Page 73 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

But she couldn’t do that.

So, instead, she moved out of the storage closet.

Without her panties, she realized a moment too late.

But there was nothing she could do about that when Lucy finally spotted her, waving the bottle full of susten­ance at her.

Pandora hoped it would help with her frayed nerves.

Even if, with each passing moment, she suspected her hunger had less to do with needing to feed and a lot more to do with her fiancé himself.

19

“You look flushed,” Lucy said as the two crept into the kitchen, finding it blissfully abandoned, save for whatever foods were sitting under cloches. Pandora was afraid to look. “How do you look flushed? You can’t flush, right?” she asked, eyeing her friend with a quizzical head tilt. “Or maybe you’re just … not as pale as usual?”

“I’m just a little overwhelmed. And underfed,” she said, struggling with the too-tight lid on the stainless-steel tumbler hiding her meal.

“I saw Victor’s parents on the way in,” Lucy said, seemingly completely unbothered by the whole thing, as Pandora finally got the top off and took a long swig. “They seem … quite prim and proper, yeah?”

Pandora nodded. “Very. Luckily, Dante and Elias are running interference for me. And my uncle Leopold and his boyfriend are as normal as a couple of vamp—”

“There you are,” Victor said, pulling to a stop as he looked at Pandora standing there, a bit of blood still staining her lips.

“Is something wrong with that wine?” Lucy asked pointedly when Pandora simply froze.

“Yes,” Pandora said, turning to make a show of spluttering into the sink. “I think it’s turned.” She quickly filled her mouth with tap water, swooshing it around to get the red out of her mouth.

“Even smells off,” Lucy said, sniffing the contents of the tumbler and starting to put the lid on it.

“Why not dump it if it’s bad?” Victor asked.

Pandora’s stomach dropped at the idea of wasting perfectly good, and very needed, blood.

But what other choice did they have?

With her back to Victor, Pandora flashed her rinsed teeth at Lucy, who gave her a little nod to let her know they were clean, then proceeded to dump the rest of the blood into the sink drain, the water running over it until all traces were gone.

At least she’d gotten a big sip.

She could feel it moving through her system, calming some of the anxiety she’d felt growing all day. And even as Victor came closer, she could no longer hear the blood moving through his veins.

“Is everything all right?” Pandora asked, hoping her breath didn’t smell metallic.

“Yeah, I was just looking for you. Figure we should, you know, have a united front.”

How did he seem so unaffected? As if nothing at all had just happened? While she felt like a completely different person than she’d been when she’d gone into that closet?

“Oh, right. Of course.” Pandora moved toward him as Elias suddenly came into the kitchen.

“What’s going on in here?” he asked, and Pandora could swear she saw him sniff the air. Could he still smell the blood? Worse yet, could he tell it was pig’s blood? Might he tell her mother?

“Oh, great. You,” Lucy said, capping the tumbler but keeping a death grip on it.

Pandora hoped Lucy would stash it somewhere that she could find later, after anyone who might be suspicious was long gone.

Victor started to pull Pandora into the hall, so she had no choice but to follow. She was trying to focus on not letting her mind wander back to the cupboard, so she missed the reason Victor had come to a sudden stop.

“Victor, what—”