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“Yes, I do!” Amelia exclaimed. “Ah, it’s kind of daring. I was the bridesmaid at an extreme wedding.” She emerged from the closet with her hair disheveled, her eyes lit with triumph. She rotated the hanger so I could get the full effect. She’d had to pin the dress to the hanger because there was so little to hang.

“Yikes,” I said, uneasily. Made mostly of lime-green chiffon, it was cut in a deep V almost down to the waist. A single narrow strap ran around the neck.

“It was a movie star wedding,” Amelia said, looking as if she had a lot of memories of the service. Since the dress was also backless, I was wondering how those Hollywood women kept their boobs covered. Double-sided tape? Some kind of glue? As I hadn’t seen Claudine since she vanished from the courtyard before the ectoplasmic reconstruction, I had to assume she’d gone back to her job and her life in Monroe. I could have used her special services just about now. There had to be a fairy spell that would make your dress stay still.

“At least you don’t need a special bra to wear under it,” Amelia said helpfully. That was true; it wasn’t possible to wear a bra at all. “And I’ve got the shoes, if you can wear a seven.”

“That’s a big help,” I said, trying to sound pleased and grateful. “I don’t suppose you can do hair?”

“Nah,” Amelia said. She waved a hand at her own short ’do. “I wash it, brush it, and that’s that. But I can call Bob.” Her eyes glowed happily. “He’s a hairdresser.”

I tried not to look too astonished. At a funeral home? I thought, but I was smart enough to keep that to myself. Bob just looked no way like any hairdresser I’d ever seen.

After a couple of hours, I was more or less into the dress, and fully made up.

Bob had done a good job with my hair, though he’d reminded me several times to keep very still, in a way that had made me a little nervous.

And Quinn had shown up on time in his car. When Eric and Rasul had dropped me off at about two in the morning, Quinn had just gotten in his car and driven away to wherever he was staying, though he’d put a light kiss on my forehead before I started up the stairs. Amelia had come out of her apartment, all happy I was safely back, and I’d had to return a call from Mr. Cataliades, who wondered if I was quite all right, and who wanted me to go to the bank with him to finalize Hadley’s financial affairs. Since I’d missed my chance to go with Everett, I’d been grateful.

But when I’d returned to Hadley’s apartment after the bank trip, I’d found a message on Hadley’s answering machine telling me that the queen expected to see me at the party at the old monastery tonight. “I don’t want you to leave the city without seeing me again,” the queen’s human secretary had quoted her as saying, before informing me that the dress code was formal. After my discovery, when I realized I’d have to attend the party, I’d gone down the stairs to Amelia’s in a panic.

The dress caused another kind of panic. I was better-endowed than Amelia, though a bit shorter, and I had to stand really straight.

“The suspense is killing me,” said Quinn, eyeing my chest. He looked wonderful in a tux. My wrist bandages stuck out against my tan like strange bracelets; in fact, one of them was acutely uncomfortable, and I was anxious to take it off. But the wrist would have to stay covered a while, though the bite on my left arm could remain uncovered. Maybe the suspense about my boobs would distract partygoers from the fact that my face was swollen and discolored on one side.

Quinn, of course, looked as though nothing had ever happened to him. Not only did he have the quick-healing flesh of most shape-shifters, but a man’s tux covers up a lot of injuries.

“Don’t you make me feel any more self-conscious than I already do,” I said. “For about a dime, I’d go crawl back into bed and sleep for a week.”

“I’m up for that, though I’d reduce the sleep time,” Quinn said sincerely. “But for our peace of mind, I think we better do this first. By the way, my suspense was about the trip to the bank, not