leaned a little closer and gave her a crocodilian smile. "Gold digger."

  The blood drained out of Eve's face, leaving ugly pinkish blotches high on her cheeks. "Why, you . . . You . . ."

  I waved my hand. "No, it's all right; I don't mind finding alternate terms. I understand that you're under pressure. Must be hard trying to look good in front of the old money when they all know that you were really just a receptionist or an actress or a model or something."

  Her mouth dropped completely open.

  "We're all having a tough day, dear." I flipped my hand at her. "Shoo."

  She stared at me for a second, then let out a snarled curse you'd hardly expect from a lady of her station, spun on the heel of one Italian-leather pump, and stalked from the room. I heard a couple of beeps as she crossed to the shop's door, and then she started screech­ing into a cell phone. I could hear her for about ten seconds after she went outside.

  Mission accomplished. Spleen vented. Dragon lady routed. I felt pleased with myself.

  Billy heaved a sigh. "You had to talk to her like that?"

  "Yeah." I glowered out after the departed Eve. "Once my mouth was open and my lips started moving, it was pretty much inevitable."

  "Dammit, Harry," Billy sighed.

  "Oh, come on, man. Sticks and stones may break her bones, but one wiseass will never hurt her. It's not a big deal."

  "Not for you: You don't have to live with it. I do. So does Geor­gia."

  I chewed on my lower lip for a second. I hadn't thought about it in those terms. I suddenly felt less than mature. "Ah," I said. "Oh. Um. Maybe I should apologize?"

  He bent his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "Oh God, no. Things are bad enough already."

  I frowned at him. "Is it really that important to you? The cere­mony?"

  "It's important to Georgia."

  I winced. "Oh," I said. "Ah."

  "Look, we've got a few hours. I'll stay here and try to sort things out with Eve," Billy said. "Do me a favor?"

  "Hey, what's a best man for? Other than tackling a panicked groom if he tries to run."

  He gave me a quick grin. "See if you can contact Georgia first? Maybe she's had car trouble or overslept or something. Or maybe she just left her phone on all night and it went dead."

  "Sure," I said. "I'll take care of it."

  I called Billy and Georgia's apartment and got no answer. Knowing Georgia, I expected her to be at the hospital, visiting Kirby. Billy might have been the combat leader of the merry band of college kids who had learned shape-shifting from an actual wolf, but Geor­gia was the manager, surrogate mom, and brains when there wasn't any violence on.

  Kirby was on painkillers and groggy, but he told me Georgia hadn't been to see him. I talked to the duty
nurse and confirmed that though his family was flying in from Texas to see him, he'd had no visitors since Billy and I left.

  Odd.

  I thought about mentioning it to Billy, but I didn't really know anything yet, and it wasn't like he needed more pressure.

  "Don't get paranoid, Harry," I told myself. "Maybe she's got a hangover, too. Maybe she ran off with a male stripper." I waited to see if I was buying it, then shook my head. "And maybe Elvis and JFK are shacked up in a retirement home somewhere."

  I went to Billy and Georgia's apartment.

  They live in a place near the University of Chicago's campus, in a neighborhood that missed being an ugly one by maybe a hundred yards. It still wasn't the kind of place you'd want to hang around outside after dark. I didn't have a key to get in the building, so I pressed buttons one at a time until someone buzzed me in, and took the stairs up.

  As I neared the apartment door, I knew that something was wrong. It wasn't like I saw or heard anything, magical or otherwise, but when I stopped before the door I had a nebulous but strong con­viction that something bad had gone down.

  I knocked. The door rattled and Fell off the lower hinge. It swung open a Few inches, drunkenly, upper hinges squealing. Splits and cracks that had been invisible until the door moved appeared in the wood, and the dead bolt rattled dully against the inside of the door, loose in its setting.

  I stopped there for a long second, waiting and listening. Other than the whirring of a window fan at the end of the hall and some­one playing an easy-listening station on the floor above me, there was nothing. I closed my eyes for a moment and extended my wizard's senses, testing the air nearby for any touch of magic upon it.

  I felt nothing but the subtle energy that surrounded any home, a form of naturally occurring protective magic called the threshold. Billy and Georgia's apartment was the nominal headquarters of the Werewolves, and members came and went at all hours. It was never intended to be a permanent home—but there had been a lot of liv­ing in the little apartment, and its threshold was stronger than most. I slowly pushed the door open with my right hand.

  The apartment had been torn to pieces.

  A futon lay on its side, its metal frame twisted like a pretzel. The entertainment center had been pulled down from the wall, shattering equipment, scattering CDs and DVDs and vintage Star Wars action fig­ures everywhere. The wooden table had been broken in two precisely in its center. One of the half-dozen chairs survived. The others were kindling. The microwave protruded from the drywall of an interior wall. The door of the fridge had taken out the bookcase across the room. Everything in the kitchen had been pulled down and scattered.

  I moved in as quietly as I could—which is pretty damned quiet. I've done a lot of sneaking around. The bathroom looked like some­one had taken a chain saw to it and followed up with explosives. The bedroom used to house computers and electronic stuff looked like the site of an airplane crash.

  Billy and Georgia's bedroom was the worst of all of them.

  Because there was blood on the floor and one wall.

  Whatever had happened, I had missed it. Dammit. I wanted to kill something and I wanted to scream in Frustration and I wanted to throw up in Fear For Georgia.

  But in my business, that kind of thing doesn't help much.

  I went back into the living room. The phone near the door had survived. I dialed.

  "Lieutenant Murphy, Special Investigations," answered a profes-sional, bland voice.

  "It's me, Murph," I told her.

  Murphy knows me. Her tone changed at once. "My God, Harry, what's wrong?"

  "I'm at Billy and Georgia's apartment," I said. "The place has been torn apart. There's blood."

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," I said. "Georgia's missing." I paused and said, "It's her wedding day, Murph."

  "Five minutes," she said at once.

  "I need you to pick something up for me on the way."

  Murphy came through the door eight minutes later. She was the head of Chicago P.D.'s Special Investigations Department. They were the cops who got to handle all the crimes that didn't fall into anyone else's purview—stuff like vampire attacks and mystical as­saults, as well as more mundane crimes like grave robbing. Plus all the really messy cases the other cops didn't want to bother with. SI is supposed to make everything fit neatly into the official reports, ex­plaining away anything weird with logical, rational investigation.

  SI spends a lot of time struggling with that last one. Murphy writes more Fiction than most novelists.

  Murphy doesn't look like a cop, much less a monster cop. She's five nothing. She's got blond hair, blue eyes, and a cute nose. She's also got about a zillion gunnery awards and a shelf full of open-tournament martial arts trophies, and I once saw her kill a giant plant monster with a chain saw. She wore jeans, a white tee, sneakers, a baseball cap, and her hair was pulled back into a tail. She wore her gun in a shoulder rig, her badge around her neck, and had a backpack slung over one shoulder.

  She came through the door and stopped in her tracks. She sur­veyed the room For a minute and then said, "What did this?"

  I nodded at the twisted Futon Frame. "Something strong."

  "I wish I was a big-time private investigator like you. Then I could figure these things out for myself."

  "You bring it?" I asked.

  She tossed me the backpack. "The rest is in the car. What's it for?"

  I opened the pack, took out a bleached-white human skull, and put it down on the kitchen counter. "Bob, wake up."

  Orange lights appeared in the skull's shadowed eye sockets, and then slowly grew brighter. The skull's jaws twitched and then opened into a pantomime of a wide yawn. A voice issued out, acoustics odd, like when you talk in a racquetball court. "What's up, boss?"

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Murphy swore. She took a step back and almost fell over the remains of the entertainment center.

  Bob the Skull's eyelights brightened. "Hey, the cute blonde! Did you do her, Harry?" The skull spun in place on the counter and sur­veyed the damage. "Wow. You did] Way to go, stud!"

  My face felt hot. "No, Bob," I growled.

  "Oh," the skull said, crestfallen.

  Murphy closed her mouth, blinking at the skull. "Uh. Harry?"

  "This is Bob the Skull," I told her.

  "It's a skull," she said. "That talks."

  "Bob is actually the spirit inside. The skull is just the container it's in.

  She looked blankly at me and then said, "It's a skull. That talks."

  "Hey!" Bob protested. "I am not an it! I am definitely a he!"

  "Bob is my lab assistant," I explained.

  Murphy looked back at Bob and shook her head. "Just when I start thinking this magic stuff couldn't get weirder."

  "Bob," I said. "Take a look around. Tell me what did this."

  The skull spun obediently and promptly said, "Something strong."

  Murphy gave me an oblique look.

  "Oh, bite me," I told her. "Bob, I need to know if you can sense any residual magic."

  "Ungawa, bwana," Bob said. He did another turnaround, slower, and the orange eyelights narrowed.

  "Residual magic?" Murphy asked.

  "Any time you use magic, it can leave a kind of mark on the area around you. Mostly it's so faint that sunrise wipes it away every morning. I can't always sense it."

  "But he can?" Murphy asked.

  "But he can!" Bob agreed. "Though not with all this chatter. I'm working over here."

  I shook my head and picked up the phone again.

  "Yes," said Billy. He sounded harried, and there was an enormous amount of background noise.

  "I'm at your apartment," I said. "I came here looking for Georgia."

  "What?" he said.

  "Your apartment," I said louder.

  "Oh, Harry," Billy said. "Sorry, this phone is giving me fits. Eve just talked to Georgia. She's here at the resort."

  I frowned. "What? Is she al
l right?"

  "Why wouldn't she be?" Billy said. Someone started shrieking in the background. "Crap, this battery's dying. Problem solved, come on up. I brought your tux."

  "Billy, wait."

  He hung up.

  I called him back, and got nothing but voice mail.

  "Aha!" Bob said. "Someone used that wolf spell the naked chick taught to Billy and the Werewolves, back over there by the bed­room," he reported. "And there were faeries here."

  I frowned. "Faeries. You sure?"

  "One hundred percent, boss. They tried to cover their tracks, but the threshold must have taken the zing out of their illusion."

  I nodded and exhaled. "Dammit." Then I strode into the bath­room and hunkered down, pawing through the rubble.

  "What are you doing?" Murphy asked.

  "Looking for Georgia," I said. I found a plastic brush full of long strands the color of Georgia's hair and took several of them in hand.

  I've gotten a lot of mileage out of my tracking spell, refining it over the years. I stepped out into the hall and drew a circle on the floor around me with a piece of chalk. Then I took Georgia's hairs and pressed them against my forehead, summoning up my focus and will. I shaped the magic I wanted to create, focused on the hairs, and released my will with a murmur of, "Interessari, interressarium."

  Magic surged out of me, into the hairs and back. I broke the cir­cle with my foot, and the spell flowed into action, creating a faint sense of pressure against the back of my head. I turned, and the sen­sation flowed over my skull in response, over my ear, then my cheek­bone, and finally coming to rest directly between my eyes.

  "She's this way," I said. "Uh-oh."

  "Uh-oh?"

  "I'm facing south," I said.

  "Which is a problem?"

  "Billy says she's at the wedding. Twenty miles north of here."

  Murphy's eyes widened in comprehension. "A faerie has taken her place."

  "Yeah."

  "Why? Are they trying to place a spy?"

  "No," I said quietly. "This is malicious. Probably because Billy and company backed me up during the battle when the last Summer Knight was murdered."

  "That was years ago."

  "Faeries are patient," I said. "And they don't forget. Billy's in danger."