Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

“My arm…” Cher wailed, squeezing her eyes shut as she turned in to herself, hugging her right arm to her chest.

“You, back in your room,” I ordered Arun. He frowned, probably some aristocratic response to being accosted by a plebeian. “You’re not supposed to see her,” I said, jerking my head at his bride, now crouched next to Cher, murmuring and stroking her stepdaughter’s cheek.

Suzanne lifted her head, caught his eye, tears in her own. “Just go, Arun.”

He hesitated, his desire to be by her side apparent even despite the circumstances, before turning mutely. I inched closer to Cher, now rocking and wailing in sharp staccato breaths. We were beginning to draw a crowd, and I scanned the faces, worried about Mackie, but it was all hotel personnel and, moments later, medical staff.

“She fell down the stairs,” Suzanne was saying as we moved aside, her own sobs warring with Cher’s for the limited airspace. “She was right next to me, but when I turned to check my reflection one last time at the top of the stairs, she was gone.”

“No,” argued Cher, wincing. “I didn’t fall! I was pushed.”

I stilled. “Pushed?”

Suzanne leaned closer, smoothing the hair back from Cher’s beautiful, red, pained face. “Darlin’, there was no one near us.”

“I know when I’ve been pushed, Mother!” Cher snapped. “I did not fall down those stairs.”

Then she moaned, leaning over herself, and the paramedic edged Suzanne back. We gazed at each other over Cher’s head, before I broke to canvass the top of the staircase. Anyone could be up there. Just because Suzanne hadn’t seen someone push Cher didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Agents could cover the entire pool area in a blink. But to a mortal mind, one used to making sense only of that which they could see and touch and sense, there had to be some other explanation. Suzanne searched for one now.

“Maybe it was my dress,” she fretted, running her hands along the full skirt. “Maybe it pushed you with the force of its layered tulle, beads, and endless beauty.”

Cher’s head shot up, eyes hot. “Or maybe it was the hands planted on my back!”

Suzanne began to weep openly. “Somebody tell Arun the wedding’s off.”

“No!” Cher’s anger evaporated as she lunged toward Suzanne, crying out when the movement jarred her broken arm. The attendants moved in closer, but she shooed them away. “You can’t do that! You have to get married.”

“But my baby is injured.”

“No, Momma. I won’t be responsible for ruining the happiest day of your life. So much planning went into it. And all these people are here-”

“All these people,” I interrupted, “will be happy to come back.”

But Cher wasn’t hearing it. She grabbed Suzanne’s arm, her face etched with pain, but her voice pleading.

“Momma, Arun is the love of your life. He is a prince. And I am going to call him Daddy. Please, please, don’t call it off.”

Suzanne let out a great sigh, turning her head to the vaulted, gold-brushed ceiling, then closed her eyes. “Okay,” she whispered, though she was shaking her head.

The paramedics worked quickly, stabilizing Cher and picking her up when she refused a stretcher. It would make too much of a scene, she said. Yet even leaving via the back doors couldn’t prevent that. The yells of reporters, the click of cameramen, and the surprised gasps of onlookers swelled as they realized it was the bride’s stepdaughter being carried from the room. Then the door clicked shut, the security guard stoically planted himself in front of it, and a sniffle sounded behind me.

“Maybe wearing a color only once removed from white wasn’t such a good idea.”

I turned and grasped Suzanne by the shoulders. No, I didn’t want her marrying Arun Brahma. But with both the Tulpa and Warren in the house, and Mackie surely on the way, it was the lesser of all present evils. It was also my best opportunity to rid myself of half that paranormal foursome.

“Nonsense,” I said, squeezing until she looked me in the eye. “That accident had nothing to do with some eastern superstition. Besides, you’ll have a weeklong Indian wedding next month, and Cher will be well enough to attend that. Right now, you’re on American soil. White is lucky, but gold is divine. Now. Let’s go back upstairs, touch up your mascara, and tuck in your toilet paper.”

Suzanne turned and I placed one hand on her waist supportively, the other on the gun at my back.

“Oh God,” she sniffled again. “Please don’t let anything else go wrong.”

I didn’t say there were other wannabe deities involved in this disaster. She could pray all she wanted for nothing else to go wrong, but she’d be lucky if, from this point on, anything else went right.

I’d been thinking about weapons and fighting and blood, about chaos and death and battles that never seemed to end, about what it meant to be mortal and what it meant to be super, and how strange that all these forces were gathering during a ceremony of “this man joining this woman.” Something both so ordinary and celebratory. Irony had such a dark sense of humor.

So when I stepped back onto the giant pool patio, with its white and gold runner draped over the floating Plexiglas aisle and dock, I blinked up at a blue, temperate sky with a sense of amazement. The air was utterly still, every color and object sharp, as if outlined in charcoal. Glancing at the front of this small arena, where the priests and Arun stood side by side, I saw that the candles signifying two people being joined as one were now lit, burning straight up as though lifted by strings. The still, perfect setting made me wonder if Arun controlled the weather in addition to a good portion of the Asian world.

The sitar player let the last haunting notes fade, and the full string orchestra used my appearance as a cue to begin the first song of the ceremony. Eight hundred of Suzanne’s closest friends-and two of my greatest enemies-turned to watch me make my way down the floating Plexiglas aisle.

The longest fucking aisle of my life.

I plastered what I hoped was a pleasantly expectant look on my face and tried to keep my eyes off the water reflected through the clear plastic at my feet. It was a beautiful touch, light refracting against the undulating water, but it combined with my nerves to nauseate me, so I lifted my eyes, looked straight ahead, and steadied my breath.

I was also overly conscious of the trident at my back and the gun at my thigh, and kept my movements small so the sari stayed put, revealing neither. When I made it to my position at the western priest’s left without being attacked, decapitated, or injured in any way, I gave both him and Arun a nervous smile. The priest nodded back, but Arun barely glanced at me before returning an anticipatory gaze to the aisle. A second later the wedding march started up, and the rest of the guests did the same.

The dress appeared first, full, but with the odd effect of making Suzanne look taller. Or maybe it was pure bliss doing that, because she beamed as brightly as the winter sun, beginning that fateful walk down the center aisle, acknowledging the oohs and ahhs with a slight inclination of her head. She was beautiful for a woman of any age, but the years had somehow come together on this day to make her more solid somehow. She moved like a gift, wrapped in all that jewel-encrusted gold. It was probably just the reflection off the walkway, but her glowing skin was bested only by her eyes, dewy with emotion.

Arun, in turn, was thunderstruck. She reached his side, unable to look away from him as well, blindly offering me her bouquet before holding her hands out to him. He took them almost by rote, staring into her face like he was trying to adjust his eyes to some new phosphorescent light.