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of the magical gift, Cynna would never have to bleach her hair again.

    “Cullen’ s jazzed about it,” she said, unstopping the little vial. “Both the above part and the below. He hated the way the bleach made the hair on my head smell, and he says the spell puts a sexy little glow on my —”

    “TMI, Cynna.”

    She grinned. " Nether regions? Private parts? Hey, you've got sisters. You can't tell me you never talked about stuff with them.”

    “With Beth, sometimes. But Susan? She calls it a pudendum. You can't talk about stuff with a big sister who calls it a pudendum.”

    “Jesus. Really? I know she's a doctor and all, but . . . ” Cynna shook her head.

    “Takes all kinds, I guess.” She closed her eyes, took a cleansing breath, and dabbed sea water on the dandelion fluff, a.k.a. her base chakra. Then she anointed the sacral chakra just below her belly button, and continued on up.

    The ceremony itself would be Catholic, but they'd decided to include some other rituals, too. This cleansing mixed Wiccan with Eastern rites. Cullen had taught it to her.

    At first Cynna hadn't wanted any ceremony. Why couldn't they could just go to the courthouse and do the deed? Cullen wouldn't hear of it. " You know the importance of ritual,” he'd said.

    She'd pointed out that they were getting married, not casting a spell.

    He'd raised an eyebrow. " You don't think marriage requires a touch of magic? Besides, you want to be married in the Catholic Church.”

    She did, though she hadn't expected him to like the idea. Probably she needed to get over expecting things because she was usually wrong. Hadn't she expected to have trouble getting married in the Church? Not that Catholics didn't marry outside the faith sometimes, but she didn't know of any who'd married outside their species.

    Turned out that wasn't a major hurdle. Father Michaels even speeded things up for them since they weren't planning to remain in DC much longer, asking for only three counseling sessions — one with her, one with Cullen, and one with the two of them together.

    Getting married here at the park was a bigger problem. The Church wanted people to marry at the church, in the building itself, and Father Michaels couldn't agree to waive that on his own. He needed dispensation from his bishop. Now, Bishop Kearns might be a fine fellow in some ways — Cynna was trying to reserve judgment — but he wasn't exactly flexible. He didn't think allowing a dragon to attend the ceremony was a good reason to buck tradition.

    Fortunately, she and Cullen knew someone with ecclesiastical clout. Archbishop Brown was on the Presidential Task Force as well as being on their guest list, and he'd agreed to speak to his brother bishop. They'd received their dispensation.

    Then the assholes at the courthouse proved to be more hidebound than the Catholic Church. Them and their damned form DHS 366.

    The law required blood tests. That was fine unless one of the people being tested was a lupus — an issue that, admittedly, hadn't arisen before. Everyone knew lupi didn't get venereal diseases, but common knowledge cut no ice with bureaucracy. Cullen had to be tested for syphilis and that test had to be certified as negative before the license bureau would issue a marriage license.

    It still shouldn't have been a big deal. The test checked for antibodies produced by a body infected by syphilis, and the lab agreed that they hadn't found any such antibodies in Cullen's blood. They still refused to certify their results because the blood came from a lupus. Separated from its organizing principle, the magic in a lupus's blood turned random, which made a mess of lab tests. Everyone knew that, too, but this time common knowledge trumped common sense.

    In the end, it took a call from a certain presidential assistant to persuade the lab to fill out form DHS 366 appropriately. Marilyn Wright had pointed out that the lab was not being asked whether the test could reasonably