Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
She ducked her head to avoid eye contact as the train pulled up, kicking up a cool wind.
“Be gone, demon!” he shouted from just behind her as the train doors opened and a crowd hurried inside, happy to be away from the man with the crazed eyes. “Back to hell!”
She was already there, she thought, as she moved with the rest of the crowd into the train, finding a seat and keeping her gaze down, paranoid that someone might look at her and see the truth of the man’s words.
“She will feast on you all!” he yelled through the doors, making a few people shift in their seats, likely hoping he wouldn’t come on the train with them. “May God have mercy on your souls!” The doors finally slid closed, silencing the man as he continued to rant.
Pandora leaned back in her seat as the train started to surge forward.
That had been the fourth time this month that someone had shouted at her from the train platform or in the street. Or, once, while she’d been passing a church as people had been leaving.
It was definitely on the rise. Pandora suspected that it was a sign the world was changing: people were becoming more aware of the fact that they weren’t alone, that the creatures they read about in their novels and watched in their films weren’t just figments of someone’s imagination, but actual beings who walked among them.
Though, so far, the only ones who seemed to spot her for who she really was were those that society considered crazy. That inclination worked in her favor.
Pandora reached into her purse, pulling out the well-worn paperback, its pages soft from time, its once crisp edges now rounded and frayed from countless hands. The cover of the book, a bodice-ripper straight out of the late twentieth century, featuring a woman with a generous heaving bosom and a shirtless man with long, glorious hair, was faded and creased with a web of fine lines. She lovingly stroked her hand over them, thinking of how the outside hinted at the countless stories of its travels that were just as vivid as the story within.
The spine was woefully cracked, each break a testament to a reader who’d been unable to put it down, who’d been too engrossed to treat it with care.
Pandora had picked it – and others just like it – from a box she’d found on the street, the previous owner’s family ready to just throw the goldmine away.
Once she finished it, she would use a specialized book tape to fix the spine as best she could. Then it would go on the shelf with all of the others. Ones she desperately hoped she could share with the masses, each one a little piece of a dream she wasn’t sure she could see becoming a reality. At least not without the inheritance it now seemed unlikely she was going to be able to receive.
She forced the thoughts away, trying to concentrate on the story at hand. There was a kidnapped maiden to be found by the roguish hero, after all. Lucy said they had some of the best steam she’d read in a historical romance in ages.
And Pandora couldn’t help but keep inserting herself as the maiden and Caramel Macchiato Cutie as the moody, dirty-talking hero.
“Ugh.” Grumbling, she slipped the sugar packet functioning as a bookmark back in between the yellowed pages, then put the book in her handbag as the train came to a stop.
She had a long walk ahead of her.
Sure, she could grab a black cab. But it would cost precious money that she couldn’t quite afford.
Besides, the walk might help to clear her head before she got home to face her parents.
She definitely couldn’t talk to them when her emotions were high, or she would say something that would upgrade the cyclone to a category-five hurricane.
But why couldn’t they just adjust to the changing times? Her mother was a modern woman in many ways. Why was she OK with this ancient, patriarchal, vampire bullshit?
Clearly, the walk wasn’t helping at all. Only to make her even hungrier. She had a nice pint of relatively fresh blood waiting for her in the fridge, hidden by several bottles of wine. Because if her parents came across a container of pig’s blood, they would dump it down the drain. They were purists. The only “good” blood was fresh from the vein of a human. Them finding out she wasn’t consuming human blood would just lead to yet another argument.
An argument that she didn’t have the energy for.
Hopefully, a little sustenance would help the situation.
Then – then, she could sit her parents down and try to talk some sense into them.
3
The Von Ashmore estate loomed like a shadow against the sky, casting a threatening gloom across the grounds. Spired turrets clawed at the heavens, their ornate wrought-iron accents tangling with the thick green ivy that coursed along the stones like veins.