“Thank you for the moral support.” I threw the pillow at her head. “Your overwhelming confidence in me being able to make a deal with the Devil is heartwarming.”
“Dude, you don’t have a heart.”
“Now that’s just rude,” I snapped. However she was correct. Technically I had one, but it didn’t beat and I don’t breathe.
“Look,” Gemma said as she got on the massive bed and shoved me over. “You just have to reason with him.”
“He’s the Devil. Don’t think reasoning will work.”
“Fine. Blackmail him. Do you still have the recording of him singing Journey songs in his sleep?” she asked with a wince.
“Oh my Uncle God, I do.”
During a horrendous sleepover on Christmas Eve, I’d recorded my Uncle Satan singing in his sleep. He’d decimated most of Journey’s Greatest Hits in the key of Z minor. It was all kinds of ear-bleeding awful and it would be all kinds of awesome to use it to my advantage.
“You know he wouldn’t hesitate to blackmail you if he wanted something badly enough. Case in point, forcing you to spend the biggest day of your life in Hell,” Gemma reasoned.
“This is true.” A smile pulled at my lips as I imagined the look of horror on Satan’s face when he heard himself singing. “But it’s kind of mean and could backfire in a big bad way.”
“It is, and it could,” she agreed with a thoughtful nod. “Maybe you should just go with the flow. Let him close the portals… getting married in Hell might not be that bad.”
The glare I gave her simply made her laugh. I was losing my touch. “It’s not funny. Shall I define not that bad for you?”
“Please do,” Gemma said as she sat up and pulled her knees to her chest trying unsuccessfully to bite back her smile.
I wanted to wipe the grin off of her lovely face and the gritty details of my nuptials in Hell would certainly do it.
“Well,” I said, as I piled the pillows into a small mountain and got comfortable. “Mother Nature has two thousand on her guest list and Satan has three thousand. At Christmas, Gigi offered to cater the affair. That alone is enough to cut the RSVP list of immortal whack jobs down to about twenty-five hundred attendees who will most likely die of food poisoning. That will be one stinky health hazard. On top of that, there’s no doubt that Mother Nature will pole dance since Satan has stripper poles all over the Dark Palace. I’m fairly sure my Uncle still has plans to abduct Steve Perry again, who by the way, is a Unicorn and I’m gonna guess that the dress code will be all black.”
“Dude.” Gemma shook her head and looked appropriately horrified. “Wait. Steve Perry is a Unicorn? An honest to God Unicorn?”
“Apparently. It’s certainly sheds some light as to why he wasn’t so freaked out on Christmas morning when the Sins had him bound and gagged under the tree for Satan.”
“You have to blackmail your uncle,” Gemma announced with fierce determination. “And I can’t believe Steve Perry is a freakin’ Unicorn.”
“Right? But if you really think about it, it makes sense in a farked up way. I mean his hair does kind look like a mane,” I pointed out.
“Good use of the word farked,” Gemma congratulated me.
“Thank you,” I said, accepting her praise. I’d been trying to curb my potty mouth since my son was a repeater.
“But when I think of a Unicorn I picture My Little Pony—you know, all rainbow-y and weird—kind of scary like a clown. Clowns totally skeeve me out.” Gemma shuddered.
“Clowns are fucking petrifying,” I agreed. “But I picture the all white Unicorn from that movie Legend with Tom Cruise. But that wouldn’t be right for Steve. I’d think he would be all black with maybe a red mane and a purple horn.”
“No, I think he’d be chocolate brown with a multicolored mane and a silver horn that lights up like a rock concert,” Gemma mused aloud.
We both let that visual sink in for a moment.
“Do you realize that if normal people could hear us right now, we’d be institutionalized?” I asked with a giggle.
“Dude, not a day goes by that I don’t wonder the same thing.” Gemma blew out a long sigh and flopped back on the bed. “We’re the weirdos.”
“Agreed. Think about it, we make clowns look safe for children. I’m dead and you’re a Fairy. We can both fly, my uncle is Beelzebub, and I’m basically unkillable. Normal left the train station a long fucking time ago.”
“Clowns are supposed to be safe for children,” she countered.
“That’s a total conspiracy and I call bullshit on that. I’ve had nightmares about clowns my entire life.”
“Word,” Gemma agreed with a shudder.
Both of our lives had changed dramatically in the past year. I’d tried to quit smoking and ended up undead and she found out she was the long awaited reincarnation of the Fairy Queen. Creepy clowns had nothing on us.
Of course, I’d met the love of my undead life and had a child against all odds since my plumbing didn’t exactly work anymore. Fortunately, I was the Chosen One and it was all part of the prophecy. My son, Samuel, was the light of my world and I wouldn’t go back to my old life for all the money of the greedy Vampyres combined—even though not being able to eat food was a bitch.
“So what are you going to do, Astrid?” Gemma asked softly as she played with my hair.