Page 25 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

“O h, well, hello,” Pandora said as she opened her bedroom door to see a merle Pomeranian standing there like he was waiting for her. “I’m supposed to give you a treat, right?” she asked, reaching for the bag as the dog came rushing into her room, sniffing around.

“He’s a menace.” Vlad came flying into the room to land on his perch, getting a couple of halfhearted yips from the dog. “Just this evening, he ate your mother’s favorite shoe, played tug with some of the curtains, and used your father’s favorite walking stick as a chew toy.”

“I think he’s the puppy.” Pandora defended the dog, who was sniffing around the bed, likely never having seen one before.

“I suppose I am not one to judge. When I was fresh out of the egg, I used to sit outside the window of a lady who’d had the temerity to shoo me off her feeder once and whisper to her.”

“What did you say?” Pandora asked as she bent to try to scoop up the puppy.

“‘I know your secrets, Martha. I saw what you did.’ Things like that.”

“You probably drove her mad.”

“Turns out, she’d killed her husband by putting poison in his stew. She turned herself in to the police after being ‘plagued by her conscience’.”

“You have led quite the interesting life,” Pandora said as she finally grabbed the puppy and started to carry him toward the door. “Oh, no. Did they cook again?” she asked, smelling something food-like wafting up from the lower level.

“Your aunt Ravenna said she has done a lot of research since the engagement party,” Vlad said, flying to land on Pandora’s shoulder as she walked out into the hall.

“I feel like I should be worried,” Pandora said.

“Might want to prepare for having to call the paramedics,” Vlad said before flying down the stairs ahead of her.

“Oh, there you are, my sweet Maxwell!” Aunt Henrietta called, arms out, snatching the puppy out of Pandora’s arms. “Oh, Mummy was so worried about you.”

Henrietta was a Rubenesque woman who, in fact, claimed to have been a model for several of Peter Paul Rubens’s paintings ‘in her day’. She was always dressed in absurd contrasts. That night, it was a green velvet Regency dress underneath a modern faux-fur leopard--print jacket.

Her curly red hair was pulled back in a French braid and her face was covered in many layers of thick make-up, with false lashes, heavy eyeliner, and bright red lips.

As for shoes, the moment Henrietta had discovered rubber clogs, she’d outright refused to slip her feet into any other shoewear. She even had an entire piece of luggage full of the little charms you could put into the holes of the shoes.

Pandora fully expected Henrietta to wear something truly absurd to her wedding. Like a serving-wench dress from the Renaissance under a punk-style floor-length black leather jacket. And, of course, the rubber clogs.

“He will be the sweetest little ring-bearer – yes, he will,” Henrietta cooed at the dog as Pandora tried not to groan at the idea of sixteen little fluff balls with no sense of direction making their way down the aisle toward her.

“Pandora, my darling.” Ophelia descended the stairs. “That’s what you’re wearing?” She clucked her tongue at Pandora’s choice of an understated navy-blue corduroy skirt with a white blouse.

“I don’t want to make Mary and Robert uncomfortable if they aren’t dressed up,” Pandora said. “This is probably going to be a little overwhelming as a whole.”

Pandora had tried to fight her mother on another party. But Ophelia had claimed that they would have to get to know the family eventually, so what was the point in delaying it.

“Besides,” Ophelia had said. “This is hardly the whole family.”

It wasn’t.

But it seemed like each time Pandora turned around, some other distant relative was showing up and expecting to move in until the wedding.

More family members meant it would be harder for Pandora to keep control over the situation.

When it was mostly just Uncle Reginald to worry about slipping up in front of Victor, she felt comfortable handling it.

But now it would be Victor, Mary, and Robert rubbing shoulders with other relatives who hadn’t sat through the last party.

It would be fine.

It had to be.

“You look like you need it,” Elias said as he held out a glass toward her. She reached for it, expecting wine, only to find the liquid thick and viscous. “What?” he asked, watching her with a look that seemed to be seeing far too much.

“There can’t be blood here tonight!” Pandora said, her voice a low hiss. “What if Victor, Mary, or Robert accidentally pick up one of your glasses instead of their own?”

“When was the last time you fed?” Elias asked, watching Pandora with a frown.

Too long.

She knew it was the reason she was feeling frazzled and unfocused. There simply hadn’t been a good time for her to go to the butcher to get her usual bottle of blood. Especially when Ophelia made Elias follow Pandora whenever she left the house.

She was hoping Lucy was going to be able to make it to the house, before Victor and his parents arrived, with a tumbler full of blood that would help her feel more like herself before the night’s festivities started.

But Lucy was working the afternoon shift at the coffee shop and there was no way she could leave before the nightshift workers arrived.

Which left her an extremely narrow window to get to the butcher’s, then to the estate.

Maybe, if Lucy could run interference when she did show up, she could sneak into the kitchen, chug her blood, then rinse all traces of it out of her mouth. Then she’d be able to maneuver this evening with a lot less anxiety.

She hoped.

“Shoo! Shoo, you nuisance!” Ravenna flapped her hands at one of Henrietta’s dogs, who was gnawing at one of the wooden chair legs.

“Kevin, come to Mummy.” Henrietta leaned down to scoop up the long-haired chihuahua and snuggle it to her chest. “Don’t listen to the mean lady. She’s never known the love of a sweet puppy.”

“I have a loving husband , you bitter old crone,” Ravenna mumbled to herself as she attempted to fluff the stiff couch cushions.

“I have had husbands as well,” Henrietta said with a haughty chin-lift. “Dogs are more loyal. And they don’t assail me with pointlessly long-winded diatribes about how things used to be so much better in the ‘good old days’.”

“Please, can we get along for just the evening?” Pandora asked pleadingly.

Ravenna and Henrietta, two generally affable women, had some age-old hatchet that refused to get buried. The last thing Pandora needed was one of them to comment on Henrietta’s suspiciously deceased five husbands in front of Victor and his parents.

“I can if she can,” Henrietta said, nose up.

“I can if she can keep her beasts from destroying the place,” Ravenna said, pushing past Henrietta to go into the kitchen to check on – may the universe have mercy on them all – the food.

Pandora ran her hands down her dress before continuing into the sitting room, finding her uncle Leopold standing close to Cody near the fire, the two of them listening raptly to some story Uncle Reginald was telling.

Thankfully, Cody had had a bit of a modernizing effect on Leopold.

Which meant he was dressed in an understated black suit with a pinstriped shirt beneath.

By contrast, Cody wore a pinstriped suit with a black shirt beneath.

Both men looked smart and normal standing beside Uncle Reginald, who’d opted to wear full-on baroque extravagance with his knee-length, frilled breeches, square-toed high-heeled shoes with rosettes, and an opened, frilled shirt.

Though Pandora was pretty sure his long coat with braid-trimmed button holes was actually from a later period.

She supposed she could at least be grateful that he hadn’t opted to wear one of those heinous curled wigs.

Victor would have surely told his parents about her family’s ‘historical reenactment’ and ‘method acting’, so it shouldn’t be the same shock to them as it had been to Victor originally.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” she murmured to herself.

“What?” Bellatrix snapped at her as she passed by, making Pandora suppress a sigh. She turned to see her cousin in a scandalously tight red silk dress that exposed her entire back, right down to just above the curve of her bum.

Catching Pandora looking, Bellatrix did her own once-over of her cousin. If the curl of her lip was anything to go by, she clearly found Pandora’s style lacking. She walked away with an exaggerated sway of her hips.

“Don’t pay attention to her,” Elias said, passing Pandora a glass that, this time, was full of wine instead of blood. “Just another ploy to draw attention to herself. You look lovely.”

“Thanks. I’m still not leaving Victor for you, no matter how nice you’ve been,” she told him.

During that brief period when she hadn’t been in contact with Victor, she’d actually seriously tried to consider it, to make herself see him as a viable romantic interest. But she simply couldn’t do it.

“I know,” Elias said with a nod. “No one who saw that kiss the other day would think you’re anything but head-over for the guy. Save for maybe Bellatrix,” he added.

“What do you mean?”

“She was there that night,” he told Pandora. “That was who I’d seen and went to try to confront. But she was too fast. Got away from me.”

She was about to ask some follow-up questions, when the knocker clacked against the front door, making her jolt.

“Probably Lucy,” she said, hoping that was the case so she could get her blood. But when she rushed toward the door and pulled it open, Victor was standing there.

“Oh, hey,” she said, surprised. “Where are your parents?”

“They’re driving in,” he told her. “Traffic was awful tonight, so I told them I would meet them here and take the Underground so they didn’t need to fight it to get me. Can I come in?” he asked with a small smile when she kept barring his entrance.