Queen of the Night

by Leanne Hall

  The men clear out of the cage, and two more fighters enter. I blink. They’re girls like none I’ve ever seen.

  One is short and wiry, with two black buns on either side of her head. She wears tight black leather, trailing a tail behind her. I try to see where the tail joins her body, but she weaves restlessly, making it difficult. Her skin is slick with sweat or oil.

  The other girl-fighter is taller, more lithe. She wears a form-fitting grey suit. Her hair grows low on her brow in a widow’s peak. She has red irises.

  ‘Don’t be fooled by their youth!’ The megaphone man must imagine he’s in front of a full stadium, rather than a handful of saddos with gambling problems. ‘These girls know how to rumble!’

  A different guy has taken up the vacant position next to me. He whistles loudly with two fingers up to his mouth.

  ‘All right!’ he yells.

  ‘What are they?’ I ask him.

  He looks at me with surprised and bleary eyes. ‘Hellcats, man. You never seen a hellcat before?’ He lifts his head and screeches to the sky, ‘HOT LADIES!’

  An air-siren goes off, and the two girls run at each other, colliding in midair. The guy next to me keeps whistling so piercingly I have to move. I kick through the dust, head down, pretending I can’t feel adrenaline tingling along my limbs. Why would Paul come to a place like this? And why wouldn’t he tell me about it?

  ‘Wolfboy!’ The call comes from the bleachers. I pick out a waving hand on the top step.

  The bleachers are ancient and the wooden slats bend ominously underfoot as I make my way to the top.

  ‘Wolfboy, my man!’

  Tony wears a loud purple shirt and a gold necklace. He pulls me in to clap me on the back. ‘I always wondered why I never see you here.’

  ‘First time,’ I say. Tony managed a cafe where Thom, Paul and I used to hang out, before the Darkness.

  Tony whistles. ‘You’ve been missing out. I’m having a good night.’ He pulls a roll of cash from his shirt pocket. The chunky watch on his wrist flashes; so does the gold ring on his fingers. ‘I’m up two grand and counting.’

  ‘I didn’t realise gambling was such a big thing in Shyness.’

  Tony puts the cash away. ‘Yeah, there’s the money side, but really people just like to see people beat the shit out of each other.’

  ‘People?’ I say. ‘Don’t you mean freaks? People like watching the freaks beat the shit out of each other.’

  Tony punches my shoulder affectionately. ‘Don’t be a hater.’

  I ignore that. ‘You ever seen Paul at these fights?’

  ‘Your skinny Korean friend? Yeah, sometimes. One time he got me to place a bet for him. But I haven’t seen him for a few months.’

  The thought that Paul hasn’t told me about this makes me feel sick. He’s been hiding parts of his life for longer than I thought. Tony bends his head as a hulking man comes to whisper in his ear. He introduces us.

  ‘Wolfboy, this is the Gentleman. The brains behind all of this.’

  I shake the Gentleman’s hand. Brains are not what first spring to mind. He’s at least a foot taller than me, barechested and hairy, wearing pinstriped pants held up with braces. What are they feeding these guys? He has a thick moustache and his hair is slicked back.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Wolfboy,’ the Gentleman says in a polite bass. His meaty hands envelop mine. A mobile phone rings and Tony fumbles in his pocket. The Gentle man cuffs him over the head.

  ‘Tony, turn that thing down. You trying to deafen me?’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Tony walks away from us, with his phone stuck to his ear.

  I turn back to the Gentleman. His gaze is disturbingly direct. ‘Wolfboy, I won’t beat around the bush. I came over to see if you’re interested in fighting for me. We could do with someone like you.’

  ‘Fresh blood?’

  When the Gentleman smiles the sharpness of his teeth is terrifying. ‘You could say that. Hopefully there won’t be too much blood involved.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ My eyes shoot off towards the lit-up cage where the hellcat bout is reaching fever pitch. I remember fighting Doctor Gregory’s henchmen on the rooftop in Orphanville. The crunch of bones under my fingers, the voltage rush and then, soon after, the nausea and guilt. ‘I’m not much of a fighter.’

  ‘With all due respect, Wolfboy, I know a fighter when I see one.’

  I don’t want to argue with him. Something about his manner, or the way he holds himself, reminds me of Gram. He’s probably the same age as Gram would be if he were alive. The Gentleman leans in closer. I smell liquor and dust and clothes that don’t get washed often.

  ‘You think you’re carrying a burden. But it’s a privilege.’

  ‘What am I?’ I dare to whisper.

  ‘It’s worse if you don’t give in.’ The Gentleman’s mouth is at my ear. ‘I heard from my little hellcat that the Doctor has been sniffing around you. Do not trust that man.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  The Gentleman puts his hand on my shoulder. A kind touch, worlds apart from the cuff he gave Tony. ‘The Doctor is nothing but a charlatan, Wolfboy. A megalomaniac with ambitions to run this suburb. But he can only have the power you give him, nothing more. Whatever he’s told you, it’s all lies.’

  ‘He hasn’t told me anything. And if he did I wouldn’t believe him.’

  ‘Good.’ The Gentleman straightens suddenly. Tony is heading our way. The Gentleman raises his voice again. ‘Think about it. You can earn good money.’

  The shouting and barracking over by the cage has become cacophonous.

  ‘All right, Wolfboy?’ asks Tony, clapping me on the back again. We look out over the top of the crowd. Something is happening near the cage. People are piling together. I see punches thrown, and bottles cracked over heads.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ says the Gentleman as he leaves. ‘Wolfboy, come see me again. Soon.’

  Tony surveys the growing brawl.

  ‘Feral,’ he says. It’s difficult to know if he says it with censure or approval.

  From my vantage point I can see the Gentleman heading into the thickest knot of spectators. He tosses people out of his way as if they don’t weigh a thing. Once he reaches the centre, far from trying to stop the fighting, he starts kicking and headbutting anything in sight.

  ‘I’m going,’ I tell Tony.

  ‘Sure, sure.’ Tony doesn’t take his eyes off the fighting. Dust flies up in the floodlights. The two hellcats are pacing idly in the cage, watching what’s happening outside. I have one more question before I leave. I would have asked the Gentleman if we hadn’t been interrupted.

  ‘What do you know about the Datura Institute, Tony?’

  That surprises him. He turns to me.

  ‘Don’t bother with that shit, Wolfboy,’ he says. ‘Why would you bother with that? The Datura is the opposite of this.’

  I straighten, letting Tony see my full height. ‘You know everything that goes on in Shyness. Tell me how I can talk to some blue people.’

  The night has been long, almost as long as that first night with Wildgirl, and I feel like the walking dead by the time I get home. There’s a light on in Blake’s room. The temptation to sag onto the couch is strong, but—

  ‘Blake?’ I knock even though I can already see her surrounded by her usual flotilla of books and pencils. A charcoal smudge crosses her left cheek. A large sheet of paper covered in black scratches lies on her bed. I sit down and turn the paper around.

  ‘Ravens,’ she says. ‘Or raven. There’s one that visits our backyard every few days. Sometimes he brings a friend.’

  I turn the paper back the right way. ‘So did Diana behave herself the other night?’

  Blake turns her attention back to her book. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do with her?’

  ‘We made a cubby. Pizzas.’ Blake twists a piece of hair round and round her finger, then lets it spiral.

  ‘Did you play in the backyard?’ />
  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you go anywhere else?’ She frowns at her quilt cover and doesn’t answer. ‘Blake?’

  Blake finally looks at me. She looks scared. The scars on her arms, a legacy of her time with the Kidds, are visible below her lion t-shirt. ‘Tell me what my punishment is,’ she says.

  That knocks the wind out of me. ‘I’m not going to do that. You’re not in the Kidds anymore. There’s no… punishment.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would be angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry,’ I say automatically, but it’s a lie. I get a brief and unpleasant memory-flash of what my father often looked like. Tight all over, a zigzag vein popping out on his temple. ‘Why would you take Diana out of the house? Who’s the Queen of the Night?’

  ‘Diana wanted to meet her. I told her how cool she is.’

  ‘Who is she? What’s her real name?’

  ‘I didn’t know it was wrong.’

  I sigh. ‘Blake, Diana’s a little girl. You can’t give her everything she wants. And you’d have to know that Ortolan wouldn’t want you out in the dark. Where does the Queen live? Shyness?’

  Blake nods. She looks chastened but at least the fear is gone.

  ‘Why is she called that?’

  Blake’s eyes dart to the side. ‘I don’t know. Because of her job, maybe.’

  ‘Her job,’ I repeat, but Blake doesn’t elaborate. ‘Is this the friend you were going to show the tarsier to?’

  She doesn’t answer. I wait a few seconds. There’s more I want to know, but I don’t want to push Blake. She hasn’t had a normal family life for a while, if ever. I don’t know too much about what happened before the Kidds.

  I pat the paper on her bed. ‘I like the ravens.’

  Her relief is palpable. ‘Do you want to play Monopoly?’

  We’ve got a Monopoly set that we’ve doctored, with the street names changed to Shyness names, and Lego blocks glued on to make Orphanville. Blake always takes the bike token, and I use the tarsier we made out of tin foil.

  ‘It’s the middle of the night, Blake. As in, the nightnight. I’ve got to get some sleep. Tomorrow, though, okay?’

  I close Blake’s door and use my last reserves of energy to drag my feet to the front room. I flop onto the couch, caring little that I land on top of a book. I pull out the ribbon Ortie gave me, letting it run through my fingers.

  15

  I make sure I’m ready for

  Mum when she gets up. I’m dressed in my school uniform, my bag packed with what I need for Shopping Night, sitting on the edge of the couch waiting. I’ve had barely five hours’ sleep. School is going to hurt today.

  Mum walks into the lounge with a toothbrush poking from the corner of her mouth. She fumbles with the clasp on her bracelet.

  ‘You’re keen for your first day,’ she says. ‘Honey, can you do this for me?’

  I shake my head, refusing to acknowledge her outstretched wrist. Mum dumps the bracelet on the kitchen counter and pulls the toothbrush from her mouth.

  ‘What’s wrong? You’re giving me that look.’

  ‘Sit down,’ I say.

  ‘Oh god.’ Her face falls, and she zips over to the couch in record time, staring at me with wide eyes. ‘Are you pregnant? Don’t tell me you’re pregnant.’

  ‘I’m not pregnant, Mum. Give me some credit, please. I want to talk about you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I’m going to ask you something and I want you to tell me the truth, even if you think it’s going to make me mad. I need to know.’ I pause. Mum has two spots of white toothpaste on either side of her mouth, and she hasn’t painted her face yet. ‘A couple of months ago, say six months ago, did you answer my phone and talk to someone?’

  She looks confused for a few seconds, then recognition dawns. ‘Oh. That.’

  ‘Yes, that. Teen wolf from Shytown. This is the bit where you tell me what the hell you were doing answering my phone, for one. And then another thing you might want to tell me: what did you say to him?’

  Mum draws back into the couch. ‘The thing is, Nia, I was protecting you. After that night, when you never came home and I was so worried, I realised that I hadn’t been doing my job as a parent properly. So when he called, I thought the right thing to do, the proper, responsible thing to do—’

  ‘MUM,’ I say. ‘Cut the crap. It is of vital importance that you tell me what you said to him.’

  Mum shrinks even more. ‘I told him that he wasn’t good enough for my daughter and that he should never call you again.’

  I stare into space for a few seconds, pressing my lips together. It’s worse than I thought. No wonder Wolfboy was so vague about what was said. I speak with tight control. ‘I’m going to go to school now, Mum. And I won’t be coming with you to Fish Creek on Wednesday. I don’t want to talk to you at the moment.’

  ‘Nia,’ she says, pleading, practically hanging onto the hem of my school dress.

  ‘Nuh.’ I hold my hand up in her face. ‘That’s enough.’

  The walk through the school gates is loud, the yard is loud, assembly is loud. Hundreds of screaming teenagers all trying to tell each other everything they did on summer holiday, in the shortest space of time possible. A wave of body heat and body odour and hormones. The only good thing is that now I’m not the new girl anymore. I notice straightaway that there’s a different vibe in classes. Everyone quietens down and takes notes, even the kids who are normally climbing the walls. I try to concentrate, I really do. But my head isn’t really in school; it’s still in front of the train station, in the dark and the cold, arguing with Wolfboy.

  At lunchtime I grab a salad roll from the tuckshop and eat it quickly in the quad with the group of girls I made friends with last year. We talk about which boys got hotter over the summer, and which teachers we have this year. Even though the sun bakes the crown of my head so fiercely I might actually catch on fire, I can’t stop thinking about the night.

  I give up trying and go to the library to use the computer. We don’t have the internet at home, a fact that never ceases to amaze my classmates. The library is deserted. Even the hardcore nerds aren’t inside on the first day.

  I search for Datura Institute, but nothing comes up. No big surprise. If you were running a clandestine organisation, you’d hardly have your own website. Next, I look up datura. As I’d suspected from the flowers on the card, it’s a plant.

  At first the information is boring and heavy with scientific terms. I scroll down to the juicier bits about witches brews and love potions and hallucinogens. Holy crap. Confirmation that some seriously weird shit goes down in Shyness. If Paul’s involved in a secret society, they’re just as likely to be into kitten sacrifice as flower arranging. If the institute is a front for a druggie cult, though, why would you give it such an obvious name? Maybe whoever runs it doesn’t care. Police aren’t exactly an issue in Shyness.

  According to the site, many people have died, either accidentally or deliberately, after eating the datura plant. I jump off the computer and head for the stacks. I’m an old-fashioned girl in more than a few ways and I’d rather look up a book than stare at a screen all day.

  I scan through the science Deweys and eventually find some illustrations of datura plants, which look like delicate upside-down tubas. Apparently there are lots of different types, even though they all look basically the same. Their names are chilling: devil’s trumpet, mad apple, moonflower, nightshade.

  Wolfboy’s right to be concerned. I look at the line drawings of the beautiful but deadly plants. Paul was a nice guy. Jury’s still out on Wolfboy. I’d like to pretend I didn’t care about either.

  ‘You’re not dressed,’ is the first thing Helen says to me.

  She’s wearing a long, glittering silver caftan and, inexplicably, has a black moustache drawn on her upper lip, the ends curling up towards her cheeks. Behind her, the shop floor has already been cleared and a makeshift catwalk laid down.

  ‘I came straight f
rom school.’ I hold up my backpack. ‘My ballgown’s in here.’

  ‘Good girl.’ Helen waves a champagne flute at me. Her whole body sways with her. ‘Because I need something to go right tonight.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, as Ruth sweeps past me and snatches the glass out of Helen’s hand.

  ‘The caterer forgot our order,’ Ruth says. ‘But they’re still going to put something together, and drop it off a bit later. Helen’s nephew was supposed to DJ but he’s stuck at the beach with a broken-down car. I’ve put together an emergency playlist for the parade, and we’ll have to play store records for the rest of it. On the plus side, Bob has already built the stage, and we’ve had loads of last-minute RSVPs. Oh, but Duncan has food poisoning. So no male model.’

  ‘Which is why Helen has a moustache?’ I guess.

  Ruth points at me. ‘Bingo.’

  ‘So, Helen is taking Duncan’s place in the fashion show?’

  I don’t want to be rude, but Duncan is at least six feet tall and as thin as a Masai, whereas Helen is a five-footnothing all-woman.

  Helen clearly agrees with my assessment of the situation, because she slaps her own arse so hard it makes her wince. ‘This is prime rump steak, ladies! How’m I going to fit it into those skinny little man clothes?’

  Ruth gives me a beseeching look, and starts pulling reams of fabric out of the storeroom. ‘Please, Nia, can you get dressed quickly and help me with this train wreck? I left you something to wear in the staffroom.’

  I race off to the staffroom where I find a red velour jumpsuit hanging on the door. It’s much nicer than the fluffy old formal dress I was going to wear. I put it on and brush my hair out, slapping on a quick bit of mascara and lippie. There’s a knock on the door.

  ‘Have you got it on?’ calls out Ruth. She pokes her head around the door. ‘Ooh, I knew that would suit you. Let me quickly do your hair. I brought my curling iron.’

  I sit on the kitchen table while Ruth gets to work behind me. The curling iron is warm against my scalp.

  ‘Hey, I almost forgot—how did your big date go?’