Page 9 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

“W hat is that ?” Pandora grumbled as she was pulled from a particularly vivid dream of Victor pushing her up against a building and kissing her long and deep, instead of releasing her and putting distance between them, like he had the night before.

The sound drifted upward from somewhere else in the house, each note swelling and ebbing, a clawing noise that made her think of a cat yowling in the night.

“That …” Vlad said, and she rolled over to see him perched on his stand, waiting for her to wake up. How he managed to get in through a closed door had always perplexed her. “Is your cousin Bellatrix.”

“What is she doing? Dying?” Pandora curled her pillow up to the sides of her head, pressing it against her ears to try to muffle the racket.

“She has, apparently, picked up opera.”

“Great.” Pandora huffed, giving up on the idea of sleeping in and placing her legs off the side of the bed. “The floorboards are vibrating. Has anyone checked the glass downstairs? I half expect it to all be shattered.”

She wasn’t typically so unkind.

But she was restless from fleeting sleep, thanks to her mind racing with thoughts of Victor. And the awkward silence between them after he’d saved her.

And, well, Bellatrix was probably her least favorite person. So waking up to her vibrato wobbling and warb-ling, pushing its way under the door, and through the walls and floors, was making her extra grumpy.

Pandora went through the motions of showering and putting herself together. She didn’t dress up. It hadn’t seemed to make a bit of difference anyway. So she put on her usual work uniform with a cardigan over it.

Then she reached for the stainless-steel tumbler she had hidden under her sink. She’d picked it up in the hopes that it would keep her blood fresh enough to last the night, since she didn’t dare risk keeping it in the fridge with Bellatrix snooping around.

The last thing she needed was some big confrontation with her mother about her stubborn refusal to drink human blood. Especially with family visiting. And when she was about to try to float a fake engagement right in front of their faces.

Best to just fly under the radar for the time being.

Pandora chugged her blood then brushed her teeth before making her way out of her room. Vlad perched on her shoulder, looking as pained by the singing as Pandora felt.

They were just about to round the corner to the stairs, when Dante came shuffling toward them. Like he was coming home. In the middle of the day. Again.

What was going on with him?

As if sensing her thoughts, Dante’s head jerked up.

The sleepless smudges under his eyes looked even more intense than they had the day before.

And when she’d been restless in her sleep earlier, she could have sworn she’d heard some strange banging and almost … gurgling sounds coming from his room.

But before she could open her mouth to ask him about it, he was wincing at a particularly egregious missed note, making his shoulders pull up by his ears.

“Who told her she could sing?” he asked.

Her indulgent parents, no doubt , Pandora thought.

“Is anyone else awake?” she asked.

“I’m sure they are,” Dante said. “Who could sleep through that?”

“But are they downstairs?”

“No. Why?”

“I’m heading out,” she told him.

“It’s early for work.”

“I have another date. Could you possibly tell Mum and Dad that, when you see them later? Maybe tell them how excited I looked.”

“Why don’t you look excited?” he asked.

“I am!”

“Come on, Pandy,” he said, shaking his head at her. “You look tired and tense.”

“I just didn’t sleep well. I’m actually super excited to go on a date with my future fiancé,” she said, lying. “I have to get going. I don’t want to be late. Is it raining?”

“It’s bucketing down.” He reached up to push his wet hair out of his face.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll take an umbrella. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“Maybe,” he said, in a way that made her think he didn’t plan on it.

She was worried about him, but she didn’t have time to press him on it. She was on too much of a time crunch with her engagement and marriage.

So she made her way to the servants’ stairs, rushed down, and went out the back door to avoid her cousin who, thanks to not needing to breathe, seemed to have endless abilities to hold the wrong note.

When she arrived at Luna Bean, she found Victor waiting inside, sipping his usual coffee with one hand, but holding another drink in the other.

“Chamomile tea?” he asked, holding it out toward her.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, smiling at him.

He didn’t seem as distant as he’d been the night before. She decided not to overthink that and just be happy about it instead.

“So, where are we having our date?” she asked.

“One of my favorite places in the world,” he told her.

But he refused to explain further as the two of them walked under her umbrella toward the Tube.

Instead, he veered the conversation toward the more boring aspects of their contract. Exact dates, contingencies, et cetera.

“What about our living arrangements?” he asked.

“What about them?”

“Will we be living together?”

“Oh, right. Yes, of course,” she said, trying to tamp down the warm feelings she got at the idea of sharing a home with him. “After the wedding.”

“And what about the divorce?”

“What about the divorce?” she asked, ignoring the pang in her stomach at the idea.

“Would we both move out of the flat?”

“Oh, uh, I haven’t given that a lot of thought, actually.”

“I guess there’s time. Might want to actually find a flat before we talk about who lives in it after the … contract is over.”

She was glad when the train pulled into the station, ending the practical – and oddly sad – conversation as they made their way down the waterlogged streets until they came to a door.

“A bookshop?” she asked, smiling up at him.

“The best one London has to offer.” He beamed as he reached for the door.

“That is quite a claim.”

“It will live up to it, trust me.” He followed her in after lowering the brolly, putting it in a designated spot just inside the door.

Pandora was immediately met with that distinct, layered aroma of old books. She’d always thought that aged paper had the same scent as fallen leaves – rich and slightly musty.

The store was absolutely labyrinthine, with endless bookshelves crammed into the small space, forcing shoppers to walk single-file between them. The shelves bowed with the weight of all the tomes stacked on them.

“Fair warning,” Victor told her. “Nothing in here is in order, save for by genre. It’s hell if you’re looking for a specific book, but heaven if you are just here to browse and find a buried treasure.”

They walked through the stacks then, reaching for books, discussing favorites, choosing a few to sit down with in the only two chairs at the very back of the store.

They seemed to forget all about consulting the questions Pandora had jotted down the night before, when sleep had been elusive. Little things she felt that real lovers would know about each other.

Instead, they just talked.

About books and artists. About the things they each loved or hated in stories.

Pandora tried desperately to defend the use of miscommunication in romance novels, insisting that sometimes people were too hurt or too insecure to express themselves the way some readers would want, that it was actually more realistic to have people miscommunicate than it was for them to have fully adult and productive conversations all of the time.

Victor railed against “plot armour”, where the main character was constantly thrown into increasingly dangerous situations but somehow managed to survive, despite having no real skills to speak of.

“I hate it more when a character is put in one of those situations and just magically develops new powers that so conveniently can be used for that specific problem. I hate-read a whole YA series once that had it happen so often it was hilarious.”

In fact, Pandora and Victor got so wrapped up in casual, in-depth conversation that they seemed to accidentally learn more about each other than they would have, had they followed Pandora’s list.

She couldn’t help but watch his profile as he spoke long and deep on topics that mattered to him, his face animated with his clear passion.

Pandora knew her gaze was likely too soft and lingering, but she couldn’t seem to make herself care.

She hung on his every word, feeling like it was a rare and special treat to have someone who seemed as quiet as Victor open up so much for her.

She actually felt a little frustrated each time he batted a question in her direction, wanting to be able to focus fully on him.

But he seemed just as invested in peeling back her layers as she was in exploring his.

“Victor,” she said when he finished speaking, watching as he turned to look at her.

“Yeah?”

“What are you studying?”

“Victorian English Literature,” he told her, not surprising her in the least, given his passion for the subject. Until, of course, he spoke again. “But I am working on my thesis on literature that focuses on vampires.”

Pandora felt like the floor had just opened up beneath her: she was falling into it, her belly swirling, her mind racing.

Vampire literature?

He was doing a thesis on vampire literature?

How, how , had she ended up not only having a crush on, but also entering into a fake-dating-and-marriage scen-ario with the one man who might be able to pick apart her family’s odd habits and eccentricities, and conclude they were the very creatures from his books?

“Pandora?” Victor’s voice sounded far away while her head was spinning off in a million different directions.

“Yeah?” Her voice came out in a squeak. Then, trying to calm herself down, she said, “I, uh, didn’t realize that was a topic for a thesis.”

“I don’t know if it’s been done before. I think that’s what will be so compelling about it; publishing takes forever, but I’m hoping it will be out in the summer.”