Page 31 of Tell Me Why
Tell didn’t want people showing up during the day.
Tina appreciated that.
Tell put his hand out to her again and she took it, following him back toward the parking garage.
“At the party, you can feed as you like,” he said. “Just do it privately. We’ll have non-fountains there.”
She nodded.
“Why here and not back at the club?”
“Various reasons,” he said. “What we do is reasonably discreet, but there are places that will try to trap you with evidence of a feed. Or push you onto a fountain who will play ignorant for the right money. They might try to drug you to influence how you feel about them or your decisions, if they think you’re important, or even just to rob you. I did it to prove to Andromedus that I trusted him enough to do it, but you were right to be cagey. You wouldn’t have the experience to know when you were being taken advantage of, and I do. He was checking whether you were stupid enough to go along.”
“So I did it right,” she said, and he nodded.
“We need to go meet the wedding decorator,” he said. “She’s got a few hours to work before dawn. If you can supervise her, I’m going to talk to a party planner and get that moved along.”
“Gothic themed,” Tina said.
“Yes,” he said wryly, unlocking the car door and letting her in.
“With flowers,” she said.
“Yes,” he said again.
“You suppose they’re black-and-white flowers?” she asked.
“I can’t wait to find out,” he answered.
The woman cameto play ball.
Tina was astonished, watching her work, the gear that she and her tiny but highly energetic assistant managed to disgorge from their giant white van. She’d expected the woman had oversold Tell and would come set up some curtains, but what she actually had was Chinese dressing screens made of solid metal, wrought iron covered with silver-threaded black mesh, and Tinahad spent a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out where the catch was.
“How many gothic-themed weddings do you do?” Tina had asked, and the woman had laughed in a put-upon way, as though Tina were interrupting an intense schedule of work.
“Honey, the things I’ve pulled together at the last minute would shock you,” she said.
And that was the last she spoke to her as she got the rest of the decorations pulled out and arranged. The assistant was constantly making little comments, here and there, and Tina didn’t know if they were for her benefit or not, but they were clever, and it made her smile.
And then they were gone, and the basement was set up for a wedding.
Complete with metallic silver and black flowers.
As dawn was approaching, the woman presented a bill to Tell and left with her chipper assistant, and Tina went to stand behind the wrought-iron wall.
“One layer instead of several, but it will help,” Tell said. “The party is set.”
She could feel that it was going to be better, but the sun was bearing down on her again.
“Go on,” Tell said. “I’ll make sure we’ve got everything locked down for the day.”
She nodded, blinking hard as she walked back to her room.
It was still a lot.
She missed Viella.
Most of the time,Tell’s parties came together without any real awareness on Tina’s part. They went from his phone to Kirsten, and then everything just showed up and was taken care of.
