My Big Fat Demon Slayer Wedding (12 page)

I wasn’t fighting. In fact, my problem was that I hadn’t pushed back for the majority of my life. I stewed in silence, which didn’t help anybody. It was only when I came into my powers that I began to realize I didn’t have to be the person my mom wanted me to be. I could be me.

The biker witches had given me that gift. They may have dragged me to it, kicking and screaming, but they taught me to let go, to make my own choices, to believe in myself. I didn’t live my life afraid anymore. I knew who I was.
 

In fact, if I had any sort of guts, I’d tell Hillary I was a demon slayer. She needed to know. And now was the perfect time.
 

My heart sped up and my voice caught in my throat.
 

“Mom—”
 

There was no going back.

“Wait.” She set down her clipboard with a sigh. “I know we’re both under a lot of pressure with this wedding, but you’re my daughter, and I’ve been dreaming about this for so long.” She took a deep breath. “Now, let’s both try to smile. I have a surprise for you.” She walked to the large closet by the back door. “I was going to save it. I should.” She drew a clear garment bag out of the closet. “But I don’t know what you’re going to do anymore.” Inside, was a wedding dress.

Mom, I’m a demon slayer.

“This was my dress. I’d like you to wear it,” she said, as more of a fact than a request.

Disappointment welled up in me. I wasn’t sure if it was from the lost chance at a confession, or that I was going to have to let her down again. “I have a dress,” I said. I loved it. It was so me.

She closed her eyes, as if she’d expected this particular failure, too. “This dress is couture,” she said, unzipping the bag and holding up an off-white gown with one long, elegant sleeve and one arm left bare.

“You’re missing a sleeve,” I told her.

“That’s the style,” she said, proudly.

She turned it around and showed me a waffle-like design on the back. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before and like nothing I wanted to wear.

“Thank you, mom. I’m honored.” I was. I really was. “But I want to wear my own dress.” Maybe a few years ago, before I’d broken free, before I’d learned to stand up for myself, I would have bowed under the pressure to give up my gown. But not anymore.
 

The sadness in her expression nearly broke my heart.

But it didn’t break
me
.
 

“We’ll think about it,” she said, as if we hadn’t settled it already.

I couldn’t do this anymore. “I need to get to bed.”
 

“Well, that’s true,” she conceded. “You don’t want bags under your eyes.”

As if that were my biggest problem.

I gave her an awkward wave goodnight and headed out of the kitchen.

I’d lost my chance to give her the truth. But in a way, I think I’d given her all the truth she could handle for one evening. There was nothing for me to consider. This was who I was. She needed to accept me.
 

Or maybe I was taking the easy way out—only giving her the truths that I had to—leaving out the ones that were soul-deep.

It would come to a head sooner or later, if only I could find a way to make it easier.

Chapter Eleven

The next morning, I woke up with bags under my eyes. The tragedy.

Of course I hadn’t slept well. I just wanted this week to be over. My dog was nowhere in sight when I made it out of the bathroom.
 

“Pirate?” I asked, noticing the hall door was slightly open.
 

Sure, he never liked to sleep in, but he usually let me know when he was going to wander.
 

I slipped on a pair of yellow wedge heels that went with my daisy print sundress.
 

“Little dog?” I asked.
 

I opened the door to peek out into the hall and almost ran smack into Creely, who wore leather pants, a zebra print top and was carrying her own version of Hillary’s clipboard. “Oh, good. You’re awake.”

“What are you doing?” I asked, almost one hundred percent sure I didn’t want to know the answer.

She raised her brows, a Kool-Aid green lock of hair falling in between them. “You said you wanted us to play nice. We are. Now, I want to go over some options for the post-wedding kegger.”

“Absolutely not,” I said, stepping out into the hall. “You said you were going to listen to my mom.”

Hopefully better than I listened to her.

“We tried.” She shrugged. “Now we’re going to do it our own way.”

“What about me?” I’d asked them to get along.

She shot me a quizzical look. “You’re just the bride.”

And here I thought this wedding was about what I wanted. I don’t know why I kept clinging to that notion.

The doorbell rang downstairs, and Pirate let off a frenzy of barking. So that’s where my dog was.

Creely kept talking.
 
“Don’t worry. We’re going to do the reception up fancy, with clear plastic glasses and whatnot, but I tell you, it’s going to be a bitch to get a beer truck up the hill out front.”

“Hillary will have a heart attack,” I said to her, and myself. I said it slowly, so she would understand.

I started to walk around her, to check out who was at the door. Because, let’s face it, Creely wasn’t budging.

“Neal is getting his old hair band back together,” she said, in true biker witch style.
 

“Neal?” I gaped. Grandma’s off-again, on-again, hippie lover Neal? “She can’t behave around him.”

“Says the woman who banged a griffin in the fog.”

Lovely. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

She shrugged. “Neal’s band is good. At least, they used to be.”

Creely angled her clipboard away from me but not before I saw the note to stop by the dollar store for balloons and slip-n-slides.

“I’m not going on a slip-in-slide.”

She gave me the “duh” expression. “It’s for after you and Dimitri leave. We’ve got to do something to the Electric Slide.”

I couldn’t believe this. “How about you do the dance,” I said, heading for the stairs, “like normal people?”

She laughed like I was making a joke.
 

The door opened, but I couldn’t see who was arriving. I glanced back at Creely. “Don’t think you’re off the hook.”

She merely grinned.

When I reached the foyer, mom was closing the door.

“Who was that? I asked. My mentor, Rachmort, was due to arrive today, although he’d probably be in the foyer if it were him.

“It was no one,” my mom said airily.
 

She looked a little too innocent for my taste, like Pirate after he broke into my last box of Girl Scout cookies. “Mom…” I prodded.

She waved a hand. “It was a mistake. I fixed it.”

Dimitri walked in from the hall. “I saw the UPS guy leaving. Did you get your dress?” He stopped, checking his watch. “The tracking said it was supposed to be here by ten.”

No. She wouldn’t. My insides hollowed, and I felt myself begin to shake. “Mother, what did you do?”

“I’m taking care of the details for you.” She drew up her defenses. “We agreed you’d wear my dress,” she said in a rush, as if were the most obvious thing in the world.

Only I did not agree to anything of the sort, and oh my God—she sent back my dress. I rushed past her and threw open the door. The truck wasn’t even a blip on the winding drive and my dress was gone. Vanished. Kaput.

I spun to face her. “What were you thinking?” I yelled, the words burning my throat. “This is
my
wedding,” I advanced on her. “That was
my
dress!”

She brought her hands up to her chest as if I’d struck her. “You didn’t see it. It was plain.”

“It was mine!” I screamed.

She backed up. “It was short,” she said, stammering, her gaze searching for anything but me. “This wedding is going to be a production and your dress has to live up to that. The one you picked out was a dress for cocktail party.”

“Get it back.” I ordered.

She brought a hand to her chest. “Lizzie, I—”

“Get. It. Back.” I repeated.

My head was going to explode. Dimitri stepped up, but I held out my hand before he got any closer. I didn’t want him to make this right, unless it meant getting my dress back.

“This ends now,” I told her. “I’m not a prop in a show to impress your friends. I’ve gone along with the teas and the planning and all of this production that I didn’t ask for and I didn’t want. All I wanted was to wear
my
dress, and you fucked that up. I’d rather walk down the aisle naked than wear your dress.”

I spun and ran straight into Dimitri. Dammit. I was shaking. I tried to pull away, but he caught me. “Hey,” he smoothed my hair out of my face, “listen to me. I’ll get it back for you if I have to fly out and land on top of that truck.”

My throat felt tight. “Thanks.” We should have just gone to Vegas, done it biker witch style.

Dimitri pulled out his cell phone and started the tracking process.

And if that didn’t work, I wondered if Dimitri was serious about shifting and hijacking the truck. That had to be illegal on about seven different levels. I still wanted him to do it.

Ophelia came from the sitting room, not doubt drawn by the noise. “Oh, my.” She wrapped both hands around my arm. At least she cared. “We can fix it for you, kopelia mou.”

Maybe. I hoped. “Do you know someone at UPS?” I asked.

She patted my arm. “No. I’m sorry, dear. But we have a gift for you that will make you feel so much better.”

She’d obviously never had her wedding dress replaced.

“This way,” Ophelia said, guiding me into the sitting room, where the Greeks had erased Hillary’s white board and instead used it as a place to keep score for their Biriba tournament.
 

Good.
 

“Come, come,” Ophelia said to the biker witches gathering at the fringes of the room. “This is for everyone.”

Dimitri stood in the foyer, with his back to us, on the phone, tracking my dress. I was glad he could handle it, because right now I was afraid what would come out if I opened my mouth.

I stood, trying to calm the shaking that radiated from my core as Ophelia directed her fellow matriarchs with trays of drinks that looked like mimosas. She pressed one into my hand and I sipped. Definitely some kind of Greek liquor in it, but it was sweet and frankly, I could use a stiff one at this point.

The couches were full of various aunts and uncles, although I did notice the younger cousins gave up their seats for some of the biker witches.

Diana and Dyonne were two of the last to arrive. They gave me questioning looks—probably wondering why I looked ready to strangle someone—as Ophelia drew me in front of the big, bay window.

Ophelia was flustered, excited as two of the aunts made their way through the crowd with a bundle tied in black silk.
 

She brought her hands together as if in prayer, then touched them to her lips. “My little bride,” she said bringing her hands down, clasping them against her breast. “We are so happy, so honored to welcome you into our family and our clan. We are Artamae, the hunters.”

Yes, from Rhodes. Dimitri had shown me pictures of the ancient gates to one of the cities the clan founded. The carvings of the sacred deer were still visible on the walls. In old times, the people could see griffins and would make offerings of the best kills from their hunt. When I’d squicked out a bit, Dimitri reminded me that I liked deer sausage. He’d had a point, I supposed.

“You are our family now,” Ophelia said.
 

I took a deep, calming breath. “I’m glad,” I said. I really was, even as Dimitri lowered the phone and turned to give me a glance that said all was definitely not well.

“And so,” Ophelia said, her eyes growing misty again, “we have made your wedding gown!”

I gripped my drink glass. Not another one.
 

“It is our tradition,” she said. “Each woman in the clan gives something to the dress. Some choose the silk. Only the best. Some work tirelessly on the stitching. Hand done. Every bit. Some work hard to inspect each and every bead for the bodice…”

Hillary stood, stone-faced, at the back.

She deserved it.

“We keep adding and adding and working until,” she unveiled the dress. “You have this!”

Creely spit her drink.

I would have, too, except I was frozen in place.
 

It was made of silk, all right—yards and yards of silk, like a Southern Belle intent on drowning herself. And there were beads…everywhere. On the bodice, down the front, streaking over the sleeves, wound around the high, choking neckline like snakes. And these weren’t pretty, dainty glass beads or pearls. They were shaped like sunbursts and seashells and I even spotted a few sand dollars among the complete and utter chaos.

“Damn.” Creely said.

“Wow,” I said, trying to recover, but the light was catching the sequins on the poof-ball sleeves, and frankly, the whole thing was such a train wreck, I couldn’t stop looking.
 

But it was made with love, given with no strings attached.

The Greeks weren’t trying to change me, or hurt me. Ophelia and her clan only wanted to make me happy.

In fact, it was perfect. If I couldn’t have my dress, this was the next best thing simply because it was the exact opposite of everything my mom was trying to force on me. If Dimitri pulled off a miracle and got my dress back, I’d find a way to bow out of this graciously. But if not, revenge was best served with a million seed pearls.

“As you may have heard from all the yelling,” I said, “I have a dress picked out. Still, there’s been an accident.” I started to warm to the idea, and to my mom’s shock in the back. “If my dress doesn’t arrive,” which it would, it had to, “I would be touched and honored to wear this dress.”

The Greeks cheered.

My mom dropped her cocktail.

Ophelia held up the dress while I took another look at what I’d agreed to wear. Danged if it didn’t make me smile. I couldn’t help it. I had to admire it. “The bow on the butt is huge.”