Page 29 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

P andora’s gaze went to her mother, but she looked just as perplexed as Pandora felt, as Lucian rose from the table to ascertain who was at the door.

“How much more family do you have?” Victor asked, looking down the table. Which, despite the many people gathered around, was only half full.

“Well, let’s put it this way. When everyone is here, there’s not only no room at the table, but we usually have people standing around.”

“Wow,” Victor said, shaking his head. “Are they all as … colourful as everyone here?” He glanced over at Dudley, who was feeding his cockatoo pieces of pasta out of his own mouth.

“I wish I could say not,” she said, wincing.

The sound of footsteps drawing near had her attention turning to the doorway.

Really, if she’d been given a thousand guesses as to who might be at the door, she still never would have landed on the right person.

Because right there, standing next to her father, was the woman whose eyes had followed Pandora around the sitting room her entire life.

It was her great- great -grandmother.

Ambrosia Von Ashmore.

She couldn’t exactly say that the quite youthful, stunning woman standing just a few yards away was her great- great -grandmother, now, could she?

But no one else seemed capable of coming up with a good lie on the fly either.

“Well, don’t you look just like your mother,” Ambrosia said, those haunting grey-blue eyes pinned on Pandora.

“I … Thank you,” Pandora said, not really seeing the resemblance herself, but knowing that was meant as a compliment. Even if Ambrosia’s cool tone didn’t suggest as much.

“Wait,” Victor said, brows scrunching as he looked at Ambrosia.

He’d seen the painting in the sitting room.

And there was a spark of recognition in his eyes.

“Aren’t you the woman from the painting?” he asked.

“There is no painting, young man,” Ambrosia said, her tone sending a shiver down Pandora’s spine. But not so much as the way her eyes seemed to glow as she spoke to Victor. Almost as if …

“No,” Pandora said, jumping out of her seat so quickly that her chair overturned, knocking onto the wood floor, making half the table jump.

“Whoa. That was fast,” Victor said, looking at her, seeming a little drunk.

Of course he did.

Her great-great-grandmother had just glamoured him.

That was completely out of line.

“Pandora,” Ophelia said, her voice a hushed warning.

Sure, Pandora had been raised to respect her elders. And you literally couldn’t get any older than Ambrosia. But that didn’t mean she had the right to go around glamouring whoever she wanted. Especially Victor.

“Is there a problem?” Ambrosia asked, brows lifting, the picture of innocence, like she genuinely couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong.

Maybe that was the case. The last Pandora heard, Ambrosia lived in a castle in Scotland, far removed from society as a whole.

“No, no, of course not,” Ophelia said, gesturing toward an empty seat. “Would you care to join us?”

“I would like to speak to my grand—”

“To Pandora,” Ophelia butted in. “Of course. Of course. Pandora,” she added, her tone tight.

“I’ll be right back,” Pandora told Victor, then gave Lucy big eyes so she knew to keep an eye on things, before following her great-great-grandmother out of the dining room and into the sitting room.

“News got to me that you are to be married,” Ambrosia said as soon as they were alone.

“Yes. I’m engaged.”

“To a mortal.”

“Yes, the one you glamoured,” Pandora said, unable to keep the anger from seeping into her words.

“Does he know what we are? What you are?”

“No.”

“Then what is the problem with a little glamour?”

“It’s wrong,” Pandora told her.

“Why?”

“Because it’s … It’s like brainwashing.”

“Yes, that is the point of a glamour. To wash the brain of things we don’t want the mortals to know.”

“There’s no need for it. We’ve been managing just fine without needing to glamour Victor or his family. That’s not how I want to go into this marriage.”

“But with lies about your very nature is fine?” Ambrosia asked.

That wasn’t a bad point, Pandora had to admit. No matter how she didn’t like being reminded of that truth.

“It’s different. I’m not messing with his memory,” Pandora said. “He looked drunk after.”

“Perhaps my glamour is stronger than I realized. I have only ever used it on my familiar.”

“You have a familiar?” Pandora asked, not having heard of anyone else in her family having one. Generally, they didn’t want humans in their homes, in their lives, which was why some were struggling to accept the fact that Pandora wanted one in her home, life, bed, heart.

“Yes, of course.”

“So, you don’t hate humans?”

“Why would I hate my life source?” Ambrosia asked, frowning.

“So you don’t disapprove of my relationship with Victor?”

“Well, I have to admit it is quite … unconventional. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the company of a mortal man. Their egos tend not to be as overwhelming as a man who has had centuries to become intolerably arrogant.”

“But?” Pandora asked.

“However,” Ambrosia said. “The point being you would have centuries with one of our kind.”

Pandora couldn’t tell her that she only planned to have a year with him, no matter how much that thought made her heart hurt. “I understand that.”

“Is everything all right in here?” Lucian asked, lurking in the doorway, clearly wanting to protect his daughter, but also wanting to show the appropriate amount of respect for his great-grandmother.

“You have raised an interesting daughter,” Ambrosia said, and Pandora wasn’t entirely sure that was a compliment.

Lucian seemed to pick up on the same thing his daughter did, because his brows raised.

“Pandora, can you give us a few minutes?” he asked.

She didn’t ask why.

She was happy to get the heck out of there. Better to let her father handle it. She had enough on her plate.

With that in mind, she hurried back into the dining room, hoping there were no fires that needed putting out.

Only to find Victor missing.

“Where’s Victor?” she asked Dante.

“Oh, I think he was going for more wine,” Dante said, clearly distracted by trying to keep an ear on the conversation between Uncle Reginald and Robert. It seemed as if Ravenna and Lucy were speaking to Mary.

Everything seemed all right.

Until Pandora noticed another empty chair at the table.

Bellatrix’s one.

There was no logical explanation for the way panic surged through her system – for the bone-deep certainty that something had gone wrong.

No, not just wrong.

Horribly wrong.

Unable to shake the feeling, she made her way along the chair backs, making a beeline for the kitchen, not sure what she was going to find, but knowing she needed to find Victor.

She moved into the kitchen, but found it empty.

There were several bottles of wine gathered on the island, the corkscrew still sticking out of the top of one. As if whoever was uncorking it had got ten distracted by something.

Or some one .

“Why are you marrying Pandora?” Bellatrix’s voice carried to Pandora during a slight lull in conversation in the dining room.

“I … like her,” Victor answered, voice slow and thick.

Were they in the pantry?

Pandora rushed over in that direction, but paused as her hand went for the doorknob.

Yes, eavesdropping was wrong.

But so was cornering Pandora’s fiancé when she wasn’t around.

“Fine,” Bellatrix said, sounding frustrated. “But there’s something else you’re not saying. What are you two keeping from everyone?”

“It’s a secret,” Victor said in that same slow, slurred voice. Like he was drunk.

No.

Like he’d done with Ambrosia.

When she’d glamoured him.

Bellatrix was glamouring Victor. To try to get information out of him.

“Yes, but what is the secret?” Bellatrix asked.

Pandora threw open the door, knocking Bellatrix in the back with it, making her stumble forward toward Victor.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Pandora snapped at her cousin as Victor visibly jolted when the glamour broke.

“Pandora,” Victor said, brows scrunched as he looked at her. Then he cast a confused glance around the pantry. And, finally, at Bellatrix. “This isn’t … It isn’t what it looks like,” he said, but he seemed uncertain.

“Victor, can you please bring the wine out to the table?” Pandora asked, glaring at Bellatrix.

“OK,” Victor said, looking upset.

But she couldn’t deal with him right then. There would be time to comfort him later.

Right then, she needed to deal with her cousin.

Pandora waited until she heard someone speaking to Victor in the dining room before she slammed the pantry door behind her and took a threatening step toward Bellatrix.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You don’t get to go around glamouring my fiancé.”

“If you weren’t both hiding something, I wouldn’t need to.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think I do,” Bellatrix said, flipping her pale hair over her shoulder. “He even admitted that you two have a secret.”

“We have lots of secrets,” Pandora said. “Like any couple.”

“Nope. Something is up. And I’m going to figure out what it is.”

“You know what it is, Bellatrix? You are pea-green with envy. You just can’t stand anyone getting attention other than you. It’s sad, really.”

Pandora thought she had her for a moment.

Anger and embarrassment flashed across Bellatrix’s gaze.

But it wasn’t long before it was replaced with an icy sort of reservation.

“I’m going to find out what’s going on. Then I’m going to expose you to everyone.”

With that, she moved toward the door, slamming into Pandora’s shoulder as she went.

Pandora stood there for a moment, trying to pull herself together, to stop her mind from spiraling.

It wasn’t until she stepped into the kitchen, finding Victor waiting for her, that she realized something else she’d overheard in that pantry. Before she’d even gone inside. When Victor was being glamoured, so he couldn’t have been lying.

“Why are you marrying Pandora?” Bellatrix had asked.

“I like her.”

He liked her.