“So much light!” He braces himself against the wall. Then he collapses with a whimper. “Please, someone, end this suffering!”
Hanry sends me a pointed look, and I know with a sinking feeling that that someone is meant to beme.
8WHAT I’D GIVE FOR A MOBILE BLOOD BANK RIGHT NOW
IMIGHT HAVE TAKEN BULAN’Sand Hanry’s assurances that a vampire’s bark is worse than their bite a little too much to heart. My gallows walk across the ballroom to Dark Dave takes about five seconds, and to my dismay, it’s rudely anticlimactic. I don’t have a life-flashing-before-my-eyes montage the way you should with a harbinger of death. Dave’s prostrate, pale form and twitching leg make me think less of wolves and dangerous doom and more of beached porpoises. In fact, the only scary thought bothering me now is what I’ll do if the wedding fails so spectacularly that Dave and Amanda decide I won’t get paid.
“Hi, Dave,” I say, squatting to join the vampire groom where he lies despondently on the floor. “How are you doing? Excited for your big da—night? Your big night?”
He runs trembling hands through his jet-black bangs. “It’s terrible!” he says. “Disastrous!”
“I hear you. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“The light!” Dark Dave curls into a fetal position. “It’s too bright.”
“I’ll blow out some candles. Anything else?”
He gestures limply toward the ballroom.
“What’s that noise?”
“I think our bands are having a showdown. A battle of the bands, if you will.” After a brief show of interest, Dave moans and curls up tighter. This is going nowhere fast, and I don’t have time. “Listen, Dave. Let’s focus on whywe’re here. For your wedding. To Amanda. The love of your life! And when everyone celebrates you together tonight, it’s going to be spectacular.”
“Did you just sayspook-tacular?”
“I—no?”
“Like your last name? Spük? It’s very clever.Spük-tacular.”
Dave’s expression clears. Rather than looking like he wishes for his second death, he now looks like he’s wishing for a darker corner to sulk in. It’s a marked improvement.
“There’s something else,” I say, nursing the onset of positive vibes. “Your friend Hanry has been helping us. He made the wedding arch look awesome.”
“He’s here already? I’m honored. What a prince.”
There! That’s the flamboyance I was aiming for.
“Yeah, he’s in the ballroom, see him? He came early. Almost like… like…” I trail off, rather than say aloud what I’m thinking: that Hanry knew I’d need him here. “Never mind that. Let’s get you to the room where you and your groomsmen will chill before the ceremony.”
“What room is that?”
I shrug. “No idea. Wanna choose?”
It takes ten minutes for Dave to find a dusky room to his liking. By that point, I’m getting nerves. I don’t have my phone, but I know the wedding ceremony’s starting soon, and the ceremony room isn’t ready. Plus, I don’t know where Amanda is.
Speaking of, I don’t even know whereIam.
The chasmic mansion’s pitch-black hallways obscure everything. Annoyed and lost, using the extended toe of my foot to keep track of the walls, I bump into something small and soft. It could be a giant rat, except the noise it makes is way too gleeful. Just going to ignore that.
Fortunately, the next thing I bump into is less bizarre: the wedding officiant. Thank god or whatever he believes in, he’s got a phone. And he seems human?
“I’ve got to say, it seems hazardous to have low lighting to this degree,” the officiant says, guiding us down the hall.
“Not my circus, not my monkeys. Though I convinced the groom to includesomelighting for his non-vamp—his more light-inclined guests. See?”
Up ahead, a light emanates from a door. I think it’s the ballroom.
“Good thinking,” the man says. “Huh! What a nice-sounding band.”
