“You’re the corpse bride and I want a picture! Mommy, make her give me a picture!”
“It—it’s just a picture,” the mother said, walking over while still staring at the commotion. It had gotten worse, with the Graeae piling their newly purloined clothes on top of Augustine. I wasn’t sure if that was because they were running out of room, or to shut him up, but if the latter, it wasn’t working.
“Look, lady—”
“Just pose for a picture, would you?”
“No,” I said, suddenly pissed. “I will not.”
“Why? It would only take a minute.”
“So does telling your child no.”
And, okay, I’d finally been irritating enough to get her full attention. She turned around. “What does that mean?”
“It means that maybe giving your kid everything she wants—”
“Don’t tell me how to raise my child.”
“—isn’t the best tactic for bringing up a well-adjusted—”
“Well-adjusted?” Her eyes took in my dusty, blue-lipped, shoeless form. “What would you know about well-adjusted?”
“More than you!”
“Just pose for the picture!”
“No! I am not the freaking corpse bride! My name is Cassie Palmer and I don’t—”
But I didn’t get a chance to say what I didn’t do. Because a booming voice suddenly broke out, loud enough to shake the walls. “CASSIE PALMER. CASSIE PALMER. CASSIE PALMER IS IN AUGUSTINE’S.”
What the hell?
Chapter Five
“What?” Augustine’s perfectly coifed head poked up out of a pile of clothes. “What is that?”
“No!” The irate mother stared around, and then abruptly became a lot more irate. “Goddamn it, no!”
She bolted for the counter with the cash register, which also contained the gift-wrap station. And started throwing fancy cards, spools of ribbon, and luxurious wrapping paper around, looking for something that I guess she didn’t find, because she kept doing it. And while that wouldn’t have been a great idea anywhere, it was especially bad here, because Augustine didn’t use normal paper.
Augustine didn’t use normal anything.
As was demonstrated when a roll of shiny blue and silver foil rolled across the worktop and fell off the edge.
“You put that back!” Augustine demanded. “You put that back right now!”
But it was too late. The paper hit the floor, and immediately began folding itself into a long string of origami animals. Which tore off the roll and started sprinting through the maze of tasteful racks and tidy tables. Which suddenly weren’t so tidy anymore, with paper tigers leaping on them, and paper elephants ramming them, and paper monkeys climbing them.
And gleefully throwing the perfectly folded wares at each other. And at us. And at the floor.
It looked like they were still stuck on last season’s circus theme, which the formerly elegant shop was really starting to resemble.
And then a swarm of something flew in the open front doors.
“CASSIE PALMER.”
“CASSIE PALMER.”
“CASSIE PALMER IS IN AUGUSTINE’S.”
The locator spell blared like a foghorn, screaming my name and confusing my brain. Which was already confused enough watching what looked like a couple dozen bats swoop in and start circling the room. I stared up at them, feeling like I’d been caught in a rogue game of Jumanji, while Augustine cursed and Fran?oise grabbed the crazy woman who was still trying to destroy the gift-wrap station.
Only to have her pull something out of her purse.
“Where is your shield?” the brunette screeched, brandishing what looked suspiciously like a wand.
“Get zat out of my face!” Fran?oise warned her.
“Where is it? You have to have one!”
“Get eet out right now, or I swear to you—”
“No, I swear to you—”
Fran?oise took the wand away from her and snapped it in two.
“What the . . . how did . . . you bitch!”
“Witch, actually.”
“So am I!”
“But not a very good one,” Fran?oise said smugly.
And then the circling cloud dove, in a black, shrieking, speeding mass.
I ducked, hands over my head, but it didn’t help. The next second I was surrounded by a crowd of fluttering things that weren’t bats, weren’t birds, weren’t anything I’d ever seen before, but were suddenly everywhere, including right in my face. And screeching something I couldn’t understand because they were all talking at once.
“Don’t answer them!” the woman—the witch—was yelling. “I was here first. I was here first!”
“CASSIE PALMER.”
“CASSIE PALMER.”
“CASSIE PALMER IS IN AUGUST—”
“Cassie! Zees way!” Fran?oise called, and I threw myself behind the counter. The not-bats followed in a streaming mass, only to go up in flames when Fran?oise, who is a very, very good witch, threw a fireball at them.
Of course, a mass of flapping, yelling, on-fire things is not exactly an improvement. But they didn’t appear to be much more substantial than Augustine’s origami. Because they disintegrated as I scurried out the other side of the counter, in puffs of ash that exploded in the air all around me.
At least the outfit couldn’t get much worse, I thought, staring about.
And then jerking back when I found myself facing one that had been smart enough to head round the other way.
Up close, it looked less like a bat than an overlarge butterfly, since it had no body to speak of. Or even a head. Just a vertical slit of a mouth wedged in between two rapidly beating wings and yelling something.
Until it was plucked out of the air and eaten by Deino, the sweetest of the Graeae, who wasn’t picky about her choice of snack.
But this one didn’t go down so easily. In fact, this one didn’t go down at all. It stayed in her mouth, thrashing about and making her look like she was chewing on a wad of black bubble gum. Or talking in a really exaggerated way, because her jaw kept going up and down, up and down, with words spilling out, only Deino didn’t speak English.
But somebody did.
And now that there were only a few of the black things left, I could understand what they were saying.
“Crystal Gazing here,” a woman’s voice said, from somewhere over my head. “Lady Cassandra, can you comment on the state of your relationship with the vampire senator Lord Mircea? You’re rumored to be lovers—”
“The Oracle here,” a booming British voice interrupted, out of Deino’s mouth. “Our readers would like to know what, exactly, was the nature of the creature you fought and killed at your coronation two weeks ago—”
“And why were you naked?” Crystal Gazing added eagerly. “Was it a ritual?”
“—they would also appreciate confirmation on the identity of the creatures you fought in the lobby of this hotel last week,” the Oracle continued, speaking a little louder. “It has been speculated—”
“Or maybe some kind of sex magic? Our readers did a poll—”
“—that they were the personal guards of the demon high council—”
“—and you were voted sexiest Pythia by a margin of almost three to one!”