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Chapter One
Blaire
Wednesday, October 22nd
10 Days Until the Wedding that
Shall Not Be Allowed to Proceed
(Not if Blaire Belladonna Wonderfully has anything to say about it.)
Ten days.
Ten days until my sweet, angelic sister, a woman who lives for books, babies, and late-night giggle sessions with her quilting club is forced to marry an evil, bloodsucking vampire with a plaid fetish and creepy teeth. (Yes, I’m aware that all vampire teeth are creepy, but Colin’s are especially stabby-looking when he’s cranky. And he’s cranky a lot.)
I have to put a stop to this insanity.
The sooner the better…
I poke my head through the open kitchen door on the ground floor of Blackmore Manor, spying on the event-in-progress in the rose garden. My nose wrinkles as I spot Colin and Annie chatting with a few of our new neighbors by the bar.
My sister looks beautiful in a long green dress that matches her eyes, with her brown hair gathered into a decorative pile of curls atop her head. Colin also looks okay, I guess—tonight’s plaid suit is a subdued mix of gray and light green, and his smile is fang-free at the moment—but I’m not fooled. He might be six feet, three inches of studly vampire with broad shoulders, a square jaw any comic book hero would covet, and dark blond hair that sets off his blue-gray eyes, but his savage, blood-sucky side is always there.
It lurks just below the surface, waiting for the chance to drain my sister dry and leave her willowy, delicate librarian’s body in a ditch by the side of the road.
Or, even worse, turn her into a vampire, too.
According to what I’ve been able to glean since we arrived in Nightfall, New Hampshire a month ago, full-blooded witches aren’t supposed to be able to be turned against their will. But Annie and I haven’t come into our powers yet and we have no clue who our father was. Even if our mother is a witch and not the flighty, tree-hugging, but very human hippy we thought we knew before she disappeared last year, the chances that our father was a warlock are slim to none.
Apparently, male witches are exceedingly rare.
Which means Colin could probably turn Annie if he wanted to—with or without her permission. Vampires don’t usually worry about consent when it comes to turning other people into vampires. Most of the vamps in this bonkers town were turned against their will—including Colin.
Though to be fair, it sounds like he was too busy frothing at the mouth from a bad case of arsenic poisoning for his maker to get a thumbs up or down before giving him the Blood Kiss, but still…
Vampire culture is creepy. And rape-y. And absolutely not a good fit for any modern, self-respecting woman, let alone a sweetheart like Annie.
Annie, who still reads Children’s Fantasy books, despite the fact that we both turned thirty-four last summer.
Annie, who knits tiny caps for babies in the NICU to keep them warm.
Annie, who has always wanted a big family of her own, despite the fact that our childhood was a literal dumpster fire that we and our four little sisters barely survived.
And since he’s technically a walking corpse, Colin can never give her children. If she marries him, that dream, her biggest and brightest, will be dead and buried for good.
That’s another thing about vampire marriages—they’re until death do you part. Literally. There is no such thing as a vampire divorce. Couples are free to get pissed at each other and live separate lives, but their union can’t be dissolved.
It’s some sort of magical thing I don’t fully understand because our scatter-brained mother didn’t bother telling us that all this shit is real—or that we’re witches. We had to find out at the reading of her will in late August, when her attorney explained that we’d inherited a Victorian mansion in a supernatural town hidden from human eyes, but that in order to keep it, the oldest Wonderfully of our generation would have to marry one of the Nightfall elders.
It’s the only way to renew the town’s supernatural shield. Apparently, Annie is going to be able to zap that failing shield back to full strength as soon as she and Colin seal their union, even though neither of us seems to have naturally manifesting magic and we won’t start training with our witch teacher, Celeste, until she returns to town for the winter solstice.
But by December, Annie will have been married for nearly two months. It will be too late to pick our tutor’s brain for alternatives to the sacrifice of my sister’s happiness.
Like she hasn’t done enough sacrificing already…
As the two oldest sisters—Annie and I are twins, born just three minutes apart—we both took up the slack for our sporadically maternal mother. But Annie was the one with a talent for the often-grueling work of keeping our sisters’ clothes and bodies relatively clean, defusing squabbles, and getting supper on the table every night. I was the one who chopped firewood for our neighbors and did odd jobs around town to earn grocery money when Mom disappeared for months at a time to do whatever it was that she did out in the wilds of Maine.
By the time I was seven or eight, I’d learned to be grateful that Annie and I weren’t identical twins and that I’d emerged from the womb strong and solid to my sister’s delicate and slender. Yes, there were times when I wished I had her sea glass green eyes instead of my muddy brown ones and that my freckles were a cute little sprinkling across my nose instead of a full-body explosion. But all-in-all I was grateful for the fact that I could rip out carpeting and pound wood floors into place by the time I was ten.
