Dressed To Slay. Harper Allen

tonight. But since we don’t have our resident expert here to answer those questions, we have to assume the worst. Help me find something to arm ourselves with—maybe a broomstick or—”

      Kat pointed to the table beside the sofa. “Will that do?”

      “It’ll have to,” I answered, moving to it and sweeping my bouquet to the floor. “Take a leg and pull, like at Thanksgiving with the wishbone.”

      Thirty seconds later the three of us stepped into the vestibule of St. Barnabas, where a red-faced Popsie was waiting. Except for the red face, he looked dapper in a dove-gray morning suit, and when he saw us his expression softened.

      “I’d like to horsewhip that young man of yours for not getting to his own wedding on time,” he said gruffly, crooking his right arm for me to grasp as Kat and Tash took their places. “Lucky for him your sisters’ fiancés slipped him in the side entrance without running into me. But I promised your grandmother I wouldn’t spoil your big day, so I’ll say no more about it. Are we ready?”

      As if St. Barnabas’s organist had heard and taken Popsie’s query for a cue, the huge Hammond at the front of the church began booming out the opening bars of “The Wedding March.” I exchanged grim looks with Kat and Tash as two ushers opened the double oak doors leading from the vestibule into the church and Popsie began escorting me down the aisle.

      Every female with an ounce of romance in her soul dreams of her wedding day. Even the most tomboyish little girl occasionally takes time out from picking scabs from her knees and beating up little boys to envision what she’ll wear and the kind of flowers she’ll carry. Now, as I solemnly step-paused, step-paused with Popsie down the velvety red carpet leading to the altar, I realized I was living the fantasy.

      Sort of. Then again, sort of not.

      Through the lace of my veil I could see packed pews on either side of me and Popsie. The fragrance of the gardenias festooning them was so heady it was like running the spritzer gauntlet in Macy’s perfume section. The florist had woven tiny crystals through the dark green leaves, and more crystals dripped in strands to brush the floor. Tash, Grammie’s pearls around her throat, the skirt of her yellow satin bridesmaid’s dress swinging like a bell and its short train falling from a flat bow positioned at the back of her waist, looked like a fairytale princess. Kat looked like a movie star, with her silver-blond hair worn down and the fishtail hem of her strapless silk organza swishing sexily behind her. I didn’t look like a movie star or a princess. In the Monique Lhuillier ball-gown-styled wedding dress I’d fallen in love with the moment I’d first set eyes on it, I looked exactly as I’d always dreamed of looking on my wedding day…elegant and beautiful.

      That was the sort of part of living the fantasy. The sort of not part was the big hunk of broken table leg strapped to my leg by a frilly blue garter—totally Freudian, now that I think of it—plus the fact that as I slowly proceeded toward the three men standing with their backs to us at the front of the church, I felt like turning tail and running like hell.

      Or do all brides feel like that?

      Whether they do or not, most of them don’t bail on their own weddings and I wasn’t going to, either. Tash and Kat, as nervous as they were, would see this out for the same reason I intended to. Somehow Todd and Lance and Dean had risen after being staked. I wasn’t going to leave an unsuspecting Grammie and Popsie to face them, although right now, facing them wasn’t the operative phrase.

      “This is so humiliating I could die,” Tash whispered across Popsie, whose hearing isn’t the sharpest. “They’ve still got their backs to us and everyone’s beginning to look really uncomfortable. I mean, even if they’re vamps, you’d think they could show some manners, right?”

      “Sure, sweetie,” Kat said under her breath. “Just like the old-world courtesy they displayed last night when they were trying to sink their teeth into our necks.”

      “They’re fudging with our minds, as Grammie would say,” I said tersely. “Or as I would say, fucking with our minds. They’re obviously using some sort of mojo to look normal to everyone here but they’ll show their real faces to us just before they—”

      A couple of things happened all at once. Well, not all at once, but really close together. The first thing was that “The Wedding March” suddenly trailed off on a discordant note. The second was that Grammie, about fifteen feet away in the first row of pews, stood up and began to make flapping motions at us with her hands, as if she were shooing chickens. The third was that Lance and Todd and Dean turned around.

      I stared at Dean in horror. Flames burned in his eye sockets, his canines were impossibly long, his face was dead-white…and no one in the church was screaming.

      I didn’t bother wasting time wondering about that part. I began fumbling under my crinoline for my stake, determined to get to our undead grooms before they had a chance to take a step closer to Grammie, but even as I did I froze. My stake fell from my hand, bounced once on the red carpet, and clattered to the floor beside the nearest pew.

      The three men standing at the front of the church and looking at us weren’t Lance and Todd and Dean at all. They didn’t have fiery eyes or vamp teeth or white faces—in fact, they looked absolutely ordinary. Two of them were in the familiar blue uniform of the Maplesburg Police and the third wore jeans, an unbuttoned sports jacket and a gold detective’s badge clipped to his belt. He narrowed his eyes at Tashya and Kat and me, but when he spoke he raised his voice so everyone could hear.

      “Sorry, folks, the wedding’s been postponed. The groom and his buddies appear to have gone missing, as everyone here but the bridal party seems to have noticed.” In the hubbub that arose from the guests he lowered his tone, this time directing his words only to us. “I’m treating their disappearances as possible murders, ladies. Not that you’re suspects, but can the three of you fill me in on where you were and what you were doing last night?” His gaze went to my fallen stake and he went on smoothly, “And can you also explain why you’re carrying a concealed weapon at your own wedding, Ms. Crosse?”