My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding by Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jim Butcher, P. N. Elrod, Rachel Caine, Esther M. Friesner, Susan Krinard, Lori Handeland, L. A. Banks Read Free Book Online Page A

listing of her published works at www.vampirehuntress.com

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"SOMETHING BORROWED"
    copyright © 2006 by Jim Butcher.

    Steel pierced my leg and my body went rigid with pain, but I could not allow myself to move. "Billy," I growled through my teeth. "Kill him."
    Billy the Werewolf squinted up at me from his seat and said, "That might be a little extreme."
    "This is torture," I said.
    "Oh, for crying out loud, Dresden," Billy said, his tone amused. "He's just fitting the tux."
    Yanof the tailor, a squat, sturdy little guy who had recently immigrated to Chicago from Outer Sloboviakastan or somewhere, glared up at me, with another dozen pins clutched between his lips and resentment in his eyes. I'm better than six and a half feet tall. It can't be fun to be told that you've got to fit a tux to someone my height only a few hours before the wedding.
    "It ought to be Kirby standing here," I said.
    "Yeah. But it would be harder to fit the tux around the body cast and all those traction cables."
    "I keep telling you guys," I said. "Werewolves or not, you've got to be more careful."
    Ordinarily, I would not have mentioned Billy's talent for shapeshifting into a wolf in front of a stranger, but Yanof didn't speak a word of English. Evidently, his skills with needle and thread were such that he had no pressing need to learn. As Chicago's resident wizard, I'd worked with Billy on several occasions, and we were friends.
    His bachelor party the night before had gotten interesting on the walk back to Billy's place, when we happened across a ghoul terrorizing an old woman in a parking lot.
    It hadn't been a pretty fight. Mostly because we'd all had too many stripperinduced JellO shots.
    Billy's injuries had all been bruises and all to the body. They wouldn't spoil the wedding. Alex had a nasty set of gashes on his throat From the ghoul's clawlike nails but could probably pass them off as particularly enthusiastic hickeys.
    Mitchell had broken two teeth when he'd charged the ghoul but hit a wall instead.
    He was going to be a dedicated disciple of Anbesol until he got to the dentist.
    All I had to remember the evening by was a splitting headache, and not from the fight. JellO shots are far more dangerous, if you ask me.
    Billy's best man, Kirby, had gotten unlucky. The ghoul slammed him into a brick wall so hard that it broke both his legs and cracked a vertebra.
    "We handled him, didn't we?" Billy asked.
    "Let's ask Kirby," I said. "Look, there isn't always going to be a broken metal fence post sticking up out of the ground like that, Billy. We got lucky."

    Billy's eyes went flat and he abruptly stood up. "All right," he said, voice hard.
    "I've had just about enough of you telling me what I should and should not do, Harry. You aren't my father."
    "No," I said. "But"
    "In fact," he continued, "if I remember correctly, the other Alphas and I have saved your life twice now."
    "Yes," I said. "But"
    His face turned red with anger. Billy wasn't tall, but he was built like an armored truck. "But what? You don't want to share the spotlight with any of us mere onetrick wonders? Don't you dare belittle what Kirby did, what the others have done and sacrificed."
    I am a trained investigator. Instincts honed by years of observation warned me that Billy might be angry. "Great hostility I sense in you," I said in a Muppety voice.
    Billy's glower continued for a few more steady seconds, and then it broke. He shook his head and looked away. "I'm sorry. For my tone."
    Yanof jabbed me again, but I ignored it. "You didn't sleep last night."
    He shook his head again. "No excuse. But between the fight and Kirby and . . ."
    He waved a vague hand. "Today. I mean, today."
    "Ah," I said. "Cold feet?"
    Billy took a deep breath. "Well. It's a big step, isn't it." He shook his head. "And after next year, most of the Alphas are going to be done with school. Getting jobs."
    He paused. "Splitting up."
    "And that's where you met Georgia," I