I just wanted a nice simple little wedding.
Me, my guy, a couple of vows, no Eternal Damnation. Maybe some
shoes that didn’t make my feet bleed.
But you’ve been thrown hard off the cliff of simple when you have to beg your mother to promise, promise, she won’t
fly up into the rafters and hoot.
She wasn’t exactly wild about the wedding thing. She wasn’t
exactly wild about men. Oh, you could say the divorce had done
a number on her. Say, something in the triple sixes. Or sevens.
Divorce, ha. As if anything was final. Or filed.
Still.
Some women get a tattoo and boink the new yoga instructor. Some fornicate with demons and swear to gnaw the bones of the offspring of man.
Whatever works.
She pulled some harpy about my choice of venue, too. I mean, really, could I go with an outdoor wedding? No. Too Garden. And too insect. Besides, I liked my church. Father John was the kind of priest who dressed up to jeans and a t-shirt. And he believed in the good and evil in all men, not in god or the devil.
That was fine with me. I knew devils, and they weren’t that
bad.
But my mother cringed under the stained glass archway like
she’d been blasted with a faceful of holy water, and, at the rehearsal last night, she smiled at the Rosenbaums’ newborn,
and asked them where the little squish slept.
I also had a bridesmaid problem.
Seriously.
My sisters shrieked to be bridesmaids.
All one thousand of them.
Now, I killed this. In a wholly logical and sympathetic manner. I sent out a group e-mail, with a glorious attachment of the dress I claimed my bridal heart demanded for its ever fair maids. It was a teal and pumpkin sin, with double puffed sleeves, a metric ton of bustle on its ass, and, of course, the loose A-tunic cut that is the blistering rage of fashion, a cut too grotesque and unflattering for even the most bloated and desperate of maternity gear, a cut that masks even a starving stick lacking any hint of hip or bosom into a wide load of double patty pregnant heifer. Oh, and hey, it was made out of coarse taffeta that would give even cast iron a seeping rash.
I figured I’d get a thousand acking replies of ‘Oops! I’m
Too Busy!’
But the lilim aren’t just the soul-sucking succubi who ravage
men and wet their dreams, they are also sisters. There was
only one thing to do: into the dress.
So I had to order an even thousand. Of the ugliest thing that
had ever fallen before the retina of mortal or immortal, a
thing so ugly Medusa averted her gaze from it, a thing so misbegotten
that the shop girl asked me with tears in her eyes if I was
really sure—and that girl was getting commission.
Of course, I got to see my sisters smile and slip those monsters on. But then I had to smile back. And the photos! Sweet all, the photos!
“Sweetie?” That was my guy, lowing through the locked door.
Okay, so I was also hiding in the vestibule, wringing my hands into Twizzlers.
“You okay?” He sounded kind of hollow, what with the cathedral
ceilings and all.
He also sounded frightened. That was either fears of the temperature of my feet, or one of my sisters had her teeth in him. Ugh, I hoped it was her teeth.
I whipped open the door.
He was alone.
And looking rather Bondish. It was the tux. The classic black and bow. The vest was a rather bit snazzier, but you had to be very close to see pirate skulls. His hair was still riding his scalp in every direction, with its own civilisation and eco-system, so, with that and the skulls, it was more like Tim Burton plays James Bond.
He ripped into the room sideways, clomping the door back with
his heel. He splayed himself against the door, eyes closed
tight, like an extra in the Living Dead. An extra about to
be—
“Al?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “We’re going to need therapy.”
“What?”
“I swear, I just overheard your mother ask mine if she liked
it on bottom.”
“I am so sorry.”
“What?” Al cracked open one eye.
“My family. I just—”
“Hey—”
My face twisted up, and tears splatted all over.
“Hey,” Al murmured, and got me in a good hug, rocking me while I tried to twist snot away from his shirt. “Is
that what this is about?”
I made a noise, something like gurg.
“Because I thought you were holed up from the new Hamlet.
And I get it. The EMF detector was a bit much.”
I made another gurg.
“Wait. It’s Supernatural, isn’t it? They don’t treat the Impala
right.”
I got my fist in his ribs.
“Okay, okay,” he choked. “I have the mother-in-law from hell, and your sisters are kind of…”
“Evil? Psycho? Sociopathic?”
“I was going to say skanky. Double fisted skanky. But,” he shrugged, “I
guess.”
I snorted. “Mara tried to bump her grind into Father John.
During the blessing. She bellowed his art should be in her
heaven. They heard her in Bloomsbury.”
“Yeah, well, my Uncle Stil sat in the front pew with his hand
down his gaping pants, looking around for the collection plate
because he wanted to pilfer for the vending machine.”
“Huh?”
“You’re not getting the light end of the deal, Kal. You’re just so mortified by your own clan, you’re ignoring mine. Aunt E just tore a chunk out of Genesis because she wanted scrap paper; my mom asked Father John where he keeps the wine, saying she needed to, um, defecate her face; and yippee, my father brought his fourth wife, and this one, she’s not old enough to remember when Transformers was a cartoon, and if she did, she couldn’t
follow the plot.”
“Harsh.”
“I calls them like I sees them.” He swung his grip on my hands, and sawed my arms back and forth, like I was on a ski machine. “Now,
are we going to go dance to some Eric Carmen, or are you going
to stay in here and mope in your tatty sweats?”
“Hey!” I clutched a tummy of my turquoise and fuchsia velour. “I
like these sweats!”
“I know. And they liked you. Five years ago.”
My dress was a cute little floral number, white with purple
and green, with a fifties flare and a dropped lace petticoat
to bell it out and girl it up. It was ill suited to a sweat-drenched
panic attack, and if I’d had a teddy bear stashed in the vestibule,
it would have joined the swap.
I could wriggle back into my dress and bop into the church hall like nothing happened. Or, I could stay in my lumpy comfort clothes.
I picked sweats, adding my battered sneakers, and shaking my hair out.
The hall was swaying, or at least a few random bits were listing languidly, to Chris deBurgh. My sisters had the space aglow. Literally.
Shelby was a fair representative. She was smiling at Al’s cousin, Cammie. He was leaning well into her bubble, his face smeared with a smile so oily it needed a double scrub with Ivory to reach sleazy. He had her smushed against a counter, and his hand, which had probably been smart enough to start contact at her arm or back, had drifted heavily into her bathing suit region. She was sparking, her hair and eyes giving off a tint of red. It wasn’t
something most people would notice. It was definitely something
a horny guy would never notice; a horny guy is oblivious to
any details below the subtlety of naked. But the sparking was
a dip stick test. It detected the presence of lust.
“You might want to save Cammie,” I sighed, jerking my head.
Al twisted away from a jab whacked by his Aunt Mill. She was in her eighties, and dancing with a horrifying smack-it sexy, complete with raised fists swinging and sharp elbows.
Tip. Wailing away like an angry mime in toxic spasm? Never sexy.
Edging around Mill’s flailing thrash, Al’s head tried to follow my jerk. “What?
Why?”
I frowned, and sighed again. “Well, he is…” I tried to think. And not think. “…family.”
“How many times did he yell ‘nail tail!’? Just at the rehearsal.”
“Seventeen. And you made him an usher. Freak.”
“Aunt Flo is to guilt what Hawking is to string theory. And he’s
getting what he, um, asked for.”
“Yeah.” And he was into it, hard, hence sparkage. “But the
tail has tail.”
“Do you feel bad for him?”
“Nope.” I looked for the desserts. Ugh, too many tables. “Bastard put his hand on my ass,” I
said through my teeth, eyes locking on a load of sugar.
“What?” Al swung about, getting between me and a tray of frogs.
“Hey,” I warned. “I want.”
He reached back, grabbed the whole tray like he was going
to smash it into some skull, then handed it to me instead. “Give ‘er.”
I bit down into the bliss of chocolate and coconut. “He said nice dress, and then he took a sample.” I swallowed. “Classic
pig move.”
“Did you smack him?”
I scowled. “He’s your family.”
“I’d have smacked him.” He took back the tray, and I yanked a handful of frogs before they could escape. They’d suffer, really. They’re not meant for the wild. “I’ll smack him now,” he
added, and the tray made a noise like it had already met cranium.
“Wait on that.” I got on my toes for a look.
Shelby was sparking like she was welding.
“Will she kill him?”
“Probably not.”
“Alright then.” Al pinched a bite of frog.
“But—”
He dabbed some chocolate off his lip. “What?”
“Nothing.”
On reflection, I figured it wasn’t a good time to mention that just once with a lili, and you’re
completely impotent for anything else.
Nah, a good time to mention that tidbit was in the never.
I nibbled another frog from my palm. “I—”
“Lovely dress, dear. The bride wore velour.”
I turned to my mother with my hand still over my mouth. “Way to get lippy, mother.” I licked a smeared crumb of coconut. “That
dress is too tacky for Technicolor. Slut red. It burns.”
She was bursting from a flaming orange-red tube that might have been quite fashionable. In the eighties. If you were a whore. And dating Sly Stallone.
Her hair was just as eye-gouging, the same shade as the strawberry
biting the edge of her glass of ginger ale. It looked like
a cheap wig or a vicious dye job, but I’d never seen it any
other colour. As usual, she wore her lipstick hard and heavy
to match.
“Your sister rather likes it.”
“Oh, well that’s just odds. One in a thousand will agree with anything.” I
started to turn. Now I needed a drink.
But a glass was already meeting me. Al handed me pop with his left, taking a sip of his own with his right. Probably hiding a smirk.
I took a swallow, savoring that cold delicious burn, and smiled at him.
God, I married well.
“Kal?”
“Yes, mother,” I said, all absent perfunctory, still smiling
at Al. He offered me a lemon tart, and I grinned, wanting to
bite into him for the treat.
“The Rosenbaums saw someone last night. Right at the window, they say.” My mother’s
voice frothed, spiked with the eagerness of Pollyanna and the
malice of a valley girl.
I stroked a lemon tart into my fingers, and Al twisted his face at my cruelty.
“Outside, in the dark,” Mommy Dearest went on to mutter through a sip of ginger ale. “Watching
the baby.”
Tart hurled in all directions.
Lemon spat over my chest and stomach, over most of Al’s front,
and plopped down from my clenched fist to the floor, probably
slobbering my sneakers.
Excellent coverage really.
I turned my head, slow, so my fist wouldn’t swing with it. “Mother.”
She popped her eyebrows and smiled, quirking her head into
it. “I wasn’t prying. Not really. I mean, okay, they were talking to each other, fretting really, but it’s not like I was hiding, they should have known I was—”
“Mother.” My body came around. But I tucked my gooey fist
back. A bit.
Dropping the smile for a twist of lip, she popped her eyebrows again, and took a hard hit of ale.
“You promised,” I hissed.
“Hey!” She stomped a step and smacked her glass down onto a table. Hard. Like she’d
rather be cracking it into me.
The gal sitting at that table flinched, lurching to the far side like a toppled bookshelf, gagging and spitting chunks of iced pound cake into her hovering napkin plate.
I could feel my face going tight, pulling back into a snarl.
I went for my mother’s arm, with a lock on her elbow.
I wasn’t even close when she windmilled from my reach. With
a sharp glance aside, she tried to cover the burst of movement
by fussing with her hair.
She’s quick for an old hag.
“Mother…”
Her hands come down, slow, in arches that framed her face.
She stared into me. “I have never broken a promise. Never.” She turned, roughing up the table to get her drink back. The tablecloth was proud and didn’t bleed. It struck back, sloshing pop out and over the strawberry, and then that teardrop of fruit took a hard fall, flung from its glass to bleed a smear of red. “Your father was the lying cheating son of a—”
“Lilith,” Al cut in, through his teeth, all brother grim as he handed her a napkin. “Special day,” he
said, plucking up the strawberry and dive bombing it back into
its glass.
“Every day is special,” I said. “With her.”
She turned to me, her lips pinching into red arrows. “Do you think he’d
spark for me?”
I froze.
Literally.
It was like raw ice scraped across my skin.
Al scowled. “What does she—”
There was a noise. Like glass breaking. Because it was glass breaking.
Ginger ale dripped down the side of her chin, pouring into her dress. The strawberry had bounced off her shoulder, but the glass shards, some of them still held her hair, unsteady as dying leaves.
I can be quick, too.
“Get out,” I said. “For good.” My voice sounded odd, like it came from a computer’s
internal speaker, the comes included kind, all distorted and
weak.
My mother picked a piece of glass from inside her ear, wincing. Not that there was a mark on her. Other than a small stain of strawberry.
“Is he worth it?” she tarted.
“Always.”
She glared over my shoulder at Al.
He moved up like it was a summons, lining to my back. His arm came around me, and I folded into it, my lips curling, without meaning to. Never alone. It was a good vow.
I turned my head, wondering what kind of look he was giving
my mother. Or gesture. But he was looking at me. In a way that
made my innards all gooshy. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he agreed, and grinned at me, pressing his head down
into my shoulder.
“Good,” came the snark.
I twisted back and almost got an eye full of glass as she shook it from her hair.
She turned and shoved off.
I took a breath, rubbed my forehead, and tried to think of
what they’d charge me for the glass.
“Kal?”
I looked up. With clenched eyes.
My mother looked back, head half over shoulder, and bit her
lip, her face twitching with something strange. “Something is hunting the Rosenbaums,” she said, flat. “And it isn’t
me.”
She left.
My mother is many things, most of them as wrong as wearing
a bra with spaghetti straps. But she is right on one thing,
she’s not a liar.
The Rosenbaums were meat.
“Uh, Sweetie?”
“Yes, Dear?”
“I need to bail. Family thing.”
“Come with?”
“Nope. Girls only.”
“Be careful.”
One of the handy things in marrying a guy you’d been with for over a decade, was, you’d already done your ‘splaining. You’d
built your trust. He knew, without you saying, when you needed
a cuddle, and when you needed to do some cutting.
I herded up the cattle in the most efficient way. I mouthed it to Jan. In about thirty seconds, the hall was less a thousand frilly swirls of ugly. As a communication resource, she beat the plaid pants off the internet.
Do not tell that girl your PIN.
So.
I did not expect to spend my wedding night hanging in a tree.
The humidity was up, way up, and a cold dusk had crept in, grey and blue, slithering a white mist that lolled over the grass, denser than smoke. The mist swelled, rising like dough, until it puffed up to the leaves on the trees. It was pretty, in a gothic lost on the heath kind of way, and helped me from frantically cutting my head open.
The mosquitoes were in ecstasy in the humidity, blanketing
us in a gnawing cloud of feeding frenzy. There were merciless
on my scalp, and my head was a mass of burning welts. It was
the last meal they’d ever have. They’d nip in, drink up, stumble
drunkenly away, and plummet to their deaths. There were probably
a thousand of them, easy, belly up, at the base of the tree.
You can’t feed from a lili.
I tried to take some joy from decreasing the surplus population, but I had too much of a headache from the boiling bug venom of anticoagulant.
Sam was perched next to me, sharing my branch. She yawned and scratched a welt that plumped her cheek up into her eye. It looked ugly. Also painful.
If anyone had peeked out and flashed a gander at our branch,
they’d have seen us.
Sort of.
They would have seen a pair of crows.
We didn’t all fit in the tree, so my sisters were spread out—over
grass and mist, bushes and fences, rock and roofs. A group
of crows.
A murder.
We waited.
Night slipped on. The mist grew colder, thicker, just like the dark.
Little Eli Rosenbaum went to bed, and to sleep, and the lilim watched.
I shivered, wishing I’d given in to the thought to pop a sweater
over my velour.
More night came. The moon was smudged in the sky, a dirty moon, blurred by a slurried mist, sepia flecks and scratches like the degraded transfer of a silent film.
Wherefore art thou, Nosferatu?
He came.
He didn’t coalesce, or flicker into being. He didn’t skulk
or splinter from the shadows. He walked up the driveway, just
like he was meant. He went into the door, just like he was
told.
And there he was, with little Eli, just.
We waited.
Sam and I shared a scowl, and bark bit under my fingernails as my hands curled, tighter.
We sparked, all of us, murky bits of fire in the mist.
No.
The lilim flew, a swarm of murder.
We cut through walls and glass like water, clotting about
Eli’s crib.
Our prey made a scream, but Shelby ate it, and we were there,
biting and tearing. It’s all-you-can-eat. We leave no welts,
no stain, no tears.
Eli sleeps, as his monster dies.
We’re demons, sure, but we’re not bad things.
The lilim rather like children.
And you better, too.
You know, taffeta looks better wet.
Velour? Not so much…
