were alight with rage and madness and an almost sexual arousal. Murphy’s arms twitched a little, and Jenny gasped, lips parting, and pushed down harder.
Murphy’s hand fluttered one more time and went still.
The next thing I knew, I was smashing my blasting rod down onto Jenny Greenteeth, screaming incoherently and pounding as hard as I possibly could. I drove the faerie back from Murphy, who slid limply to the ground. Then Jenny recovered her balance, struck out at me with one arm, and I found out a fact I hadn’t known before.
Jenny Greenteeth was something strong.
I landed several feet away, not far from Billy and Georgia, watching birdies and little lights fly around. On another table, next to me, was another punch bowl.
Jenny Greenteeth flew at me, lust in her inhumanly lovely features, her feline eyes smoldering.
“Billy!” I slurred. “Dammit, kiss her! Now!”
Billy blinked at me.
Then he turned to Georgia, lifting the upper half of her body in his arms, and kissed her with a desperation and passion that no one could fake.
I didn’t get to see what happened, because faster than you could say “oxygen deprivation,” Jenny Greenteeth had seized my hair and smashed my face against the bottom of the punch bowl.
I fought her, but she was stronger than anything human, and she had all kinds of leverage. I could feel her pressed against me, body tensing and shifting, rubbing against me: She was getting off as she murdered me. The lights started to go out. This was what she did. She knew what she was doing.
Lucky for me, she wasn’t the only one.
I suddenly fell, getting the whole huge punch bowl to turn over on me as I did, drenching me in bright red punch. I gasped and wiped stinging liquid from my eyes and looked up in time to see a pair of wolves, one tall and lean, one smaller and heavier, leap at Jenny Greenteeth and bring her to the ground. Screams and snarls blended, and none of them sounded human.
Jenny tried to run, but the lean wolf ripped across the back of her unwounded leg with its fangs, severing the hamstring. The faerie went down. The wolves were on her before she could scream again. The wheel turns, and Jenny Greenteeth never had a chance. The wolves knew what they were doing.
This was what they did.
I crawled over to Murphy. Her eyes were open and staring, her body and features slack. Some part of my brain remembered the steps for CPR. I started doing it. I adjusted her position, sealed my lips to Murphy’s, and breathed for her. Then compressions. Breathe. Compressions.
“Come on, Murph,” I whispered. “Come on.”
I covered her mouth with mine and breathed again.
For one second, for one teeny, tiny instant, I felt her mouth move. I felt her head tilt, her lips soften, and my oh-so-professional CPR—just for a second, mind you—felt almost, almost like a kiss.
Then she started coughing and sputtering, and I sank back from her in relief. She turned on her side, breathing hard for a moment, and then looked up at me with dazed blue eyes. “Harry?”
I leaned down, causing runnels of punch to slide into one of my eyes, and asked quietly, “Yeah?”
“You have fruit-punch mouth,” she whispered.
Her hand found mine, weak but warm. I held it. We sat together.
BILLY AND GEORGIA got married that night in Father Forthill’s study, at St. Mary of the Angels, an enormous old church. No one was there but them, the padre, Murphy, and me. After all, as far as most anyone else knew, they’d been married at that disastrous travesty of a farce in Lincolnshire.
The ceremony was simple and heartfelt. I stood with Billy. Murphy stood with Georgia. They both looked radiantly happy. They held hands the whole time, except when exchanging rings.
Murphy and I stepped back when they got to the vows.
“Not exactly a fairy-tale wedding,” she whispered.
“Sure it was,” I said. “Had a kiss and an evil stepmother and everything.”
Murphy smiled at me.
“Then by the power vested in me,” the padre said, beaming at the pair from behind his spectacles, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss th—”
They beat him to it.
IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, TOO
—from Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris
Takes place between White Night and Small Favor
I’ve met people who are sweeter and nicer and more likeable than Charlaine Harris—but I really can’t remember when. Every author I’ve ever talked with who knows Charlaine just couldn’t be happier about the success of