“Is it your time of the month?” Satan asked giving me a sad face.
“I’m a fucking Vampyre,” I shouted. Black glitter covered my arms and my fingers sparked dangerously. I was seconds away from burning a nice big hole in my uncle’s very expensive, custom Armani suit. “I don’t have a time of the month. Furthermore, a man should never ask a woman that question unless he’s ready to die violently. Only women can ask each other that appalling question.”
“Well, you are half Demon. I just thought…”
“Don’t think,” I hissed. “It never turns out well.”
“Astrid, Astrid, Astrid,” he said silkily. A smile lit his eyes and turned them a glittering red. “You’re such a spicy one. It delights me to no end to see you’ve inherited some of my traits.”
“The spicy part is from me,” a disembodied voice cut in, scaring the crap out of me and eliciting a surprisingly shrill, girly scream from the Devil.
“Damn it, Mother. What have I told you about speaking without your body arriving first?” Satan bellowed in a far deeper voice than usual in an attempt to negate the high pitched squeal he’d just produced.
“I do believe you threatened to smite my ass,” Mother Nature, aka my grandmother Gigi, said with a giggle. “I’d love to see you try.”
Her arrival was grand and destructive, as was everything she did. A few flowering trees blasted up out of the hardwood floor and tore through the center of a priceless Persian rug. A colorful flock of teal and magenta birds floated around her head and a small shimmering rainbow popped up near the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Her gown was a riot of gossamer color that matched her feathered friends. Her red hair was piled fashionably on her head framing a face that would make Angels weep. She was otherworldly beautiful. She knew it and she loved it.
I glanced around the room and shut my eyes. Ethan was going to have a fit and I didn’t blame him. However, it was business as usual with my extended family. Either something exploded or we gained an indoor jungle. If I had to choose, I’d take the wildlife sanctuary hands down.
“Astrid, my sweetheart,” Gigi purred, air kissing my cheeks. “I understand you’re going to get married in Hell.”
I shot a glare at Satan which would have made anyone with a lick of sense duck for cover. He just grinned.
“You understood wrong, Gigi,” I corrected her.
“Well, thank goodness for that,” she huffed and gave her son a victorious raised brow. “We shall have the wedding in Nirvana. I throw a wonderful party and I have a petting zoo.”
And the day got worse. Gigi was prone to fits that brought down cities when she didn’t get her way.
“Actually,” I said calmly, even though my insides danced wildly. “I was thinking we would have the wedding here—at the Cressida House.”
“But it’s so common to get married on Earth.” Mother Nature pouted as she examined the treasures on Ethan’s desk with interest. “You’re a True Immortal and Ethan’s a Prince. You simply can’t get married here. What would everyone think?”
“Honestly, I don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks,” I said as I watched her eye a tape dispenser and covertly slip it into her Chanel purse. “And who in the Hell is everyone?”
“Oh, you know, all the Angels and Saints,” she said, pilfering a tray of paperclips.
“The Demons, Fairies, Vampyres, Trolls, and Gnomes,” Satan added and pocketed a jewel handled letter opener not to be outdone by his mother.
“And don’t forget about the Shifters and Unicorns,” Mother Nature reminded us as she moved on from the desk and over to the bookshelves to see if anything struck her fancy.
“Shut the fuck up!” I shouted, while silently vowing to buy Ethan new office supplies to offset the ransacking of his office by my relatives. “No one ever told me Unicorns existed.”
“Of course they do,” Mother Nature stated. “Very rare. Steve Perry is a Unicorn. And let me just suggest not extending an invitation to the Trolls or the Gnomes. They’re horrid guests and violent even by my standards.”
Well, that was certainly saying something.
“I had no intention of inviting anyone like that. I was planning on a family and close friends only wedding.”
I sat on my hands so I didn’t zap them through the roof for helping themselves to my mate’s belongings. The silence was alarming. However, the expressions on their faces almost made me laugh.
“Darling,” Mother Nature said, beginning to glow dangerously. “That simply won’t do. I have at least two thousand I was planning on inviting.”
“Two thousand what?” I asked. My entire body tingled in dread.
“People, darling,” she assured me. “Well, most of them are.”
“I have three thousand,” Satan bragged, clearly pleased to have more friends or more hostages than his mother. “The Cressida House is far too small, puny, and inconsequential to hold the guest list.”
“Okay, let’s get a few things straight here,” I snapped as I felt my hair begin to blow wildly around my head—never a good sign. “I am not having tens of thousands of freaks at my wedding. I have no desire to be the catalyst for the next war between the races. That would be an immortal shitshow.”
“She does have a point,” Mother Nature said to her son.