“No,” he admitted, covering his face with his hands. Whether it was from shame or to protect his eyes from my vampire death glare, I have no idea. “You know her. You know what she does with announcements like this. We’re talking Valium and screaming, taking to her bed for weeks at a time. I knew there was no way she’d accept you, much less Jolene and her family. I’m just trying to get through the wedding without her making a scene. I saw what it did to Jolene when my parents threatened not to come. Can you imagine how she would handle Mama’s werewolf meltdown? How much that would hurt her? Once we’re married, Jolene will realize that she’s better off with my family not liking her anyway.”

“Don’t you think your family will notice something’s off when the bride’s side mows through the buffet?” I asked.

“Oh, my family will be too drunk to notice,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Why do you think we’re having the open bar?”

“That’s not—actually, that’s brilliant.”

“I’ve tried everything to get Mama to behave, to be decent to Jolene,” Zeb said. “She says she’ll straighten up and be nice, and then I get a phone call from Jolene, crying about whatever Mama’s said now. I’ve told her to ignore Mama, but she just can’t. She can’t stand having someone not like her. And I’m exhausted. I’m tired of being the go-between. Why can’t she just handle this stuff herself?”

I arched my brows at the angry, exasperated tone Zeb was using. He seemed to shake it off after a moment, rubbing his hands over his patch and then moving them to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“In a few months, this will all be over,” he said.

“Because you will have succumbed to chronic stress headaches and bottle-rocket trauma?” I asked, taking one of his hands and gently pushing at the pressure point between his thumb and forefinger.

When he smiled, the skin around his visible eye crinkled. “Because in a few months, we’ll be married. And we can enter the witness-protection program.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, quirking my lips as I stared at him.

“What?”

I shrugged. “It’s just weird. Normally, I’d be the first person you’d call when something like this trailer deal comes up. But now it’s Gabriel. I think you’re entering into a functional adult relationship with someone besides me. I guess the wedding is the final sign that we’re growing up.”

“I don’t know how I feel about it,” Zeb said absently. He was looking at me intently; his good eye seemed glazed over, unfocused. This was not the way Zeb normally looked at me. This was the way Zeb looked at mint-condition, still-in-the-package GI Joe Battle Force dolls.

Since he was dealing with a traumatic injury, I was willing to attribute this bizarre behavior to a concussion. “It doesn’t suck.”

“It does a little bit.” He cupped the back of my head in his hand, bringing my face almost uncomfortably close to his. For a weird moment, it felt as if he was going to kiss me. Which, for our relationship, was highly unusual. I leaned away, pulling his hands from my neck.

Gabriel came in and found the two of us staring at each other, Zeb’s hands in mine. Zeb dropped his hands to his sides and looked vaguely guilty.

“If you weren’t Jane’s best friend and engaged to a beautiful and violently monogamous woman, I might find this upsetting,” Gabriel commented dryly.

6

Werewolf fathers insist on preapproving proposals of marriage. In fact, it’s rumored that the human tradition of “asking for a woman’s hand” came from a human who failed to ask for betrothal permission and actually lost his hand.

—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were

“Why did I try to make more friends?” I muttered, shielding my eyes from my reflection in the Bridal Barn’s fitting-room mirror. “This is what comes of having girlfriends.”

If the picture of Jolene’s chosen bridesmaid’s dress was bad, the live version was horrifying. Basted together, the putrefied peach piecework was not just unflattering, it was insulting. My hips looked wider than my shoulders; wider than the dressing-room door, in fact. My preternaturally pale skin looked cheesy and almost blue. I actually looked dead, which was a first. At no time had I ever wished harder that vampires couldn’t see themselves in mirrors.

After much groveling on both sides, Zeb and Jolene made up, which meant I was still trapped in bridesmaid-dress hell. I took cold comfort in the fact that I wasn’t alone. I would be walking down the aisle with Jolene’s legion of cousins. The McClaines went with a “lene” theme in naming this generation’s females: Raylene, Lurlene, identical twins Charlene and Darlene, then triplets Arlene, Braylene, and Angelene. It was pronounced “Angel-lean,” by the way. That’s a mistake I didn’t make twice. All of them were gorgeous, redhaired, and green-eyed, with ridiculously high cheekbones. And all of them pretty much hated me. First, I was an outsider, which could have been overlooked if I was not also a vampire. Compounded by the injustice of my position as best maid despite being a relatively new friend, this created another sense of clan shame among the cousins. The fact that Zeb and Jolene chose me to avoid a blood feud among Jolene’s cousins escaped them.

Despite the snubbing of her firstborn, Lurlene, from the best-maid spot, Jolene’s aunt Vonnie was finally persuaded to keep her shop open after dusk so I could come in for a fitting. I’m pretty sure the indignity of having to rework her schedule for a vampire is what put the burr up her butt.

Buying your first prom gown at the Bridal Barn is a rite of passage for every Half-Moon Hollow girl. Because it was the only place in town where you could buy a prom gown. Or a wedding gown. Or a bridesmaid gown. We had a formal-wear chain store called Mr. Monkeysuit in the early 1990s, but they mysteriously shut their doors after six months. Before I knew the Barn was owned by a werewolf, I figured that the lack of competition stemmed from the claustrophobic confines of Hollow commerce. Now I thought it may have been because Aunt Vonnie ate her competition.

Now that I knew how much time Aunt Vonnie spent in the nude, I found it deliciously ironic that she owned a dress shop. Werewolves don’t like wearing clothes when they’re in the home field. Clothing makes life awkward for werewolves, for whom the most comfortable state is to be in wolf form. In an environment where they’re relaxed, sometimes they don’t even realize they’ve changed. There’s a subtle blending of light, and suddenly there’s a full-grown wolf standing next to you. It’s difficult to change form while dressed. At the same time, adult werewolves become conditioned to associate clothing with being out in public among humans. It’s handy as a reminder to help keep the change in check.

Jolene says that modern weres have adopted the human habit of dressing for weddings since so many of them involve human guests, and a nude officiate can be terribly offputting. The weres figure if you have to be dressed, it might as well be the most elaborate, uncomfortable clothes possible, which led Vonnie to open her shop. The problem was that Vonnie’s tastes hadn’t quite evolved since the days of big shoulder pads and bigger hair. The dresses in the Bridal Barn only came in colors that cannot be found in nature. Also, I don’t think any of the fabrics were manufactured after 1984. We’re talking a lot of large-gauge sequins.

“Jane, are you comin’ out?” Jolene called from outside the dressing room.

“No,” I whispered, transfixed by the horrific reflection before me.

Wasn’t there a Greek myth that ended like this?

From just outside the privacy curtain, Jolene said quietly, “Zeb says you’re not thrilled with the dress.”

“And that means I have to kill Zeb for telling you that,” I said, poking my head out of the dressing room but keeping the curtain closed tight around my neck. “I hate it when couples make up. It means they repeat everything other people have told them in some sort of confessional fit.”

“It can’t be that bad—” Jolene ripped back the curtain. “Whoa.”

“Yeah,” I deadpanned.

“It will look different,” Jolene promised. “After the rose and the ruffles and everything are put on. It’ll look different.”

“I don’t think ruffles are going to improve the situation.”

“I know,” Jolene whispered. “I know it’s horrible. I’ve worn that dress in six of my cousins’ weddings, including my cousin Raylene, who chose black taffeta for a July ceremony. Nobody looks good in it. That’s the whole point. Parade the bridesmaids out in this dress, make them look like cows—”

“Hey.” I glared at her. “There’s no need to agree with me quite so much.”

She ignored me. “So that when you walk down the aisle, you seem gorgeous by comparison. That’s the real tradition behind the dress.”

“You’re already gorgeous by comparison,” I hissed.

“Thanks,” she said, glowing briefly. “But it’s the one concession I’ve made to the pack about the wedding. I’m not marryin’ a were. I’m havin’ a nighttime ceremony to accommodate the vampire guests. I’m not marryin’ in the boneyard.”

“Boneyard?”

She shook her head. “Don’t ask. I went against almost every McClaine family tradition to marry Zeb. This is the one thing I agreed to.” She paused when I arched an eyebrow. “That you have to wear. You can get me really, really drunk at my bachelorette party and take embarrassin’ pictures,” she promised.

“I was going to do that anyway,” I snarked.

Aunt Vonnie bustled into the room with a bolt of lime-green chiffon. My lack of enthusiasm was clearly an affront to her craft.

“I haven’t stayed open past six in thirty years of business,” she reminded me.

“I really appreciate it, Miss Vonnie,” I said with all the cheer I could rally dressed like an extra from Footloose. “And thank you for making the dresses. They’re just … stunning.”

Aunt Vonnie easily picked up on my shifting eyes and twitchy lips. Or maybe I was pushing it with the empty double thumbs-up.

I have got to learn how to lie.

“Every McClaine bride since 1984 has chosen the ‘Ruffles and Dreams’ for her bridesmaids.” She sniffed, turning back to the sewing room. “It’s very popular here in town. I’ve made this dress in thirty-two colors for more than one hundred weddings.”

“Well, that certainly explains the Hollow’s unusually high divorce rate,” I muttered.

“I heard that!” Aunt Vonnie yelled from the back. I was going to have to watch myself around werewolves and their superhearing.

I turned to Jolene. “There will be pictures. Oh, yes, pictures and male strippers.”

“I accept your terms,” Jolene said solemnly.

“Get me out of this thing.” I sighed, angling the ridiculously placed zipper toward her. “Can I at least see the wedding dress?”

“I ordered it special on the Internet!” she squealed as she ran into the back room.

“Still need help with the zipper!” I called after her. I turned and caught a look at myself in a mirror. “Gah!”

Seriously, how does a veteran seamstress sew a zipper so that you need Go-Go Gadget arms to reach it? I spun in circles like a dog chasing its tail. I heard shuffling and giggling as Jolene tried on her wedding dress.

She emerged from the dressing room a vision in an elaborately beaded white Edwardian gown. And despite the universal laws of wedding dress ordering, the standard size four actually fit her perfectly. The cut emphasized her tiny waist and gave her the ideal hourglass silhouette. Every move sent a burst of sparkles from the beading. Her skin seemed clearer, brighter, creamier, her eyes a truer green.

“I hate you. You’re completely gorgeous, and I hate you,” I grumbled, feeling even more dumpy in my half-basted peach death shroud.

“Thanks.” She sighed dreamily.

“Meanwhile, I’m still dressed like this and …” I sent a glance at my watch.

“The engagement party!” she cried. “I almost forgot!”

“Well, that’s probably just your brain’s protective response to the prospect of seeing Mama Ginger,” I said as she dashed off.

“Hey, I’m still in this … thing!” I yelled after her.

You know that feeling you get when you walk into a room and you’re completely underdressed? That feeling would have been welcome at the Lavelle-McClaine engagement fete.

Claiming that the McClaine family was hogging all of the prewedding revelry, Mama Ginger threw together a last-minute “celebration” of Zeb and Jolene’s engagement. Engagement parties are a rarity in the Hollow, generally thrown by swankier families at the Half-Moon Hollow Country Club and Catfish Farm. Mama Ginger pulled a fast one when she listed the venue address on the invitations. Since few of us spent a lot of time at Eddie Mac’s, where local rednecks went to find their future former spouses, we were not familiar with the exact street number. Floyd and Mama Ginger had special access to the back room there as members of the pool league.

It was a surprise party, as in “Surprise! You’re wearing three-inch heels, but your party’s being held at a place where the table linens come from wall-mounted dispensers.”

I should have suspected something when the invitations encouraged us to “dress up.” This may have been a counterattack following the Great Wedding Date Change. A week after the wedding invitations were sent out, Mama Ginger decided that her allotted 100 were not enough. Apparently, her open distaste for the bride didn’t preclude Mama Ginger’s right to invite every person she’d ever met to her only son’s wedding. She convinced a neighbor who sold stationery out of the back of her dad’s gas station to help Mama Ginger design her own version of the invitation, featuring a Precious Moments bride and groom. Mama Ginger sent it out to another 150 distant relatives and passing acquaintances, so that instead of assuming the risk of inviting 100 carefully selected strangers to their farm, the McClaines now risked exposing their secret to 250 people even Mama Ginger might not recognize face-to-face or sober.