I was happy. I was sitting in my bedroom with my best girlfriends and we were gossiping about my wedding—my wedding. My wedding to the sexiest, most loving, smartest Vampyre in the whole freakin’ world. In four more days I would be a married dead person—totally unheard of and so very exciting. As long as we could follow Jeff’s no-sex edict, everything would be just fine.
Maybe.
“How is Charles doing?” Dixie asked as she breezed into my bedroom with about ten overloaded shopping bags in her hands.
“No clue,” I answered, eyeing the bags with materialistic curiosity. “He assures me it’s all good, but that doesn’t mean shit.”
“The invitations are lovely, albeit a little untraditional,” Raquel said as she narrowed the Chanel nail polishes down to two.
“You got an invitation?” I asked, perplexed and somewhat annoyed. “I never okayed an invitation. How in the Hell did you get an invitation? The little three-headed fucker doesn’t even have a guest list to go off of. We were supposed to do that later today. Did all of you get invitations?” I asked way too calmly as my fingers began to spark. Thank Uncle God I’d put the dresses away. I’d be pissed if I fried one to a crisp.
My bevy of bridesmaids nodded cautiously and backed away from my flickering fingers. I glared hard at the ceiling and counted to thirty-three and a half. The wedding was only four days away and I knew all of these things had to get done, but I was pretty sure I was supposed to have a say.
“Is this normal?” I demanded of my girls.
Everyone glanced around nervously and shrugged. It was a stupid question. Most of them were hundreds of years old and none of them had ever been married.
“Dude, I say unless Charles invited clowns it’s all good. Dixie cast a spell on him to know everything about weddings. Right?” Gemma asked, trying to spin a possible clusterfuck into a positive clusterfuck.
“I did,” Dixie promised. “And I thought the skulls, coffins and bloody fangs were a nice touch. I especially thought the nude photo of Ethan’s ass was inspired.”
“What?” I screeched and darted around the room in a panic. “Ethan’s ass is on our wedding invitation? You have got to be kidding me. He’s going to kill me and then Charles is definitely a goner. This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. There is no way in Hell I’m gonna be able to keep Charles now. Shitballsmotherhumpinassholeplantations.”
“Whoa there, Nelly! I was joking,” Dixie said as she grabbed me before I took flight and pulled me in for a hug. “That was a joke. Ethan’s fine backside has not been revealed to the world.”
“Asshole plantations?” Gemma questioned with a wince.
“Did I say asshole plantations?” I asked somewhat perturbed that I didn’t even know that had come out of my mouth. We were definitely going to have to get Samuel another baboon.
“You did.”
“My bad,” I apologized.
“I should say so,” Gemma chastised with mock severity even though she was trying not to laugh.
“Holy Hell,” I muttered as I sagged in Dixie’s arms. “I think I’m too wound up for jokes this week. My swearing is off and I don’t even know what asshole plantation means. But the worst of the worst is that I’m not allowed to get laid until after the wedding. It’s messing with my chi.”
“Seriously?” Raquel asked. “That sucks.”
“Tell me about it. Jeff, that premarital Angel, is a butthole,” I griped, still wildly relieved that my mate’s fine hiney wasn’t being revealed to the immortal population. “Wait a minute. What about the fangs, coffins and the skulls?”
Everyone went silent.
Awesome. Fucking awesome.
“Well… I thought you’d be so relieved that Ethan’s butt wasn’t out there to be admired by everyone we know that the reality of the invite wouldn’t be so bad,” Dixie explained with a forced smile.
“I see what you did there.” I nodded in appreciation at my cousin’s crafty skill. “However, skulls, coffins and fangs are not on the top of my list of classy shit to put on my wedding invitation. I mean the fangs are kind of okay, but why in the living Hell would that three headed dork have put skulls on the damn thing? And a fucking coffin? It’s not a freakin’ funeral.”
“I get the fangs,” Paris said thoughtfully. “And the coffin might be a nod to the fact we’re dead. Kind of gross, but I get it. The skulls? Not so much.”
Letting my head fall back on my shoulders I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that my invitations didn’t look like a high school goth party gone bad. Did it really matter? I mean people just glanced at those things, noted the date and sent in a response. They’d forget about the wildly inappropriate piece of paper in no time. Hell, I wasn’t even going to ask what the RSVP cards looked like. As of this moment I was going forward with the motto don’t explain, don’t complain. However, I was definitely going to set Charles straight about doing things without my permission. If that three headed Gollum-wannabe freakshow was planning on living here, he was going to have to abide by my rules. And sending out shitty wedding invitations was a big fat fucking no-no.
“I’m good now,” I told my doubtful friends. “However, if Charles does anything else that heinous, he’ll be sporting two heads instead of three.”
“I think that’s a very good attitude,” Venus congratulated me. “You ready for a surprise?”