“Where did you sleep?”I asked.“Or were you Jarvis’s big spoon in the bed of the truck?”
He chuckled.“Bubba, I live in the woods.I did what I always do—I slept on a bed of moss at the base of a big oak tree, then bathed in the stream down the hill.”
“Doesn’t that creek run right behind a housing development?”I asked.
Barry actually blushed, something I’d never seen before.Admittedly, his face was usually covered by a buttload of hair, so it was pretty hard to see normally.“There may have been an unintended audience to my ablutions.”
“Well, once we get some grub in us, let’s get all gussied up and head to the church.We can still get there a little early if we don’t screw around too much,” I said, piling enough bacon on my plate to give a normal human a coronary right there at the table.Since I’m neither normal nor completely human, I counted on that to save me.
It took another hour and half to get everybody scrubbed down and headed to the venue, but we were still on track to be there half an hour before the ceremony, which I figured was plenty of time.Amy must have thought the same thing, since after a couple of reassuring texts from Geri, she stopped calling.Father Matthew and Skeeter rode with Geri, and Jarvis and Barry piled in my truck to get going.
We pulled off the main road onto the long driveway leading up to the Rolling Clover Event Venue and Soiree, and a familiar-looking black Suburban slid in right behind us and blinked its lights.“Harker’s here,” I announced to the truck.
“Who’s Harker?”Jarvis asked from the back seat.
I looked at Barry who shrugged.How to explain Quincy Harker to a mundane?“You ever watchSupernatural?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, Harker is kinda like the short brother on that show, only more sweary,” I said.
“Moresweary?Dean was pretty profane,” Jarvis said, his skepticism evident.
“Quincy Harker is the only person I’ve ever heard use the word ‘fuck’ as every part of speech,” I said.
“I know a lot of people who do that,” Jarvis said.
“In one sentence?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.He kinda works with us.Sometimes.He’s engaged to Amy’s boss, so be nice.”I left out the part where he also throws fireballs and might roast Jarvis from the inside out if he said the wrong thing, but hoped that was understood.
I saw another compact SUV pull into line behind Harker as we drove up the winding gravel road, then pulled into the wide parking lot and slammed on the brakes, almost causing Dalton, Georgia’s first ever pileup.“What the hell, Bubba?”Jarvis cried, throwing out a hand to keep from slamming his face into the back of Barry’s seat.
I ignored him, flinging my door open and sprinting up the hill to the venue.Seconds later, I heard a chorus of other doors open and slam shut, and a series of pounding feet behind me.I stopped at the base of the steps leading into the main building, and everyone else stopped a few steps behind me.
“What the fuck?”Harker asked, perfectly encapsulating everything I was feeling.
“Bubba?”Skeeter’s voice was thin and worried.
“Yeah, Skeet?”My own voice sounded small, like a frightened child.Which made sense, as that’s how I was feeling right then.
“Where’s the building?”Skeeter asked.
“Skeeter,” I replied.“I have no goddamned idea.”
Where the Rolling Clover Event Venue and Soiree had stood just twenty-four hours earlier, now nothing but an empty patch of bare earth remained.A few pipes stuck up from the red dirt, and I saw a black snake slither along, unconcerned about the vanishing architecture.The wedding venue, and everyone belonging to the cars in the parking lot, had simply vanished.
“Um, dude?”I turned to see Ash, the stagehand from the other day, standing next to their car in the black pants and white dress shirt of cater-waiters everywhere.“Does this have anything to do with my gig and everyone in it disappearing?”
I looked where they were pointing and saw a mushroom ring right in the center of the dirt.I walked over to it and stared down, feeling the fear and rage begin to crystallize in my gut.“Shit,” I said as I recognized a pattern in the center of the ring.Four rows of mushrooms, all perfectly arranged to form a capital “M.”
I looked at the rest of my assembled friends and family.“Mab,” I said, unable to keep the dread out of my voice.
“What?”Harker asked.
“Queen Mab, my psychotic grandmother and the Winter Queen of the Fae, kidnapped Amy and the whole damned wedding party,” I said.
