I grin. “I’m magical.”
“Now we just have to get this book club to agree to help us.”
“They’ll agree,” I say, although I sound more certain than I feel. “They cannot resist a supernatural mystery. All we have to do is lay the perfect vampire trap.”
THE NEVERMORE MURDER CLUB AND SMUTTY BOOK COVEN GROUP CHAT
Komal: Winnie, you volunteered us to WHAT?
CHAPTER FORTY
WINNIE
Mum: Winnie, it’s not fair, I’ve been doing so well with my cleaning, but the council lady came again and she’s issued me with a notice that says they’re going to condemn the house if I don’t make it the way she wants it.
GRIMDALE SEXUAL HEALTH CLINIC: Winifred Preston, thank you for booking your appointment for a non-hormonal copper IUD. We look forward to helping you manage your sexual health.
Now that we have our plan for the ball, all I have to do is convince the ladies in the Nevermore Murder Club and Smutty Book Coven to help us. I’ve given them the broad strokes over the group chat, but I plan to lay on the Winnie Wins charm at the Midsummer Festival. I offered up Alaric and myself as volunteers and told them we’d treat them all to dinner at the pub afterwards. I’m hoping that if they spend some time with him (and he pays for all the drinks), they’ll like him as much as I do and agree to be vampirebait to help him.
For now, we need to make sure that the castle is ready for the ball. And that means breaking the back of our final room. After my appointment at the Grimdale Sexual Health Clinic to get an IUD put in (because you can never be too careful when you’re sleeping with a hot vampire who could impregnate you with an iron-toothed monster) I put on my Get Shit Done playlist and Alaric and I sort the last of his sculpting tools, throw out the broken ones, and stack the clay neatly in a room near the back of the castle.
All that’s left to do now is find some use for the towering wall of ceramic pots.
“She agreed to that too easily,” Alaric says as he regards the mugs.
“Your mother? You’re being a pessimist. She loves you in her own violent, terrifying way. I don’t believe she was really going to kill you?—”
My phone beeps. It’s my mother again.
Mum: I tried to apologise to Ken. I left a box of Reggae Reggae Sauce from Savemart on his front step, because I know it’s his favourite. But he tossed the carton over the fence. Can you believe it? The nerve of some people. I can’t believe I ever considered them friends.
I tap out a vaguely supportive message. There’s no point explaining to my mother that Ken probably saw a box of unsolicited BBQ sauce on his porch as a threat, not a peace offering.
“Someone’s messaging you a lot?” Alaric’s nostrils flare. “It’s not Patrick, is it?”
“Jealous, husband?”
“I am jealous of the sun, for it kisses your skin where I cannot. I am jealous of that coffee you’re drinking, for it touches your lips …”
“Okay, okay, I get the idea. It’s my mother.” I tap out another message dissuading her from writing WANKER in Reggae Reggae Sauce across his front window. “Difficult mothers aren’t just forvampires, you know.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I—” The wordsI can’tcatch on my lips. Alaric spilled his heart to me beside the fire. He gave me everything, making sure that I knew all the darkest corners of his soul before I made my choice to stay. I should trust him enough to give him this tiny piece of me. “She’s a hoarder.”
“Like me?” Alaric raises an eyebrow.
“Not quite like you. She’s not an artist like you. She’s a compulsive shopper. She goes to the shops and whatever she sees, whether it’s forty dented cans of mustard or a bright yellow umbrella, she tells herself that it will change her life. She gets such a thrill from finding a bargain or buying someone the perfect gift, but by the time she gets home the thrill has worn off so the bargain goes in one of her towering piles or the gift never makes it to the receiver. But the thing that makes her worse is that she hoards memories.”
“Memories?”
“My mother sees a thousand connections between objects and thoughts and feelings and memories that I don’t. You’re like her in that way. Only she stores her memories and dreams in objects. So to her, if you throw away the object, you throw away all the happy things associated with it, or the future she imagines for herself. Each item she collects is part of an ideal world she’s creating for herself. Which makes your life difficult when you’re her daughter and you’re being crushed beneath piles of your own childhood drawings and school textbooks.”
Reginald appears silently at my side and hands me a mug of his famous chocolate, iced instead of hot, since the night is warm. I wrap my fingers around the mug, letting the spicy, sweet scent steady me against the bitter memories.
“She has always been messy, but it was just part of her personality. She’s so much fun. We never had a lot of money growing up, but she always tried to make everything special for me. She would spend hours doing crafts with me, or inventing wild games, or decorating cakes with pick ’n’ mix lollies into whatever animal or cartoon character I was obsessed with that year. Those early years, I remember Dad being beautifully, giddily in love with her. He calledher his ‘wild spirit’.”
“To be that in love is a precious thing,” Alaric says sombrely. His eyes are fractured obsidian shards.
