Chapter Seventy-Three

Havermouth, Five Years Before

A hammering at the door woke Aislen. It was late afternoon, slipping into dusk, and Toby snored on the mattress next to her. The room was littered with debris from their day - scattered clothing, take-away food wrappers, the nearly empty whiskey bottle, the bong, the bag of drugs on the table, and the overflowing cigarette ashtray.

“Your time is up, room twenty-three!” A man bellowed from outside.

“Yep,” Toby snorted awake and yelled back. “We hear you. We’re going. Fuck,” he sat up and looked around him, blearily, his eyes focusing on Aislen. “Fuck,” he winced. “How old are you again?”

“Eighteen,” she realized. It was her birthday, and that fact had completely slipped her mind in the drama with her parents and the Triquetra. “I’m eighteen.”

“Thank fuck for that. Not that it makes any difference. I’m probably going to jail anyway,” he muttered, as he began to dress.

“Because they drowned,” she said softly. The memory was fuzzy of him weeping out his confession somewhere in the blur of drugs, drinking and fucking.

“Yeah,” a muscle ticked in the corner of his jaw. “Keep that to yourself, eh?”

“That’s what I do, it seems,” she sighed and began to dress. They hadn’t used condoms and she could feel the slime of his cum leaking from her as she began to move. It made her feel sick and filthy. She wanted nothing more than to have a shower and scour him from her.

“Help me with these things,” he was picking up the debris from around the room. Blue and red lights swept through the room, and his face became stricken. “Fuck, the cops are here!” He said, shoving the bag of drugs and bong at her. “Hold these.”

“Why should I?” She demanded. “They’re not mine!”

“You used them too! And your record is clean. This will fuck up any chance I have of staying out of jail… You can keep the drugs.” He pushed them into the pocket of her school skirt. “Tuck the bong under your shirt between us and walk out to the car.”

He opened the door and looked out. “Yep, they’re after the hooker down the row. Just walk to the car, girl… What is your name?” He looked over his shoulder, frowning.

“Lillian,” she lied, using the first name that popped into her head.

“Alright Lillian, let’s go,” he put his arm around her shoulders, and they strolled to the car. He remained tense as he backed out of the car spot and drove away, but the police didn’t even look their way.

Aislen put the bong onto the floor of the car.

“Where to?” He asked.

“Wilson Road,” she decided to keep the number vague.

He nodded and indicated to turn towards Wilson Road. “Are you on the pill?” He asked eventually.

“Yes.”

“I get regular checks, and normally use condoms, so you don’t have to worry about catching something from me,” he told her.

“Same,” she lied, flushing. “Though I’ve only slept with three people.”

“Three,” he raised his eyebrows. “At eighteen. Four now. That makes you a bit of a slut, you know.”

“How many people have you slept with and how old are you?” She snapped back.

He shrugged. “Touche.”

She looked at him in surprise, not used to winning her points. “Stop here,” she said and twisted to get her school bag from the back seat. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“I don’t mind driving…” He pulled over anyway, and she frowned. The Triquetra would have told her to shut up and made her kiss them at the door to prove that they were in control of her. Toby’s compliance was strangely exhilarating.

“Hey,” he said as she opened the door. “We had fun, didn’t we?”

“I guess,” she was dubious.

“Maybe we’ll do it again, some time, if I don’t get thrown into jail?”

“Yeah, maybe,” she closed the door and walked away. She crossed the road, heading away from her house, towards the graveyard. Going home and taking a shower weren’t going to happen, she admitted to herself, shivering in the cool night air. Her parents would be sitting down to dinner, and she couldn’t go into the house reeking of smoke, alcohol, and sex.

She went to the pretty gazebo and sat on the ground with her back against the railings, trying to be small and invisible, and trying to bring the too-short school skirt as far over her legs for warmth as she could. She used her school bag to block as much of the breeze as she could and wrapped her arms around herself, leaning her head back against the wrought iron and closing her eyes.

Her doze was light and frequently interrupted, her heart leaping at every noise or shift of air around her, not sure what she feared more – being discovered by someone from school and mocked, or being attacked and raped…

Her grimoire was in the bag, and for a while she read by the washed-out streetlights, trying to distract herself from her discomfort, but she shook from cold. She looked up when she heard wolves call in the distance, and a fragile hope fluttered to life. Even as it did, she realized that if the Triquetra came near her now, she’d reek of Toby’s cum, and they would know what a slut and whore she was.

She put her grimoire away and decided to risk sneaking into her house, preferring her parents’ anger to that of the Triquetra. The lights were off when she drew near. She crept down the side of the house and pried up her bedroom window, managing to scramble and lift herself in.

She stripped off her filthy clothes and put on a pair of flannelette pajamas, seeking both the warmth and the modesty of them, feeling ashamed of her body and what she had done with it.

As she put her school skirt into the washing basket near the door to her bedroom, she felt the crunch of the bag of drugs. She dug it out and looked around frantically for a place to hide it, before prying up the loose floorboard which her mother was always complaining about. She stuffed the bag deep, out of sight, before putting the floorboard back into place.

If only it was so easy to hide away all her sins, she thought, as she lay down in the bed. If only she could make herself disappear as easily.