Free Green-Eyed Envy by Kasey Mackenzie

still made me leery—after being ambushed by a human sorceress in one—but living in Boston made developing a downright phobia of them impossible. One of the very few benefits to my magical Rage was the ability to channel a tendril to beat back the fear and focus on the suspect list.
    I’d been to Harper’s place a few times over the months we’d gotten to know each other and had to admit she had much more elegant taste than me. She opened the door to Penn’s knock and ushered us through the wide foyer that separated the entryway from the large, spacious area consisting of her living room, dining room, and kitchen. Decorated in crisp white with bold slashes of black and teal, the open floor plan was modern and more put together than anything I could have managed in my own townhouse.
    My feet had barely crossed the threshold into Harper’s living room when I started picking up weird vibes from our arcane version of Romeo and Juliet. They kept exchanging surreptitious glances I caught from the corner of my eye. The weird part was they would then look in my direction and quickly away again. As if they were planning to ambush me or something.
    And the way my life went, that might not be far from the truth.
    I tensed and crossed my arms over my chest, stopping in the middle of the floor and causing Scott to bump into me. “Riss?” Harper and Penn—both preparing to sit on a long white sofa I would have spilled whiskey on in a heartbeat—cast guilty looks in my direction and froze.
    Ignoring Scott’s questioning tone, I tilted my head at Romeo and Juliet. “I should have known something was up when you seemed so insistent about having us over for dinner tonight.”
    Harper tried—and failed as miserably as Penn would have—to look innocent. “What are you talking about, Riss?”
    “Don’t pussyfoot”—ha!—“with me, Christabel.” Okay, so I couldn’t resist. “I’m a Fury and a cop, and I know a sting operation when I see one. So spill it.”
    Penn jiggled the gift in his hands again. Is that for Harper? The Cat in question took the package from her fiancé as if she expected it, answering that question. Which could only mean . . . It’s for me ? Okay, just why are they trying to butter me up? I was sure I wouldn’t like the answer to that question—and I was right.
    Harper cleared her throat and stepped toward me. “Penn and I were thinking.” I didn’t like this already. “We don’t want to give this bastard power over our lives, but at the same time, we want to see him caught more than anything. So, what if we killed two birds with one stone? Took back control of our own futures and set a trap for his psycho ass all at once?” Well, that didn’t sound so bad. “We took more than a year to admit our love publicly, but we’re not doing that with our engagement. In fact, we want to move the wedding up. Way up. To next month.”
    What the—wait. That could actually work. Trinity, Scott, and I could investigate all the major players behind the scenes leading up to the wedding and—“ And we want you to be our wedding planner.” She settled the package in my hands. What. The. Hell? ? ?
    I blinked. Then tilted my head to the other side. Looked behind me to Scott, and then back to Romeo and Juliet. No, I hadn’t suddenly woken up from some bizarre dream. Harper really stood there with a straight face and said she wanted me to be her wedding planner .
    Harper took advantage of my shocked silence to tap the gift. “Open it.”
    Still unable to formulate a coherent thought, much less a sentence, I ripped into the elegant wrapping paper and found myself staring down at a thick paperback entitled Wedding Planning Made Easy . And for once, found myself just as speechless as a creepy dummy doll.
     
     
    “JESUS, RISS, FOR THE DOZENTH TIME, NO, I did not know about Harper’s crazy but brilliant scheme!”
    I paused in the act of unlocking the door and looked over my shoulder. “Wait. You think her