Page 6 of Love At First Fright

R osemary sucked in a breath—she hated taking the tube.

The tinny sound of music playing through headphones, the smell of oil and stale air and too many people’s armpits.

The lights were glaring, and she escaped the platform to find the train carriage even busier. But worst of all were the remnants.

Not to be confused with ghosts, a remnant was a memory, or perhaps a moment, manifested into a spectral form.

The non-ghost-seeing population were surrounded by remnants far more than they realised.

When something impactful happens to a large group of people in a place, it leaves a scar, and cities as old as London were rife with scars.

Like a palimpsest, remnants from various periods folded over one another throughout the city, and when you went into its bowels, like the tube, they broke through.

Of course, this was only an issue if you had the ability to see them.

As the tube hurtled through the dark tunnel, Rosemary caught glimpses of faces hovering in the darkness, some with their eyes closed, others wrought with expressions of fear.

Those were probably stations where civilians died during the Second World War.

She did her best not to look too closely at them, even if they weren’t really there, just echoes of a harrowing memory.

At the first chance she could, she got off the train, choosing to walk from Holborn to Dina’s café, which was located in the heart of Bloomsbury, minutes away from the British Museum.

Rosemary couldn’t help but beam when she saw her friend’s café with its purple awning, the windows a little steamed up against the cold.

October at Serendipity was a brilliant sight to behold.

The bell jingled as Rosemary stepped inside, pulling her suitcases (one for clothes, a bigger one for books) behind her, and the scent of cinnamon, ginger, and just a hint of honeyed pumpkin washed over her.

The coffee machine was rumbling loudly, and the armchairs and colourful wooden tables were all full of people studying or catching up or taking a moment for themselves amongst the London hustle and bustle.

Protective evil eye charms hung from the walls, along with framed paintings of Dina’s favourite poems. String-tied bunches of dried lavender and eucalyptus were pinned by the front windows, lending a delicate floral scent to the air, as well as having the secondary magical purpose of cleansing the space, if Rosemary correctly remembered what Dina had told her.

Every inch of this place reminded Rosemary of Dina.

The three of them—Rosemary, Dina, and Immy—had met during an Addams Family costume movie night back when they were in university and had been inseparable ever since.

She heard a squeal, and found herself suddenly enveloped in a hug, a mass of brown curls tickling her face.

“You’re here! You’re finally here!” Dina laughed, pressing a kiss to Rosemary’s cheeks.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Rosemary said, squeezing back. “I’ve missed this place so much. But first let me see the ring!”

Dina grinned, flashing her left hand.

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“You could take someone’s eye out with that thing.”

Dina cackled. “Sometimes I feel like a magpie, I just catch myself staring at it and cooing.”

“As you should! How’s Scott?” Rosemary asked, looking around.

Scott spent a lot of his time working out of the café instead of his office at the museum, and Rosemary couldn’t blame him.

The couple used every spare minute when they weren’t working to plan their wedding.

It was going to be an intimate affair, but a creative one, no doubt.

“He’s good, working on his new exhibition about Māori tattoos at the moment, but you’ll see him soon. Come round to the kitchen now,” Dina said, looping her arm in Rosemary’s. “Immy will kill me if we spend any more time catching up before she’s said hi.”

Rosemary ducked around the counter and stepped into Dina’s kitchen.

She loved it here. The copper pots and pans hung from the sunlit ceiling, the ovens were full with deliciously scented pastries and cakes, and there was a fresh batch of blueberry muffins, her favourite, waiting on the polished wood counter.

Immy sat in one corner, using a breast pump. She was positively glowing, her blond hair buzzed short, and she was sporting a bold red lip.

“Don’t look at me, I’m a mess.”

“A beautiful one.” Rosemary grinned, reaching over the pump to hug Immy. “How are you doing, how’s the pumping?”

“My boobs are huge…Eric loves it.” She winked. “But they’re so sore. I swear, my body knows when I’m away from the twins, too, motherhood is so fucking weird.”

“Bet it makes for great writing ideas, though,” Rosemary said.

“Oh, for sure. I’ve already started working on an idea about a parasite cuckoo alien species that takes over a woman’s body and mimics pregnancy, I’ll send you my draft when it’s done.”

“Fucking creepy, I love it,” Rosemary replied, plonking herself down on a stool and tucking into a muffin.

The blue juice from the berries had seeped into the sponge, just the way she liked it.

Eating it, she felt her head clear, the jet lag from the early-morning flight fading away. She was pepped up, wide-awake.

“A magical anti-jet-lag muffin? Dina, you’re a genius,” she said, laughing as the witch tossed back her hair.

“I actually have something for you, which I must give you before we start gossiping like a bunch of old women, otherwise I know I’ll forget it.

” Dina popped into her pantry, rummaging around for a moment, then placed a pale cream pillar candle in front of Rosemary.

Rosemary leant forwards, inhaling the candle’s scent.

“Lavender and basil?” she asked.

“You have a good nose,” Dina replied. “I was just thinking about you in that old manor house the other day, and it got me worrying. What if there are some weird ghosts or remnants you don’t want attention from?

It’ll be hard to avoid them if you’re sleeping there.

So, I looked in my spell book, and I found this recipe for a protection candle.

If you light it in the room where you sleep, it will keep out any unwanted spirits. ”

“What about unwanted actors?” Rosemary joked.

“Already on your mind, is he?” Dina said, at the same time that Immy added, “If he’s in your room then he’s very much wanted, isn’t he?”

She should have known better than to mention Ellis Finch around these two, they were plotting something.

“How do I know this isn’t some kind of matchmaking candle that is going to have all the single men and women running to my location like a sexy GPS?”

“You’ll just have to trust me…though a sexy candle is a good idea, I need to write that down.”

And just like that, the three of them fell into easy habits, laughing over hot chocolate and muffins, Immy showing them photos of their adorably chubby godchildren Sidney and Ellen, named after two of the greatest Final Girls in horror history, and Dina getting their thoughts on flower arrangements, though the big day wasn’t for another ten months. She was having a late-August wedding.

Rosemary had almost forgotten how much better it was to be with her best friends in person, instead of seeing their faces in the glare of her phone screen.

She wished there was a way she could see them more, but she couldn’t just up and move to England, could she?

After all, she was currently a nomad without an apartment, and she could work from any place she could plug in her laptop. She would enjoy it while it lasted.

“You’re never going to believe who was in here the other day,” Dina said.

“Who?”

“Noah.”

Rosemary groaned.

“He asked after you.” Dina smirked. Rosemary groaned louder.

“Who is Noah again?” Immy asked. “My sleep-addled brain doesn’t remember.”

“Ah, that’s because we never used to say his name, only his nickname.”

Immy looked puzzled for a moment, then her eyes went wide. “Oh my fucking god. The dungeon master.”

Noah, aka the dungeon master, was the man who showed Rosemary the proverbial kink ropes, back when she was living briefly in England for her semester abroad.

He hadn’t called himself the dungeon master, but when Immy and Dina found out about his penchant for playing RPGs on the side, the nickname had stuck.

They hadn’t been together together—they just had an arrangement, and it worked for both of them, or so Rosemary had thought at the time.

“How did he seem?” Rosemary finally gathered the courage to ask.

“Good, I think. It took him a moment to place me, I reckon, and then he seemed a little shy.”

“Well, you know what they say, it’s always the shy ones.” Immy laughed. “What happened between you two again? I don’t remember him being a bad guy.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Rosemary said. “He had the whole sweet and gentle but dominant in bed vibe that you know I’m a fan of, and we had that trust between us that was so important to have, and I learned so much about what I want from our time together…” She trailed off.

“But…?” Immy asked.

“But I think in the end he thought that trust was something more than it was.”

Dina squeezed her hand. “Our little commitment-phobe.”

“I just need the right person. Maybe you should do another one of your tea leaf readings for my love life and see what it says.”

“Already have done.” A mischievous glint that Rosemary did not like appeared in Dina’s eyes.

“And?”

The evil witch tapped her nose.

—

Rosemary could happily have spent another afternoon yapping away with her best friends, but work called, and an hour later she had pulled up outside the Cloverwood Hotel, with enough time to check in and get settled before the preliminary cast and senior crew meeting.