Page 18 of A Dead End Wedding

The cheers were loud enough to blow the roof clear off the building.

“It’s not quite nine, and the competition is at midnight in the town square. So, Mr. Frost and I are going to go home and sit out on our front porch for a spell.” She raised her chin, but I was close enough to see the slight tremble in her lips. “Just in case it’s the last chance we get to do it. We don’t know what they have planned for us, but we’re going to win. Dead Enders never quit!”

The standing ovation lasted a long, long time as Mrs. Frost made her way offstage. When Aunt Ruby stepped back to the podium to close the meeting, several hands shot up.

“Oh, do we have new business?” Aunt Ruby looked like she might close the meeting anyway, but then she gave a little shrug and pointed. “Sapphire?”

Sapphire Penn, editor and owner of the Dead End Gazette, shot to her feet. Her hair was rainbow colors instead of her usual blue, and she had a few new piercings in her ears. She was effortlessly the kind of cool I could never aspire to, only admire.

“Yes, Mayor. The real question everybody wants to ask is this: Which wedding dress did Tess pick?”

Everyone in the room turned to stare at me. To my utter dismay, several women stood up holding wedding dresses in their arms.

“Mine!”

“No, mine!”

“Nobody would want to wear that ugly dress, Mabel. It was even ugly clear back in the 1972, when you wore it!”

When a wave of wedding-dress carrying women started toward me, Jack grabbed my hand, and we ran.

We barely made it out of the auditorium’s back door unscathed. Jack propped a heavy wrought-iron bench against the door, so nobody could open it, and gave me a wild-eyed look. “Listen. The offer to elope is still on the table. I’m begging you. Everybody in town is going nuts over this wedding!”

I crossed my arms. “Jack Shepherd, if you ever want me to bake anything for you again in your life, you’ll drop the eloping idea. I want my family and friends there, and I want the whole shebang.”

He picked me up, held me close, and kissed the stuffing out of me. “Then the whole shebang you get. Did I mention today that I love you, Tess Callahan?”

Turns out, he had.

But I was always happy to hear it again.

8

Jack

Wednesday: Wedding minus 10 days

Fifteen minutes till midnight

Dead End town square at midnight is not usually a hotbed of activity. Except during the many—and I’m not kidding about many—festivals, the town rolled up the sidewalks after dinner. Sure, the nightlife had been more exciting since Connor opened his pub, but it was Wednesday night, not a weekend.

“Hey, there’s Connor,” Tess said, waving. She had an uncanny ability to home in on what I was thinking, but I still wasn’t sure if it was a supernatural ability related to her gift or just one of the glorious mysteries of Tess.

“This is not the Dead End I know,” Sheriff Susan said, walking over to us. She was wearing her dress uniform and stood stiffly correct. The Fae appreciated ceremony, and Susan knew it.

“You’re not kidding,” I muttered.

The town square was transformed. Lit torches burned on all sides, providing plenty of light. The gazebo was gone, hopefully not permanently, because Ruby would have a fit. Fae warriors on horses lined up in parade formation, ten on each side of the square. They were keeping the Dead Enders out, but I didn’t know if that was their intention or people were simply wary of moving past them.

“We stopped by to pick up Mrs. Frost, but she was already gone,” Tess told Susan.

“She asked Andy to pick her up,” Susan said, scanning the crowd.

Any crowd this size could turn into a riot, as she and I both knew. Especially if the results weren’t what we were all hoping for.

“Okay. Game time,” I said, feeling that inimitable tingle of Fae queen magic. “She’s going to appear dramatically right in the middle of the square in three, two, one.”

And there she was.

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