This was all sad, understandable, and inevitable, I guess.
When it was time to leave the church, the tension ratcheted up again.
Sam stepped outside and explained to the waiting shifters what was about to happen. When Deidra and Craig stepped out of the fellowship hall, they went through the church so they’d be protected by a building for as long as possible. By the time we’d gotten back to the church vestibule, I cracked the doors open to look outside. The two-natured had formed a solid phalanx of bodies between the doors of the church and the parked cars. Trish and Togo had recovered enough to join them, though the dried blood on their clothes looked awful.
Craig and Deidra came out first, and the people still there began clapping. Startled, the couple straightened from their hunched-over postures, and Deidra smiled tentatively. They were able to leave their wedding reception almost normally.
The plan was that we would all go to Bernie’s house. Deidra’s parents had suggested that maybe Deidra should change into her going-away clothes there, and I didn’t want to think too hard about why they’d thought it was such a good idea. They’d also told their two younger girls to get in the car and go home with them, and they hadn’t made it an option. I managed to hug Angie, who’d pulled the bell rope with me. I had high hopes for her future. I don’t think I ever spoke two words to the younger girl or Deidra’s other brother.
I was looking around in the remaining crowd. There were still a few protesters, though they were notably quieter about their opinions. Some signs waved in a hostile way, some glares . . . nothing that didn’t seem small after the ordeal of getting to the church. I was looking for a particular face, and I spotted it again. Though she looked older than she should have, and though she was wearing dark glasses and a hat, the woman standing with a camera in her hands—she’d discarded the sign—was Sarah Newlin. I’d seen her husband in a bar in Jackson when he was supporting a follower who’d come prepared to assassinate a vampire. That hadn’t worked out for Steve Newlin, and this wasn’t working out for Sarah. I was sure she’d taken my picture. If the Newlins tracked me down . . . I glanced around me. Luna caught my eye.
I jerked my head, and she came over. We had a quiet conversation. Luna drifted over to Brenda Sue, one of the Biker Babes, a woman nearly six feet tall who sported a blond crew cut. The two started a lively conversation, all the time moving closer and closer to Sarah, who began to show alarm when they were five feet away. Brenda Sue’s hand reached out, twitched the camera from Sarah’s grasp, juggled it for a moment, then tossed it to Luna.
Luna, grinning, passed it from her right hand to her left hand behind her back. The blonde made several playful passes with it. All the while, Luna’s hands were busy. Finally, the blonde was able to retrieve the camera, and she tossed it back to Sarah.
Minus the memory chip.
By that time, those of us who had ridden to the wedding were back in the vehicles. Luna and Togo and Trish got into the truck’s flatbed, and the bikers each gained a passenger. Somehow we all got back to Bernie’s house without any bad incidents. There were still a lot more people in the streets of Wright than normal, but the protest had lost its heart, its violence.
We pulled up in front of the house to find that the beer was being unloaded and carried into the backyard, and that even more people were bringing food. The manager of the grocery store was personally unloading more sandwich platters and tubs of slaw and baked beans, plus paper plates and forks. All the people who had been too frightened to come to the wedding were trying to find some way to make themselves feel better about that, was the way I took it. And I’m usually pretty accurate about human nature.
All of a sudden, we were in the party business.
The two-natured who’d flooded into Wright now surged through the house and into the backyard to have a drink and a sandwich or two before they had to take the road home. With a pleasing sense of normality, I realized I had work to do. Sam and I changed from our wedding finery into shorts and T-shirts, and with the ease of people who work together all the time, we set up folding tables and chairs, found cups for the beer, sent the rapidly healing Trish to the store with Togo, and arranged the napkins and forks and plates by the food. I spotted a big garbage can under the carport, found the big garbage bags to line it, and rolled it to the backyard. Sam got the gas grill going. Though Mindy and Doke offered to help, both Sam and I were glad when they went home with the kids. After such a day, they didn’t need to hang around. Those kids needed to go back to Mooney.
Few humans remained to party with the twoeys. Most of the regular people had seemed to get a whiff of the otherness of the guests, and they’d drifted away pretty quickly.
Though we were short on folding chairs, everyone made do. They sat on the grass or stood and circulated. When Togo and Trish returned with soft drinks and hamburger patties and buns, the grill was ready to go and Sam took charge. I began putting out the bags of chips. Everything was going very well for an impromptu celebration. I went to pump beers.
“Sookie,” said a deep voice, and I looked up from the keg to see Quinn. He had a plate with a sandwich and some chips and some pickles on it, and I handed him a cup of beer.
“There you go,” I said, smiling brightly.
“This is Tijgerin,” Quinn said. He pronounced it very carefully. It sounded like “Tie” plus a choking noise, and then “ine” as in “tangerine.” I practiced it in my head a couple of times (and I looked up the spelling later). “That’s ‘Tigress’ in Dutch. She’s of Sumatran and Dutch descent. She calls herself Tij.” Pronounced “Tie.”
Her eyes were as dark a purple as Quinn’s, though perhaps a browner tone, and her face was a lovely high-cheekboned circle. Her hair was a shiny milk-chocolate brown, darker than the deep tan tone of her skin. She smiled at me, all gleaming white teeth and health. I figured she was younger than me, maybe twenty-three.
“Hallo,” she said. “I am pleased to meet with you.”
“Pleased to meet you, too,” I said. “Have you been in America long?”
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I am here just now. I am European employee of Special Events, the same company Quinn works for. They send me here to get the American experience.”
“You’ve certainly gotten to see the bad part of the American experience today. Sorry about that.”
“No, no,” she said again. “The demonstrations in the Netherlands were just as bad.” Polite. “I am glad to be here. Glad to meet Quinn. There are not so many tigers left, you know?”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” I said. I looked from her to Quinn. “I know you’ll learn a lot while you’re here, Tij. I hope the rest of your stay in America is better than today.”
“Oh, sure, it will be!” she said blithely. “Here we are at a party, and I am meeting many interesting people. And the praying at the church, that was very interesting, too.”
I smiled in agreement—“interesting” was one word for it. “So, Quinn,” I asked, since we were being very polite in front of Tij, “How’s your mom?”
“She’s doing all right,” he said. “And my sister’s gone back to school. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but she seems a little more serious about it this time.”