A Fashionable Fiasco Read online

  Now that was simply awful. I adored little people. Whoever was concocting this vision was a meanie. If someone was trying to get my attention… they had it.

  Swirling tendrils of lavender smoke wound their way around my legs and held fast. I waved my hands to clear the air before the newly arrived fun mirrors crashed and splintered. This shit had to stop. I’d eaten nothing at my disastrous luncheon so that couldn’t be the problem.

  “This ends now,” I muttered, moving slowly as not to wake myself from my slumber.

  Realizing I could use my hands and still be immersed in the Hell I’d entered inside my dream, I quickly put out the flames consuming the little people and sent them away to safety—or relative safety considering I had no clue where I was.

  Actually, I had no clue where I’d sent them either. I was just thankful they were gone and hopefully still flame-free.

  Catching a glimpse of myself in one of the warped mirrors, I came as close to losing my debatably sane mind as I’d ever come. Detonating the bizarre room I was standing in seemed like an excellent idea. However, I was unsure if magic in my sleep would actually occur in real time as well. It wouldn’t do to blow up Nirvana. Plus, Bill was sleeping in our bed—wherever that was at the moment. For all I knew, I was still taking a nap next to the love of my Immortal life.

  I’d done that gorgeous man until his eyes crossed. Yes, I was that good.

  This was definitely a dream. I would never wear such unfashionable clothing. Never. No one messes with Mother Nature’s style. No. One.

  “Who dressed me? This is unacceptable,” I hissed, glancing down in abject horror at the plain brown flannel nightgown with rows and rows of dull cream-colored ruffles. Of course, it didn’t help that I was covered in powdery cake mix either.

  The nightwear belonged on a nun—not on the Goddess of Nature. I wore silk or nothing at all for the love of everything breathtakingly beautiful. Not flannel. Could this fashion catastrophe be compliments of my vomitous and irate luncheon guests? I was quite sure none of the Fearsome Five were Dream Walkers. Dream Walkers were the rarest of the rare. Plus, not one of the idiots would have dressed me in brown flannel. They might be violent, uppity, big-boned and rude, but they had outstanding taste.

  “I will smite your sorry ass to Hell if you don’t show yourself. And I will enjoy it,” I threatened as I tried in vain to remove the offending material from my body.

  “Hello, Gaia,” a disembodied voice whispered.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. I glanced around the room and realized I was suddenly standing at the edge of a cliff that led to an abyss of darkness so evil I sucked in a cautious breath. “What do you want?”

  “There are whispers that the end times are coming,” it said.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I snapped, trying desperately to recognize the voice.

  Was it male? Female? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I didn’t like whatever it was and it had abhorrent taste in sleepwear. Not to mention the end times would suck.

  “Is it ridiculous?” the voice inquired silkily. “Are you quite sure?”

  “Yesssss, I’m sure,” I lied through my teeth, wondering if this was just a dream or a dire warning. The airborne seven-headed beasts were not exactly a good omen.

  A burst of laughter from whatever had decided to pay me a visit sent shivers skittering up my spine. However, I kept my stance causal and hoped to Hell and back that I could wake myself if needed. Maybe playing along and being polite would convince the entity to leave.

  “Mmmkay, let’s just pretend you’re not full of shit. Is there something I should do to stop the end times?” I inquired. So much for being polite…

  “You should learn how to cook.”

  “I’m an outstanding chef,” I shouted. Where were people getting this false information?

  “You can’t cook,” the voice purred.

  Being nice was for the birds. The dancing cake, the appalling sleepwear, the refrigerator with eyes and the evil abyss were one thing. However, the faceless visitor had just crossed the line into Whoop-Ass-Ville.

  “Take that back,” I snarled.

  “Can’t take back the truth,” it informed me with glee.

  It was positively evil and I was done. I considered waking myself up, but there was a message in this nightmare. It wasn’t about my culinary prowess—or at least, I didn’t think it was.

  “State your business and be gone,” I snapped, letting my gaze stray to see if I could spot the owner of the voice.

  Nothing. Crap.

  “Your children are not getting along,” it whispered as the wind picked up and my feet involuntarily moved closer to the edge of the cliff.

  “Your point? My children never get along.”

  When your offspring were God and Satan, discord was a given. Was this thing a damned idiot? My boys had entirely different agendas. They would never be chummy.

  “Fair enough,” the voice as it seemed to fade away.

  Wait. Was that it? I already knew my boys weren’t overly fond of each other. “Umm… do you have anything else to add?” I asked wanting to get this over with so I could change my outfit. Itchy and ugly wasn’t my regular modus operandi.

  “Bring them together. Children need their mother. They will help you find the perfect recipe. They will have the ingredients. Good versus evil must be served by one with a little pinch of nature.”

  “Bring who together?” I demanded. “My boys?”

  The damned voice stayed silent, which most likely meant I’d given the incorrect answer. Whatever. I’d try a different angle.

  “There’s a dish called good versus evil? Is it sweet or savory? And by a pinch of nature are we talking vegetables or fruit?” I asked, confused and wishing I had a piece of paper to write this shit down. Cryptic nonsense made my trigger finger itchy. An earthquake would be a bad move right now, but I was tempted.

  “Are you serious?” the voice questioned, annoyed. “That’s all you got from what I just said?”

  “What was I supposed to get?” I inquired with an eye roll that almost gave me a headache.

  “Umm… not that,” it replied, trying not to laugh. “There were a whole bunch of really good hints.”

  “That I’m supposed to understand?” I hissed.

  The entity was silent for a long moment. “Umm… well…”

  “For the love of everything nightmare-ish. You suck at this,” I shouted.

  “Fine,” the voice hissed. “The hints will reveal themselves in time. You happy now?”

  “Not particularly. Repeat the warning,” I demanded.

  “Bring them together. Children need their mother. They will help you find the perfect recipe. They will have the ingredients. Good versus evil must be served by one with a little pinch of nature.”

  Mmmkay, maybe the thing wanted me to cook up a feast with God and Satan and make my boys serve it? Preposterous. What on earth did that have to do with the end times? Bringing God and Satan together and making them wear aprons would most likely cause the end times.

  Was I being played by the nasty entity who had appalling taste in clothing?

  “That’s a recipe for disaster,” I muttered, wondering how many double meanings might be in the bizarre directive.

  “Kind of like your luncheon?”

  Throwing my hands in the air, I stopped short and counted to thirteen instead of blowing up wherever the Hell I was. Maybe my therapist wasn’t as crappy as I’d thought. “Aren’t you quite the bitchy messenger?”

  “Yes, well, one has to amuse oneself,” it replied with a chuckle.

  “Whatever,” I grumbled, feeling the disrespectful entity begin to move away. I needed a bit more clarification before the spirit left. I hated cryptic messages. I liked my dire warnings to be spelled out in fine print—or blood if one enjoyed being dramatic. “So you say all I have to do to end the end times is have a dinner party with my boys?”

  “Oh my Hell,” the thing sputtered. “Are you
daft?”

  I was so done. “You’re a fine one to talk. You set little people on fire. I would never set little people aflame,” I insisted, stomping my foot and causing the edge of abyss to crumble and slide into the unknown.

  Whoops. It would be wildly embarrassing to get sucked into a crevasse of evil even if this was just a dream. Backing away, I lifted both hands skyward and extended my middle finger to whoever was annoying me to the point of violence.

  “And are you sure they didn’t enjoy being on fire?”

  “No one likes to be on fire,” I hissed, raising my birdie fingers higher, and then paused. “Well, my son enjoys a good inferno, but he’s insane.”

  “Parts of the dream are of your own making.”

  “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” I demanded. Talking in circles pissed me off. Pissing me off caused catastrophic damage. This thing was treading on very thin ice.

  “It means whatever you want it to mean, Gaia.”

  Waving my middle fingers so the spirit was sure to see my rude salute, I counted to fifty and then blew up the refrigerator and all the funhouse mirrors. It felt wonderful and I was somewhat in control now. A little bit of destruction could go a long way indeed.

  “At the risk of being uncouth,” I started.

  “You’re already there,” the voice pointed out.

  It was a reasonable observation. I really didn’t need to flip the thing off. It just felt nice and was far better than whipping up a volcano and letting it erupt.

  “My bad,” I replied, retracting my birdie fingers. “So all I have to do is make my boys play nice and everything will be fine?”

  “Umm…that’s somewhat simplistic, but it’s a start. Remember all I have told you. Go about business as usual.”

  It took all I had not to detonate the area. “Would you like to be less cryptic?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You won’t,” I snapped, again glancing around and trying to find the owner of the voice.

  “The end draws near and you may not be strong enough to withstand the storm. What you could lose might be priceless,” the voice purred softly.

  “How much time do I have?” I demanded.

  “A week.”

  “Well, Hell on fire,” I snapped. “Is that negotiable?”

  In a clap of thunder that I felt all the way to my toes and a blast of purple lightning, everything disappeared—including the horrid brown flannel. I stood alone and completely naked in what I could only describe as nothingness. No color. No movement. No life.

  I smiled. The voice was wrong. It was wildly incorrect about its assumption concerning me.

  “I am strong enough,” I whispered into the barren, sterile air. “For I am the storm, you mother fucker.”

  “Sweet Hell on Sunday in a strapless bra,” I shouted as I jerked to a sitting position and tried to untangle my legs from the peach silk duvet.

  “What’s wrong?” Bill shouted as he hopped out of the bed and prepared to kill whatever had alarmed me.

  Bill was as gloriously naked as the day he was created. In his state of high alert, his eyes turned a sparkling bright green and tendrils of shimmering silver smoke wafted from his nose.

  It was wildly arousing, but sadly I didn’t have time to indulge. My six-foot-four, dark-haired, amber-eyed mate was the most exquisite eye candy in the Universe. Every inch of my lover was pure muscle, but his mind and heart were far sexier than his body. My temptation was named Bill. However, temptation would have to wait. I had to think.

  Most of the time when I indulged in deep thought, it ended in an avalanche, but that was a risk I would have to take.

  “I had a dream,” I told him, looking down to make sure I wasn’t wearing brown flannel. Nope. I was naked—naked and fabulous. “Wasn’t a good dream though—more like a nightmarish vision. I even used the term that rhymes with brother trucker at the very end.”

  “That’s highly unusual and quite out of character, my lover,” Bill said, crawling back into the bed and wrapping me in his strong arms.

  I paused and considered how much to share. I still didn’t understand what it all meant and burdening my love could backfire. Bill tended to kill first and think later where I was concerned. Was the message meant for me alone? Would I disrupt destiny if I spoke of it?

  Shit. Being in charge was indeed tiresome sometimes.

  “Darling, as much as I love you in your true form, maybe you should revert back,” I suggested, playing with the light sprinkling of dark hair on his chest. “It’s very difficult to keep my train of thought while your ass is exposed.”

  “Funny thing,” he said perplexed. “I tried when you passed out after the tenth orgasm and it didn’t take.”

  “That’s odd,” I replied. Not the ten orgasms, of course. That was normal.

  “Quite,” Bill agreed.

  Normally, my lover looked like a Sprite—small in stature and incredibly squeezable. It was the façade he showed the world. His true form was our secret. As a Sprite, he was tremendously powerful. As the Enforcer, he was one of the deadliest forces of nature in the Immortal world with an insanely fine ass. As the ancient prophecy went, Bill would never stay in his Enforcer form until…

  Well, crap. I couldn’t remember.

  “Shit,” I shouted and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Do you know what this means?”

  “Umm… that we can have sex again?” he inquired, yanking me down on top of him and his happy camper.

  “Well, yes,” I said with a giggle as I writhed on top of his body that was the definitive orgasm machine. For a moment the sheer size of his camper made me forget that the world was coming to an end. “NO!”

  “No?” Bill asked.

  “Well, maybe three or four or five times, but we have to talk first.”

  With a panty-melting smile and a kiss that made my toes curl, Bill lovingly tucked my wild red locks behind my ears and gently moved me off of his body. I felt the loss of his heat acutely.

  Okay, okay, okay. My therapist said to think things out before freaking out or decapitating people—not that I would ever decapitate Bill. Even if I could, he was another True Immortal like myself and Astrid. Besides, he was far too good in the sack to even contemplate beheading.

  “Well, before I get to the possible end times part, my luncheon didn’t exactly go well,” I admitted, letting my chin fall to my chest.

  “Those vicious porcine women would be lucky to have you in their club,” Bill said, his eyes narrowing with displeasure.

  “That’s what I told them,” I pouted. “They said I poisoned them.”

  Bill was silent for about thirty-three seconds too long. I would swear he was trying not to laugh.

  “Umm… did you have the event catered?” he asked carefully.

  “Of course not,” I huffed indignantly. “I cooked.”

  Again with the silence.

  “What?” I demanded.

  As my knee was dangerously close to his crotch, I watched as Bill searched for the words that wouldn’t cause me to neuter him. Thankfully, his pride and joy would grow back if I accidentally on purpose removed it. We’d discovered the nifty fact about a thousand years ago after a disagreement about clowns. He thought they were funny. I didn’t. He lost his joystick and I won the argument. The kicker was that it grew back bigger than it was originally. Being that his camper was already an extra-large, I really didn’t want to remove it again in case it came back-monster sized.

  “Darling?” Bill said, rearranging his huge frame so he was lying on his stomach.

  “Yes?”

  After a tremendously long pause, Bill decided to change the subject. The way he pressed his lips together was a dead giveaway.

  “Umm… tell me about the dream,” he said. “You say the end times are near?”

  “That’s what it said,” I admitted.

  “What who said?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Snapping my fingers, I dressed Bill in a cu
stom black Armani suit and myself in a black Prada sheath. Looking down, I gasped. We looked like we were going to a funeral. I never wore black. What the Hell was going on here?

  “Tell me what happened,” Bill insisted, looking as alarmed as I was about the hue of the dress I’d chosen for myself.

  So I did. I told him the entire bizarre dream leaving nothing out. When I finished, we both silently contemplated what on earth it could have meant.

  “Hmmm,” he said, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth. “Quite confusing.”

  “Right?” I said, delighted he thought the same thing I did. Although it would have been more helpful if it had made sense to him.

  “Do you think it was the Antichrist?” Bill asked in a flat tone as silver smoke began to waft from his nose again.

  “Well, shit. I never even considered that,” I said, turning away from Bill and blowing up the armoire. With that unwelcome news, I needed to blow off some steam. “I suppose it could have been since the end times were mentioned, but it doesn’t feel right.”

  “It talked about a recipe, children needing their mother and good versus evil being served as one. Yes?” Bill pressed as he stood up and began to pace our enormous suite in the Garden Palace.

  “Umm, yes, I think so.”

  “Darling?” Bill said, positioning himself behind a large dresser. “Can I be frank?”

  “You can be whomever you want to be. However, I’m quite fond of the name Bill. You’re really not a Frank.”

  Bill laughed and I giggled. I had no clue what I’d done to amuse him, but his laugh always undid me. I craved his delight as much as I craved his body.

  “Fine,” Bill said with a grin. “I’ll stick with Bill. But I want to tell you something and I’d prefer to keep all of my body parts. Can we make that work, my lover?”

  I considered his request. He was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear. At least he was smart enough to warn me. Of course, when you’d been with someone since the beginning of time, you knew their quirks—or violent tendencies to be more accurate.