Page 133 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

He kisses the top of my head, turns, and walks back inside.

It takes ten days before we know. They are not comfortable days. Rowan doesn’t come to the shop and he doesn’t go to the hill. The production team stays in town. Ben films the lighthouse and the breakwater and, on one occasion, a hundred and twenty pounds of Lucy Carver’s darkroom equipment being carried up a flight of stairs.

Chloe comes into the Salt & Sage twice. The first time she buys coffee and doesn’t mention Rowan. The second time she buys a lemon tart and actually eats it.

Julian doesn’t pack another journal. He doesn’t unpack one either. I don’t mention that.

Then, on the twenty-ninth of January, the website changes.

Season Nine. A Harbor Full of Ghosts. Six episodes.

The photograph across the top is the Widow’s Lantern at night, taken from the street, with the window burning. There’s no section called THE OWNERS OF BLACKTHORN HOUSE. There is no four-image progression ending with the man I love standing outside Harbor Books. There’s no photograph of Julian at all.

I sit at my desk in the back of the Salt & Sage and stare at the screen until Lucy comes around the counter and looks over my shoulder.

“Oh,” she says. “Is that⁠—”

“Yeah.”

“Should we call him?”

I look at the page again.

“No,” I say. “I think I’m going to tell him in person.”

Rowan comes into the Salt & Sage the next afternoon and orders a coffee and two cranberry things.

“I’m not going to tell you I was wrong,” he says.

“I didn’t ask.”

“I want to, actually, and I’m not going to, because I don’t think I was and I’d rather not lie to you in your own shop.” He takes his glasses off and cleans them on his scarf. “I’ve got four pictures and no funerals, which is compelling and isn’t proof. I’ve got a producer who won’t put her name on the episode and who I’m not prepared to lose. I’ve got a town that has closed like a fist. And I’ve got a man who sat next to me in a pub and told me no to my face.”

“That’s four things.”

“It’s four things.”

“Which one did it?”

Rowan puts his glasses back on.

“I’m still working that out.”

I slide his coffee across the counter, but he doesn’t pick it up immediately.

“I still think I’m right, and I think he knows I think I’m right.”

“He definitely knows.”

“And I think you know I’m right.”

“I wouldn’t place any money on that.”

“Which is why I’m not a gambling man.”

I smile despite myself, and Rowan looks down at the coffee.

“There’s a version of this where I run the episode exactly as written and never make a claim I can’t substantiate. Every fact is public. Every photograph is real. Every question is fair. And six months from now I could sit across from anybody who complained and explain, accurately, that I never said the thing they’re accusing me of saying.”