Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

pigeons,” his daughter continued on blithely.
    “Pigeons?” said Adam thoughtfully. “Pigeons are pretty. And they taste pretty good, too.”
    I hit him in the shoulder. Not hard, just enough to acknowledge his teasing.
    “—but finally decided that butterflies would be better,” continued Jesse.
    “Butterflies and balloons,” I told Adam. “She wants to release butterflies and balloons. Two hundred balloons. Gold ones.”
    “I expect she’s trying to get Monarch butterflies if she wants gold balloons,” Jesse said helpfully.
    “Monarch butterflies,” said Adam. “Can you imagine the poor things trying to figure out their migration route from the Tri-Cities?”
    “She has to be stopped before she destroys the ecosystem,” I told him, only half-joking. “And I can only think of one way to do it. My sister eloped under the pressure of planning her wedding with my mother. I guess I can, too.”
    He laughed—and looked a lot less tired.
    “I love your mother,” he said with honest satisfaction that lowered his voice to a purr. “I suppose preserving the Tri-Cities’ ecosystem is a valid reason for jumping the gun. Let’s get married, then. I have my passport with me. Do you have your birth certificate, so we can get the license, or do we need to go home first?”

    IT WAS A LITTLE MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT, SO IT took us two days to get married. Eloping just isn’t as quick as it used to be unless you live in Vegas, I guess. Of course, we still might have made it in one except that I insisted on Pastor Arnez doing the honors. He’d had a funeral and two weddings to work us around.
    Adam had lost a lot of things fighting in Vietnam. His humanity and belief in God were just a few of them, he told me. He wasn’t thrilled about a church wedding, but he couldn’t really object without admitting that it was anger, not disbelief, he felt about God. I was just as glad to avoid that argument for a while.
    We meant the ceremony to be a small thing, Adam, Jesse, and me, with a pair of witnesses. Peter, the pack’s lone submissive, stopped in at the house at just the right time and so was pressed into service as a witness. Zee, my mentor, who would step in and run my business while we were gone on our impromptu honeymoon, was thus brought into our plans almost immediately and claimed the privilege of second witness. Despite rumor, the fae have no trouble going into a church of whatever denomination or religion. It is the steel that the early Christian church brought along with it that was deadly to the fae, not Christianity itself—though sometimes the fae forget that part, too.
    Somehow, though, word got out among the pack, and most of them managed to be at the church on Tuesday morning by the time Jesse and I drove in. Adam was coming separately with Peter in a nod to tradition. He had had to stop for gas, so Jesse and I arrived first, and when we parked, there were a lot of familiar cars in the lot.
    “Word travels fast,” I said, getting out of the car.
    Jesse nodded solemnly. “Remember when Auriele was trying to throw a surprise party for Darryl? We might have managed to keep the pack out of this if we could have gotten it done yesterday. Do you really mind?”
    “No,” I said. “I don’t mind. But if we have a lot of people here, Mom’s going to feel bad.” My stomach began to tighten with stress. One of the reasons to have a planned wedding was to avoid hurting people’s feelings. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
    When we walked into the church, though, it became obvious that more than just the pack had found out. Uncle Mike greeted us at the door—I supposed Zee had told him. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that the old barkeeper had brought a few other fae, including, somewhat to my dismay, Yo-yo Girl, whom I’d last seen eating the ashes of a fairy queen. Yo-yo Girl wasn’t really her name, which I had never learned, just what she’d been doing the first time I’d met her. She was dangerous, powerful, and looked like a ten-year-old girl with flowers in her hair, wearing a summer dress. She smiled at me. I think she knew how much she scared me and thought it was funny.
    I hadn’t intended on walking formally up the aisle. But as people started to arrive, Samuel—werewolf, previous roommate, and long-time-ago boyfriend—pulled me aside and gave me a bouquet of white and gold flowers.
    He pulled my hair away from my left ear and bent down to whisper,