Page 46 of A Dead End Wedding

“No, Lorraine. Absolutely no animal print decorations for the church.”

“But—”

I groaned. “No! I don’t care that Jack is a tiger shifter. We’re not turning the church into a cut-rate Elvis wedding chapel!”

“What abouttigerlilies?” Eleanor, my formerly favorite employee, asked me with a straight face.

Wait.

Toostraight of a face.

“Are you guys … are youpunkingme?” I couldn’t believe it. With everything else going on, and the danger of whatever we’d have to face that night from the Fae, my Aunt Ruby and her evil buddies were punking me.

About my wedding.

Aunt Ruby couldn’t answer, because she was bent over laughing. As were her two partners in crime.

“Oh, sure,” I muttered. “Tess, we’ll help you out. Tess, we’ll take care of everything. Now, I’m not under enough stress that you have to terrorize me with animal print? That’s it. I’m done.”

I stood and walked down the aisle toward the door. I was mostly kidding.

Mostly.

“Tess! I didn’t raise you to be rude,” Aunt Ruby began, but Lorraine cut her off, still laughing.

“Ruby, don’t even try that. The poor girl is right. We need to shape up.”

“If you can keep from torturing me for twenty minutes, I’ll buy you lunch,” I told them over my shoulder, but I kept walking.

I had so much to do that my lists had lists. Only three days left, and we hadn’t heard from the Fae, and …

I stepped out onto the porch to see Rhys na Garanwyn and his full complement of followers.

“What’s the deal, your prince-ship? Can’t go anywhere without your minions?”

His charming smile slipped. “I beg your pardon?”

“Yes. You should beg my pardon. I’d think an important royal person such as yourself would have better things to do than hang out in Dead End and torture the mortals. Especially when one of us—me—is trying to pull off a wedding in three days.”

He narrowed his unfairly beautiful eyes. “Why are you being rude to me? You invited a troll to your wedding! How can you be nice to a troll, but not to me?”

His obvious astonishment ended my grumpy mood instantly. The poor guy really couldn’t believe anybody would prefer a troll’s company over that of his beautiful self.

“Well, beauty isn’t really beautiful when it’s only on the outside, is it? Think about that!”

Behind me, I heard my three flower girls gasp.

“Tess, don’t annoy the scary Fae prince,” Eleanor said in a stage whisper.

“Yes!” Rhys pointed to Eleanor. “Listen to her! I’m scary!”

“Okay, sure. You’re so scary. Ooh! I’m scared.” I waved my hands around and pretended to shudder, realizing somewhere beneath my bravado that he really could squash me like a bug, but not caring.

I’d had enough of these Fae playing with our lives.

“Just spit it out. What do you want? Are you here to tell me which of my family members you want to put through something awful next?”

His face had grown colder and colder as I talked. When I paused for a breath, he leaned forward on his horse.

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