Chapter Seventy-Eight

Havermouth, Present time

Talen kissed her as he leaned over the bed and she reached up automatically, opening her eyes as her hands encountered cloth. “You’re dressed!” She accused.

He chuckled. “It is almost dawn, little demon, and I must go.”

“Oh,” she sat up. “You will be back tonight, daddy?”

“Of course,” he adjusted the collar around her neck so that the infinity knot sat in the hollow of her collar bone. “Eat healthily and drink lots of water,” he smoothed his big hand over her hair. “Sleep and stay out of trouble.”

“I’ll try,” she slid out of bed as he eased back, following him to the bedroom door. “I’ll think about you all day.”

He cupped her chin and leaned down to kiss her. “I will be back as soon as the sun sets.”

She watched as he let himself out and sighed. There was no point to returning to the bed, she decided, it was just lonely without him there. She went to her childhood bedroom and pulled on her dressing gown before going into the kitchen to boil the kettle.

She drank coffee and worked on her comic until the sun was bright through the kitchen window, and then decided to follow Talen’s instructions and made herself a breakfast of wilted baby spinach, cooked diced tomato, and scrambled egg.

As she ate, she toyed with the collar around her neck and wondered what Talen did during the day. Did he sleep? When she stirred during the night, he was always sleeping with her. There was very little information on vampires in her grimoire.

For a moment, she contemplated contacting the coven in Rideten to see if the inner circle knew more… But she discarded the thought. She would let Talen reveal his secrets in his own time, she decided. When he trusted her enough to reveal them, she would trust that he had given her the truth.

In the interim, she would just enjoy the time he gave to her.

She touched the collar around her neck. Apparently, he intended to give her plenty of time. “Now you are mine,” he had said.

“That makes you mine too,” she murmured to herself with a small smile.

She worked until midday and then showered and got dressed, deciding it was time to get some fresh air and proper coffee.

She was no longer stared at as she walked up the main street. Her appearance and presence seemed to have been accepted, in the same way as Rhett and his employees were. She had joined the ranks of Havermouth’s fringe dwellers, she thought, with wry amusement.

In the coffee shop, there was no sign of Diana behind the cash register, and she had to wait for her long black like everyone else.

“Where is Diana today?” She asked the sulky teenager who manned the register.

“Out back,” he said, with a slide of his eyes towards the rear of the shop.

Intrigued, Aislen took her coffee up the side alley around to the rear of the shop. Between the industrial dumpsters, someone had set a collection of mismatched chairs for employees to take their smoke breaks, and Diana sat on one of them, her eyes red and raw from weeping, a cigarette slowing growing ash and a bottle of whiskey between her knees as she gazed vacantly at the pavement before her.

“Hey,” Aislen sat next to her. “Got another smoke?” She took the whiskey from the werewolf and added a liberal dash to her coffee whilst Diana located the cigarette packet that had slipped from her pocket to the ground.

Aislen sat back. “I don’t normally smoke,” she said as she blew out a lungful of it. “Something about this town, though, makes me feel like I am stuck for eternity as the sad teen that I was when I left here, and that makes me want to smoke and drink far more than I normally do.”

“I don’t drink or smoke,” Diana mumbled.

“Well, we’ll sit and not drink and smoke together then. Are you still with Lillian?”

Diana’s head jerked her way, her surprise focusing her eyes. “How do you know the things that you know?” She demanded. “How do you know secret things, things that you just shouldn’t?”

“My gift,” Aislen replied honestly with a shrug. “So, did the two of you end up happily married?”

“She married Rohan,” she replied quietly. “They have two kids.”

“Ah,” Aislen sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Diana remembered her cigarette and ashed it onto the ground before taking a drag, coughing out the smoke in spurts. “It was never going to work out,” she spluttered.

“Why not?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Diana shook her head.

“Mhm,” Aislen sipped her coffee. “Small towns are not very tolerant, cheerleader used to being held up as the epitome of success and perfection didn’t want to soil her image by coming out as a lesbian?”

“Sometimes love just isn’t enough,” Diana sighed.

“Here, swap you,” Aislen sacrificed her coffee. “I’ll take that,” she took a swig of whiskey and pulled a face. “I’ve never enjoyed straight whiskey. I’m a wine drinker.”

“It was in the cupboard in the shop kitchen,” Diana sipped the coffee.

“So why are you getting a drunk on at midday?” Aislen asked.

“My grandfather,” Diana explained. “And his little metal box of photos and locks of hair.”

“Plus, the bodies buried beneath it.”

“Yep,” Diana swallowed hard. “My photo is in that box.”

“Yeah,” Aislen sighed the word and offered back the whiskey. “I sort of suspected that.”

“They knew,” Diana hissed the words. “They knew what he did to me, to others. When they found out, they made him stop, they put him in the old folk’s home where they said he wouldn’t get near kids again, but that was all they did. Keep it quiet, let no one know, preserve the family name,” she said it with loathing.

“It’s all over now, Diana, they said. It’s done. You can move on with your life, don’t think about it anymore… How do you stop?” She demanded of Aislen. “How do you stop thinking about something so awful that you feel like you want to tear out the parts of your body that he touched, and you are never clean enough, and your dreams are haunted by the memories… How do you stop thinking about that?”

“I don’t know,” Aislen took back the whiskey and took a swig. “You don’t. You just don’t. It lingers. You think that it has faded and then suddenly, one day, out of the blue, it’s right back before you in Technicolor, and you realized that it never really faded away, you just hid it behind everyday things, like the ugly jumper your mother thought was so cute on you, stuffed in the back of the cupboard behind all the other clothes…”

“I had a jumper like that,” Diana was startled.

“We all have a jumper like that some time in our life,” Aislen said.

“I guess we’re more alike than I thought,” Diana murmured. “Who raped you?”

Aislen pulled a face. “I think the Who Didn’t Rape Aislen list is a shorter one, to be honest, Diana. Even I raped myself in a way, five years ago, when I was hurting over… things, the Triquetra, and life in general. I let a guy I didn’t know take me to a motel room and we got drunk, and high, and fucked… I walked into the situation with open eyes, but I… well, I wasn’t capable of making safe decisions for myself at the time.”

Diana leaned her head back against the wall. “I never thought about things like that.” She sighed. “We all got a bit fucked up in the head during our teen years,” she said. “I was fucked up about my grandfather, Lilly was fucked up about that human who raped her and gave her an STI, and you were… Well, I guess you were fucked up three times over,” she laughed under her breath ruefully. “The Triquetra…”

“Yeah, the Triquetra,” Aislen acknowledged wearily. “Lillian was raped by a human?” She felt bad about her comment about the football team. “I feel like a bitch. I teased her about…”

“I remember,” Diana replied. “Don’t worry about it. It’s in the past. And please, don’t say anything. She doesn’t want anyone to know. She’s the opposite to me. She wanted it kept quiet. She wanted to pretend it never happened. Her parents made a big deal out of it, the boy was charged, and his family driven out of town.”

“That’s a bit fucked up,” Aislen observed. “Seeing how many human girls were raped and the charges dropped…” She trailed off as Diana frowned.

“Did you say…” Diana hesitated.

“Say what?” Aislen asked, ingenuously.

“Nothing,” Diana shook her head. “I’m really, really drunk.”

“Well, you’re in the right profession to fix that. A few of your own coffees, and you’ll be back on track.”

“Yeah,” Diana rose to her feet. “I’ll make you a new one seeing as I drank half of yours.”

“Free coffee? I won’t say no,” Aislen followed her into the back of the café. There was an industrial-style kitchen in gleaming stainless steel, with a team of people washing dishes and preparing food. Diana ignored them, moving forward into the store, where the coffee machine was. She took over the machine.

Aislen looked around, curious, seeing the shop from the other side for the first time. There was a Secret Keeper sheet pinned to the cork board, along with a piece of paper with names, dates, amounts and… theories.

“What’s this?” She asked Diana.

Diana glanced over her shoulder. “It’s the Secret Keeper pool.”

“The Secret Keeper pool?”

“Yeah, nearly every business has one going. Customers with theories place bets. Whoever gets it right, wins the pool. Do you want to enter?”

“Oh, no,” Aislen shook her head. She read through the theories. “These are interesting.”

“Yeah, it’s become a town hobby,” Diana brought the coffee to her. “They’ve nominated the Secret Keeper, too.”

“Nominated… for what?” Aislen was bemused.

“For mayor. I don’t know who started it, but anyone can be nominated or campaign for the role as long as they’re a resident of Havermouth. From there it’s just a popularity contest, and the Secret Keeper is all that anyone can talk of. I think we’re going to be that crazy town who voted in a rumour,” Diana shook her head in disdain. “We’ll be the punchline of a joke.”

“Yeah,” Aislen agreed. Diana had no idea, she thought, how right she was. If Havermouth voted in the Secret Keeper as mayor, they were, by extension, voting in Aislen Carter, the Triquetra’s whore. “Who do you think the Secret Keeper is?” She asked Diana.

“I have a few ideas,” Diana replied. “There are a few locals whose families have been here for generations, who hold grudges. Some of the things on the Secret Keeper’s list… Like the pastor. Everyone knows who that refers to. So maybe it’s someone from the church making things up. The thing about… you know… my grandfather,” she whispered the words. “Well, that could be someone from the police, or any of the staff who manage evidence for the police station, or any of the legal profession…”

“Ah,” Aislen nodded. “I see. Well, I had better be off. Gotta work to earn money, need money to live, you know how it is.”

“Yeah. Aislen…” Diana walked her to the rear door. “Thanks, by the way. For, you know…”

“Bumming your smokes and whiskey?” Aislen arched an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Diana smiled. “For that.”

“Anytime.” Aislen wriggled her fingers in farewell and headed back to the main street.