Page 2 of The Grip of Death
“You let me worry about all that for now, Jackie boy. I spoke to the others earlier this morning, figured you needed a break. You can spend all the time you want at the Halls of Making today. Tinker with that fancy device you boys have been building. Go take your mind off the wedding stuff. It’ll do you a world of good. You just leave all the planning to me for now.”
The artificer’s device, the one Whitby found in his memories, an unfinished blueprint courtesy of Luciana and Octavian Pryde. Even thinking about it kindled the fire of excitement in my belly. It somehow made every muscle in my body relax, too.
“You’re actually the best, you know that? But are you really going to be okay? I don’t want you to think that I don’t care about wedding prep at all.”
“That’s exactly the problem. You care too much, and it’s stressing you out. You’ve done plenty, Jack. Let me do this on my own for a little. It’s going to be okay.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, assessing him for a moment. “And you’re sure you can handle this? It’s a lot to take on for anybody.”
“Oh, I’m absolutely sure.” He clapped me on the cheek, a light, playful slap. “I’m an actual genius, Jack. Got a certificate for it and everything.”
I body-slammed him onto the bed, then raced out the door before he could take his revenge on my gorgeous body. We reached the bottom of the stairs at about the same time, both breathless and clutching the bannister. It was only the presence of our friends that stopped us from doing anything too gross or too violent to each other.
Beatrice Rex cocked one eyebrow, a hand on her hip. “Eww. Is this foreplay? This looks like foreplay. Don’t inflict that on us, boys. Get a room. Go back upstairs.”
“I heard yelling,” said Sedgewick McCall, candle mage of the Flickering Flame. “Another nightmare, Jack? Something about a cake this time? Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine. Promise.”
“We’ll see to that ourselves,” said Kaoru Minamimoto, the Scribe of the Thousand Hands. “Everything will be in order, Jackson. You’ll see.”
Sedgewick and Kaoru sat on the couches in our living room, Beatrice standing over them like a general surveying a war table.Which was what our coffee table sort of looked like, covered in a mess of paper, ink, ribbons, wax, and fabric swatches of all kinds. Samples for me and Xander to look at — or just Xander, now that he’d insisted on letting me take the day off.
The basics had already been sorted out: our outfits, the handwritten invites, down to the delicate wax seals that Sedgewick had designed and stamped himself. I loved how everything was shaping up aesthetically, this classic, sophisticated black-and-white look, something to match the color of Xander’s hair. But our friends were such good friends that they’d doubled up on wedding supply duties.
Beatrice had volunteered to provide any necessary drapes and fabric furnishings, and who were we to turn down the Seventh Veil of the House of Needles, someone who could control cloth with her own mind? Kaoru was more than happy to handwrite place cards for every table, each card as lovely as a work of art. Meanwhile, Sedgewick was extremely excited to discuss the larger part of his contribution: enchanted candles to help set the mood and match the decor.
We had the very best friends on hand to make this the perfect wedding, in short. Seeing all the materials spread out in our living room and these very eager faces who just wanted to help definitely took a massive weight off my shoulders. Xander was right.
“You guys,” I started to say, unsure of how to finish the sentence. “I just — thank you so, so much for everything.”
Xander ushered me out of the living room and past the kitchen, which was emitting the wonderful smell of something baking. I barely had time to wave goodbye to the others, Xander only relenting when I stopped to talk to Whitby. His mainframe was blinking in alternate shades of white and red, accompanied by his distressed murmuring.
“What is it, buddy?” I asked, kneeling close by.
Fortunately, we never saw another incident like the one at the Halls of Making, when he’d gone wild after being overloaded with memories of the blast that had destroyed the old guild. We’d been very careful to keep things low stress for Whitby, because even an artificer’s intelligence could only take so much. But the poor guy clearly had something he wanted to say.
“Um, Jackson? Remember when we discussed my presence at your wedding? I’m very flattered — really, I am — that you’d like me to be the ring bearer. But I really don’t know about all the attention. And I really don’t want to be an imposition, you moving around my monstrous bulk and all.”
I smiled sympathetically and patted his crystal mainframe, warm to the touch. “You’ll be fine, Whitby. Look, it’ll be great. Preston and I are going to build you a trolley so you can attend the wedding to begin with. It’s not an imposition at all. Someone will roll you down the aisle when it comes time for the rings. No sweat. People will love it.”
“Right, right,” he said, pale light blinking from within his crystal body with every word. “It’s just, I’m not sure thatI’mgoing to love it. You know?”
A second, smaller crystal whizzed out of the kitchen and straight toward us, coming to a dead stop in mid-flight just a foot away from my face. I didn’t even flinch anymore. Lore truly had mastered the gift of movement. Then again, he’d mastered it within minutes of attaining freedom from his mainframe. The Pryde AIs were brilliant in every way.
“Oh, Whitby, I’m positive you’ll have a wonderful time at the wedding. Why, you’re being almost as jittery as Jackson here. All will be well. And as for the cake, well! I can tell you now, Jackson. You’re going to be blown away by the result.”
I chuckled as I stood back up. “I’ll hold you to that, Lore. I knew we did the right thing trusting you with the cake.”
Weird how I still thought of the amorphous Mother Dough bakers in general whenever I tried to remember who was supposed to be baking our wedding cake. It was Lore, actually, working busily away in our kitchen, experimenting with the best kind of cake base to use as well as the best way to put the cakes together and stack them up high.
It was hard to mentally separate Lore and the guild of bakers ever since he’d become a proper member of Mother Dough. The very first artificer’s intelligence to join any of the Black Market’s guilds! A fantastic achievement, and one made possible by none other than Master Gertrude Goodness herself.
He’d have to construct the thing at his own workspace at the guild, though, given the lack of proper space and equipment in our kitchen. A very ambitious design, so he said, one that would require plenty of room to build. But imagine that! An artificer’s intelligence with guild membershipandhis own workshop? I couldn’t be prouder of the Prydes, of what we’d all accomplished.
A quick trip into my own workshop to pick up my backpack and I was ready to head down to the guild. Tools, check. Gauntlet, check. Just in case. I glanced over my shoulder as I headed to the front door, unable to stop myself from smiling as I saw my friends working to make this the best possible wedding for me and my almost-husband.
Everything was going to be okay. My heart bursting with sunshine, a spring in my step, I headed into the foyer and onward to the front door.
Only to stop dead at the sight of someone lingering there. Niko Belkova was too cool to sit with the rest of the kids, leaning against the wall with his arms and his legs crossed. Heir to the leadership of the Ringing Hollow, Niko had already expressed disinterest in taking over the guild of glassmakers the way his mother and grandmother did.
