Calvin Coolidge!” exclaimed Hugh, highly offended. “This is the same suit he wore at his inauguration.”
I sighed. “Hugh, nobody here remembers that.” That was one of the downsides of being immortal. Our memories became obsolete as more time passed. Hugh, an imp who bought souls for Hell, was much younger than Roman and me, but he had a lot more years than any human here.
Slipping away from Roman and Hugh’s argument, I headed across the room to mingle with my guests. Some of my coworkers from the bookstore Doug and I worked at were huddled around the punch bowl, and I stopped to chat. Immediately, I was bombarded with compliments.
“Your hair is amazing!”
“Did you dye it?”
“It doesn’t even look like a wig!”
I assured them it was a very good wig and dealt out praise for them in return. One person, however, earned a rueful head-shake from me.
“You have more creativity than all of us put together, and that’s the best you could do?” I asked.
Best-selling author Seth Mortensen turned to look at me with one of his trademark, slightly scattered smiles. Even when I was dizzy with vodka, that smile never failed to make my heart speed up. Seth and I had dated for a while, plunging me into the depths of a love I’d never imagined possible. Part of being a succubus was an eternity of seducing men and stealing the energy of their souls—a real relationship had seemed out of the question. And in the end, it had been. Seth and I had broken up—twice—and while I usually accepted that he had moved on, I knew that I would love him forever. For me, forever was a serious matter.
“I can’t waste it on a costume,” he said. His amber-brown eyes regarded me fondly. I no longer knew if he loved me too; I only knew for sure that he still cared about me as a friend. I kept trying to portray the same image. “Gotta save it for the next book.”
“Lame excuse,” I said. His shirt depicted Freddy Krueger, which might have been acceptable if not for the fact I suspected he had owned it long before Halloween.
Seth shook his head. “Nobody cares what guys wear at Halloween anyway. It’s all about the women. Look around.” I did and saw that he was right. All the elaborate, sexy costumes were on my female guests. With a few exceptions, the men’s dulled by comparison.
“Peter’s dressed up,” I pointed out. Seth followed my gaze to another of my immortal friends. Peter was a vampire, a very fastidious and obsessive-compulsive one. He was clad in pre-Revolutionary French garb, complete with brocade coat and a powdered wig over what was normally thin brown hair.
“Peter doesn’t count,” said Seth.
Recalling how Peter had painstakingly stenciled swans around his bathroom’s baseboards last week, I couldn’t help but agree. “Fair point.”
“What’s Hugh supposed to be? Jimmy Carter?”
“Calvin Coolidge.”
“How can you tell?”
I was saved from answering when Seth’s fiancée—and one of my best friends—Maddie Sato appeared. She was dressed as a fairy, complete with wings and a gauzy dress nowhere near as slutty as mine. Fake flowers wreathed black hair that had been pulled into a bun. Her being with Seth was something else I’d more or less come to accept, though I suspected the sting of it would never leave. Maddie didn’t know Seth and I had dated and had no clue about the discomfiture I felt over their whole relationship.
I expected her to slip her arm around Seth, but it was me she grabbed hold of and jerked away. I stumbled a bit. Five-inch heels weren’t normally a problem for me, but the vodka complicated things a bit.
“Georgina,” she exclaimed, once we were far enough away from Seth. “I need your help.” Reaching into her purse, she pulled out two pages torn from magazines.
“With wha—oh.” My stomach twisted uncomfortably, and I hoped I wouldn’t be joining Doug in the bathroom. The pages showed photos of wedding dresses.
“I’ve almost narrowed it down,” she explained. “What do you think?”
Grudgingly accepting the man I loved was going to marry one of my best friends was one thing. Helping them plan their wedding was an entirely different matter. I swallowed.
“Oh, gee, Maddie. I’m not very good at this stuff.”
Her dark eyes widened. “Are you kidding? You’re the one who taught me how to dress right in the first place.”
She apparently hadn’t taken the lessons to heart. The dresses, while beautiful on the anorexic models wearing them, would look terrible on Maddie. “I don’t know,” I said lamely, dragging my eyes away. The dresses were conjuring mental images of Maddie and Seth walking down the aisle together.
“Come on,” she entreated. “I know you have an opinion.”
I did. A bad one. And honestly, if I were a good servant of Hell, I would have told her they both looked great. Or I would have endorsed the worst one. What she wore was no concern of mine, and maybe if she showed up at her wedding looking subpar, Seth would realize what he’d lost when we broke up.
And yet…I couldn’t. Even after everything that had happened, I just couldn’t let Maddie do it. She’d been a good friend, never suspecting what had occurred between Seth and me before and during their relationship. And as much as that petty, selfish part of me wanted it, I couldn’t let her go forward in a bad dress.
“Neither are good,” I said at last. “The full skirt on that one will make you look short. The flowers on top of that one will make you look fat.”
She was taken aback. “Really? I never…” She studied the pictures, face falling. “Damn. I thought I had this stuff down now.”
I can only assume my next words came from the liquor. “If you want, I’ll go with you to some places this week. You can try some stuff on, and I’ll tell you what works.”
Maddie lit up. She wasn’t gorgeous in the popular, magazine sort of way, but when she smiled, she was beautiful. “Really? Oh, thank you. And you can look for your dress too.”
“My what?”
“Well…” Her smile turned sly. “You’re going to be a bridesmaid, aren’t you?”
At that moment, I reconsidered my earlier thoughts about nothing being more painful than helping plan her wedding. Being her bridesmaid pretty much blew that out of the water. Those who believed we made our own hells on earth must have had something like this in mind.
“Oh, well, I don’t know…”
“You have to! There’s no one else I’d rather have.”
“I’m not really the bridesmaid type.”
“Of course you are.” Maddie’s eyes suddenly looked at something beyond me. “Oh, hey. Doug’s back. I’m going to go check on him. We’ll talk about this later. You’ll give in.” Maddie scurried off to her brother, leaving me numb and speechless. I decided then it was worth risking illness to go get another drink. This party had taken a definite U-turn.
Yet, when I turned around, it wasn’t toward the bar. It was toward my patio. One of the best features of this condo was its expansive balcony, one that looked out over Puget Sound and the Seattle skyline beyond. As I stood there, though, it wasn’t the view that captivated me. It was…something else. Something I couldn’t explain. But it was warm and wonderful and spoke to all my senses. I imagined I could see colored light on my balcony, kind of like the waves of an aurora. I could also hear a type of music that defied all human words and had nothing to do with the Pink Floyd blasting from my stereo.
The party faded into the background as I slowly moved toward the balcony. The door was open to air out the hot room, and my two cats, Aubrey and Godiva, lay near it to look outside. I stepped past them,