HONEYMOON OF THE DEAD EXCERPT
Chapter 1: The Lovers
Astrological Correspondence: Gemini
A honeymoon in Transylvania with her vampire husband. I ask you: What more could a wWitch ask for?
Well, for starters: How about everything going smoothly for a change and this plane leaving the tarmac sometime this year?
Minnesotans like to say “could be worse” or “can’t complain” at times like this, but I’ve been living in Madison, Wisconsin, for several years now, so forget that. Besides, my wedding was nearly a non-starter, what with the ex-wife zombie and all, so was it too much to ask that my honeymoon be just a touch better?
I could probably deal if the airline hadn’t screwed -up so that Sebastian and I not only didn’t get first-class seats, but also now sat two rows apart with me wedged between a sumo wrestler and a stringy- haired teen with his MP3 player so loud I could hear every word Slip Knot belted out.
And then there was the dinner with my Minneapolis cousins who couldn’t make my wedding. My mother had insisted we see them before we left for our honeymoon, despite the fact that Sebastian and I had nothing in common with the ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Christian, meat-loving side of my family. My stomach was still urpy after making polite attempts to ingest bacon-wrapped chicken drowned in beefy marinara sauce. I don’t think they had a vegetable in the entire house! And the wedding present! Who wants to lug a heavy, antique porcelain figurine of two cherubic angels all the way to Europe? We would have shipped it home, but there just wasn't time, what with the storm and a plane to catch.
I didn’t, I’d tell you that much for free. I didn’t want that horrible thing in my possession at all. Sebastian privately joked about just leaving it on the side of the road, but it was Great-Aunt So-and-So’s, so now it was taking up valuable space in my luggage.
My stomach roiled unhappily.
The heavy metal bass line beat in time to the pounding of my head.
Couldn’t we at least get off the ground?
I adjusted my hips in the narrow seat and looked around the other passenger’s girth at the gleaming expanse of the jet’s wing through the window.
Admittedly, Sebastian and I couldn’t have picked a nastier time of year to go on honeymoon. At least the flights were cheap thanks to the New Year’s holiday. Sleet rained from a dismally gray sky. It’d been an oppressive drive up from Madison to the Saint Paul/Minneapolis International Airport, yesterday. If it wasn’t for the oh-you’ll-have-a-lovely-time-with-them-I-promise cousins, we’d have headed south to O’Hare, and hopped a direct flight to Austria, but no. . . . Instead, we braved ice slicks on the curvy stretches of Interstate 94 that had me holding on to the door handle with white knuckles. The snow really started hitting somewhere around Menomonee. The weather had only grown worse and worse the closer we got to the Cities. Honestly, I’d been surprised they’d let us board. I was sure the flight was going to be canceled.
In a way, I wished they would just call the whole thing off. At least then Sebastian and I could be laughing at our misfortune while snuggled under a scratchy blanket at a Days Inn. I wish we could even just sit together. I turned back to try to catch Sebastian’s eye when the teen accidentally elbowed my breast. My stomach lurched in a you’re-falling-catch-yourself sensation. I rubbed the injured part absently as I acknowledged the teen’s mumbled apology. Laying my head back on the hard cushion of the seat, I waited for the dizziness to pass. I’d been getting these strange touches of vertigo for a couple of weeks now. In fact, I got them nearly any time someone touched me. It was almost as if the nausea was some kind of magical feedback loop when my aura and someone else’s collided unexpectedly. Sometimes I experienced double -vision too. I should’ve probably told my new husband about all this before we booked a flight to Vienna, but I didn’t want to worry him. Sebastian and I’d had a lot of adventures so far—crazy stuff involving zombies, shape-shifters and ex-dead Gypsy ex-wives. And, you know, I just didn’t want to burden us with what could just be some version of witch-aura- flu. Rubbing the space between my eyes, my frown deepened. In fact, because Sebastian and I had such a tendency toward trouble, before we left, I cast a “just -let –it- all -be -normal” spell. It wasn’t much. Just a candle and some hurried visualization before rushing out the door to head to Minneapolis. I sure hoped Mátyás remembered to blow out the candle like I asked. Mátyás was Sebastian’s half-vampire, immortal son, now my step-son. There was something that was going to take some getting used to. Mátyás and I didn’t always get along. Now we were family. Over the intercom, the captain apologized for the continued delay. I snorted in disgust. Had my “normal” spell even worked? Given all the problems we’d had on this trip so far, I’d doubt my abilities as a successful Witch if it weren’t for the fact that where other people talked about being “goddesses,” I really was one. Okay, really, it was more like this: I had this full-time, resident Goddess, Lilith, whom I accidentally permanently bonded to me when I needed help fighting off an American Indian Trickster God. The good news was that I could now call on Lilith when those zombies and whatnot attacked Sebastian and me, but the bad news was that She was the Queen of Hell and Mother of Demons. And, worse, the more time we stayed together, the more inseparable we became. Yeah, I was becoming the original bitch. Nice, huh? I felt it today for sure. Carefully, I shifted in my seat, impatient for some movement. The snow outside continued to fall. No offense to Sebastian, but I wished we were headed somewhere warmer—the Bahamas, Tahiti, or even Greece. That reminded me, I was actually carrying two Goddesses around. Because of Lilith’s darker side and tendency to destroy anything She touched, I called on another Goddess during the last big crisis that befell us—Athena. She could be hanging around because I kind of sort of promised to devote my life to Her worship in exchange for Her help. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake. I mean, I was beginning to think that maybe my body was overcrowded, and that was part of what was causing all these flashes of dizziness. Perhaps Lilith and the new Goddess -in -residence were duking it out for control over my spiritual real estate. The speaker crackled to life overhead and the captain’s voice informed us that we’d be taking off as soon as the de-icer had a chance to work. Thank Goddess!—whichever one of my divine occupants answered my prayer! The sumo wrestler’s knee grazed mine and I felt that odd disorienting tingle, like the world just shifted under my feet. For a second, I thought maybe the plane was finally moving. I checked out the window. No such luck. . . . And it looked like we wouldn’t be going anywhere for some time given that there was a Frost Giant on the wing. Wait, what?