Magical Weddings (24 page)

“Let them eat off paper towels.”

Her backside butted up against the door. Heavily muscled arms bracketed her upper body. Huge hands gripped the doorframe to each side of her.

“Two rolls should be enough for the bunch of them.

Rest
.
Chloe said rest
.

“Just let me pick you a room.”

“This one will do,” he said.

“I don’t think you’d be comfortable.”

“I don’t care what size the bed is.”

“There’s no bed. This is a broom closet.”

Emitting an embarrassing mouse-like cry, she found herself plucked off her feet, shifted down the corridor to the right and set, fully upright, in front of the next door over.

“How about this one?” he asked. “Bed inside?”

“King size.”

“Wonderful.”

They both went for the doorknob at the same time.

Flung open, the door banged into the wall, leaving an indentation. Colleen didn’t know which one of them slammed it shut again. Their mouths rushed each other, lips crushing, hands unashamedly groping. The fever between them soared. High. Faster. Scorching. They knew each other too well to pretend they needed a guide to the erogenous. They knew without asking. He knew how she liked the very tips of her nipples kissed through the sheer fabric of her blouse; areolae sucked and laved seconds later. She knew he liked her to bite into his left earlobe, slowly dragging downward with it clenched between her teeth until the soft flesh sprang free. Greed, impossible to sate, drove them, the rapacity of tongues and flesh doing everything it could to meld with flesh as hard and completely as it could. They’d been one desperate look away from grabbing each other for decades. God, the waste. Why had she waited this long to tear through her reticence and fear and unwrap the gift of him? To have him. Exactly where she wanted him.

“Inside,” she said.

“Getting there,” he said.

Boots and shoes came off.

They turned and turned as a single person, moving vaguely in the direction of the bed, tripped over a coffee table and hit the carpet on their knees. Struggled up again without breaking the deep, hungry kiss, she tore off his shirt. He thoughtfully ripped off her blouse for her.

“Thank you.” She mumbled her gratitude along his bottom lip.

Both reached for their jeans simultaneously, collided with and dumped themselves awkwardly into a cramped wing chair with their pants caught at the knees. She discovered he liked to go commando, neither boxers nor briefs.

Breathing each other like swimmers about to go under for three laps of the pool, they agreed to part lips just long enough for him to launch them back up out of the chair. Ax swept her half-dressed into his arms, took a stride toward the bed, but got hobbled, ankles still trapped by his jeans. Down they went over a dressing bench.

“Dammit to hell,” he said.

“I’ll say.”

They lay panting, side-by-side on the bedroom’s thick carpet.

“How many pieces of furniture does this room have?” he asked.

“Too many.”

“Time to quit fooling around.”

Gripping the hems of her jeans, he pulled hard and whipped them off her like a magician pulling the cloth off a dinner table while leaving the tableware undisturbed. She stood and shrugged out of her panties.

Clear of obstacles and free of clothing at last, Colleen danced backward toward the monstrous bed with its piles and piles of soft, luxe bedding.

Ax rolled onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows, but made no other immediate move. Pleased astonishment spread across his face.

“Well, well,” he said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’ve wondered for the longest time. You know, because of your eyelashes and hair. Red or brown?”

Colleen looked down at herself—as if she had to check—and then at him.

“Oh. Well, now you know.”

She crooked her finger, beckoning him onto the bed.

He rose to his feet.

“Now I know.”

He was the fence builder and yet he’d just torn hers down, blown each carefully fitted board to bits.

They lay on their sides facing each other, she awake, but flagging, he nearly dozing, eyes heavily lidded, only a slit of their warm green visible. Lighting in the room was barely enough to make out his healing wounds. They’d never turned on a light and the afternoon darkened toward storms and evening.

His poor face. How had he even remained standing after The Priest’s initial attack?

“I wonder,” he said. His eyes didn’t open. He spoke on the threshold of sleep. “What poor sap of a warlock at this very moment is getting stapled to a witch he barely knows for the rest of his life.”

“What poor witch, you mean,” she said.

“Witch’s lib rears its head.” He reached out and pulled her closer, secured her, protectively snugged up against his chest, before drifting further toward slumber.

More happy minutes passed quietly in Colleen’s life. It felt incredible to lay here next to him doing nothing at all.

“We’re supposed to be down there, you know,” she said. “It’s the law. Everyone has to attend.”

He petted her forearm absently.

“What exactly does the law say? What’s written down?”

“Nothing, actually. It’s an unwritten one. Everyone understands they have to come here and be present at the wedding.”

“We are,” he said.

“We are, what?”

“Here for the wedding. The wedding is here. We’re here. Technically. So, we just happen to be upstairs. Who cares? We’ve done our duty by showing up.”

“I guess.”

“Though it’s strange,” he said. “I haven’t heard any music yet. Have you heard–?”

A tentative knock came at the door.

Guiltily, they bolted up in bed.

“What do we do?” she mouthed at him.

“I don’t know,” he mouthed back. “Who is that?”

Softly, the knocking came again.

Colleen sighed in deep irritation. She didn’t need Drayhome to tell her the identity of the person standing on the other side of the door. She knew that distinctive knock.

“Lawrence,” she whispered.

“Who?”

It was the caterer’s friend-slash-helper, the same warlock who had found her hiding in the third floor maid’s bathroom the other day. Over 60 rooms in the house, he had unerringly found them here. She hardly qualified as a scholar when it came to understanding the variety of gifts among The Rede, but it was a safe bet Lawrence was a tracking talent.

“Wait here,” Ax said and climbed out of bed. She pulled the bedclothes up to her chin. He scrambled around looking under furniture for his pants.

Once more, the knock. It was different this time, brisk, businesslike.

Locating the jeans at last, he didn’t spare time to put them on, but rather held them in front of himself and cracked open the bedroom door.

“Yes?” he said and then involuntarily jerked back. His surprise allowed the door to open wider.

From Colleen’s vantage point with the bed directly facing the door, she couldn’t miss seeing into the hallway.

And the crowd who occupied it, squeezing themselves into every spare foot of floor space. They were all out there. She knew it. Every witch and warlock at the wedding.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

“It isn’t us,” Lysée, who stood at the front of the search party, said.

“Excuse me?” Ax said.

“It isn’t any of us.”

“Any of you, who?” he asked.

“Getting married,” Shelley said. “We’ve been down there all afternoon, cooling our heels. No magic.”

“Runyon?” Ax said.

“He finished with the perimeter two hours ago,” Air said.

Ax, agitated and bewildered—adorably so, Colleen thought—turned to her for some sort of explanation. “Do you…?”

She shrugged at him.

He shrugged back.

They studied each other a moment longer, just in case something amazing was about to happen. It didn’t.

“Uh…” Ax started. “I don’t think it’s–”

“Sorry, you two,” Earth said, “but you’re the only ones who haven’t been downstairs with the rest of us. Apparently this is your lucky day.”

With that pronouncement, people swarmed the bedroom.

“Hey!” Ax said, but his objections were pushed aside.

“Come on,” Air said, grabbing Ax by the arm and hauling him out into the hall. “Let’s get you more
formally
attired.”

“Customarily, one waits,” Earth said, “until after the ceremony to begin the honeymoon.”

Colleen watched them disappear down the corridor, leaving her alone with–

“Haul your ass out of bed. The beauty squad is here,” Shelley said. With Lysée and Mia’s help, the three witches got her up and stripped of the sheet she clutched around her.

“Mia,” Shelley said, issuing orders. “The dress. I left it hanging in the coatroom. Lysée, I need my kit. It’s down in that little vestibule-ish place off the conservatory. The rest of you, out of here.” She shooed everyone else still loitering in the bedroom out the door. “I swear. Pervs. Well, what are you waiting for, Colleen? Hop in the shower. Chop-chop.”

****

Like ozone after a lightning strike, the smell of magic hung heavy in the air as Colleen’s bridal procession hurried past the doors to the ballroom, where the reception for she and Ax would begin thirty minutes from now. In contrast to its state following the wall quake, not a glass or fork or plate was missing or out of alignment. Some heavy-duty incantations had to have been evoked to restore the venue to order. When she’d been in here earlier, she’d counted at least two dozen shattered place settings, dust shaken down from the ceiling covering everything, including the cake, the top two levels of which had splatted to the floor.

Now, the silver and crystal gleamed. Instead of traditional centerpieces, each banquet table played host to a woodland scene in miniature, groves of bonsai cherry trees, only these were crafted from spun sugar. Their leaves fluttered in stray drafts of air moving through the ballroom. Tiny, chocolate squirrels scampered up into the branches. The cake,
their
cake, the one she and Ax would soon cut, stood tall and pristine again on the table in the corner. All nine tiers bloomed a riot of fondant and butter cream flowers, each bud and curling vine having reached full maturity at the precise moment for peak consumption. Shelley’s tower of spelled champagne glasses, one of the historic magicks from weddings past, stood on another table nearby. Derby, the caterer, and his small staff, rushed about, filling water goblets and distributing breadbaskets.

Colleen and her party swept on, leaving the scene behind.

Lysée cleared the corridor ahead. Mia carried the train of Colleen’s dress. Shelley using her craft—though Colleen was sure dressmaking was not her main gift, only a hobby—continued to whisper spells under her breath, making alterations on the run. What began upstairs as an 1870s gown with a bustle the size of a car trunk had transformed into a simple, exquisitely draped, off the shoulder, satin dress with asymmetrical sprays of beaded lace at the bodice.

“Circa 1942, the year you would have been married had you not come to Breens,” Shelley said. How she might know this, the witch didn’t explain.

Colleen was given a loose, wavy, Katherine Hepburn-esque hairstyle to match the dress. Other than a light brush of powder, mascara and natural lipstick, Shelley flatly refused Lysée’s instance upstairs in the bathroom that she give Colleen more elaborate makeup.

“Are you blind?” Shelley said. “She’s the bride. She glows on her own. I’m not going to cover that up.”

Colleen had looked at herself in the mirror, detecting no such glow.

“It’s there, Colleen.” Shelley countered her obvious misgivings. “You can’t see it yet, but I do.”

Their party reached the doors to the conservatory. Lysée gripped the handles to the first set of double French doors

Colleen balked.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait. I can’t do this. I don’t want Ax bound to someone when we aren’t the ones. This isn’t right. I don’t feel any magic. We
aren’t
the ones.”

“Colleen–” Lysée began in a voice to soothe.

“No.” She shook her head. “No. And, oh, God. No. To have The High Priest perform our handfasting!”

“He’s not. He won’t,” Lysée said.

“But it’s how it’s done. The High Priest–”

“Sometimes things are meant to be done differently,” Mia said from behind her. “Trust, Lysée. She has something else planned. Ramsay Wise won’t get anywhere near you.”

“Breathe, Colleen,” Lysée said. “Just. Breathe.”

Colleen nodded. Lysée opened the doors.

Colleen stepped into the conservatory, immediately confused. How did she get outside, in the garden? Was Drayhome playing tricks on her now?

Then she realized, in here, the sun was shining. She gazed up through the glass ceiling at black clouds birthing torrents of snow, whirling and sheeting in the wind. Outside, on Drayhome’s terrace that snow began to stick in the crevices between slate pavers. It coated and froze the newly opened peonies and lilies in the gardens. Gusts tore blossoms off the apple trees.

Here in the conservatory late spring continued uninterrupted. Each direction she looked, what was outside and damaged by the weather was mirrored inside, reproduced down to the last detail, safe from the storm. It didn’t seem possible, after all the conservatory was only so big, certainly not large enough to contain every flower bed, hydrangea bush and full grown fruit tree at Drayhome, but she couldn’t argue against what her eyes and senses perceived.

“Mia! It’s breathtaking.”

“Thank you,” Mia said. “I didn’t think a little weather should keep us from having a proper
outdoor
wedding.”

Ax waited for her at the center. Instead of the traditional altar with magical tools, Mia had replicated the water fountain with her red lilies. As with Colleen’s dress, Ax’s tuxedo fit perfectly, courtesy, no doubt of a helpful team of warlocks, counterpart to Shelley’s beauty squad. For once, his long hair was tamed, face smooth shaven.

Certainly a different look for my rough and primitive Celtic warrior
.