"Take that rag off," my best friend rasped. "It makes you look like a dead crack whore."

"Not a dead one," my roommate, Marc, mock-gasped. "How positively blech-o."

"It's not that bad," I said doubtfully, twirling before the mirror. But Jess was right. Nordic pale when alive, I was positively ghastly when dead, and a pure white gown made me look like-it must be said-a corpse bride.

"I think it looks very pretty," Laura, my half sister, said loyally. Of course, Laura thought everything was very pretty. Laura was very pretty. She was also the devil's daughter, but that was a story for another time.

The five of us-Marc, Jessica, Laura, Cathie, and I-were at Rush's Bridal, an uberexclusive bridal shop that had been around for years, that you could only get in by appointment, that had provided Mrs. Hubert Humphrey and her bridesmaids with their gowns. (The thank you note was framed in the shop.)

Thanks to Jessica's pull, I hadn't needed an appointment. But I didn't like stores like this. It wasn't like a Macy's. . . you couldn't go back in the racks and browse. You told the attendant what you wanted, and they fetched (arf!) various costly gowns for you to try on.

I found this frustrating, because I didn't know what I wanted. Sure, I'd been flipping through Minnesota Bride since seventh grade, but that was when I had a rosy complexion. And a pulse. And no money. But all that had changed.

"I'm sure we'll find something just perfect for you," the attendant, whose name I kept forgetting, purred, as she had me strip to my paisley panties. I didn't care. Jessica had seen me naked about a zillion times (once, naked and crying in a closet), Laura was family, and Marc was gay. Oh, and Cathie was dead. Deader than me, even. A ghost.

"So how's the blushing bridegroom?" Marc asked, surreptitiously trying to take Jessica's pulse. She slapped him away like she would an annoying wasp.

"Grumpy," I said, as more attendants with armfuls of tulle appeared. "I swear. I was completely prepared to become Bridezilla-"

"We were, too," Cathie muttered.

"-but nobody warned me Sinclair would get all bitchy."

"Not pure white," Jessica said tiredly. "It washes her out. How about an Alexia with black trim?"

"No black," I said firmly. "At a vampire wedding? Are you low on your meds?"

Marc frowned. "Actually, yes."

"Never mind," I sighed. "There's lots of shades of white. Cream, latte, ecru, ivory, magnolia, seashell-"

"You don't have to wear white," Laura piped up, curled up like a cat in a velvet armchair. Her sunny blond hair was pulled back in a severe bun. She was dressed in a sloppy blue T-shirt and cutoffs. Bare legs, flip-flops. She still looked better than I was going to look on The Day, and it was taking all my willpower not to locate a shotgun from somewhere in that bridal shop's secret back room and shoot her in the head. Not to kill her, of course. Just to make her face slightly less symmetrical. "In fact, it's inappropriate for you to wear white."

"Virgin," I sneered.

"Vampire," Laura retorted. "You could wear blue. Or red! Red would bring out your eyes."

"Stop! You're all killing me with your weirdness."

"What's the budget on this thing, anyway?" Cathie asked, drifting close to the ceiling, inspecting the chandeliers, the gorgeous accessories, the beautifully dressed yet understated attendants (who were ignoring all the vampire talk, as good attendants did), the utter lack of a price tag on anything.

"Mmmm mmmm," I muttered.

"What?" Cathie and Jessica asked in unison.

"Cathie was just asking about the budget." One of the yuckier perks of being queen of the dead? I alone could see and hear ghosts. And they could see and hear me. And bug me. Any time. Day or night. Naked or fully clothed.

But even for a ghost, Cathie was special. As we all know, most ghosts hang around because they have unfinished business. Once they finished their business, poof! Off into the wild blue whatever. (God knows I'd never had that privilege.) And who could blame them? If it were me, I'd beat feet off this mortal plane the minute I could.

But even after I'd fixed Cathie's little serial killer problem, she hung around. She even ran defense between the ghosts and me. Sort of like a celestial executive assistant.

"So?" Marc asked.

"Don't look at. . . me," Jessica gasped. Marc's lips thinned, and we all looked away. "Gravy train's. . . over."

"Would your friend like some water?" a new attendant said, swooping in out of nowhere. "Got any chemo?" Jess asked tiredly. "It's, um, three million," I said, desperate to change the subject. I couldn't look at Jessica, so I looked at my feet instead. My toenails were in dire need of filing and polishing. As they always were-no matter what I did to them, they always returned to the same state they'd been in the night I died.

" Three million?" Cathie screamed in my ear, making me flinch. The attendants probably thought I was epileptic. "What, rubles? Pesos? Yen?"

"Three million dollars?" Marc goggled. "For a party?"

All the women glared at him. Men! A wedding wasn't 'just a party.' A party was just a party. This would be the most important day of my-our-lives.

Still. I was sort of amazed to find Sinclair had dumped three mill into my checking account. I didn't even bother asking him how he'd pulled it off.

"What the hell will you spend three million on?" Cathie shrieked.

"Cake, of course."

"Talking to Cathie?" Laura asked.

"Yeah. Cake-" I continued.

"Cathie, you should go to your king," Laura suggested.

"King?" Cathie asked in my head.

"She means Jesus," I said.

"This haunting isn't very becoming," my sister continued doggedly.

"Tell your goody-goody sister to cram it," Cathie said.

"She says thanks for the advice," I said.

"Just think of all the charitable contributions you could make with that money," Laura gently chided me, "and still have a perfectly lovely ceremony." (Have I mentioned that the devil's daughter was raised by ministers?)

"There's the cake," I continued.

"What, a cake the size of a Lamborghini?" Cathie .asked.

"Gown, bridesmaids' gowns, reception, food-"

"That you can't eat!" Marc groaned.

"Honeymoon expenses, liquor for the open bar, caterers, waiters, waitresses-"

"A church to buy from the Catholics."

The others were used to my one-sided conversations with Cathie, but Marc was still shaking his head in that 'women are fucknuts' way that all males mastered by age three.

"None of these are working," I told the attendants. I wasn't referring to the dresses, either. "And my friend is tired. I think we'll have to try another time."

"I'm fine," Jessica rasped.

"Shut up," Marc said.

"You don't look exactly well," Laura fretted.

"Aren't you supposed to go back to the hospital soon?

"Shut up, white girl."

"If I ever said 'shut up, black girl,' you would land on me like the wrath of the devil herself" Laura paused. "And I ought to know."

"Stay out of my shit, white girl."

"If you're ill, you should be in the hospital."

"Cancer isn't contagious, white girl."

"It's very selfish of you to give Betsy something else to worry about right now."

"Who's talking to you, white girl? Not her. Not me. Don't you have a soup kitchen to toil in? Or a planet to take over?"

Laura gasped. I groaned. Jessica was in an ugly mood, but that was no reason to bring up The Thing We Didn't Talk About: namely, that the devil's daughter was fated to take over the world.

Before the debate could rage further, the attendant cut in. "But your wedding is only a few months away. That doesn't leave us much-"

"Cram it," I snapped, noticing the gray pallor under Jessica's normally shining skin. "Laura, you're right. We're out of here."

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