KEY WORDS:
Quandries, Glitches
I ran upstairs to discover that Vatican witch hunters
were crashing my wedding rehearsal. Literally. The windows in the front that I ’d been admiring were completely destroyed. Glass and shattered wood littered the floor. Upturned folding chairs lay scattered everywhere. Ice-cold wind blasted through the gaping hole the witch hunters had smashed. My dad and I had just reached the top of the stairs when someone burst in through the front doors. I turned to see a black robed priest duck out of the way. Behind him stood a man holding a longbow, cocked, with an arrow pointed right at my breast.
“Get down,” I said to my dad, giving him a shove off to the side.
The archer, however, didn’t shoot. He seemed to be scanning for someone else. I had a good idea who, given that the last time we encountered the Order of Eustace, they stuck Sebastian to the wall with an arrow exactly like that one. That time, however, they’d had surprise on their side.
Though I tried to grab at him, the archer pushed past me into the main room. Sebastian was on the opposite end near the broken windows, wrestling with two other hunters who’d apparently come in that way. The rest of the wedding party seemed to be in hiding, although I wasn’t sure how much cover folding chairs actually provided. I turned back in time to see the archer take aim.
“Sebastian!” I yelled, “behind you!”
Unfortunately, half the wedding party poked their heads up to see why I was yelling. My mother stood up with the fierce look of a lioness protecting her cub. “Get away from my daughter!” was her battle cry, as she started moving toward the archer just as he let his arrow fly.
I screamed. My mother was going to step between Sebastian and the arrow.
Sebastian moved faster than I’d ever seen him go. He vaulted over the witch hunter, trying to block his way and hit the ground running. Reaching out, he caught the arrow in his hand. At least that’s what it looked like at first, until my eyes registered the fact that his fist closed around a shaft that had pierced him clean through his palm. A spray of blood spattered my mother’s face. The arrow had been that close to hitting her. While still running toward the archer, Sebastian snapped the shaft with his fingers. The barbed point stuck out the back of Sebastian’s hand; I could see it as he sprinted past me. The guy who’d kicked the door in for the archer launched at him. Sebastian backhanded their hunter, leaving the point embedded in his cheek. Now I wasn’t the only one screaming.
More hunters streamed in the door. Over his shoulder, he yelled, “Get back. I’ll take care of them.”
Dazed, I stumbled to a stop and tried to take stock of the situation.
Sebastian’s show of strength, however, seemed to have rallied my friends.
Closest to me, a knot of people, which included Smitty, Izzy, Marlena, and a confused and battered -looking black-robed priest, wrestled. Punches flew haphazardly, but Team Wedding Party seemed to be kicking the hunter into submission. Mátyás and my mother teamed up against another one. Mátyás had the hunter in a stranglehold, while my mother bashed the fellow about the ears with her handbag.
Walter and Larry had tackled a hunter too. Walter sat on the guy’s chest pinning his arms under his knees and seemed to be yelling at the man about his lack of manners. Larry had his hands on his hips and occasionally nodded his head in agreement with whatever Walter was saying.
The minister hid behind the altar. She peeped out to check out the scene, let out a gasp of despair and/or horror, and retreated to safety again.
Meanwhile, William stood in the center of the chaos, talking on his cell phone. He had a finger in his ear to keep out the sounds of the fighting, ducking and dodging whenever various bits of debris flew near him.
“The heck?” my dad shouted, coming to my side. “Are we being attacked by rabid priests?”
I was about to answer my dad, when Lilith growled.
“Whoa,” my dad said. “You don’t need to be like that. It was an honest question.”
Through Lilith’s heightened awareness, I picked up the scent of what was bothering her: a Sensitive. When on assignment, the Order always traveled with someone conversant in magic. This Sensitive fought for the Order on the astral plane. He or she broke wards of protection, threw counterspells, and the like. Lilith could sense an impending attack. I had to do something quickly, or the tide of this battle might turn.
“Fine, be like that,” my dad muttered as he rolled up his sleeves and waded into the battle. He picked up a nearby bit of smashed wood and held it like a club. Without a moment’s hesitation, my dad whacked one of the two guys squaring off against Sebastian on the back of the head.
In the movies, the hunter would have dropped like a stone. Instead, he looked really, really pissed off as he turned around to see what’d hit him.
The image of a black-robed priest bearing down on my dad with murder in his eye brought it all back—the night I walked in on the Order after they’d slaughtered my coven. I’d lost my best friends—no, more than that, my surrogate family—that night. They were dead because I hadn’t acted soon enough. I would not let the Order take my family from me again. No way in hell.
Lilith’s power surged through me like an electrical storm. My fists sparked with static. The charge raised the hair all over my body. Spits of lightning snapped with pinpricks of pain out of my pores.
I felt the eyes of the Sensitive focus on me. He ’d hidden in the shadows of the coatrack, but, with Lilith ’s perceptions, his magical aura stuck out like a flare to me. I could see too that he ’d been using a spell to try to contain Sebastian and Mátyás’s magic.
Well, that just made me madder.
The charge I’d built around me released with a thunder-clap.
Flaming coat bits flew everywhere. The rack twisted into a melted heap. The Sensitive collapsed, though my magical senses revealed that he was still alive.
The room, meanwhile, went dead silent.
Every head in the room stopped and stared at me.
“You,” I said to the nearest witch hunter, “are not welcome here. Get out.”
They got the hint. Though they had the reputation of never backing down from a fight, they ran away. I ’d never seen anyone scramble to their feet so fast, much less such an orderly, hasty retreat. They left the Sensitive where he ’d fallen and disappeared into the night.
“Dudes, you forgot somebody,” Marlena said, noticing the guy I’d zapped.
“He should probably get to the hospital, if I can ever get a damn signal,” William said, his phone still pressed to his ear.
“They were probably jamming it,” Sebastian said and looked at his ruined palm with a grunt.
“Damn, that was fun,” Smitty said with a laugh.
“I think I’m going to faint,” said Larry, as Walter put a steadying arm around his shoulders.
“I broke a nail,” muttered Izzy. “Goddamn it.”
“Are you planning a full assault for the real wedding?” Mátyás asked wryly. “Because we definitely rehearsed that.”
“Who’s going to pay for the damages?” My mother was worried. “Look at this place.”
“Uh, I’m afraid I can’t officiate at your wedding,” the minister said, coming out from behind the altar on shaky legs. “I no longer have a church.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling Lilith’s power melting from me. I sat down on the floor, feeling wasted and drained, “Yeah, sorry about that.”
“How did they find out about us, anyway?” Mátyás asked.
Normally, I would have accused him of tipping them off. But he seemed genuinely concerned, plus he’d been fighting for his life along with the rest of us.
“The dream,” William said.
“The astral wedding invitation,” Sebastian agreed with a shake of his head in my general direction.
“Oh, yeah, I had a dream about the wedding,” said Marlena. “It was the weirdest damn thing.”
“We all had it,” Izzy said.
“Apparently, Garnet forgot to set a friends-only filter,” William said.
I looked out at the shattered remains of the church I was supposed to be getting married in, and I started to cry. It was never going to happen now, was it? I had no cake, no band, no reception hall, no flowers, no bridesmaids’ dresses, no license, and now no minister and no church.
I put my head in my hands and sobbed.
An arm slipped around my shoulder. “Hey,” said Sebastian. “It’s going to be all right.”
I broke. “All right? Are you insane?” I went down the laundry list of everything that had fallen apart one more time. “And now you have to buy a new church for the Unitarians. You can’t even say no one’s been hurt. They shot you with an arrow. Again.”
He tucked a loose lock behind his ear. Glass fell out of his hair.
“Actually,” he said, cradling his bloody palm in his lap. “It could have been a lot worse. They usually carry machine guns.”
Unbidden memories of my coven came into my mind. They’d been gunned down, unarmed, in their own home. Sensing my tension, Sebastian pulled me closer against him.
“Yeah,” William said absently. “Why no guns?”
Mátyás lifted a hand toward the stone altar. “I’m surprised they brought the longbow in. This is a church. It’s an old tradition of respect not to bring weapons into God’s house.”
“Does God live in a Unitarian church?” Walter asked.
“If you were a true believer, would you take the risk?” Mátyás asked.
“They shot Sebastian,” William pointed out.
“In their mind, he’s the devil incarnate,” Mátyás said. “Like I said, they probably bought an indulgence or something for that one.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Tears threatened to spill again. I took in a ragged breath. “I can’t even believe this conversation. Why can’t we have one normal minute?”
Sebastian squeezed me even closer. He looked out over the assembled crowd. I followed his gaze. Everyone had begun to form groups. Larry and Walter were righting chairs. William had found a broom and was sweeping up bits of broken glass. Smitty seemed to be regaling Izzy and Marlena with embellished tales of former glory. My mom and the Unitarian minister were in some kind of tight knot of negotiation near the shattered coatrack.
“You know, darling,” Sebastian said. “This is kind of normal for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—” He waved his injured hand in the direction of the wreckage and our friends, and then he laughed softly. “I hope you’re not expecting a settled life with me.”
I had to laugh too, although another sob caught in my throat. “Oh, Sebastian,” I said, laying my head against his shoulder. “I never defeated the curse. Teréza won.”
Sebastian kissed the top of my head softly. “Not by a long shot,” he whispered. “We’re still together.”
I pulled my head up to look him in the eye. “We are, aren’t we?”
He flashed me a soft smile. “To me, that’s what’s important.”
I kissed him, full on the mouth. “You’re right,” I said once I pulled away. “That is all that matters.”
As we were sitting there, my mother came up to me. Unexpectedly, she came down beside me and gave me a big, giant hug. I could feel her arms shaking a little, and I wrapped mine around her and squeezed as tightly as I had when I was four. Into my ear, she said, “You should wear whatever makes you happy. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“I love you too, Mom,” I said.
The police showed up a few minutes later. While the
minister talked to the two uniforms, Izzy and I organized people to help board up the broken windows.
The officer who took my statement seemed pretty unconvinced, despite having heard the story six times already. He had curly black hair cut almost military short, and his face had a lot of rough edges like he’d been a professional boxer in his younger days.
“So you didn’t see these, uh, priests come crashing through the windows?”
I’d seen the one come through the doors, but not the first assault. I shook my head. “I was downstairs with my dad.”
“Uh-huh,” he said and raised his eyebrows like I just told him that I liked to snort marshmallows up my nose. Eventually, after dutifully writing it all down, they left.
The minister thanked us for helping clean things up, but she told us she still had to call the insurance company and things like that. As we left, I apologized profusely, and Sebastian quietly made arrangements for a “donation” to help cover the costs. The wedding party stood around outside in the cold, dark night, wondering what to do. So I invited everyone back to the farm, and we picked up takeout on the way. Someone, it might have been Smitty, raided a liquor store and bought enough wine and beer for everyone.
We had an impromptu post-rehearsal dinner, casual-style.
Chinese noodles and beer can cure a lot of ills, as can silly stories told by a man with an Australian accent. It didn ’t take long before the house rang with laughter. Even Benjamin didn’t complain about all the company for once. Barney came out and had her pick of laps. After soliciting scratches from nearly everyone present, she chose my dad to snooze on, of course. He ’d had one beer and fallen asleep in the armchair closest to the fireplace.
Sebastian disappeared upstairs to change out of his bloody shirt. I followed after to check up on him. Someone hooted, like we were off to do some hanky-panky. Much laughter and good-natured teasing ensued. Upstairs, I found him struggling with his clothes.
“I lost blood,” Sebastian noted, as I helped him out of his jacket. The shaft had made an ugly hole in his hand, but I could tell it was already healing. Still, I thought it could use some Bacitracin or something. Given how fast Sebastian recovered, I worried that infection could set in even as the wound closed.
“You can have some of mine,” I offered when I came back from the bathroom with the salve. “Blood, I mean.”
Sebastian sat on the bed. He smiled at me a bit wickedly. “I thought you assured your friends your intentions were honorable.”
“They are,” I said, handing him the tube of disinfectant. “The entire wedding party is downstairs. We can’t have sex.”
He squeezed out a handful of goo and slapped it over the puncture haphazardly, like it was suntan lotion or something. “Why not? It’d be naughty.”