I was looking around in the remaining crowd. There were still a few protesters, though they were notably quieter about their opinions. Some signs waved in a hostile way, some glares . . . nothing that didn’t seem small after the ordeal of getting to the church. I was looking for a particular face, and I spotted it again. Though she looked older than she should have, and though she was wearing dark glasses and a hat, the woman standing with a camera in her hands—she’d discarded the sign—was Sarah Newlin. I’d seen her husband in a bar in Jackson when he was supporting a follower who’d come prepared to assassinate a vampire. That hadn’t worked out for Steve Newlin, and this wasn’t working out for Sarah. I was sure she’d taken my picture. If the Newlins tracked me down . . . I glanced around me. Luna caught my eye.

I jerked my head, and she came over. We had a quiet conversation. Luna drifted over to Brenda Sue, one of the Biker Babes, a woman nearly six feet tall who sported a blond crew cut. The two started a lively conversation, all the time moving closer and closer to Sarah, who began to show alarm when they were five feet away. Brenda Sue’s hand reached out, twitched the camera from Sarah’s grasp, juggled it for a moment, then tossed it to Luna.

Luna, grinning, passed it from her right hand to her left hand behind her back. The blonde made several playful passes with it. All the while, Luna’s hands were busy. Finally, the blonde was able to retrieve the camera, and she tossed it back to Sarah.

Minus the memory chip.

By that time, those of us who had ridden to the wedding were back in the vehicles. Luna and Togo and Trish got into the truck’s flatbed, and the bikers each gained a passenger. Somehow we all got back to Bernie’s house without any bad incidents. There were still a lot more people in the streets of Wright than normal, but the protest had lost its heart, its violence.

We pulled up in front of the house to find that the beer was being unloaded and carried into the backyard, and that even more people were bringing food. The manager of the grocery store was personally unloading more sandwich platters and tubs of slaw and baked beans, plus paper plates and forks. All the people who had been too frightened to come to the wedding were trying to find some way to make themselves feel better about that, was the way I took it. And I’m usually pretty accurate about human nature.

All of a sudden, we were in the party business.