Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 (13 page)

‘Normal.’

‘
Normal
Normal, which is refreshing.’

‘Does he know about
you
?’

‘That he might one day want to throw a rock at me?’ I grinned. ‘Not yet.’

‘And?’

‘And he turns up when he says he’s going to and he doesn’t send me on jobs where I’m likely to get stabbed. I’m happy. And
no, I don’t know if he snores yet – maybe I’ll find it adorable or maybe I’ll put a pillow over his face. But for now, I’m
happy. It’s all so new, Ziggi; there’s so much potential and nothing’s gone wrong yet. Just let me enjoy it.’ My stomach rumbled.
That humble pie was looking more and more attractive. I held up a finger. ‘And I am being careful not to mistake who I
want
him to be with who he actually
is
.’

‘Look at you, learning from the past. You make me proud.’

‘So, the house? Anything?’

‘Nah. Sorry. For all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist, although it’s still glamoured. Powerful
ju-ju
, to hang around after its maker’s death.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m thinking it’s a lot easier to hide than erase. In related news,
there are no records of it in the Titles Office, nor of power, gas or water ever being connected. And no one ever registered
to vote using it as a residential address.’

‘How’s that possible?’ I drummed my fingers on the tabletop to release the simmering frustration.

‘Did Bela come up with anything?’

‘Do you think you could avoid telling Bela that I’m still working on this?’ As our boss thought it was over I had no desire
to listen to a lecture on letting things go.

‘I dunno – do you think you could apologise to Aspasia?’

‘It’s a deal,’ I grumbled. I loved Ziggi dearly, but he and Bela had been friends for a long time and sometimes stuff just
slipped out. I decided not to tell him about the Boatman or the knife strapped against my ankle either, just in case.

His gaze drifted away from me and he sat up straight, which could only mean one thing: our food was on the horizon, hopefully
sans
spittle. The plates made it to the table in none-too-gentle fashion and the waiter scampered away in case we tried to order
anything else. Ziggi cut a cylinder from the middle of his muffin, stuffed a curl of butter inside, then gently massaged it
to help the melting process along. It was messy and fascinating. I tried to maintain some dignity as I ate mine.

Then Ziggi came out with, ‘Oh!’ A little bit of muffin made a re-appearance, but he didn’t seem to notice. He grabbed his
mobile and waved it about. ‘Bela wanted me to show you this.’

He queued the video with greasy fingers and delicately handed me the phone. I hit
play
.

The clip had been taken at night from a rooftop or balcony in Fortitude Valley, further up towards the New Farm boundary.
I recognised the glare of the Judith Wright Centre in the distance. The recording was grainy but I could see well enough as
a wave of blackness swept along, somehow folding in on itself. Over the sounds of static and the late-night/early-morning
city, I picked out the rhythm of footsteps somewhere on the deserted street. A breeze gathered pieces of garbage; newspapers,
cans and cigarette butts, and bundled all of it into an ever-growing, rapidly forming body until it looked like a man, a man
of rags and trash and darkness.

It turned off Brunswick Street and continued down the incline, revolving madly and picking up speed as the sources of illumination
grew fewer and dimmer. Just about at the bottom of the thoroughfare the thing threw itself right, then hard left, and gathered
up what might have been a person hiding in the curve of a wall. There was no outcry; whatever –
whoever
– was lifted and spun about in the man-shaped maelstrom quickly ceased to be.

At the very end of the strip, the streetlights bloomed again and the
sound of footsteps was clear, but further details were obscured as the video degraded into a haze of grey and white.

‘Who took this?’

‘A friend saw it and sent it on. It’s been doing the rounds on the Internet. Everyone thinks it’s part of a trailer for an
amateur horror film . . . but it made me nervous.’

‘Aw, Ziggi. Why show me this? Don’t
add
to the problems!’

‘Bela wanted me to suggest that it might have been responsible for some of the disappearances we’ve blamed on the Winemaker.
And he might not be wrong, you know.’ He sniffed. ‘This stuff – is it just me, or does there seem to be a lot of it happening?
You know, strange occurrences, I mean?’

‘Ziggi, you’ve got an eye in the back of your head – you
are
a strange occurrence.’ I sighed. ‘The amount of wine in that cellar? That was a bumper harvest. Whatever this is . . . I
don’t believe it was taking those kids. Anyway,’ I said, returning his phone, ‘until this is
proved
to be something other than an amateur horror movie, it isn’t a priority.’

‘And the Baker thing? Bela asked me to ask,’ he said sheepishly. Bela was obviously anxious to stay out of my reach for a
while.

‘Also not my top priority. I’ll get to it – Baker Père door-stepped me yesterday, for the love of fuck – but I’ll put money
on the boy having done a runner to get away from his father.’ I rose. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go. I need to buy some hiking boots.’

Ziggi dropped his cup in shock, luckily not from too great a height. The liquid splashed about in the saucer a bit.

‘Oh, you heard me.’ I stood up. ‘See you later.’

*

‘There certainly seems to be a lot of moisture in the air,’ I said the next day.

The force of the afternoon storm was massaging my scalp through the cap, which might have been nice except for the icy trickle
down my neck. David, a few feet in front, turned his head just far enough for me to see the grin, then continued trailblazing
us along the walking track at Mount Holy-crap-I-can’t-believe-you-talked-me-into-this.

‘And what’s that smell?’ I asked.

‘That would be nature.’

I’d said, ‘Sure, an easy ramble would be nice.’ With my leg doing so well it didn’t need to be
that
easy, but I am essentially lazy. He knew painkillers had formed one of my basic food groups for a while, although he didn’t
know the circumstances of the injury. The walk itself wasn’t difficult, but the unseasonal, very hard, very wet precipitation
was making me wonder about my companion’s sanity. He’d appeared to be so normal, but I suppose an obsession with the outdoors
isn’t really as obvious as, say, a pair of wings or elongated canines. At least there was no one else around to see us slogging
onwards like idiots through what I was pretty sure could be described as a monsoon.

In all fairness he was, as I’d told Ziggi, not just Normal, but
normal
, and I hadn’t realised how much I’d craved that until that first time we went for pancakes. We’d talked and talked, and kept
talking. David made me laugh, which still felt like a surprise present being given over and over. He was now occupying a large
chunk of my thoughts and I was in danger of turning schoolgirl: lying on my bed, feet kicking around, writing
Dear Diary
notes with a pink pen.

He’d moved from Tasmania to do a computer science degree with a minor in marketing and had ended up staying in Brisbane. He
had no family to speak of, no siblings, and his parents were long years dead. We’d established he’d had three serious previous
girlfriends;
he’d wanted commitment and two didn’t, the last had decided she’d rather go overseas. He was open and unaffected, and not
at all embarrassed about answering whatever questions I’d asked. He’d even offered to build me a website, but I couldn’t imagine
writing the copy to describe what I did – and anyway, it wasn’t like I needed to advertise, seeing as jobs found me whether
I wanted them to or not.

We’d planned more dates too: lunches and dinners slipped into the cracks of life, between his work and mine, and we spoke
about ordinary stuff and we did ordinary things and I liked it. Which was probably why I’d agreed to a bush walk . . . Gods
help me, the next thing would be
camping
. I stared at my feet in their embarrassingly new hiking boots, stared past them at the mud and rotting leaves and the yellows,
dark crimsons and ochres of berries half-buried in the path. Then I lifted my eyes, blinking against the rain; up beyond the
reach of the trees was a sky of darkest grey.

Not that it bothered my boyfriend. Friend-boy. Whatever. He walked on, stoic in the early afternoon light until we eventually
hit a sort of walkway in the middle of some crowded trunks and shrubby undergrowth. David pulled back a particularly creepy-looking
plant thing and said, ‘Wait-a-while.’

‘Huh?’

He grinned. ‘If it grabs your clothes it takes ages to get rid of them – wait-a-whiles.’

Ah. Nature. Cue shudder.

We pressed on, finally breaking through to a wooden platform hemmed by metal railings and hanging out over a waterfall. The
sun put in an unexpected cameo through the clouds, weak and watery. Alongside ran the stream we’d been crisscrossing; it tripped
around rocks and dived under fallen branches until at last it threw itself out into the air in one long glorious spray, bursting
on boulders far below
before reforming into a brownish-olive pool. Moss, the brightest green I’d ever seen, ran riot, even scaling the trunks of
the trees circling the pond.

‘Long drop,’ I said, knuckles white on the rail while my feet tried to sneak away.

David caught my forearms and pulled me close, winding his hands around my waist. ‘I won’t let you fall.’ Then he kissed me,
and I didn’t care what happened in worlds either Weyrd or Normal or how much rain fell, just as long as no one interrupted
us. For a long while no one did.

Until somewhere close by there was a crash, and boughs creaked and cracked. We separated and stared in the direction of the
sound. Something heavy, dark and mostly obscured by foliage bounded off, branches and leaves whirling aside as whatever it
was disappeared at speed.

‘What the—?’ I started.

‘Mmmm, one of the inhabitants.’

‘Mutant wombats?’

‘Probably.’

‘Ah, nature.’

‘You know, you have to stop saying that with such disgust.’

‘Meh.’

He ran a finger tenderly across the injury on my forehead. ‘Really ran into a door, huh?’

‘Really.’

I kissed him again and that kept him quiet.

Inspector McIntyre had provided two addresses for Serena Kallos, along with strict instructions not to leave any prints or
destroy any evidence, which to my mind denoted a certain lack of faith. I decided not to take it personally. The Scene of
Crimes Officer wouldn’t get to either place until later that day, she’d told me, and if I could defuse any magical mousetraps
first, everyone would be eternally grateful. So I had free rein for a while, and a little breaking-and-entering was just what
the doctor ordered.

Some quick searches showed that the siren was registered to vote, owned property, paid her taxes and generally kept records,
which endeared her to me. She had a shop called Birds of a Feather on Oxford Street at Bulimba, close to the ferry stop, so
I started there.

Ziggi loaned me his electric pick gun after expressing some concern about my lack of subtlety when it came to locks. The back
door gave only token resistance, and it turned out that Serena Kallos, like a lot of Weyrd, didn’t bother with Normal alarm
systems. There were no serious sorceries, either, just some simple spells that might have been pretty effective against your
average burglar, but which took me only a few moments to undo. A chalk mark erased here, a near-invisible thread snipped there,
a judicious sprinkling of powdered lavender and marjoram and a whisper of certain words that I understood, a little. Anyone
with ill-intent and nefarious purpose
would have come down with a nasty rash, not to mention developing a scent the siren would have been able to track. For me,
armed as I was with my virtuous designs, a pair of heavy-duty disposable gloves and Grigor’s eldritch teachings, I was okay.

A small kitchen at the rear of the building was sandwiched between a stuffed storeroom and a loo so tiny there was barely
enough room to sit down, let alone swing any proverbial cats. A sliding door led into the store proper, which was open-plan,
with some curtained-off dressing rooms in one corner. A couple of fake Louis XIV chairs, all faded gilt and burgundy velvet,
were artfully arranged in between the hanging racks packed tight with vintage clothes. My eyes were drawn to a lovely silk
shift; as I stroked the fabric I flipped over the price tag – and immediately let go of the dress, my fingers feeling scalded.
Maybe the chairs weren’t so fake after all. It took me a while to find the cash drawer, which had been cunningly built into
the side of a display case holding a small fortune in sparkling jewellery.

The whole set-up looked less like a vintage clothing shop and more like Lily Langtree’s walk-in wardrobe.

I poked around a bit more, but nothing stood out, nothing looked displaced. Nothing reeked of either weird or Weyrd.