Free Melted By The Vampires: A Paranormal Menage Romance by Amira Rain Page B

were slices of what appeared to be, and smelled like, roast turkey, along with mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, green beans, and a roll alongside a little scoop of cranberry sauce.
     
    Smiling, Daniel set his plate to the right of my dinner plate. This plate was smaller, and on it sat a large slice of pumpkin pie topped with a dollop of whipped cream. Still tipsy, I just stared at the food in front of me for a moment with my head slightly spinning.
     
    Then, I looked up at Daniel, suddenly feeling some bizarre mix of confusion, anger, and sadness. "What's...what's all this for?"
     
    He smiled a little bigger. "It's Thanksgiving food...from 'your' time. Because today is Thanksgiving, or it would have been."
     
    I hadn't realized. I'd known it was November, because they'd told me when I'd woke up in the hospital, but I didn't have a calendar in my apartment.
     
    Seeming not to notice my emotional upheaval, Daniel continued. "Being that Thanksgiving was an American holiday, and being that most things American had died out with...well, America , we don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, particularly since regular food, which was a big part of the holiday, is something we vampires don't consume, of course.
     
    “We wanted you to be able to enjoy the holiday with a traditional meal, though. Our staff chef who cooks for us when we have human and shifter guests in town had no idea how to make pumpkin pie, but he asked one of the former frozen women in the city, and I think he figured it out. Take a bite and try it."
     
    With a little wave of nausea, I looked at the slice of pumpkin pie. Instantly, an image appeared in my mind. It was an image of my coven mother Amelia, the only real mother I'd ever known. In my mind, I saw her in her yellow-striped apron, gray hair in a bun, as she surveyed a cooling pumpkin pie on our kitchen counter, smiling. This is how she'd looked the day she'd taught me to make pumpkin pie.
     
    It had been the first time anyone had taught me how to cook anything, ever. My biological mother had been too high on meth to do any cooking. Each of my foster mothers had never wanted kids in the kitchen.
     
    Beyond being the first day anyone had ever taught me how to cook anything, Thanksgiving had been a special holiday for Amelia and me, maybe even more special than Christmas, because the day before Thanksgiving was when she'd found me and had "adopted" me, taking me into the coven. I'd kind of always considered Thanksgiving to be the day that we'd become a family.
     
    In my still-intoxicated state, with my memories seeming to take over my brain, I was becoming miles beyond confused. Miles beyond sad and angry, too.
     
    Without thinking, I suddenly flew up from my chair and turned to face Abbott and Daniel. "How could the two of you do this to me?"
     
    Daniel frowned. "Whatever 'this' is, the whole Thanksgiving thing was Abbott's idea, by the way. I just went along."
     
    I snorted, folding my arms across my chest. "Sure. You can drop the act, Daniel. I'm not buying it even a little bit. The two of you did this together, and completely on purpose; I know it. The two of you did this because you k now , and you wanted to crush my soul. You wanted to just...you wanted to hurt me and make me remember what you did."
     
    Daniel frowned even harder, furrowing his dark brows. "I'm really sorry, Harper. I don't quite understand what you're saying, but I didn't mean to upset you by telling you that we don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, if that's what I did. We still kind of have Christmas here, you know. It's even had a resurgence in recent years, with all the kids now in the city."
     
    If I'd had any doubts, I was suddenly completely convinced that he and Abbott knew who I was and who my family had been, and they'd decided to play some kind of a sick joke on me. I had no idea how they'd found me out, because my mind was still too clouded by alcohol to reason that out, but I just felt in my gut that they