A Gatlin Wedding Read online

  “Something’s definitely in the air and it’s not love.” Lena glanced over at the happy couple apologetically. “Well, not just love.” It sounded like a joke, but she was deadly serious.

  No.

  No, no, no—

  Not now. Not my dad. Not this weekend.

  But he knew it was pointless.

  There was no stopping that damn Wheel.

  II. A Dog of a Party

  “Holy crap,” Ethan said. He wasn’t smiling. Lena wasn’t either.

  “I was wrong.” She nodded. “It’s not just your dad’s wedding.”

  “No way. Not if you’re feeling it too,” Ethan said.

  “Something’s happening, and it’s not from the world of Mortals.” Lena agreed with him, which didn’t make him feel any better.

  “I knew it. I felt it.” Ethan stared at the curls, which were still twisting around Lena’s shoulders. Her grip on him tightened, and he felt another shiver running from her hand down to the base of his spine. “What do you think?”

  “Maybe it’s left over from Mrs. English being, you know.”

  “The most powerful Demon in a faraway universe?” It wasn’t a chapter either one of them wanted to remember—the alter ego of their former English teacher, the Lilum. But then, they had had more than their share of chapters like that.

  “Something like that,” Lena said, hopefully.

  “You think that’s all?”

  The look on her face said otherwise.

  Ethan took a breath. If he felt it, and if Lena felt it, something was happening. Whatever it was, it wasn’t his imagination. “Should we tell someone? Do something?”

  “Who would we tell? What would we do?” Lena asked.

  Ethan thought about it as he watched his father, who had one arm around his future bride. “Ruin everything?”

  “He does look happy,” Lena said. “But still…”

  Ethan nodded.

  Then he began to Kelt.

  The last time I felt like this was Halloween night, right after we met. Like the veil was down. Like I could feel the Darkness coming, L.

  That’s because it was, Ethan. That was Sarafine.

  Then what’s this, L?

  I wish I knew.

  “You guys are a regular party.” Liv plopped herself down on the step next to Ethan. “I see you’ve once again confused wedding and funeral. Let me help you sort it out, then. This one is a wedding. The dominant emotion is joy. In that case, the mouth turns up.”

  “Got it,” Ethan said.

  “Wedding.” Lena nodded.

  John leaned against the railing behind her. “I hear it’s catching. You two lovebirds getting any ideas?”

  “You should talk, Romeo.” Link snorted, flopping on the step below the others. As he landed, the foundation of the old house seemed to shake. It was the fate of even this quarter Incubus to be a hundred times stronger than the world around him. Foundations included.

  “The Oxford crew! Finally, we’re all back in one place again. It’s about time,” Lena said. She smiled at Liv and John, grabbing Link’s hand.

  “Hey now. Let’s show some love to the New Jersey crew,” Link said.

  “I know, Jersey. I can’t believe you guys took time off touring for this.” Ethan looked at Link, who shrugged. Sirensong, the band Link had formed with a Necromancer, an Illusionist, and a Darkborn, had managed to stay together even though a) they were being hunted by a clan of powerful Ravenwood Blood Incubuses, and b) Ridley—the Siren who had worked her Power of Persuasion on their behalf, as well as Lena’s cousin and Link’s girlfriend—had deserted them for fame and fortune in Hollywood. Oh, and their club had burned down.

  Nobody ever said the road to rock and roll superstardom was easy.

  “You know I wasn’t going to miss watching you walk your old man down the aisle,” Link said. Then he quickly moved on to his favorite subject, the buffet. “How’s the pie?”

  “Who cares? It’s not Amma’s,” Ethan said ruefully.

  “Nothing is.” Link sounded mournful, though he didn’t even eat Mortal food anymore. But he had appreciated Amma’s cooking in his Mortal adolescence more than anyone. “Speaking of our parents, my mom might be coming to the ceremony. And by that I mean, y’all should prepare yourselves in case my mom shows up for the ceremony.”

  “Really?” Ethan was surprised. The last time he had seen Mrs. Lincoln, she had still been wandering around muttering that Satan was a woman and the world was ending. (She wasn’t that far off; Lena’s mother, Sarafine, who had once taken over Mrs. Lincoln’s body, wasn’t exactly an angel. And the world had almost ended a few times.)

  “Yeah. Maybe. She’s doing pretty well. I mean, for her.” She was the craziest woman alive, so the bar was low. “She might get to come home soon.” Link tried to look happy about it, so they all tried to look happy back. Mrs. Lincoln was a complicated woman, and she’d been living in a psychiatric care facility for a while now.

  “That’s great,” John said. “Right?”

  Nobody answered.

  Nobody brought up the other complicated woman in Link’s life—or rather, the one who wasn’t in his life anymore, either.

  Ridley Duchannes.

  It took only a second for Link to figure out the subject of their non-conversation. “Stop. You guys. I’m fine. Really.” He shook his head. “A guy wouldn’t even have to be able to Kelt to pick up what all you’re all saying right now. But I’m over it. I mean, her.”

  “Yeah, right,” Ethan said, clapping his hand on Link’s rock of a back. They’d all heard that one before. Ridley had ruined Link’s life, over and over again.

  A thousand times.

  “Really. And even if I wasn’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s Rid we all should be worried about.” Link’s expression darkened. Ethan knew the look—it meant Link was thinking about Nox, the guy Ridley had taken off with, her new boyfriend. Her former band manager, and the guy who had owned the Dark Caster club that they’d all been playing at—until recently.

  But Ethan also knew Link wasn’t wrong.

  Rid was in more trouble now than ever.

  And a much Darker kind of trouble.

  “Any news?” Liv asked, softly.

  “No good news.” Link scowled. “She was still somewhere in Hollywood, last time I checked. She has some kinda show.”

  “A show? She has three million YouTube followers,” Ethan said. Lena kicked him. They’d made a pact not to bring up Ridley’s newfound Internet fame, at least not around Link. Ethan turned red. “But, you know, the whole Power of Persuasion thing. That’s probably not even a lot for a Siren.”

  “It’s okay. She can be famous. She can be successful. She can be Third Degree Burns hot. She can love everyone in the world except me. It doesn’t matter. I’m still gonna worry.” Link looked truly miserable, and Ethan felt as sorry for his old best friend as he ever had, any of the other times Rid had broken his heart. “I guess part of me thought she’d come back for the wedding.”

  “Sorry, man,” Ethan said.

  “Nah. I think I’m relieved. I can’t handle looking at her, when everything’s just so… different.” Ridley always had been almost uncomfortably good-looking, no matter how you felt about her.

  Ethan had to give her that.

  “I know. I feel the same way. But I really believe that, eventually, we’re going to find a way to help her,” Lena said. Her cousin Ridley had turned into her old self—which wasn’t much of a compliment—after being captured and caged, tortured and experimented on by the twisted Incubus Silas Ravenwood, who had vowed to avenge the death of his grandfather, Abraham. Though none of it had been Ridley’s fault, she had undergone a fundamental personality transition back to her Darkest self. As a result, she wasn’t exactly the most pleasant person to be around anymore—particularly for her heartbroken ex-boyfriend, who now reeked of (partial) Mortality, in Rid’s opinion. That the former love of her life now made her physically sick had turned out
to be a huge bummer for everyone—except her new boyfriend, the even Darker Nox Gates.

  Link was trying to man up and live through it, Ethan knew. He also knew that wasn’t exactly easy. Not when you were as whipped as Link was.

  “Macon and Gramma and Aunt Del and Reece and I have been working on a plan to help Ridley,” Lena said. “My whole family. We’re going to figure out a way to undo whatever it is that Silas Ravenwood did to her. And then we’re going to bring her back, I promise.” She didn’t mention the part about how they’d made little progress, or how Silas and his crew had disappeared off the Caster maps, or how the Duchannes family were no closer to undoing the transfusion or confusion of powers than they ever had been.

  Ethan didn’t mention it, either.

  The reunion between friends was interrupted as glasses clinked—and Ethan looked to see his father out in the yard holding up a lemonade.

  “Can I get your attention? Everyone? I just wanted to make a toast, on this special night.” Mitchell Wate took a smiling Lilian English by the hand. “To a very special someone.”

  The crowd began to applaud. Ethan found he was holding his breath, even if he couldn’t have said why.

  “Someone who has changed my life in ways I could never have imagined it changing,” Mitchell continued. He was momentarily interrupted, however, as a ripping sound echoed across the clouds.

  “Hold up,” Link said, under his breath, grabbing Ethan by the shoulder. The sound was familiar to anyone who had ever known an Incubus.

  It was a Rip. Ethan was sure of it, too—the sound of the peculiar way an Incubus tore a hole open in the universe to travel through space and time.

  Warp speed–style.

  It was almost never a good sound, unless it belonged to Link—who was still so terrible at traveling Incubus-style that the sound of his Rip was usually followed by an even louder howl as he landed in a Dumpster or a tree.

  Mitchell looked skyward and smiled, raising his glass higher. “There goes that wedding flyover I ordered.”

  Everyone laughed and applauded again.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Ethan asked in a low voice, looking from Link to Lena.

  “That’s no plane,” Lena said quietly.

  “Someone I may not have found until now, but whom I will love until the day I die—” Mitchell said, bringing Lilian’s hand to his lips and kissing it.

  Now a motorcycle revved in the distance—

  John looked up. “Here? Now?” Lena stood up on the porch. Liv pulled a pen out of her bag and held it up like a weapon. She took a deep breath.

  Mitchell was still raising his glass, oblivious. “Someone who makes my life a surprise again. Someone who makes me feel young and dangerous—”

  The backyard gate banged open—and then shattered into what looked like so many matchsticks—and a massive Harley came flying through.

  “Holy crap!” Ethan shouted in spite of himself as his father dropped his lemonade in the grass.

  Mrs. English shrieked.

  Lena was already on the move, Liv and John not far behind her.

  Link seemed frozen in place.

  Ridley Duchannes, in her favorite red leather jumpsuit, tore off her helmet. Her pink-and-blond-striped hair went cascading down over her shoulders.

  Of course.

  I should have known.

  As she slid out from behind a guy in a black leather jacket—presumably the Dark Caster boyfriend she’d taken with her to Los Angeles, Nox Gates—all Ethan could focus on were her iridescent violet eyes.

  Lena’s cousin was high as a kite, but not on any kind of Mortal drug.

  Her eyes were always the tell. The violet color wasn’t something you’d find in the Mortal or even the Supernatural world; it was the incontrovertible sign of Ridley the power addict, the Caster Frankenstein. The former Siren, who had been briefly Mortal, was now the product of multiple transfusions of more Caster blood than anyone in two universes.

  How much she’d had, and what she could do, only Silas Ravenwood knew.

  Ethan stole a glance at Lena, who had been through so much with her cousin they might as well be sisters. As he expected, she looked more stricken than anyone.

  “Oopsie,” Rid said to the stunned crowd. She laughed, stepping down onto the cracked driveway pavement with a flourish. The scent of smoke and motor oil curled around her like her own personal toxic atmosphere.

  “Might have overshot that one by a smidge.” Ridley crossed the lawn to shove her gleaming red helmet into Mitchell Wate’s frozen arms. “My bad, daddy-o.”

  Nox shut down the engine, pulling off his black helmet. He tossed it onto the grass with a shrug. “It happens. We were close.”

  Mitchell just cleared his throat.

  “Well, don’t you look like a kitty cat in the panty drawer?” Rid leaned in to kiss Mrs. English on the cheek, leaving a smear of bright red lipstick on the peach Maybelline foundation. “Brides are yummy.”

  Mrs. English said nothing, but her eyes welled with tears.

  As they watched, not one of the hundred Gatlin Mortals crammed into the yard at Wate’s Landing found they could utter a word, and it wasn’t even any kind of Supernatural Cast that had shut them up.

  It was the power of plain old shock.

  “Now then, losers,” Ridley said, making her way through the sea of card tables. She pulled out a cherry lollipop and began to unwrap it. “Let’s get this dog of a party started.”

  But before Rid could get it to her mouth, Link grabbed her and hoisted her over his massive shoulders, carrying her up the steps of the back porch as she kicked him with her platform boots.

  Just like the old days.

  “Let’s,” Ethan said, holding open the screen door.

  III. A Friends-and-Family Council

  “Unacceptable,” Marian barked. “Completely unacceptable.”

  She stood alongside Gramma and Aunt Del in the kitchen of Wate’s Landing, looking like the three Fates of Gatlin County, or maybe the Furies. Whichever ones are more powerful and more dangerous to tick off, Ethan thought. The rest of the awkward friends-and-family council—Link, Liv, John, Lena, and Ethan—surrounded Ridley at the table. Nox paced behind her like some kind of Incubus guard dog.

  Marian folded her arms in front of her in her most irritated librarian pose. “Even for you, Ridley. Try to show a little respect.”

  “It’s true.” Gramma nodded firmly. “Right or wrong, you have no business being here, child. Not at the moment. You’re out of sorts, which makes you more dangerous than you know.”

  Aunt Del sighed. “It’s not your fault, darling. It’s just… this is a very Mortal wedding. It’s not for you. Not when you’re all… like this.”

  “Why is this all sounding so familiar?” Ridley cocked her head. “Is it just because you’ve been saying it my entire life?”

  “This isn’t about you, Ridley. This isn’t even about the Casters. This weekend is about Ethan’s family, and they’ve been through enough already. I’m not letting anyone ruin this, too.” Marian took a step closer to the Siren, though Ethan wasn’t sure what she thought she was going to be able to do to the tragically twisted creature Ridley had become at the hands of Silas Ravenwood.

  Whatever she was now, it was nothing less than a modern Caster tragedy. And a really annoying one, Ethan thought.

  “Don’t be such a stiff, Mare.” Ridley kicked her boots up onto the Wates’ ancient kitchen table, the one Amma had scrubbed within an inch of its life, day in and out. The moment Rid’s boots hit the wood, lightning struck the tree outside the kitchen window—right where Amma used to hang her old spirit bottles for protection—and the windows rattled.

  The rain began to pour.

  Ethan smiled to himself.

  Nobody messed with Amma’s kitchen, not even now.

  “Calm down.” Ridley begrudgingly put her feet back on the floor. “You people really should learn how to take a joke.” She raised her voice. “All o
f you.”

  Thunder rumbled overhead.

  “Whatever.” Rid rolled her eyes.

  “That was… pretty incredible,” Liv said, scribbling in her notebook from across the table as the thunder abated. “Interdimensional connectivity… between this reality and the Otherworld…”

  “Oh, please.” Gramma snorted. “After sass like that, I’d say Amma was showing some restraint.”

  Aunt Del sighed. “Ridley’s just testing the boundaries. They say she’ll grow out of it.” Then Del looked hazy. “Or maybe, she did grow out of it?” She was a little fuzzy on the befores and afters, like most Palimpsests, who saw time not so much as a flowing river as one great big puddle. “Or something.”

  Marian didn’t say a word, but she didn’t take her eyes off Ridley, either.

  “Still,” Liv said. She shook her head and kept on writing. “Otherworld causality… provoking elemental response.” She could never help but be excited about witnessing the intricacies of the Caster world, even when she was in the middle of certain doom. Ethan had always liked that about her.

  The patter of rain against the roof grew louder now.

  “The pie!” Link said, standing straight up from his chair at the table. “The rain! Forget the Otherworld! Think about the other pies—”

  Ethan shook his head.

  Link stuck his head out the screen door. “It’s raining! Save the dessert buffet, people!” The outburst surprised exactly no one, considering how many song lyrics Link had written about food (from pie to all forms of barbecue) in his short but storied career.

  Lena rapped on the glass with one knuckle and the rain instantly stopped. “There. Can we try to stay focused?”

  “Yeah. We have toasts to get back to. With, you know, the invited guests,” John said.

  “I was invited.” Ridley scowled, unwrapping another cherry lollipop.

  Liv yanked it out of her hand and passed it to John, who dropped it on the floor and ground it to powder beneath his boot.

  “Very mature,” Ridley said.

  “Like she said, we were invited,” Nox said, standing uncomfortably in the doorway.

  “You actually weren’t invited to drive your motorcycle through the fence I had to paint all last week,” Ethan said, feeling less and less sorry for Rid and Nox by the minute.