Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1

by Angela Slatter

  The porridge in the saucepan began to burble at me and I removed it from the heat to throw in a handful of frozen raspberries. It might be a winter breakfast, but I loved it and it was incredibly healthy – well, at least until I added half a cup of cream. I poured green tea into the porcelain cup my grandmother had used every day for fifty years, carried bowl and cup outside and resumed position in the canvas chair.

  The day after Grigor’s arrest, my maternal grandparents, Albert and May Brennan, whom I didn’t even know existed, appeared and took me into their home. The first months were fraught. I didn’t know who they were, I missed my father dreadfully and I was completely uprooted. It wasn’t just the new school, new house, new food, new rules, but also the new knowledge: not only that Grigor had done terrible things, that he was gone forever, but also the fact that he had come between my grandparents and my mother, and me as well, for Grigor had kept them away.

  I learned ‘normal’ from them. They cared for me and did their best. Some days I’d catch them looking at me as if I were awful and fascinating, a cuckoo in the nest, and it hurt at first, but in the end I accepted it because I realised that despite that, they did love me. I was awful and fascinating, but at least I wasn’t stuck with the kind of problems that plagued a lot of half-bloods, like horns or wings or powers they couldn’t control. All I got was Grigor’s ridiculous strength, which I’ve been thankful for from time to time, and some useful knowledge of magical practice.

  Whenever I’d asked my grandparents about my mother, they’d generally just repeated darkly, She married badly and ended worse. How their daughter came to be married to such a man, they refused to disclose. My grandfather would change the subject without missing a beat as my grandmother’s lips pursed in the manner particular to little old ladies that so perfectly conveyed both politeness and extreme annoyance. They were even more tight-lipped on the subject of Grigor, except the day they told me, gently, kindly, that he’d died. I let him fade in my memory until he became sepia and easily ignored.

  It didn’t take long to learn that my grandparents weren’t appreciative of magic rituals, that even laying the simplest wards around the house wasn’t on, let alone the baking of blood-offering loaves. With Grigor gone, my experience of strange things also faded. The community I’d begun my life in made no contact at all.

  The flow of child disappearances stopped for a long, long time after Grigor’s arrest – or at least those disappearances obviously connected to unacceptable dining habits. Bela once told me that Grigor’s downfall had made the community a lot more alert, a lot more security-conscious: the Weyrd had begun to realise at last that their survival depended on evolution, civilisation, on moving forward and adapting, putting the old ways to rest once and for all.

  And Grigor’s customers? Those rich, powerful people disappeared like smoke, making it look like he’d been a sole predator, which, by the by, was exactly how the Council wanted it. The fact that he was a Kinderfresser never came out, not in the press, not in the courts. And the Normals in charge were just as happy with the result – their justice system had never been designed to cope with stuff like that; it can’t even cope with its own mundane crimes. Tell the citizenry there’re folk with tails and abilities and strange tastes and there’d be a riot; town squares turned into pyres, sales of garden stakes going through the roof, churches running out of holy water . . .

  But now something had changed, and not for the better. A new product, moved by an unknown force, was endangering children and putting the Weyrd community at risk of exposure once more. Something scratched at my back brain and I started to wonder if the past was the place to start. I growled in frustration, heaved myself out of the chair and headed inside to find some grown-up clothes, as most people frowned upon pyjamas as outerwear.

  No rest for the wicked.

  Chapter Four

  The State Library of Queensland resembled West End Library only in so far as they were both buildings. Located on the south bank of the river, between the Gallery of Modern Art and the Queensland Art Gallery, it was an enormous series of rectangles and voids, glass, tiles and concrete, all threaded through with Internet connectivity. International students sat with laptops, taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi to Skype home. Militant gaggles of mothers used prams and toddlers as blunt weapons without fear or favour, laying claim to café space. Determined-looking genealogists headed to the upper floors to trawl through electoral rolls, immigration and shipping logs, convict records and rare manuscripts. Others were there to go through the music, newspaper, film and photographic collections. Some just wandered in to get out of the wind, rain or sun, to nap in the stacks on the appallingly patterned carpet or in one of the almost-comfortable armchairs scattered around, others to sit in the Red Box and watch the river serenely snake past.

  Inside, the air-conditioning was set to Arctic breeze. The microfiche reader made a slight hum and gave off a lot of heat and I rubbed my hands in front of it, campfire-style. But I didn’t complain about the cold; I was too grateful that I’d been allowed through the door. A few years ago during the floods there had been an ‘incident’ in which I might have been involved. I was not the cause of said incident, but I was there clearing up a few things and, well, some people got a bit singed, books were damaged and the teacup collection on the Queensland Terrace was irreparably diminished. I was also grateful that old-style librarians – the sort who could turn evildoers to ash with a single glare – were few and far between nowadays.

  There was surprisingly little about Grigor’s activities in the archival newspapers; that would be down to Weyrd influence in the corridors of power, I supposed. It was all about damage control. But there were pictures of him being taken to and from the Supreme Court: a tall, handsome man in a bad suit, with hangdog eyes and a loose-lipped grin that showed off sharp teeth. Though he looked Normal, I thought I could make out stains on his jacket, right where the sleeves met the body: bleed-through from where they’d inserted the iron nails in his shoulder joints to stop him from shifting. His was the sort of crime that couldn’t be entirely hushed up; it had created so much outrage that it could only be shut down by a very public arrest and prosecution. My father was thrown to the wolves – not that he didn’t deserve it, but that’s how it was done: one scandal amplified in order to cover up a worse one.

  I hadn’t looked at these reports before, although Bela had occasionally shared some tidbits. I had chosen not to, to ignore it all, as if none of it had happened. During the trial my grandparents had kept the TV off at night so I wouldn’t see the news bulletins. If they bought papers, they read them before coming home. They acted as if, somehow, what was happening to my father couldn’t touch me if we all ignored it; as if it was nothing to do with me. But there were days when I believed everything I was doing as an adult, the vigil I kept over the city, was a kind of penance. Hidden somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that one day I’d have to pay for what my father did, and just maybe I had started making reparation.

  The clippings ran the gamut from congratulatory front-page features about dropping numbers of street kids thanks entirely to improved Social Services programmes, to a couple of inches on page three about missing kids, then to explosive headlines about the evil at the heart of the city. There were lists of victims’ names, and family histories reduced to anaemic sentences that in no way showed the lives of these children before my father had found them. What I did learn was where he’d gone wrong. Grigor got caught because he got lazy and sloppy – he didn’t hunt far enough away, didn’t harvest from his usual source. He’d taken a cared-for child, one from a happy home in a rich locale, a son for whom someone would – and did – look. Had he stuck to the runaways, the unwanted, who knows how long he might have gone undetected.

  I scrolled through for as long as I could, trying to figure out what was important in the wash of the historical irrelevant. Glamorous women smiled out from the social pages, shoulder pads taking up most of the photos; schoo
lkids brandished trophies after winning debating competitions and football matches; there were outcries over midnight demolitions of heritage buildings and rubber duck races on the river of brown; critics lauded festivals for writers and films, and there were a slew of other crimes just as awful as my father’s, but nothing was linked to me or mine.

  When even the heat from the microfiche stopped defrosting my fingers, I gave up. Though my brain felt filled to the brim and then some and my heart was sore, it had been a wasted afternoon. Memories made everything hurt. The need for sleep whined in my head like a determined fly, but I was meeting Ziggi at my place at six. I knew he would have picked me up from the library if I’d asked, but I was stubbornly pursuing a dream of some independence. I liked to get myself home using public transport occasionally, even if my sense of triumph was generally outweighed by pain and inconvenience. The ache in my leg suggested I was an idiot even as I hobbled through the sliding doors into the last vestiges of summer heat. In a matter of days, I knew the weather would pull a stunning volte-face and temperatures would drop. Autumn might last approximately seventy-two hours if we were lucky.

  The light outside was hard and blinding and I blinked, stunned by the flashes on my retinas. I sensed someone near me before the thump; a violent meeting of shoulders, and for a moment I was sure it had been intentional. Then I was just concerned with not falling over.

  ‘Oh, shit. Sorry! Sorry—’ Masculine tones, soft-spoken but sounding genuinely apologetic. Hands steadied me as my sight normalised. The guy was about my height, dark blond, green eyes behind wire-framed glasses, wearing jeans and a grey-blue T-shirt with a top-hatted badger riding a bicycle. Standard geek. He held his palms up to show he meant no harm.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, waving him away. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Maybe I could say sorry with a cup of something warm? It would be over-priced warmth to show my sincerity,’ he said.

  Without thinking I said, ‘No. Thanks.’

  I moved off as he gave a what-can-you-do? shrug. On a whim that surprised me, I glanced over my shoulder, but he’d already started off in the opposite direction. He looked good in jeans. I shook my head to clear the distracting thoughts and went on my not-so-merry way.

  Chapter Five

  I limped up the incline from the Norman Park train station cursing and sweating, perspiration running down my face, my back and basically everywhere. The street was deserted, the houses quiet. In the oppressive atmosphere the ring of my mobile sounded overly loud. I fumbled it on, not looking at the number, assuming it was Ziggi or Bela.

  ‘Is this Verity Fassbinder?’ Female, the timbre quite musical.

  ‘Who’s speaking?’ I asked, idly wondering where she’d got my number. It’s always nice to know where the referrals come from.

  ‘My name is Serena Kallos. I’ve been told you’re good at solving problems.’

  ‘I have my moments. What’s your problem, Ms Kallos?’

  ‘I’d rather not discuss it over the phone. Can we meet? This evening?’

  I wanted to say no, but there was something in her tone. ‘I have a few things to do tonight, but if you don’t mind meeting late? How about Little—’ No, it was probably too soon for me to return to Little Venice. ‘. . . ah, Shaky Jake’s, about eleven.’ I figured even if Ziggi and I hadn’t finished our search for Sally Crown, we could take a break, then get back to it.

  ‘I know where that is. Late is fine.’

  I wanted to ask what she was, but that wasn’t polite. If she knew where the café was, if she knew who I was, chances were she was Weyrd. Though I knew Normal people, lots of them, they generally didn’t know what I did for a living.

  ‘Okay, I’ll see you there,’ I started, but she’d already rung off.

  At the top of the hill I looked at the remaining five-hundred-yard downward slope with relief.

  Staggering into my yard, I saw someone on the patio, knocking hard on the door.

  ‘Hey, Mel.’

  She turned and looked at me with desperate hope. ‘Is Lizzie here? She said she was going to read with you.’

  Little bugger.

  ‘No, I told her not today. When did she come over?’

  ‘A couple of hours ago.’ Her voice shook, and I noticed her hands were shaking too.

  ‘Have you checked the tree?’ There was a hollow at the base of the jacaranda in my back garden. Lizzie had comic books, a blanket and a couple of dolls stashed there. Every kid needs a secret spot so her mother and I pretended we didn’t know about it.

  Mel did that thing with her head, part yes, part no. ‘It was the first place I looked.’

  My heart thumped and icy little fingers stroked my spine. No, I told myself, wrong neighbourhood. A cared-for child. Another part of my brain chimed in with, Grigor did it. I shook off the anxiety; I was overly sensitive because of what I’d been researching, jumping to conclusions after reading all those news articles. Lizzie wouldn’t go anywhere with a stranger; she knew better than to trust an adult she didn’t know. At least . . . I hoped she did.

  ‘Right.’ I paused. ‘How about playing up the road with the Thomas kids? I know she’s not supposed to, but—’ Mel was already shaking her head. ‘You’ve called her school friends?’ She was trying not to cry as she managed a yes. Panic swelled in my own throat and I swallowed it. Lizzie was just hiding. But all the same . . .

  ‘You should call the cops.’

  ‘I don’t want to overreact,’ she said, but I knew that’s exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to scream until her baby returned. She wanted to kill the person who’d caused her this tearing fear. I pushed her gently towards her house. The police would ask questions, keep her company, file a report, and when Lizzie finally wandered in, they’d give her a talking-to that wouldn’t go astray. She wouldn’t stay out late – she’d get hungry, that would bring her home.

  I told myself this was true.

  ‘Go. Call. Better safe than sorry. I’m sure it’s nothing – she’ll be back before you know it and getting her bum spanked,’ I added, eyeing the gypsy cab as it pulled up. ‘I’ve got to go out for a while, but you’ve got my mobile number if you find anything – if you need anything, yeah? I can’t avoid this appointment, but I’ll be back later this evening, I promise.’

  She looked really disappointed and I hated having to go; as her tears spilled over, I felt my own eyes welling up. When I hugged Mel I had to swallow my sobs – if I gave in now I wouldn’t be able to make myself leave. I held her tight for long seconds, then gave her another nudge. I watched her walk away, narrow back shuddering, still struggling to contain the fear.

  Then Ziggi hit the horn and I headed over. I was really trying not to get irritated by the pitying looks he shot me every time I limped. I’d known him almost as long as I had Bela, and he’d taught me a lot of what I knew about the Weyrd and their habits, about tracking and tracing people, and about breaking and entering. In many ways he was closest thing I had to family, kind of like the uncle everyone except kids roll their eyes at. Mostly he didn’t judge me, but when he did, I had to admit it was generally deserved. As I leaned in to open the door, something gleaming on the footpath caught my eye: silvery sequins, the worse for wear, shaken from a top – one paired, I imagined, with a too-short denim skirt and tatty green Converse sneakers. Paralysed, I stared across the street at the windows of a vacant house and thought how much they looked like dead eyes.

  *

  If it had been me, I would have lain low, avoided my usual haunts for a while, maybe a week or two, until interested parties gave up. Maybe I’m smarter than most people. I was certainly smarter than Sally Crown, who was young and dumb.

  Ziggi killed the engine and we rolled to a stop outside West End Library. We’d been waiting up the road, watching, careful not to be seen – we were lucky the daylight had given out, considering the car we were in – until a skinny figure flitted under the streetlight outside the redbrick building and ducked down a side path. The
community noticeboard out the front was covered with sedimentary layers of flyers no one ever bothered to remove: calls to self-help flocks, book clubs, writers’ groups and sewing circles. In a bottom corner, beneath years of leaflet collage and archaeological debris, I spied an enlarged photocopy of a newspaper article, turned brittle yellow by age and elements. I could just make out a perfectly coiffed matron’s smiling face beside a feature about the substantial cheque she’d donated to some charity or other. A moustache had been drawn across her top lip.

  ‘You okay on your own?’ Ziggi asked around a mouthful of yesterday’s Little Venice mud cake. His ability to hoard food never ceased to amaze me.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Only Bela said—’

  ‘Fuck Bela,’ I snarled.

  ‘He’s not my type.’ He sighed. ‘Look, V, I know you’re tired and cranky. I know your leg hurts more than you let on. And because I’m fond of you, I’m gonna say this even though you’ll probably yell at me: you gotta let it go.’ He fixed me with a stare, lowered his voice. ‘I know you don’t want Bela back; I know you dumped him, and why, but if you keep carrying around the reasons you left, it’s gonna kill you.’

  ‘And why did I leave?’ I asked, unable to manage even a lick of sarcasm.

  ‘’Cause he wasn’t what you thought you wanted. You’ve gotta forgive him for that. And in all fairness, he’s never pretended to be anything other than what he is. Let it go – it’s just making you mean.’

  He wasn’t entirely right, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. Or maybe he was entirely right. I swallowed, tried to answer, swallowed again and finally managed, ‘You’re right.’

  He couldn’t have looked more stunned if he’d tried.

  ‘You’re right and I hate that, but I am sorry. You’re my friend and you don’t deserve to be a scratching post.’ I rubbed my chin. ‘It’s just . . . I’m so angry with him lately. It’s . . .’ Ziggi didn’t say anything, just waited patiently. ‘It’s the leg – I blame him. My whole fucking life feels like it’s been on hold since this happened and I blame him. The pain is just a constant reminder.’