“Indeed! Now, please step out, for the party we’re meant to intercept should be right—aha! Right along!”
We’re intercepting a whole party? Well, I guess that explains the glowing orange light I’m just able to make out, advancing toward us on this country highway.
Surprise, surprise: it is another giant vegetable.
To my pleasure, though?Thispumpkin rolls up beside mine, and a small, pretty hand throws back its ornate, gauzy curtains.
“SABBY!” cries the hand’s owner, who is no other than Mandy. “You’re here! You’re coming to the wedding! I’m so HAPPY!”
My pixie assistant, and the interim lead planner for Spüktacular Weddings, is dressed in a frilly black ensemble with a gathered skirt and a giant ruffled trim. I love it. And I love her. My heart absolutely gushes with affection, and it’s kind of gross.
“Of course I’m here,” I say, rolling my eyes to emphasize how chill I am about seeing her. “We have a job to do, don’t we? Now, make room for me in your pumpkin.”
“I would, but it’s a spaghetti squash,” says Mandy. “The sugars caramelize differently. Anyway, get in!”
“Will do,” I say. I wave in thanks to my own personal Jiminy Cricket and glance at the second, taller of the two coachmen guiding Mandy’s contraption. He meets my eye, his familiar brow poised in arched disdain.
“Rochester!” I exclaim. “Hey, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
He continues to disdain me with such great power that I feel it’s best to dip into the squash, lest I become a roasted vegetable myself.
“What’s he doing here?” I ask as I slip around into my seat.
“Rochester is a fairy godmother,” Mandy informs me, toweling off her hands with a dainty kerchief. “All fairy godmothers have to study carriagecraft.”
“A fairy, I get, but a godmother? Why… a mother… Rochester is a… You know what, no. I’m not asking. Where’s Bulan?”
Mandy’s expression swiftly shifts from giddy and lovestruck to slightly panicked. “I thought he was with you!”
My stomach sinks. If Bulan didn’t go back to Salem, whatdidhis crows do with him? Maybe they’ve made him a full member of the gang now, and he’s sporting a new raven tattoo on his nose or something.
“I’m sure he’s fine, wherever he is,” I say uneasily. I bang on the squash’s fleshy wall.
“All right, Roachster,” I call out. “Time to take us to the ball. Chop-chop!”
Mandy pouts. “It’s not a ball, remember? Tonight’s the rehearsal dinner.”
“Oh, Mandy,” I say. “It was a joke. You have so much left to learn.”
“I do!” she cries, and tackles me with such a hard hug, I nearly fall back through the carriage door and onto the earth of Mid-Nonsense, New York. But thankfully, these squash vehicles are made of strong, ifstringier, stuffing, and soon we’re just another giant plant flying down the road. In fact, as far as I can tell, the only thing going faster than us is Mandy’s mouth. She has a month’s worth of hijinks to catch me up on, and only a short time to do so.
“… and after that, Rochester brought me the deposit and signed the contract for us, you see? And I was too googly-eyed to say no and on top of that, there were all these Community folks calling and checking in about their weddings and new weddings and talking about their invitations and the fonts and the printers and consultations, and I just had to keep it going. And it was so hard, but through it all, I knew you’d come back!”
I ignore the last comment, interjecting with effort: “When Bulan told me you were doing this, I thought about stopping you.”
“You should’ve!” Mandy cries. “I’m able to hold almost anyone’s attention! And I can hold SO MUCH candy at the same time! But I can’t hold together much else.”
“I’m sure you’ve done your best.” I pat her shoulder.
“Getting things organized isyoursuperpower.” She hiccups. “I want to be serious, Sabby, but I don’t know if I can. What if my only superpower is seduction?”
“I don’t think you get to call something a superpower if it’s your species’ innate ability.”
Mandy dabs at her eyes with a lacy sleeve.
“In any case,” she says, “your instructions were so clear, all the scheduling you did for this wedding and the other weddings, I just kept following them as if you were there, and if I fell behind on anything, I imagined you were really angry!”
“Glad that helped,” I say. My phone pings, and immediately I scramble to remove it from the bag on my chest. Are we back in cell area?Did Hanry finally reply to me?But no. My phone is just announcing that my battery’s about to die. And I left my charger in the apartment. Shit.
