Chapter Twenty-Seven—Love Hurts
The rhythmic swish-thwap of the windshield wipers was oddly soothing. Brittany focused on the steady sound. If she concentrated hard enough, she could almost keep herself from thinking about anything else.
Like the fact that Rodriguez didn’t love her. Or trust her. Or even like her very much.
He had looked at her with such burning contempt, as if she disgusted him. As if she were just as bad as the women who just wanted to use him as a convenient trophy. How could he think that of her?
A sob hitched in her throat and Brittany forced back the thoughts of Rodriguez. The road, the wipers, the rain. Things. She needed to think about objects. Objects wouldn’t hurt her. They couldn’t break her heart.
The front gate of her parents’ estate loomed in front of her. She hadn’t made a conscious decision to come here.
Brittany gave a bitter laugh that turned into a whimper on the way out. Where else could she go? She’d run away to grab her great new life with both hands, only to realize it had all been an illusion. Just some pretty picture she’d dreamed up. The man she’d actually convinced herself was in love with her thought she was just some spoiled rich bitch. She’d never be able to keep her job now that Rodriguez had announced to half the consultants that she’d flagrantly violated the intra-office dating policy.
And she’d be lucky if Lucy ever spoke to her again after the spectacle she’d made in the middle of her rehearsal dinner. So much for friends and her fledgling career as an event planner.
She’d tried to live a real life only to discover it came with real pain, the kind that couldn’t be fixed with a pill or a surgery. She’d lived with a busted heart for most of her life, but it had never felt like this. She’d wanted adventure, life instead of survival, but she wasn’t sure she could handle it if this was what it would feel like.
She pulled into the garage and cut the engine. The realization finally hit that she was going to have to face her parents. She’d been awful to them. She’d left them to worry for days. She knew without a shadow of a doubt they would welcome her back with open arms, but that only made her guilt that much sharper.
She trudged up the stairs and toward the sitting room where her parents often spent evenings. Would they even be home? What if they’d gone to some party? Out painting the town without a care in the world. What if they weren’t worried about her at all? Could they be relieved she was gone?
Then she walked in the room and saw them there, her mother ignoring the book in her lap and her father tapping away at the laptop at his writing desk. Relief made her knees weak and her chest feel tight.
“I’m sorry.” She sniffled wetly.
Both of their heads snapped up at the sound of her voice. Her mother gasped, her hand flying to her throat. “Brittany.”
Her mother looked awful, her eyes sunken and shadowed, and guilt stabbed into Brittany’s stomach again. She’d caused that. Her father stood, holding the back of his chair and staring at her steadily, like she might be a mirage.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “You were right. You were right to think I couldn’t make it on my own. I belong here. Where I’m safe. I should never have yelled at you for trying to protect me from the real world. You were right. The real world sucks.”
“Brittany,” her mother said again, with a soft catch in her voice.
She couldn’t stop now. She had to get her confession out. Clear the slate. “I snuck out and got a job behind your back. It was only supposed to be a temp job, working as a secretary for a unique consulting firm, but it was so much more than that. I was important and helpful. For the first time in my life, I had a purpose. I was working at Karmic Consultants. I was planning a wedding. And then I met someone and he seemed so perfect. Everything seemed so perfect, but I was just ignoring the bad things. Like I always ignore the bad things.” Her jaw quivered, but she kept talking. There was still more she needed to say. “When I was sick, I needed to pretend everything was going to be okay, even when I didn’t really believe it. I wasn’t
strong
, like you guys and the doctors always told me I was. I was wrapped up in some stupid fairy tale where the princess gets a brand new heart and Prince Charming to go along with it. But the world doesn’t work like that. I kept pretending he was my happily ever after, but he…”
“Who is he?” her father demanded.
“You just tell your father his name and he’ll take care of it,” her mother added.
“There’s nothing to take care of,” Brittany said, defeat weighing heavily on her. “He’s just a lesson I learned.”
She hadn’t taken more than two steps into the room and her parents had remained frozen in place. They weren’t much for gushy reunions, the Hylton-VanDeeres. She wanted them to run to her and wrap her in their arms the way they had when she was little and sick and wouldn’t admit how scared she was, but they just watched her like they weren’t quite certain who she was anymore.
She wasn’t entirely certain herself.
Brittany sighed, feeling utterly defeated. “I’m going to go to bed. We can talk about this in the morning.”
Or never. Maybe they could just go back to how things had been before, when she never left the apartment downstairs and horticulture experts were brought to her for consultations.
It wasn’t such a bad life. So why did the thought of returning to it make her want to curl up into a ball and cry for a week?
Brittany waved half-heartedly and turned to go. Part of her wanted them to call her back, to demand explanations or offer unconditional forgiveness, but behind her there was nothing but silence.
She made her way down to her apartment. Her body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Her chest ached and she ran her thumb up and down along her scar. Had he just slept with her out of pity? Was that it? Give the poor sick girl a thrill.
She locked the door to her apartment and leaned against it, too exhausted to go farther into her rooms. The sitting room, like the rest of the apartment, had been decorated exactly to her tastes, but now it all looked foreign. She missed Luis’s house.
How could she have been so happy there if it was all a lie? Was she really so deluded?
She wanted to hate Rodriguez. It would be so much easier if she did. But she couldn’t seem to reprogram her heart. It was stuck on him. He’d been a complete jerk, accusing her of being some materialistic twit and shouting about their affair to everyone they worked with, but some part of her refused to believe he wasn’t the man she thought he was. The man she’d fallen in love with. She couldn’t have been that wrong about him. Could she?
A knock sounded against the door behind her back and Brittany flinched. A few minutes ago she’d wanted nothing more than her parents to wrap her up and keep away the world, but now she wanted to be alone. To face the wreck she’d made of her life by herself.
The knock came again and Brittany turned, pressing one palm flat against the door, but not opening it. “I’m really tired, Mom,” she called through the wood. “Can we please talk about this tomorrow?”
The door rattled then burst open, knocking her back a step. Red glowing eyes and gleaming rows of shark teeth looked back at her.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Mikos hissed. “I’m afraid this can’t wait until tomorrow.”
He reached a hand toward her. Before he even touched her, her vision went red. She tried to scream, but choked instead. The air was suddenly sulfur and brimstone instead of oxygen. Her body seemed to fall away as the red melted into black.
The demon was the only one there to catch her as she fell into the void.
Chapter Twenty-Eight—Murphy’s Law of Weddings
“What do you mean the dress is missing? You can’t actually mean
the
dress.” Karma felt her cool slipping away as Lucy stood in front of her in a bathrobe, visibly panicking. They were standing in a back room of the church—which so far had not been set ablaze by a rogue lightning strike, though it was still raining like the end of days outside.
“
The
dress,” Lucy confirmed, her blue eyes glistening like she was on the verge of tears. “Missing. I put it in the dressing room myself and now,
poof
, it’s just gone.”
“It has to be here somewhere. Where’s Brittany?”
“No one knows. The caterer has been calling and asking for her all morning. I can hear in her voice that something is wrong, but she won’t tell me anything. I think she just doesn’t want to upset the bride.”
Jo ran into the room in full bridesmaid regalia, nearly knocking Lucy off her feet in the process. She steadied her cousin, speaking in rapid-fire staccato. “The valet just slammed the violinist’s hand in a car door.”
Lucy flinched and held her hands up over her ears. “My God, everything that can go wrong…”
“On the plus side, he didn’t crash the car, which cannot be said of Jake’s dad’s. And my mom’s.” Lucy cut Jo a sharp look and Jo rolled her eyes. “No, I did not pay him to crash my mom’s car. If I had, I would have had the videographer tape it. Speaking of whom, has anyone seen the videographer? He was here earlier, but now no one can find him. Isn’t he supposed to be capturing the pre-wedding meltdown for posterity?”
Karma felt the beginnings of a headache starting behind her eyes. “Is the valet really crashing cars?”
Jo shrugged. “Fender benders. No major damage. Yet.”
Lucy groaned. “Please don’t tell me anything else. All we need is me, Jake, the minister and a witness. Everything else is negotiable.”
Jo looked from Lucy to Karma and back again. She fidgeted from foot to foot until Karma’s limited patience shattered. “What?”
“Am I supposed to tell Lucy if there’s something wrong with the minister or does that fall under the category of not telling her anything else?”
Karma closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “What’s wrong with the minister, Jo?”
“Apparently he’s violently allergic to lilies.”
Karma’s eyes popped open. “Oh, dear.”
Lucy’s eyes flared with horror. “The entire sanctuary is filled with lilies.”
“Yeah, hence the problem. He’s sneezing so hard he can barely breathe, let alone speak. Where’s Brittany? She can zap him with her good-luck mojo and permanently cure his hay fever.”
“Brittany’s MIA.”
Jo didn’t seem concerned by Lucy’s dire pronouncement. “Did you try Rodriguez’s place? After the blow up last night and the way he ran after her, they’re probably still having make-up sex. I could barely walk this morning from all of Wyatt’s attempts to make up for talking about marriage in front of my mom. The man has stamina in spades, especially when he’s trying to screw me into forgiving him.”
“Too much information, Jo.” Lucy turned to her boss with a hopeful desperation in her eyes. “Do you think they’re together somewhere making up?”
“I hope so. I haven’t been able to get in touch with either one of them.” Karma pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. She refused to get a headache.
Jo just shrugged. “We’ve still got, what, almost two hours before the ceremony starts? No problem. She’ll be here any minute and things will magically start working. I have confidence.”
Karma had a feeling Jo’s confidence had more to do with the lingering effects of Wyatt’s stamina than anything else. She would share that confidence as soon as she could get a hold of either her exorcist or the wedding planner. Or anyone who knew where either of them were. She’d even tried Brittany’s emergency contact number.
The Hylton-VanDeeres had been vague at first, as if protecting Brittany. Karma had been relieved, sure she’d run home to Mommy and Daddy, but then she’d overheard “What do you mean she’s not here? Her car is here!” and all of that relief had gone up in smoke.
At that instant, her instincts had started screaming bloody murder and her instincts were rarely wrong. Brittany was in some kind of trouble. The wedding problems were just a symptom.
A motorcycle roared outside.
“That’s a Harley.” Jo hurried to the window. “It must be them. No, I’m wrong. Just him. Where’d he leave Brittany? Doesn’t he realize we need her mojo?”
Karma caught Jo before she could rush off to interrogate Rodriguez. She spun her around and pointed her toward the corner were Lucy was ransacking cupboards looking for a bridal gown that wouldn’t have fit inside any of them. “Stay here. Look for the dress. Try not to freak Lucy out. I’ll handle Rodriguez.”
Jo saluted. Karma left Lucy in her somewhat capable hands and walked as quickly as she could without drawing attention to herself out to the parking lot. Most of the guests hadn’t arrived yet. Only the bridal party and a few family members were onsite, but there was no sense spreading panic.
Jo and Lucy were panicking enough for everyone. Not that they didn’t have cause. Things weren’t exactly going smoothly this morning.
Visions of Lucy in her bathrobe and Jake in a pair of jeans being married by a man who wheezed out the words between sneezes swam in front of Karma’s eyes. She shook them away. That was
not
a premonition. She refused to allow it to be one. They would get Brittany back.
“Rodriguez!”
Her exorcist froze in the process of removing his helmet, looking guilty enough to have Karma’s equilibrium wavering and her headache intensifying.
“What did you do? Where’s Brittany?”
“What makes you think I did anything?” he asked defensively. “And how should I know where she is?”
“You weren’t just with her? After the show you put on last night, we were hoping you were off somewhere making up. You haven’t seen her?”
“Not since the
show
,” he growled. “She took off.”
“She went home, but her parents can’t find her either. She didn’t even take her car. She just vanished into thin air.”
“Vanished.” Rodriguez paled. “The demon.” He took a half step toward his motorcycle then hesitated. He wore his uncertainty like it was an accessory to the dark suit he had on. “Maybe you should send Edwin.”
Karma’s tenuous hold on her patience evaporated. Men were such
idiots.
“I’m sending you. You are the one I originally instructed to capture this demon. You are the one who will find him and bring her back. She trusts you.”
“I’m not so sure… After last night…”
“Man up, Rodriguez!” she snapped. “Apologize. Grovel. You know you were an ass. The entire wedding party knows you were an ass. Stop being such a pussy. Find her, admit you love her, beg her forgiveness and
get her back here to fix everything that’s going wrong
. Am I clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Good boy. Now get going.”
Karma turned away from her exorcist and whipped out her cell phone, dialing a number by heart as she walked back into the church. It went through to voicemail and Karma cursed violently, barely registering the shocked glance the minister shot her between sneezes. At the beep, she kept her voice steady and smooth. No panicking. “Ciara? I need you to find a wedding dress.
Now
. Call me back the second you get this.”
Her best finder was always home—she was practically a shut in—but she also never answered her phone if she was in the middle of using her abilities. The problem with
finding
something Ciara’s way was it could take five seconds or five hours. She might not even get the message until well after the ceremony.
Karma briefly considered calling Chase, but her second-best finder was on an extended honeymoon in Bali. She wasn’t even sure there was cell-phone reception in Bali.
The witches would take too long to whip up a finding spell. They never did anything in a hurry, claiming that rushing messed up the magic.
She mentally scanned through her consultants, trying to find one who would be able to wave a magic wand and fix this entire mess, but all she kept seeing was Brittany.
She was one of them. The Karmic Consultants’ good-luck charm. And they needed her back. Nothing would be right again until they had her, but that was only half the reason.
Karma swallowed thickly. Brittany was one of hers now. She had to be okay. Nothing else was acceptable.