Page 46 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

H e just stood there, looking at her, disbelief and hurt taking turns playing across his handsome features. While it felt like the ground had just opened up beneath her.

“Victor,” she whispered.

At the sound of her voice, he turned and strode away.

No.

No, it couldn’t end like this.

“Go after him,” her father said as she watched his figure disappear into the darkness.

“He doesn’t want to see me.”

“Yes, he does. He’s hurt, but he does.”

Pandora wasn’t convinced. But the idea of hurting Victor made it feel like someone had ripped her heart out of her chest.

She grabbed handfuls of her skirt so it didn’t trip her up and started to rush after him.

As she rounded the mausoleum, she saw Bellatrix standing there, a smug look on her face that made Pandora think she might have had something to do with Victor coming around the back of the mausoleum at the exact right moment to overhear her.

That didn’t matter, though.

All that mattered was trying to explain to Victor the whole situation.

Just this once, she was glad for her powers, namely her speed, as she ran through the graveyard to rush ahead of Victor and cut him off mid-stride.

“Right,” he said with a scoff as he came to a stop. “Super speed.”

“Please, let me explain.”

“Explain what? That you’ve been lying to me for months?”

“Yes.”

“How can you possibly explain that? You expected me to marry you with this massive lie between us?”

“How could I possibly tell you?” she said. “Vampires don’t exist, right? You would have thought I was crazy if I’d told you that from the very beginning. And don’t even try to deny that.”

“I would have probably thought you were mad, yeah,” he said. “At first. But we’ve been together for a while now. We’ve talked about our lives, our goals, our dreams. We’ve discussed sharing an entire year of our lives. And all the while, you’ve been keeping something this monumental from me?”

“If I didn’t tell you at the beginning, how could I have once time had passed? You would have felt betrayed no matter what.”

“So better for me to find out on my wedding day.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. That’s what I was talking about with my father. That this felt wrong. That I couldn’t allow you to marry me without telling you.”

“You let it get this far, though. Last night …”

“Was what made me feel like I had to tell you. It was different after that. We’re different. It wasn’t fake anymore.”

“It was never fake, Pandy,” Victor said, voice suddenly heartbreakingly sad.

“What?”

“That night when I came to tell you that I wouldn’t be coming back, that I had to drop out of uni – that was the night I was going to try to finally get up my nerve to ask you out. This was never fake for me, Pandy.”

“I had always—”

“I’ve spent the past few weeks thinking that maybe, just maybe, this marriage wouldn’t be fake after all. That you would see how good we were together.”

“I did see that,” she said.

“But you didn’t believe it enough to be honest with me.”

“It wasn’t like I was going to tell you that I’m actually naturally a blonde or something, Victor. How was I supposed to tell you that not only are vampires real, but I’m one of them?”

“Did you think I didn’t already suspect?

” he asked. “I study vampires in all forms of fiction. And even nonfiction. All the signs were there. You’re always cold.

You are ‘allergic’ to garlic and use umbrellas in the sun.

You never seem to enjoy food. You’re faster than you should be.

And that’s not even mentioning your family … ”

“Ravenna and Reginald,” Pandora said, knowing they were the most outlandish.

“Your mum, actually. I almost believed the historical actor thing. But your mum looks about the same age as you. And then there’s this.

” He reached into his shirt to pull out the necklace she’d given him.

“You gave me a vial of blood after the strange encounter I had with Bellatrix in the pantry. I’ve read everything about glamours.

I knew what she’d done. You could have told me.

Instead you, what, put some kind of spell on me? ”

“It’s a protection amulet,” Pandora said, feeling her eyes sting. She would have preferred if he was angry, if he was yelling at her. But he just seemed so hurt, so broken.

“Seems as if the only one I needed protection from was you,” he said, tugging hard until the chain snapped, then tossing it on the ground at her feet.

“This isn’t happening. I can’t marry someone who has been lying to me.

Not even to get to finish my PhD. Not for any reason.

” He paused, looking over her. “You look beautiful, Pandy.”

With that, and nothing more, he walked away, leaving her there in her wedding gown, crying through her make-up.

“Pandora?” Sometime later, Pandora heard Ophelia calling and the whoosh of the air moving as her mother sped toward her, spurred by the information her husband had likely given her. “Oh, darling.”

Then she was wrapped in her mother’s arms, crying into her neck like she’d done as a young girl.

Ophelia didn’t try to tell her it would be OK. Surely, she knew how she would feel if she’d lost her own love. So she simply stroked Pandora’s hair and held her together as she fell apart.

Pandora was sure the tears would never cease.

When they finally slowed, she felt dry from the inside out. A fragile piece of paper that threatened to turn to dust with the slightest mishandling.

She wasn’t really aware of how the wedding reception dispersed. All she knew was that she found herself in the back of a darkened car with her mother on one side and Lucy on the other, while her father and Dante sat in the front.

They half carried her to her bed.

Where she stayed the whole of the next day.

And the day after that.

And after that.

“My dear, you have to nourish yourself,” Ravenna, uncharacteristically somber, said as she sat on the bed beside Pandora, holding a cup of human blood.

“I don’t want anything.” Pandora rolled over and pulled the covers over her head. She wondered what might happen if she never drank again. Would she just dry up and turn to dust? That sounded preferable to living endlessly in her misery and regret.

“Aunt Ravenna, allow me,” Dante said as he walked into her room.

“Do try to get her to drink,” Ravenna said, reaching out to give Pandora’s ankle a squeeze through the blankets before she made her way out, closing the door with a quiet click.

“I don’t want it,” Pandora said.

“I have the synthetic blood,” he said, and she heard the click of the cap being twisted off.

“I don’t want that either.”

“You have to drink. Mum and Dad want to talk to you. And I don’t think you’d have enough strength to walk downstairs at this point.”

“I don’t want to talk to them.”

“I know you must blame them for some of this. But they’re family.

You have to speak to them.” Pandora rolled over in the bed, looking at her brother from under swollen lids.

He made a sighing sound, pushing the bottle toward her.

“Please, just hear them out. Then if you want to rot in bed, so be it.”

“Fine,” she said grumpily, trying to pull herself up against the headboard, finding the task nearly impossible.

Dante was right about her not being able to walk downstairs in her current state.

“How long has it been?” she asked as she reached for the bottle of fake blood, finding it almost intolerably heavy.

“Two weeks,” he told her, watching as she sipped her drink.

Two weeks.

It felt longer and shorter at the same time.

She’d done nothing but cry and think herself sick, trying to figure out when she should have talked to Victor, told him the truth. But not sure that, if given another chance, she would ever have felt comfortable doing so.

“There, don’t you feel better?” Dante asked when she set the bottle on her nightstand.

She did feel much more alive, whether she actually wanted to or not.

“I just want to shower,” she said as she threw off the covers. “Then I will speak to them.”

With that, Dante left her alone and she washed, put on fresh clothes, and made her way downstairs.

The house was unusually quiet after weeks full of activity and noise. She didn’t know how many of her family members were left, save for Ravenna and Reginald. But whoever was still around was staying out of sight as she made her way down to the sitting room.

“Pandora,” her father said, sounding relieved. “Come sit down. Your mother and I need to speak to you.”

Pandora walked on numb legs, still feeling horribly exhausted. But with blood in her system, she suspected it was more mental and emotional tiredness.

“You were right,” Ophelia said. “When you told us that we were being old-fashioned and stubborn and patri-archal. You were right. While we do cling to our old ways, and we both think there is some virtue in that, we also have to understand that you have grown up in a different world than we did, that your ways are going to be different from our own.”

“OK,” Pandora said, nodding.

“As such, we are going to give you your inheritance on your birthday,” her father told her.

It was what she’d always wanted.

But now, it suddenly felt completely pointless.