The ceremony location finally secured, they could have the invitations printed. The printing company that her family normally used had had a car dropped on it during the Veterans Bridge shoot-out in June. Their fallback printer seemed to have a death wish, dragging out the normal hour-long decision process into a week of back-and-forth phone calls. It didn’t have cardstock for Jane’s first three choices — but it took an entire day to verify that for each selection. After Jane had picked out a fourth choice, the printer kept putting holds on the print run as they checked and rechecked that they were spelling everyone’s name correctly. (Any company with the name of Kolodziejski Kwikie Print shouldn’t complain about Aheahe, Elikapeka, and Keaweaheulu Ka’ihikapu Taggart.) Jane had been seriously worried her mother would firebomb the company and start over with a new printer.
Then Tinker domi dropped an orbital gate on Jane’s wedding plans. The entire visa problem for both Taggart and Nigel had been instantly rendered moot. At that point it seemed saner to just push back the date of the wedding to when the Kryskill family church was free.
Jane had regretted the choice since the moment she agreed to it. It had given her mother more time to get more extravagant and more time for things to go wrong.
“There! See? In that crack?” Hal lay on the floor, shining his phone’s flashlight under the credenza.
“Oh, yes, there’s my beauty.” Nigel was in a slightly more cautious pose but right there beside Hal in terms of danger.
Much as Jane didn’t want to talk to her mother, she couldn’t in good conscience leave the conference room until the snake was caught. “Do not get bit!” she ordered the two naturalists as she dialed her mother’s phone number.
“Jane!” Her mother answered the phone with the joy generated by the planning one of her children’s massive flashy wedding.
“I just got off the phone with Duff. He said you wanted to talk to me…?”
“Elliot is trying not to let it show, but Elliot is really feeling blue about being left out of the wedding. I had a thought, if we double up the wedding party size, no one will notice one or two stray people.”
Jane had been braced for a rant against Carl Moser. “What? Who is Elli…Oh!”
The oni warlord, Kajo, had kidnapped Jane’s baby sister, Carla Marie — generally called Boo by everyone — and transformed her into a tengu of the Chosen bloodline. He planned to use her as a tool to control the tengu Flock. It was only by luck and daring that Jane managed to finally find and rescue Boo in July. They’d kept Boo secret from everyone — even extended family — in fear that Kajo might try to steal Boo back.
Duff created daily code words for the family to use when discussing Boo, just in case the oni were monitoring their cell phones. “Elliot” was today’s codeword for Boo.
In July and most of August, it had been unthinkable that Boo could be involved in the wedding as the tengu had been still enslaved by the oni. Tinker domi, however, had performed miracles and now it might be safe for Boo to attend the wedding. The place was going to be crawling with good-looking blond people once you counted all Jane’s aunts, cousins, and kids. Could Boo be part of the wedding party? Center stage of the entire long ceremony? Jane had serious doubts.
Her mother obviously hoped that if Jane’s wedding party was larger, they could slip Boo into the mix without anyone noticing. “You have your uncle standing in for your father, but it’s not right to leave your siblings out of the most important day of your life. You have five brothers. They should be part of the wedding party. And what about Hal? His nose is already out of joint over you picking Taggart over him.”
If they added Hal and her five brothers on top of Taggart and Nigel as his best man, the male side of the wedding party would jump to eight. Sixteen people. Good God, what a circus.
Jane wanted to say no but she didn’t want to hurt Boo’s feelings. “Mom, the wedding is in two weeks!”
Her mom plowed on. “We’re already renting tuxedoes for your brothers. I’ve got enough of that dusty rose fabric to make six more dresses. I’ve lined up a team of dressmakers. I’ve talked to Julia, Cora, and Ina already and they’ve said yes. That will give us six counting you and Brandy. We just need two more women — preferably ones that your cousins don’t know. As soon as possible.”
“What about Rachel?” Jane asked since her mom had only named three of her four first cousins.
“Rachel is in Mercy Hospital with preeclampsia.” Her mother used the tone of voice that indicated that her mom believed she had told Jane this more than once. She might have or she might have emailed Taggart and he hadn’t passed the information on yet. Jane had been tuning out the wedding stuff. “She might be having the baby on the day of the wedding. I really hope not, I want all of my sisters to be there. I’m going to need them for damage control.”
“Okay. Rachel is a no-go. Wait.” The numbers didn’t add up. They would need six women to balance her five brothers and Hal. Her mother had only recruited three of her cousins. “Don’t I need three more?”
“Elliot and two others.”
“Oh, yes. Okay.” Boo would be one of the three girls. Two would still be impossible. Jane’s father had died when she was twelve, just days after Boo was born. It left Jane as a semi-parent to her five younger brothers. It had also made her impatient with typical high school drama. She knew what real-life problems looked like. It wasn’t getting a date to the dance but trying to cope with a two-year-old who was grieving for his dead father at three a.m.
Her attitude hadn’t made her popular in high school. Her friends were mostly girls like Brandy Lyn Pomeroy-Brooks-Abernethy who had their own life problems that gave them similar outlooks. Others like Cesia Cwiklinski…Jane was never sure why she was friends with Cesia beyond the rule of opposites attract.
“Mom! I already asked Brandy to be my maid of honor. CC is pissed off that I didn’t ask her. She says we made some weird vow back in junior high school to be each other’s maid of honor. I don’t remember it. Frankly, I think she’s confusing me with someone else. I’m fairly sure I never thought about wedding parties until July. Whatever — Cesia isn’t talking to me. Brandy will not give up the spot either, not to CC. You know how competitive they are with each other.”
“What about what’s-her-name? You and Brandy and CC went to the prom together with her? I still can’t believe that all the boys in your class were too afraid of the four of you to ask any of you out.”
“Mel? She moved Stateside! Most of the girls in my class went off to college and didn’t come back. I don’t know any other women! I’ve been too busy since high school doing Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden to make new friends. The wedding is in two weeks! Who wants to go to a stranger’s wedding with that short a notice?”
“Oh, Jane, don’t be so dramatic. We’re talking about half of the population of the city. Surely you know someone who will bite the bullet for you. Just find two more women that your cousins won’t know and we can trust. Ask them to be your bridesmaids. We can slip Elliot in opposite to Guy and no one will question it.”
Like hell people wouldn’t! They hadn’t told anyone in their extended family that Jane had found Boo. The minute her cousins saw Boo, though, they would recognize her. Boo was a young woman instead of a child, but she had the same halo of curly white-blond hair. Jane was going to have to tell her cousin Roach since he’d spent most of the summer putting his neck on the line for her. Roach had loaned her use of his boat, volunteered to run the merchandise end of Hal’s Heroes, and was currently babysitting a crate of dynamite.