I swallowed. “Wedding officiant?” I asked as though I’d never heard the term before.
“Yes,” she said, a touch impatient. “I need to know what sort of ceremony you want. Obviously, I’ll be the one to marry you and Rafe. I am the head of your coven, after all.”
“But don’t you need to be a licensed Registrar?” I had done a bit of research. Bizarrely, a garden wedding wasn’t legal. A marriage had to occur in a fixed building. But Margaret waved such details aside. “You’ll have a short, legal ceremony at the registry office beforehand, and I’ll perform the ceremony to celebrate your union.”
Actually, that made a lot of sense. I was going to have to do better than this if I didn’t want to have Margaret Twigg officiating at my wedding. If I wanted to turn and run in the middle of the ceremony, I wouldn’t be able to. I’d have to say “I do” or risk the wrath of Margaret. Not that I wanted to run away from my own wedding. Just having her looking at me was giving me crazy thoughts.
“I hadn’t—Rafe and I haven’t—”
“Discuss it with him and let me know, but don’t leave it too long. I’ll have to make preparations.”
I nodded, too confused to say a word.
She nodded briskly. “I’ll let you get back to it. Good afternoon, Meritanum.”
“Good afternoon.”
Even the bells seemed to have a different sound when she shut the door on her way out. Almost as if they were giving out bell-like sighs of relief.
Meri said in a small voice, “That witch frightens me.”
“That witch frightens me, too. And now it seems like she’s going to be the one marrying me.”
Meri giggled. “No. It is Rafe who will be marrying you. And that is something all of us who wish you well have wanted for a very long time.”
When she put it like that, the actual ceremony didn’t matter much at all.
I sat back down again and resumed my crochet. The nice thing about working with Meri was that she also moved her needle at a human pace. I felt less intimidated than with my usual knitting and crochet companions, who’d have had an entire sweater completed in the time it took me to knit—and then probably have to unpick—a single row.
Not long after that, Sylvia walked in from the street. She blinked when she saw Meri and then, recognizing her, went forward with her hands held out. “Meri. What a pleasure to see you here.”
Meri was a great favorite with the vampires. She rose and returned Sylvia’s embrace.
“Everyone will want to see you. Especially Agnes. Poor Agnes, she feels so shut in knowing that her daughter is in town and she daren’t be seen.”
“That is very sad,” Meri said.
“But seeing you will cheer her up. Why don’t you come down tonight? It will be a surprise for Agnes and a very welcome one. You can spend the evening with us.”
Meri looked up at me as though she needed my permission, and I nodded. “That’s a great idea. And if it gets late, you can stay in the guest room upstairs.”
She nodded. “I would be most honored.” Then she looked down and blushed. “But Pete will come and fetch me.”
Sylvia chuckled. “And Pete is fetching you, is he? Well, well. I suppose one saw that coming. We’ll be making another wedding gown soon, I imagine.”
Meri was the color of her crochet cotton. “He has not spoken. Please. I do not know—”
“Stop embarrassing her,” I said to Sylvia. When I saw the way Pete looked at Meri, I suspected Sylvia was correct, but we should let them figure out their plans first. Not that the vampires excelled at staying out of other people’s business, as I knew only too well.
“I am most grateful and honored by your kind invitation,” Meri said again.
“It’s so nice to see a young woman with such good manners,” Sylvia said.
And then, with a slight glance at me, she headed into the back room. I didn’t know if she was trying to intimate that I didn’t have good manners or that she would quite like it if I was a little more servile. That was not going to happen.
I was about to close up shop when my mother returned, alone. She said, “Oh, we had a delightful afternoon. She’s such a lovely girl, Violet.”
“She is. Also, a very good shop assistant.”
My sarcastic barb went wide. The door opened again, and if I’d thought it might be my wayward assistant here to help close, I was wrong. It was my dad, looking very pleased with himself. “I’ve had a marvelous afternoon at the Ashmolean. Met up with Hughes. Been talking about a joint project. It could be very exciting.”
“That’s great, Dad.” Professor Hughes had gone to school with my dad and written a few books that had quoted my parents. I’d much rather talk about Egyptology with my folks than my wedding.
My mother, however, was not to be so easily distracted. And usually Mom was as obsessed as my dad with their work.
She said, “That’s wonderful, Jack. And you can tell me all about it later. But your father and I were speaking last night, Lucy, and we’ve decided to sell our home in Boston.”
“Sell the family home?” This came out of nowhere.
Dad was looking pleased, and Mom continued, “We talked it over, and really we were keeping it in case you needed a place to go when things didn’t work out.”
Oh, didn’t I sound like a winner in their eyes. Had they really kept the house in case I needed a bolt hole?
“Where will you live?”
They glanced at each other. “We think we’ll come here when we retire so we
