Dance Till I Die (gxg) ✓

"Something Borrowed, Something Blue"

MAVIS

                  "I do," Mavis whispered, closing her eyes. I do. Her heart was pounding. She leaned forward, untucking the lace of the veil away from her face. Warmth surged in her blood, crackling like static. Like lightning.

                   The air sizzled with heat. Mavis pressed her lips together.

                   Anticipation hummed in her veins.

                   "Mom!" Isla snapped from the other side of the door. "Get out of the bathroom! We are behind on our schedule, and you have a wedding in three hours. Come on, Queen Elizabeth! It's not fashionable to be late!"

                   Mavis jerked back from the mirror, opening her eyes.

                   The veil was folded back. Stray pieces of her disheveled hair clung like static to the air. There was a lingering blush in her cheeks, and she . . .

                    "I can't do this," Mavis groaned. "I can't. This is crazy."

                    She looked like a disaster.

                    And Robin was going to kill her when Mavis didn't show up for her shift at Inferno. After seven years, Mavis had never been this late.

                    "You are coming out of there whether you like it or not! I'm going to sic my Russian assassin on you, and she's going to bust this door down!"

                    Mavis cracked open the bathroom door. "Your Russian assassin?"

                    Isla beamed, clearly pleased with herself. "Ace and I are a team, you know. She's an assassin and I'm a ninja."

                    Mavis rolled her eyes. "Don't get ahead of yourself, baby. You're not a ninja yet." 

                    But Isla didn't even let the comment touch her. She was holding up a white silk slip of a dress and a sheer blue scarf.

                     "Get dressed, beauty queen."

                     "Isla, where did you get these things?"

                     "From the casino," Isla said impatiently. "There's a gift shop."

                     "You're seven! I told you to stay in the hotel."

                     "And you know I love listening to you, but here's the thing. If I'm going to be a ninja in the Holy Order of the Secret Society of the Illuminati―"

                      "That's not a thing."

                      "―then I have to be prepared to be stealthy, and that means practice. Doesn't practice mean perfect, Mom? That's what you always say."

                      "Yes, because I want you to do your homework." 

                      "Homework," Isla said, scowling, "is merely but a flea in the grand scheme of the universe, and when you begin to recognize that life is an illusion, you can free yourself from the―"

                      "I thought I told you to stop reading my philosophy books."

                      "Yes, but obviously I didn't listen. I already finished The Study of Neurology, The Research of Immunology and The Nanotechnology Doctrine. I was bored."