Enchanted Ever After (Enchanted, Inc. 9)

“The bigger the party, the better,” Owen said. “I’m hungry. Does anyone want a hot dog? My treat.”

We seemed to have been given a respite after the great ballgame dragon taming. I’d worried that catching Matilda wouldn’t necessarily stop anything if her family was still out there, but by Tuesday, I still hadn’t seen any reports of anything that sounded like real magic on any of the blogs, and Carmen said she hadn’t received any news releases. The Abigail Williams blog had just about fizzled out, and I hoped that meant her group was defunct.

With the case closed, I was free to worry about my upcoming wedding. I got through my bachelorette party—a spa day arranged by Gemma—without any of the drama that had hit Owen’s bachelor party. No dragons, no gargoyles, no guests with wings that I hadn’t specifically invited. It was almost a disappointment. I was starting to worry that things were a bit too easy. But there was still time for crazy things to happen at the wedding rehearsal. I wondered if weddings were like stage plays, where a disastrous dress rehearsal was considered an omen of a good opening night.

Our rehearsal was pretty low-key, with only the people directly involved in the ceremony there—and not even all of them. We waited until everyone had left work for the weekend on Friday evening, and then the wizards helping us with the wedding created the magical decorations, turning the office building’s cathedral-like lobby into something that looked like a chapel in a magical forest. It sounds weird to have a wedding in an office building, but when your office building looks like mine and when that building has a lot to do with your relationship, it makes sense.

Even on its own, that lobby is gorgeous, but the magical decor was beyond my wildest wedding dreams. A forest glade seemed to have sprouted from the tile floor, with tiny lights twinkling among the branches. Garlands of white flowers arched overhead, creating a canopy over the aisle. The seats were scattered among the trees rather than lined up in neat rows. The ceremony itself would take place on the first landing of the grand staircase, where there were more trees, their branches creating an arch overhead.

Since my father wouldn’t be at this ceremony (I could only imagine what he’d think of it), Merlin was walking me down the aisle. I’d grown used to the idea of him being my boss, but the thought that the Merlin, such a legendary figure, was playing the father role at my wedding was a little overwhelming.

Gemma, who was serving as wedding coordinator, got everyone positioned just so, with Owen and Rod standing on the steps in front of the landing and my bridesmaids lined up in front of Merlin and me. The pastor, from Owen’s boyhood church, would be arriving with Owen’s foster parents the next day. As he’d said, he’d done so many weddings he could do them in his sleep, so he hardly needed to rehearse. I would have liked the chance to run through what I would have to do in the ceremony itself, but I supposed it wasn’t really a performance.

Magical music played, and the bridesmaids walked down the aisle to arrange themselves on the stairs. Then it was my turn. I’d been practicing walking in my gown around the apartment, but I was a little worried about navigating the aisle and the stairs in it. It was a shame that I couldn’t wear it for the rehearsal. Maybe I’d get a chance to practice climbing the steps in the gown before the wedding, I thought, and I was so sidetracked by the thought that I nearly stumbled on the steps in my ordinary clothes and shoes. That didn’t bode well.

Merlin held my arm, steadying me. “Feel free to levitate me, if necessary,” I said sheepishly.

“You’ll be fine,” he assured me as he placed my hand in Owen’s.

“So, there will be the ceremony, ‘I do,’ rings, and all that,” Gemma called out. “Okay, now let’s practice the recessional. Everyone knows their positions?” I didn’t see how anyone didn’t. She’d sent enough charts and diagrams.

The attendants had made it down the steps, and Owen and I were just starting to make our own descent when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye and nearly missed a step. This time, it was Owen who caught me. I was just about to make a quip about the stairs not being such a great idea when I saw Trix whispering to Merlin. That must have been the motion I’d noticed. Fairies didn’t usually shrink to Tinkerbell size and swoop around, at least, not around humans, so I wondered what was up.

We made it back down the aisle, and Gemma applauded. “I think that should do it,” she said. “Is everyone comfortable with what they’re doing? Any questions?”

Rina, who planned events for the company and who was helping with the wedding, stepped forward and said, “After that, we’ll transform to reception mode. We’ve got the spells in place to do that. Would you like to see?”

“Sure,” I said, curious how this would go.

Rina and her team waved their hands and muttered spells, and soon the room was filled with small tables that gave the impression of a magical woodland picnic. I half expected to see the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit having tea, with Winnie the Pooh and his friends at the adjacent table. “It’s lovely,” I said, but I was still distracted by whatever Trix had told Merlin. He was frowning and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to his surroundings. I didn’t think he’d even noticed that he was now sitting at a table.

Rina reset the lobby to wedding mode, and the rehearsal was over. We were going to gather at a restaurant for dinner, but first I wanted a chat with Merlin. I grew more alarmed when he approached us first. “You should know that Matilda Mayfair has been released on bond,” he said.

“What?” I protested, trying not to shriek out loud.

“I’m not surprised,” Owen said. “With that kind of money and power, I doubted they’d have held her forever.”

“You don’t think she’ll do something, do you?” I asked.

“I don’t think you should worry about it,” Merlin said. “You concentrate on your wedding.”

“We should be safe,” Owen said, giving my hand a squeeze. “After all, their

plan has been to do things in public, and this wedding is too private for them to bother with. It’s also already magical.”

“Yeah, you have a point there,” I said. “It’s hardly going to be earthshattering if someone uses magic at a magical wedding in a magical office building.” It was reassuring when I thought about it that way. The wedding would likely be the safest place to be. But then that made me worry about something else. “That’s probably when they’ll do something else in public, though,” I said. “They’ll know that most of the people who’ve been defeating them will be here tomorrow night. I wonder what else is going on in the city.”

“As I said, you don’t have to worry about that,” Merlin said. “The Council is apparently monitoring Miss Mayfair and her associates, and we do have people who won’t be attending the wedding who will be watching the city. Prophets and Lost is scrying to monitor the situation and predict where they might strike next. But you two are officially off-duty until you return from your honeymoon and the ceremony in Texas.”

“Well, let’s just hope they can do it all without me,” I said.

It was easier than I would have expected to follow Merlin’s advice and not worry about Matilda and her plotting. It helped that I had so much going on with my wedding. My friends hustled me home right after dinner so I could get my beauty sleep and be well-rested. We had a girls’ brunch the next morning, then it was time for makeup and hair styling. We gathered all the wedding supplies and headed to the office building that afternoon, where my office had been turned into a dressing room, complete with three-way mirror.

Since we were ahead of schedule, as soon as I had my dress and shoes on, I went out to the lobby and practiced walking down the aisle and up and down the steps a few times. The skirt was stiff enough that it didn’t tangle around my legs, so it was easier than I’d feared. I thought I might actually get through this without falling flat on my face.

After my last trip up the stairs to the temporary altar, I paused and looked back at the decorated lobby. I remembered the first time I’d walked into this building, nearly two years earlier. I’d had no idea how much my life would be changed by that job interview. I’d learned that magic was real and that my utter ordinariness was so extreme that it counted as a superpower. I’d already met Owen, but then I’d learned what he really was. I’d been attracted to him, but I’d never have imagined then that we’d have ended up married.

And now, here I was, part of the magical world even though I was totally lacking in magic, about to marry the wizard of my dreams in the lobby of a magical corporation’s office building. In all my childhood daydreams about how my wedding would look, this hadn’t been on the list. It was beyond anything I might have imagined actually happening to me.