Dead If I Do (23 page)

“Mom,” I protested. “He’s going to be my stepson.”

“Just saying,” she said. “You and Sebastian would make lovely children too.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. My head started to hurt.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you that while you were out cavorting at the bar last night, a package arrived. I think it’s that other dress.”

“You mean my dress—the one I ordered—actually came?” I couldn’t keep the excitement out my voice, but my mother gave me a look like I’d wounded her to the core.

“Yes.” She sniffed. “And your grandmother’s arrived at the hotel yesterday, so it’s ready to be fitted. I brought it along. I thought I could do the work.”

The pounding of my head increased. Great. Now I had to deal with the dress crises while snowed in with my mother. Plus, I had to call William’s SCA lady and cancel the dress she was making or I’d have an embarrassment of riches. “Oh. Wonderful.”

The radio predicted eighteen more inches before the
storm system moved on. My mom and I sipped coffee and listened to the listings of school closings, neither of us quite ready to deal with the whole dress thing. I called William at home and told him not to bother trying to get in to open up the store. It sounded like the whole city was shut down. My dad made bacon and eggs. In the living room, Mátyás was asleep on the couch with Barney curled up near his head. When I last checked on them, they both snored softly.

I got up and went to the kitchen window. The snow fell much slower now, but it still came down in constant, thick flakes. The sky was muted, but I chewed on my lip at the reflection of light on the whiteness. I knew Sebastian would be all right, but I found myself worrying about Teréza. I’d promised Mátyás that snow would be enough cover to protect her.

“You’re worried about him,” my mother said.

“Yeah,” I admitted, although, strangely, it was Teréza I was thinking about right now.

“He’s a smart man. He’d have found shelter,” my dad said. “He’s probably trying to get back right now. You still like your eggs sunny-side up?”

“Uh-huh,” I said absently. “I’ll be right back.”

I snuck quietly and quickly past Mátyás and Barney and headed upstairs to the bedroom. I got it in my head that I should try to do another protection spell. Maybe I could visualize a shield between Teréza and the sun. If nothing else, I figured it couldn’t hurt. In the closet, I kept a cardboard banker’s box full of magical supplies. I had a number of votive candles in every color of the rainbow. There was a ceramic cup and a magical, ceremonial knife. Incense of every flavor, ribbons, scissors, and a box of matches were included among little things to represent the directional elements: a clamshell for west and water, a polished snowflake obsidian for north and earth, a goose feather for air and east, an ornate incense burner for fire and south, and a small silver statue of the Nile Goddess for spirit and here.

I sat down cross-legged on the area rug. Pulling out five candles, I laid four of them around me at the cardinal points. The last one I put in the center in front of my crossed ankles. I lit them one by one, starting in the east. As I struck each match and lit a candle, I imagined a protective circle around myself.

Though Lilith’s power would strengthen my magic, I let her continue to slumber. She wasn ’t a protective Goddess. She destroyed. Though she was the mother of demons, and Teréza might qualify as one of Lilith ’s brood, the truth was, I didn’t trust her. So often when Lilith got involved in my spell work, things went awry.

Once all the candles were lit and the circle imagined, I closed my eyes. I envisioned Teréza and Sebastian under the snow. As a kid, I’d spent some time in snow forts, which were little more than holes dug in the piles at the side of the road. I remembered the sensation of the ice under my snow pants and the hot/cold feeling of sweat on a cold day. The smell was wet. On sunny days, brightness would penetrate deeply. It wouldn’t be the same for them, however.

At least today, the light was muted. Parrish had told me that, unlike in Hollywood, the quality of light didn’t matter to a vampire. Rainy days were still
days
to them. Any light could kill.

What they needed was a shield, something opaque. The first image that popped into my head was of Athena with her shield with the head of the Gorgon, Medusa, affixed to it. So I’d found a goddess; now I just had to convince her to help Teréza. I’d had no problem calling down Lilith the night my coven was attacked. But that had been a desperate cry for help. I just sent out an SOS, no fancy spells, nothing. That was part of why Lilith and I were stuck together forever. If I contacted another Goddess, I had to be careful on so many levels. The last thing I needed was another piggy-backer. But I didn’t really know how to call down a Goddess on purpose.

So I meditated. I tried to reconnect to that moment on the night I’d called Lilith into me. Fear had torn open my consciousness. As worried as I was for Teréza, I couldn’t quite conjure that kind of need.

I hummed. I fidgeted. I watched the candle flames flicker. I was still tired, and I found myself drifting off to the gentle sounds of my parents moving around downstairs.

The moment my chin hit my chest, I saw her. She was a vision, but not quite in the way I might have first imagined. Tall and stocky, she had muscles like Madonna on steroids. Thick, black curls spilled from a bronze, crested helmet. She wore a Roman skirt like Russell Crowe in
Gladiator
and had black hair on her legs and under her arms almost as thick as his. She carried a ginormous pointed spear and the shield, though she kept her shield arm turned away from me. A hoot owl sat on her broad shoulder.

“Uh,” I said, when presented with this glorious image of the Goddess. “Hi?”

She nodded as though she understood me, but at the same time gave me a glare that implied that her time was precious, and I’d better get to the point, or I might be on the receiving end of one.

“I have these friends, see,” I said, at the same time projecting a mental image of Sebastian and Teréza as I imagined they must be huddled under the snow. “They . . . well, really, she needs to be protected from the light or she will die.”

At the pronoun “she,” Athena’s attention sharpened, as though the Goddess was more interested in helping a fellow female.

“Anyway, you’ve got that awesome shield,” I indicated the arm she had turned away from me. I swore I could see the twist of a snake’s head, and I heard the whisper of a thousand hisses. “Would you help me, please?”

She nodded but didn’t instantly disappear. I got the distinct impression I ’d forgotten something important. I’d remembered

“please.” Did I need to add “thank you”?

Then it occurred to me that most cultures offered something to their deities, a sacrifice to pay for services rendered. Lilith had taken what she’d wanted: lodging in my body. I didn’t exactly have a goat handy to slaughter, and, anyway, that didn’t jibe with modern Wicca or my personal belief system, being a vegetarian and all. Somehow I didn’t think plunging a knife into a kohlrabi would be the same. But I also wasn’t sure that’s the kind of thing that tripped Athena’s trigger. So what would this mountainous butch Goddess want?

I gave up trying to guess. “Tell me what you require of me.”

That brought a smile to her lips, and I realized at that moment she could be beautiful as well as terrible. I got the impression of one thing: worship. She wanted a devotee.

“As long as you don’t require me to be a virgin, I’m down with that,” I said.

She frowned a little before she disappeared, but I got the sensation that a deal had been struck.

“Thank you,” I whispered, just to be safe.

I guess I was officially a priestess of Athena. Now I just hoped that Lilith was okay with it. Rubbing my face, I stretched my arms until my shoulder blades popped. The room smelled of melted wax. One of the candles had dribbled onto the hardwood floor. After carefully and deliberately undoing the circle I’d cast in reverse order, I set the other candles on the dresser to cool. I scraped at the wax on the floor with my fingernail, but it was still too warm to do much more than smear around. I gave up and left it to harden.

Though the smell of breakfast that lingered in the air made my stomach growl, the bed looked even more inviting. I crawled under the blankets, praying that Mátyás would stay the hell out of my dreams this time.

I woke up to the sensation of being watched. My
mother stood over me with a soft expression. “Oh,” she said, as if she hadn’t woken me, “you’re up. Good. We can try on the dress.”

My mother had placed the box from the dress shop containing the one I’d bought at the foot of the bed. Next to the box, she’d lain out the white beaded . . . thing.

I sat up. “Mom,” I said as gently as I could. I raked my fingers through my spikes of black hair. “It’s so old-fashioned.”

She patted my hair, as though trying to smooth it down and tame it. “I know, honey. But it’s the dress I wore. And your grandmother. Just see if it fits, okay?”

Well, there wasn’t any harm in that, was there? I mean, given my luck so far with this whole wedding thing there ’d be no time for a fitting, anyway. I gave her a smile. “Okay.”

She brightened. The crease that had been steadily deepening between her brows smoothed out. “Thank you, honey.”

I stared at myself for a long time in the mirror that
hung on the closet door, not quite knowing what to say to my mother’s hopeful expression. The dress actually fit pretty well, which gave me some trepidation. What daughter wants to know they have their mother’s body?

But the high neck and heavily beaded waist made me look . . . old, and a little like the Madwoman of Chaillot. I hadn ’t really combed my hair since my mom woke me, and part of it wadded flatly against the side of my head in the shape of a pillow. Unruly spikes stood up in back, and something really bad had happened to some of the “product” I put in days ago. My mascara had been smeared by sleep and snow.

More than that, the dress was just not me. I mean, okay, it did sparkle nicely when I waved my hips from side to side, and it made a satisfying swishing sound with each twirl. It had a bit of retro chic, almost Vera Wang -ish. But, it was just so lacy and beaded and heavy and stiff. I felt a little like I’d been jammed into a princess straitjacket, and that was not the sensation I wanted while getting married. The whole ceremony was a bit too much like a binding spell, anyway, without feeling constricted and constrained by a dress that represented all the things about old-fashioned marriages I found wholly un-liberating, if you know what I mean. I did not want to be Ward Cleaver’s bride. Of course, with my hair like this, I looked more like the bride of Frankenstein.

“Well?” My mother finally broke down and asked nervously. “I mean, we’ll do
something
with your hair, right? Though you could wear the veil. I did.”

“Veils aren’t very fashionable anymore, Mom,” I said.

“Oh, I know. It was my generation that started all that brouhaha about removing the ‘obey’ clause from the vows and stripping out all the stuff that made women feel like property, but . . . well, it’s kind of pretty, honey, and it would hide a lot of sins.”

Nice one, Mom. “I’m not wearing a veil.”

“There’s still time to find you a nice tiara. I really think you need something to tie the whole thing together, you know? Maybe something with pearls to match the dress.”

“I’m not wearing this dress,” I said before I meant to. My mother’s mouth gaped open like I’d just punched her in the stomach.

“I mean, it’s lovely, but . . . but . . .”

My mother pulled her lips together tightly. “I understand,” she said curtly. “It’s too old-fashioned. You need something different, I suppose.”

“I’m glad you understand, Mom,” I said, even though I knew she didn’t.

After the whole dress “discussion,” my mother and I
hardly spoke a word to each other over brunch. My dad cooked up an awesome casserole thing and the crispiest hash browns I’d had in years. I made appreciative noises all through the meal, but my mother stayed frosty and brooding. Eventually, after a couple of more attempts at benign, safe conversation gambits, I gave up and went back upstairs for a nap.

I started awake to the sound of Pete Seeger singing “We Shall Overcome” at Carnegie Hall. It was an album I’d heard a thousand times as a kid, and for a moment I thought I’d woken up in Finlayson, Minnesota, at my parents’ farm. A glance at the clock told me it was about time to get up anyway. It was closing in on the dinner hour. I threw my feet over the edge of the bed and shook the cobwebs from my brain. I ’d slept hard. I had vague memories of restless dreams involving two angry Goddesses arguing over who had the most control over me, while being buried alive in an avalanche of snow. Well, I thought with a snort, at least I wouldn’t need to pay a psychologist to interpret my subconscious. After tucking my toes into my fluffy pink slippers, I shuffled over to the closet. I paused before my overwhelming array of choices in attire. I blinked at the racks of sweaters, blouses, skirts, leggings, jeans, T-shirts, and one slinky black evening dress way in the back that I’d bought for Sebastian’s birthday last year. I couldn’t decide. So I did what most Midwesterners did in situations like this; I looked outside.

Frost laced the window almost completely, with thick ice on the interior corners where the condensation had settled. Beyond the glass, everything was white. The fading sun sparkled blue and yellow like diamond dust on the newly fallen snow. Only a few, scattered flakes drifted from the sky.

I grabbed the thick, black sweater I wore on snuggling-around-the-house days. It weighed at least two pounds on its own, with extra-long sleeves and a long body that covered my butt. After pulling a cheery pair of red and white polka-dot underwear out of the dresser, I grabbed my “fat jeans” from where they lay crumpled at the bottom of the closet. My dad’s cooking was hard to resist, and I felt a little bloated and puffy. Taking my treasures, I headed for the bathroom and a long shower.

Hot blasts of water soaked my skin. I almost started
to relax and forget about dresses and worry about Sebastian and Teréza, when I felt a cool breeze as someone pulled aside the shower curtain. I quickly covered my breasts and turned toward the wall to shield myself. “Not funny, Mátyás!” I shouted.