Page 67 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

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 bebloodhere 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 lovinghusband, 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.