Chapter 5 An October Breeze of Villainous Intent #2
As I wriggle the house key out from under the flamingo’s woven-sandaled foot, Bulan rolls out from a flower bed filled with weeds. Of course he’s grinning wildly.
“I knew you weren’t really going to leave!” he crows. “A Spük never spooks.”
It pains me that I can’t prove him wrong.
“I think a worm’s stuck in your beard.”
He gives himself a solid shake, flinging the poor earthworm to the wind. “Better?”
“Uhh, sure.”
“Good. I prefer sleeping on pillows to peat. It’s much less squirmy.”
Bulan follows me to the front door and bounces up the stairs in hyper little bursts.
I don’t want him staying with me, exactly, but what kind of person leaves a stray outside on a cool night?
It’s in the fifties. Though my experience having a beard is limited, I’m guessing that when it comes to warmth, it’s no substitute sweater.
“So, so, so,” Bulan huffs. “You’re back! Does this mean we’re doing the wedding after all?”
“Just because I’m here, I’m not—”
“Dave and Amanda are expecting you to do it,” reminds Bulan.
“That sounds like a them problem,” I reply.
After the radiant heat kicks back on in Grandma’s house, I settle onto a scruffy, pistachio-green armchair and stare into the dead-eyed gaze of Colin Firth, pondering what I’m going to tell my senior.
And taking a moment to review my cruelly manipulated fate in general.
Baldy’s unnecessarily ornate, and therefore very Grandma-esque, words echo in my ears: Once I am returned to the earth, my appointed must guard my spirit until the passing of seven tides, low and high, twice over…
It’s simple enough to parse the meaning: if the tides roll in and out twice on a twenty-four-hour cycle, then basically, a week after Grandma’s funeral, my spirit-guarding work should be complete. Grandma will be ready to pass into the afterlife—and I can leave.
Grandma’s funeral was two days ago. If I only have to miss a week of work—most of it basic corporate training—then I’m sure I can figure something out with my company.
It has to happen to a lot of people, right?
I can’t be the only one. I can’t be fired over this, surely.
Except that when I pull up my firm benefits guide, I find out there are specific exclusions for new employees who haven’t accrued PTO.
In other words? I’m at the mercy of my senior.
Desperately, I compose an email designed to garner maximal sympathy:
Dear Steve, I have caught a horrible illness…
It’s not even an exaggeration. My illness is a paranormal curse, and considering that it’s come from my own kin, that’s pretty horrible.
As I type, I can’t help imagining Grandma’s unascended soul hovering behind her beloved British actor in this moment. She’s rolling her unascended eyes at me. Tut-tut! You’re being dramatic again, Samantha! Just stay here and make the most of it, you lazy girl.
Offended, I throw a slipper over Colin’s shoulder, where I assume Grandma might be.
And yet, I’m considering the point.
I’m considering it because I’ve spent too long being poor not to realize I have the opportunity to make the best of this situation financially.
Haven’t I learned that financial security is worth some emotional pain?
Not to mention occasional humiliation. Like that time when the fridge died, and my friends caught me storing groceries from the community food pantry using a bag of ice in a bucket beneath the sink.
Four thousand dollars is a lot of money. More than enough to cover a few weeks’ rent in New York, should my job decide not to pay me.
Realistically, all Dave and Amanda want is for me to arrange a few bouquets and decorate a few tables. Even vampires deserve a nice wedding, right?
Assuming I don’t get eaten—or worse, bitten—what’s the worst that could happen?
It’s just one wedding. One toe dipped into Salem’s unhinged paranormal world, and then, after the high and low tides are done with their poor tidings, I can go back to New York City like nothing ever happened.
Assuming I can pull off a wedding planning gambit, that is. But how hard can that be, anyway?
Seriously, how hard? I haven’t attended a wedding since I was five, but the last three years I spent working for a catering team at a hotel in Midtown East, the weddings didn’t seem too bad.
Sure, there were occasions I dodged angry brides and mothers by hiding behind food carts or extra-leafy ferns.
The upside of this is that I have a vague inkling of what wedding planners do.
I don’t know the first thing about what to expect from a vampire bride, though. I guess I’m going to have to learn that fast if I want to help pull off a wedding with such high… stakes.
Or no stakes, I guess. Those are probably tacky.
As loath as I am to admit it, Bulan isn’t the first to praise me for my artistic abilities.
When it came to skills with scissors, I was top of my class in pre-K, and I was the well-established corsage-tying person and boutonniere-pinner in my high school friend group.
Not to mention that Mom’s plunge into plantophile wonderland left me with realms of otherwise useless flower knowledge.
I’m organized too—I had to be to juggle school and part-time money-earning gigs for the last four and a half years.
So, handling florals, décor, and the catering?
In other words, the bulk of a wedding planning gig? I can probably manage that okay.
What I’m not ready to do is grapple with all of Salem’s more…
paranormal quirks. So as soon as I finish emailing Steve, my senior, and cc’ing the HR admin who’s been helping with my new-hire paperwork, I corner Bulan.
Really this just means I place him on a dusty floral wingback chair and loom over him with my hands on my hips.
“Bulan,” I say with an air of importance. “If you want to keep living here, you’re going to have to help me out. I need you to give me a glow-up.”
“A what?”
There’s no way he’s unfamiliar with these. “You know, a makeover? Like in old chick flicks. Do my hair. Pluck my eyebrows. Lips—”
“Pluck your lips?”
“What? No. I meant put on lipstick. But not like, regular makeup. Give me a paranormal makeover. Along with the lowdown on the town’s vampires. The witchy ways of witches. Make me Salem-savvy. I’ve spent almost a decade away. I need to know what I don’t know.”
How ironic, that I’m having to reacclimate myself to Salem in order to leave it.
But it’s fine, and temporary. Soon I’ll be in the land of no surprises or strangeness, strictly enforced by my new building’s community guidelines.
And someday, by the forced conformity of my suburb’s HOA.
I’ll look back at this mostly purged memory and see this wedding-related debacle as a sign of my dedication to my dreams.
“I shall happily assist you,” Bulan announces. “I do have one condition, though. You must give me a nice hat.”
That’s absurd. “Why?”
“So that when we’re walking in public and I’m talking to you, everyone will think I’m your dummy.”
“Oh, I think that already.”
“Thank you,” says Bulan. “I will choose to take that in the most magnanimous way. BUT WAIT.”
Pained, I do. It’s now Bulan’s turn to put on an air of importance. His ruddy eyebrows flare up, and he pulls himself up to an additional quarter inch of height.
“I require payment,” he says.
Of course he does. “Isn’t it enough I haven’t buried you?”
“I want to binge-watch the first season of Bridgerton tonight.”
I raise my eyebrows as I consider this. How long has it been since I had time to binge something without needing to do other work at the same time? I’ve been waiting at least three years to catch up on Crash Landing on You, Jungkook’s all-time favorite K-drama. My shoulders unknot a bit.
“That’s… a surprising choice, but doable,” I say. “I’d shake on it, but I’m not sure how.”
“To the streets!” Bulan calls out, as if I weren’t standing directly in front of him.
And as if he has a say in the matter, which he doesn’t.
Because while I may be temporarily adopting my grandmother’s pet talking head and enlisting him in my regrettable schemes, I can hold off my paranormal-adjacent life for business hours tomorrow.
Before that, I’m going to order dinner delivered straight to Grandma’s house. You know, a Last Meal, like prisoners get before execution.
A Last Meal with a side of Bridgerton.