Thankfully, the members of the Nevermore Coven are too busy holding on for their lives to notice the tears cascading down my face?—
“Are you okay?” Beth squeezes my thigh. “You’re crying.”
“I’m in fear for my life.”
“Don’t worry. Komal flies helicopters, and that’s way scarier. At least in a car, we’re already attached to the earth.”
Maisie squeezes my knee. “Oh, Winnie, honey. Whatever is wrong, you two will fix it.”
We can’t fix this.
I didn’t realise until that moment that I’d been waiting for him to fight for me. Alaric the warrior, who swore thathe would never let anything hurt me again, would come swooping in, sword swinging, and make it all better.
Instead, he’s driven a stake into my heart.
Alaric can’t be what I need, and I’ll never be what he needs.
I swipe at my tears. “I’m just worried about Isis.”
“We all are. And when this is over, you can tell us the real reason you’re crying,” Mina says.
I wish my tears were for Isis, but crowding out my concern for my friend and the ordeal she’s just suffered are the bugs crawling over my skin.
I close my eyes, but I see the piles of Alaric’s stuff sliding across the floor. All those images of me, crumpled and distorted, shoved on top of each other in that room.
I remember squeezing through that narrow tunnel into the dark gloom.
The memories duel against my old trauma – things that I thought I’d forgiven my mother for but still appear in my nightmares.
The first time I returned after moving out and discovered the whole house was accessible only by dark, narrow corridors lined with precarious piles of stuff.
The hours and hours I’ve spent sorting and tossing and scrubbing and fighting with her over bags of rubbish, and six weeks later the house is the same again.
The downstairs bathroom and kitchen that we stopped using because something was leaking but we couldn’t find it in the mess, so when we stood on the floors they were like sponges, and Mum wouldn’t hire a contractor because she didn’t want anyone to see how we lived.
Lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to sleep as I heard mice shuffle through the papers that had taken up residence in my once immaculate room.
That’s what I was going back to if I stayed with Alaric. And if I became a vampire, too, I would face aneternityof it.
And that wouldn’t be fair on him, either. He needs his art the way I need mystorage containers.
I never even made him an art studio in the castle. I cleaned and organised and hid away his mess, but I didn’t make a space to celebrate the joy of his creative spirit. No wonder he hid everything away. I made him feel guilty about who he is.
We’re not meant to be.
I open my eyes as the car pulls over. We’re in front of Spell The Tea, the witchy shop that Isis and Dora own together. Komal unlocks the side door with a key – Nevermore Coven members are the kind of friends who have spare keys to each other’s homes – and we push our way through the crowded storage room of the shop to reach the staircase that accesses the flat above.
It takes everything in me to force myself up that staircase. The back of the shop is almost as bad as one of Alaric’s rooms, and my trauma is too close to the surface tonight. But as we emerge into Isis’s apartment, I breathe a sigh of relief to find that it’s not as chaotic and cluttered as I pictured. The walls are painted in calming greys and pale blues, the floorboards have been whitewashed and covered with a pretty teal rug, and apart from a few too many crystals and candles crowding the bookshelf and nightstand, the place is relatively tidy.
Isis and Dora are cuddled on the couch beneath a fluffy teal blanket, while Arabella fusses in the kitchen, swearing under her breath as she searches Isis’s cupboards. “If you want the bloody biscuits, you need to tell me where you keep them.”
“They’re in the biscuit tin, Arabella. That’s where normal people keep their biscuits.”
“This monstrosity?” Arabella shakes a ceramic laughing vampire at Isis, who manages a small giggle.
Arabella tugs off the lid and nearly drops the hideous jar when the vampire starts singing, “I vant to suck your blood.”
Isis’s weak laugh becomes a full-on cackle.
