Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Kiss me quick, kiss me slow, but for heaven’s sake, just kiss me.
There was such a thing as too much lace.
“Too fussy,” Rebecca muttered as Dayna tried to spin me around. I almost lost my balance due to how restrictive the ridiculous dress was. Why would they trap my legs like this? So I couldn’t run? Maybe that was the dress designer’s marketing ploy—the perfect dress for the runaway bride.
“Also itchy,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to be scratching my butt in front of everyone while Hudson pretends I’m the most desirable woman in the world.”
“You could be naked, rolling in mud, and you’d still be the most attractive woman in the world to him,” Dayna said.
Dave strode into my office and lifted a brow at my lace-clad body. “I’m not aware of my best friend having a mud-wrestling fantasy, but I can check.”
“No mud,” I said.
“But the wrestling is on the table,” Rebecca added with a wink.
I swiped a hand down my face. “Please tell me there’s a looming war of the worlds that requires my immediate attention.”
Dave’s eyes lit up, and I realized my idiotic statement would stoke the fire of the conspiracy he and Hudson believed.
“No to the little green men,” Rebecca declared. “They won’t go with the aesthetic.”
Yes, that was the sole reason for uninviting the aliens. They clashed with the color scheme.
“Common misconception that aliens are green,” Dave said, folding his arms. His lips twitched as I shuffled toward my lab in tiny steps. I needed out of this monstrosity and into my jeans and shirt. “They are, in fact, gray.”
“Gray could work, depending on the base,” Dayna said. “A warm gray to match the earth tones rather than a cool one.”
I would bury everyone under the earth before the wedding at this rate. Then we’d all be coordinated and dead. The wedding of the century for sure.
Rebecca chuckled from behind me. “What?” I snapped.
“You’re muttering to yourself about killing everyone to avoid the wedding.”
“I was not.”
“Was so.”
“I hate the lace.”
She snorted. “Really? I couldn’t tell.”
“I don’t have time to go dress shopping,” I said with a sigh. Everything was going wrong.
“Don’t worry, after seeing you in this, I’ve got some ideas about what to put you in. I vetoed the lace, but Dayna was insistent we try it.”
And when my aunt got insistent, the best thing to do was to give in—if only to prove her wrong.
“We’ll be waiting for you once you’re decent,” Dave shouted.
My shoulders stiffened as Rebecca unzipped the dress and stripped me out of it. Time to reclaim my past and write my future.
“Are you sure about this?” Liz checked for the sixth time in five minutes. I glanced around my top-floor apartment, checking that the crystals and candles were in position.
Dave, Sebastian, Rebecca, Hudson, Liz, and Dayna stood in a loose circle surrounding me, while Harry hovered close by with a frown etched on his face.
I nodded. “I am.”
Sebastian straightened his tie. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Is that why you are wearing your lucky tie? Are you utilizing formalwear to help prevent supernatural shenanigans?”
He grinned, all teeth. “No, I have a lunch meeting with my mother after this.” He narrows his eyes and tilts his head. “I feel strangely picked on. How come you aren’t pointing out Rebecca’s pink dress and heels?”
I rolled my eyes. “She’s always in a dress and heels. I think she sleeps in them.” Vampires could always be depended upon to observe dress etiquette even when the world was ending.
My gaze slid to Aunt Liz, who was rocking a sheath dress. Okay, so elementals could be counted on to be a little stuffy too. In juxtaposition, Dayna shook her hands in front of her, making her many bangles clink together in her usual eclectic style.
Each of these people had taken and stored a memory from my subconscious so that the burden of my pain wouldn’t cripple them.
Hudson sighed and rolled his shoulders before initiating the clasping of hands to solidify the circle.
“When we start, we can’t break the circle, and nothing should cross it until Cora has all her memories back,” Liz said.
“Why?” Dave wondered.
Aunt Liz shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”
“Wrong.” Of course, he wanted to know.
Liz sighed. “It would have unpredictable consequences depending on who—or how—it was broken.”
“So long as we don’t swap bodies again.”
Aunt Liz tilted her head as she contemplated it.
“Nope, not an issue.” She cleared her throat and began chanting the words of a spell.
Magic licked the air, and tendrils of power kissed my flesh.
Dave growled low, and Hudson’s lip curled.
Rebecca rolled her eyes. The spell tightened, and pressure gripped my soul and captured my breath.
“You have to let it in, Cora,” Dayna reminded me.
I squeezed my eyes closed and fought against the protection I’d honed over many, many years. Let them in.
“Cora,” Hudson choked. Thuds echoed around me.
My eyes flew open, finding them all on their knees, their knuckles white as they held on tight.
“Trust me,” he pleaded. “You have to trust me.”
I concentrated on his honeyed gaze, on the eyes of the man I would be spending the rest of my mortal life with, and hopefully an eternity in our afterlife. I opened my heart to these people, who had taken my suffering and made it their own until I was strong enough to withstand it.
Tears formed as devastation smacked against my mind. Mine or theirs? Did it matter? I just had to let it in.
Flashes of my grandmother, no longer the bystander and orchestrator of my torture, now a hands-on woman on a mission.
My heart broke into a thousand pieces. This was so much worse.
Her hands causing the pain, the same ones that held my blood.
It was the ultimate betrayal. Her gaze shadowed with sticky power not her own as she smiled down at my prone form being brought to the brink of death again and again but never allowing me to fall into the promise of peace.
The White Furry Menace shot through the circle, meowed at Hudson, and dropped a mouse at his feet.
Aunt Liz’s eyes went wide. Shit, shit, shit. Did the cat count?
“I am not cut out to be a rat,” Rebecca muttered.
A rat? Nope, no way, no...
My memories scattered, tore away from my mind, leaving me bereft. Like a bad horror movie that ran out of budget, everything went black.
I was tired and a little itchy. Why was I itchy?
I blinked my eyes open and focused on the ceiling above me.
The unfamiliar ceiling. I frowned and rolled onto my side, finding a bunch of sleeping people on the floor beside me.
What on earth? Was this some kind of spiritual retreat thing?
The ones where everyone professed to having an epiphany when really all they got was a good nap?
I wasn’t averse to an afternoon siesta, but I think I’d prefer it on a bed.
The huge guy with big muscles groaned and rolled to his side so he was facing me. His lips tilted in a smirk as his gaze slid down my body. “Hey.”
Hey? I glanced down, relieved to find myself dressed. Good news—not an orgy.
“Who are you?” I whispered. Something occurred to me, and my throat bobbed. “Who am I?”
Maybe it was a retreat where they drugged the smoke they pumped into the air, and everything would come back to us as soon as our lungs cleared. I inhaled a deep breath to help it along. The sooner, the better.
His smile dropped, and he scowled as he rolled to his feet and offered me his hand. “I’m not entirely sure.”
Oh good. It wasn’t just me having an issue.
I clasped his hand, and a spark of awareness leaped between us, heating something low in my belly.
To his left, a blonde woman in an expensive pale-pink dress sighed as she woke. She climbed to her heeled feet with more grace than I managed in sneakers and blinked up at the huge guy between us.
She giggled. Ugh, give me a break. The blonde princess was as pretty as a peach, and so very transparent.
He didn’t fall for it. Brownie points to him.
The rest of the group consisted of two other women, both of whom seemed vaguely familiar, and two other men, one in a long leather coat that looked like he was auditioning for a reboot of The Matrix, and the other wearing a sharp suit.
“Does anyone know what’s happening?” the dude in the leather coat asked.
“More importantly, does anyone know who they are?” the taller woman in an elegant purple sheath dress questioned.
Everyone shifted their eyes between the group as I folded my arms and took in the clean apartment we were in. Gauzy drapes outlined the open French doors, which let in the sweet-smelling Louisiana air as the sun fell.
“No, but I know which state we’re in,” I said.
“Louisiana,” the pretty blonde replied.
“Did we do drugs?” the woman in a boho skirt and huge gold hoop earrings questioned as she brushed her wild hair back, bangles jingling. She didn’t appear fazed by the situation or the possibility of illegal substance use.
“Maybe?” I answered.
“Could be a cult thing,” the sharp-suited man beside her said. “There's only one way to find out.”
The boho lady grabbed his lapels and kissed him, and the room collectively sucked in a breath. It wasn’t a romantic kiss. It wasn’t even a panicked one. It was the kind of kiss someone gives a stranger when they’re desperately hoping muscle memory will solve their life problems.
He jerked back and touched his lips in shock, his fingers coming away bloody.
“You caught me,” she said with a coy wink.
“I kind of liked that,” he murmured, rubbing his fingers together while gazing at the blood. I didn’t think he was talking about the kiss.
The ice princess sidled up beside me and whispered behind her hand, “He totally reminds me of someone.”
“Who?”
“That hot-as-sin vampire from that TV show.”
I tilted my head to the side, noting the dark hair and the intensity of his fixation on the blood. Was it getting hot in here? I waved my hand in front of my face and grinned back at her. “Agreed.”