Chapter 25 I am Not a Member of the Broken Hearts Club. Who’s Got Time for That?
EXPLAIN,” I DEMAND OF BULAN, who has taken on a self-pitying expression.
Several crows caw with unnecessary sympathy, but I don’t have sympathy.
I have an ex, and he didn’t tell me he was engaged, and do you see me pitying myself?
Feeling upset and poorly used by someone I’d thought was a safe space for one of the first and only times in my life? No way.
“How is this possible?” I ask Bulan.
Preening, Bulan draws himself up an extra half inch.
“I once had a body,” he says. “When I was a young kingling, a willow sapling of a child. One day, I was out in a field near Llandovery picking daffodils—”
“How lovely,” says Mandy.
“Llandovery.”
“Isn’t that a place in Wales? Princess May is Japanese, so how could she have—” I shake my head. “No, no. Nix the story time, Bulan. We can talk about this later. First things first: we’ve got to save Hanry.”
“Oh, your lover boy.” Bulan’s brows knit as I pick him up and resettle him atop my hand-embroidered silk duvet. “That’s fine, Sabby. I don’t need a body, anyway. It’s highly overrated. What’s Hanry doing here?”
“To put it simply, he was adopted by fairy royalty. Making him a fairy prince.”
“Obviously. But what’s he doing home?”
I stare at Bulan; he stares back. This is so goddamn unbelievable; I throw up my hands. “Did everyone know he was a fairy prince except me?”
“He was pretty open about it,” says Mandy.
Bulan nods himself at her. “Yes, yes. His wood carvings were of well-known fairy tales. Sabby, did you truly not notice the whole Community referring to him as a prince? At any point?”
I choose to ignore their insults. “Bulan, if you knew that Hanry was goddamn royalty, why did you say he shouldn’t be in the castle? Isn’t this his home?”
“Changelings who come of age always spend a year in the human world. To test it out, in case they like it more than their home. Hanry seemed satisfied in Salem. I thought he might not return.”
I tap my foot thoughtfully. “So why’d he end his fay Rumspringa?”
“Maybe he was satisfied in the human world until you left?” Mandy suggests. A few crows caw in either agreement, hunger, or a longing for plastic baubles.
“Unlikely,” I say. “Hanry wouldn’t even sleep with me.”
Bulan coughs into his beard. “No wonder you’ve been so prickly.”
“Stuff it, Bulan. This isn’t about me. This is about Hanry. And our rescue mission.”
“How are we supposed to rescue him from his own wedding?” asks Mandy.
I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “By taking a page out of his adopted mother’s playbook,” I say. “And the pooka’s. We’re going to sabotage it.”
Bulan’s gasp comes out like a croak. Mandy throws her head back with a wail.
“No, no! Sabby, all this work for nothing!?”
“Yeah, I know it’s a shame, but—”
“Think what it will do to your reputation,” Bulan adds. “A wedding planner who becomes a wedding disaster planner. It would be a travesty!”
I huff. Am I the only one here who finds it problematic to force people into matrimony?
Apparently so. Am I alone in being pummeled, against my will, with worries about Hanry?
I’ve got to figure out where he is. We’ve got to help him.
And he better be conscious when we find him, because there’s no way I’ll be able to drag his six-five, two-hundred-whatever-pound body out of this castle on my own.
The lone bat of our gathered crew of would-be heisters picks itself off the floor, and taking wing, flaps around my head aggressively.
“Stop that,” I say, batting the flying mammal away. “Transform already if you want to speak.”
The bat lands, and with a pop, Dark Dave sprawls into existence, his hands covering his eyes.
“I hate transforming after a feeding,” he moans. “Also, the candles! There are too many candles in here!”
Mandy, sniffling, assists me in helping him off the floor. “There, there,” she says. “We can blow some out.”
“No blowing out the candles. And sorry, Dave,” I say, “But humans don’t understand echolocation. I need you in not-bat form if I’m going to hear your point of view.”
He moans feebly.
“Also, thanks for pausing your honeymoon to help out.”
“It was the least I could do after forgetting your payment,” he says. “Amanda will arrive after her blood spa, by the way. Shouldn’t be long now.”
“Great. You know you still owe me money, right?”
“Ah,” says Dave, taking excessive interest in the carpet. Like so many things, I’ll have to let that rest for now. Returning the room’s attention to the matter at hand, I pull my computer from my duffel bag and set Mandy’s folder on the floor.
Painstakingly, I transfer information onto a stack of sticky notes. Over the course of fifteen minutes, during which Gustavo and Jurgis shower the room with tarot cards and prod Dave, I lay out the wedding schedule—and our plan.
“Gather, minions!” I point to six sticky notes at the top of the diagram, labeled VENDORS.
“Here are our forces. Based off what I’ve seen, all our vendors will arrive enchanted and lacking on the problem-solving front.
Now, in addition to our vendors, we have a small army of overalls-clad fairy servants ready at our command.
” I place another sticky note down. It reads MINIONS.
“The castle’s minions are in charge of catering, serving whatever fairies drink for alcohol, handling the wedding cake and dessert table, and assisting in guest transportation. ”
“I look forward to seeing who arrives in a zucchini,” Mandy says.
“If we run out of time and you miss it, I’m sorry. When all of this is over, I promise to introduce you to the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.”
“Wow,” she says, confused but impressed.
“The minions and the vendors will be responsible for performing our sabotage,” I say. “I’m going to give them ruinous plans. Now, look here.” I gesture at the purple square at the heart of my floor diagram. It reads HANRY. “The rest of us—Dave, Bulan, Mandy, and I—are on groom-finding duty.”
I bring the group’s attention to a purple square labeled CROWS.
“If a crow gets your attention, follow them. Since some of you don’t have cell phones, they’ll be in charge of sharing information between us. Think of them as flying walkie-talkies.”
“Caw,” say the crows in either affirmation or mutiny. Hopefully not the latter.
“And lastly, glow sticks. Everyone will snap these onto their wrists in the morning. They’re visual reminders to stay on schedule. Each stick has a four-hour light-life. This way, we’ll know when it’s eight, noon, and four.”
“Aha. Because the wedding’s at four,” says Mandy.
“Exactly. Plus, if we need to enter the Royal Wing, they’ll be invaluable light sources…
and if Mab and Tits try to trick us by playing games with time, they’ll help us keep our footing.
Any more questions?” I rub my hands together.
“No? Okay, on to the most important plan yet: our secret escape plan.”
The word “secret” results in a chorus of impressed oohs.
“Very good! Most murderers get caught because they fail to stick the landing,” says Bulan knowingly. He rolls across the HANRY sticky note and spends the next few minutes listening thoughtfully with the square attached to his forehead.
“What happens,” he asks when I’m done, “if all else fails and we can’t wrench Hanry away until the wedding itself?”
“We won’t let it come to that,” I say. “I trust you guys.”
Mandy raises the water pitcher high. “Hear, hear. To us, and to the worst wedding ever!”
We all cheer, “Hear, hear!” and pass the pitcher around like we’re preparing for some sort of baptism. As long as it’s a trial by water and not fire, that’s fine by me. I’d like for Hanry to make it out of this with as few burn scars as possible.
Mandy wakes me with a half-eaten piece of caramel sticking to the edge of her eager crescent smile. “The hairstylist and makeup artist are here!” she cries past her candy.
“For us?” I ask, hope swelling. Only then, reality breaks through, shattering my momentarily positive vibe.
Here is the truth about my life: I’ve never had a hairstylist, ever.
I am not in my Midtown apartment, or in Salem.
Nope. I am in a fairy castle. And of all days and all mornings, it’s the morning of the no-longer-supersecret Rochester wedding.
The wedding where Hanry is getting married. To someone else. Against his will. Unless I save him.
Now that I’m awake, Mandy casts me aside like an empty bag of chips. She skips over the bed, crossing the room with more zip than you’d get on a pogo stick. The scent of high-end patchouli replaces the scent of burnt sugar.
I’m glad to see that she’s bounced back after being so beaten down last night. Between her Rochester-induced woes and my callous plans to bulldoze the wedding that was her pet project for a month, I actually expected a bit more rage.
It would be more than justified.
Maybe she’s just rechanneled it into hyperactivity. She opens the door to our room so emphatically, she bangs it against the hallway’s stony wall and only barely misses a trio of waiting figures.
“You have guests,” says our door-fairy, introducing two disheveled, vinyl-bag-laden humans.
“HELLO!” shouts Mandy. The people shuffle into the room and drop their bags conveniently atop our sticky-note diagram.
The blond guy wears a crop-top tank, athletic shorts with thermal leggings, and ribbed crew socks.
The woman is in pj’s. An intricate weave peeks from beneath a silk scarf.
Unlike Gustavo and Jurgis, these two—Matthew and Shaki, respectively—are famous, in a not-dangerously-high-profile kind of way.
Celebrity stylists and MUAs rarely get accosted in the street.
But they’re obviously professionals: in spite of being enchanted and whisked here from the midst of their morning routines, they both seem to have dutifully grabbed their equipment while being fairynapped.
“I said he-llo! Now you’re supposed to say it back,” Mandy tries again.