Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 (31 page)

It was the gentlest, the saddest I’d ever seen him. He’d been upset about Adriana, but he’d also been angry. In that moment,
he was just sad. He was dealing with losses that I’d known nothing about. Believing him to be heartless had made disliking
him easier for a long while, but he wasn’t and I knew it really; he wouldn’t have set Ziggi to watch over me otherwise. He
wouldn’t have kept an eye on Grigor’s daughter otherwise. I thought about how Baker’s obsession with his deceased wife hadn’t
dimmed with time; maybe Bela’s sense of failure was equally tenacious.

He added, ‘I did try to keep in contact with the boy, but his father made it pretty clear that was not desirable.’

‘So when Baker turned up asking for help, you saw a chance for redemption?’

He nodded.

I changed the subject. ‘Ever met an angel?’

‘V, this thing with the sirens – can’t it wait a little? The golem needs to be our priority—’

‘Multitasking is an essential quality, Bela. I know we have a lot to deal with, but do you really want more bird-lady corpses
littering the city?’ I stared at him until he shook his head. ‘So why is the angel Tobit here? Are there more? ’Cause the
way those sirens were ripped apart, I’m thinking many hands were making light work. What do you know about angels?’

‘I met some in Byzantium, a very long time ago. They weren’t as grumpy as they are nowadays, but back then they still had
hope of being called home.’

‘And they’re grumpy because—?’

‘They lost track of their boss sometime after the Middle Ages.’

‘And when you say “boss” you mean “God”; and when you say “lost” you mean . . .?’

‘I mean
lost
. Fewer and fewer of the angelic choirs were getting directions from On High, and eventually they stopped altogether. The
Archangels tried to maintain some kind of order, but there was no hiding the fact that the body was having trouble surviving
without the head. No one’s really sure when it happened, but divinely inspired writing has been thin on the ground ever since.
Whatever created them – and I’m not saying it was any kind of deity, no matter what
their
apocrypha may say – deserted them and left good-sized chips on their . . . wings.’

‘Stranded angels?’ I said, amazed. ‘As lost as the rest of us, and faith keeps declining, and so do they?’

He nodded. ‘Don’t forget they think they’re superior, better than everyone and every
thing
else. They can’t accept that they’ve fallen, that the world has moved on. They tend to roam, looking for
meaning, for something to prop up their self-worth – quests, stuff to
do
. They’re looking for a god.’

‘And they don’t like sirens?’

‘Congratulations, V – you’ve mastered the art of the understatement. Angels are
bound
by a belief in their own mythology; their writings, rules and stories chain them inextricably to their lord and master, to
his will, because they believe
implicitly
that he raised them above all others. They accepted the binding because they were
unique
. But well before the Creator got bored and went wandering there came the off-cuts, the misbegottens, the so-called
mistakes
from the stray enchantments flying around.’

‘All the making, all the magic, as if someone had forgotten to turn off the tap?’ I guessed. ‘Every mythical beast from the
ancient world sprang forth: cyclops, dragons, lycanthropes, manticores, mermaids, rocs, rusalkas, unicorns, vampires, water
monkeys, wendigos, zilants and zombies . . . The Weyrd things.’ There was no black and white in matters of dogma, no matter
how much churches would like it to be that simple. Faith, any sort of faith, was multicoloured.

‘All of whom the angels found annoying and worthy of a good deal of contempt, but nothing roused their fury, their jealousy,
their envy until—’

‘The sirens,’ I breathed.

‘The sirens: equal in beauty, in voice, in
flight
. But beings with no obligations, who recognised no rules; they served no will but their own.’

‘Sibling rivalry.’

‘Angels do not admit to envy; they think it beneath them. However, I’ve read some of their jottings and they’ve hated the
winged women since Adam was a boy. The two just don’t mix
at all
. Though angelic numbers have dropped, the sirens have flourished,
comparatively speaking. They’re arrogant, free, happy as Larry – and blessed, without any cost.’

‘Why would an angel fall in love with a siren?’

‘Not every species is filled with bigoted psychos.’ He smiled. ‘Romeo and Juliet with wings?’

‘And we know how well that turned out for the kids.’ I scratched tentatively at the half-healed cut on my temple. ‘If there
are more than one, more than Tobit, why are they here? Would they be attacking sirens just for the fun of it?’

He was quiet for a moment, considering. ‘Angels aren’t really fun-focused. I think the answer is Serena’s and Tobit’s child:
a rare and unparallelled thing.’

He was right. The baby was the key, somehow. I just needed to find her. ‘They feed off faith the way you feed off people’s
energy?’

‘Similar,’ he said reluctantly. He’d never liked to discuss the mechanics of his Weyrdness, it felt too personal, too private.

‘Are you related?’

That made him laugh. ‘I’d be a very poor angel.’

I couldn’t argue there. ‘I’d better get Lizzie home.’

‘And you’d better organise your babysitter for tomorrow too.’

‘Am I going somewhere?’

‘The Council – what remains of it – wants to talk to you.’

‘Well, that can’t be good.’

‘It seldom is.’ He stood. ‘Ziggi will pick you up at six p.m.’

‘No exhortation to behave myself?’

‘Would it do any good?’ he asked bleakly.

‘It might if you asked nicely,’ I said, which surprised us both.

‘Oh.’ He pushed a lock of black hair out of his eyes. ‘And did your new boyfriend give you that note, or did he burn it in
case it was a love letter?’

‘You’re an idiot. I got it.’ But I’d forgotten, and it was still in my jacket pocket. I tore the flap open and drew out a
piece of parchment, thicker and older than even the best I sometimes used, with age spots dotting its surface. I felt bad
about crushing it and tried to smooth it flat on the table.

The sketch was done in charcoal and coloured chalk: a portrait, head and torso of a young woman wearing an old-fashioned headdress,
a kind of gabled cap decorated with what looked like seed pearls. The pendant at her throat was a bird-and-shield, strung
on a thick black ribbon, and her earrings were baroque pearls. Her dress had a square neckline, tight bodice and tiny waist
embellished with an elaborate stomacher, again the same intricate bird-and-shield design . . .
and identical to the seals of the wine bottles in the Ascot house cellar
. All around her had been shaded, as if she sat in shadow. She smiled, her expression mocking, as if she knew better than
the watcher, better than everyone. It wouldn’t have bothered me as much if she hadn’t been so familiar.

It was the Winemaker.

She was younger,
much
younger. Her skin was smooth, unblemished, but those were her pale blue eyes, hinted at with a stroke of chalk, those were
her cheekbones, the set of the head. And all of her jewellery was now a cold, hard, congealed lump in a desk drawer at home.
I looked up at Bela, waved the parchment helplessly. He sat back down again.

‘All your yelling at the Chelmer house on Tuesday made me wonder if I wasn’t being pigheaded, and as a result, missing something
important. I thought about Vadim, and then Magda. I can’t say I remember her having any dealings with Grigor back in the old
days, but she always did like using go-betweens. I found
that
and showed it to Lizzie while your boyfriend was powdering his nose.’

I ignored the jibe. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t mentioned it, the little monkey – that she hadn’t woken from sleep with
nightmares screaming after her. She really was incredibly resilient. ‘Where’s this from?’ I whispered.

‘Papers from Nadasy’s office. I had to clear out his home when he disappeared. I didn’t keep much, but this was amongst them.’

‘It’s the Winemaker.’

‘It’s Magda Nadasy.’

‘Less dead at the time than reports would have had us believe.’ I frowned. ‘Why isn’t this erased? Everything else has been
taken out by whatever spell she set.’

He shrugged. ‘Its age? It might not be something she thought to include in the enchantment – she might not have made it far-reaching
enough. It’s hard to remember every trace we leave in life, and she was probably only thinking of modern records being here.
There was no reason to assume a Rembrandt sketch would be lying around her estranged husband’s discarded documents.’

‘Right. So if Vadim Nadasy is behind the whole golem thing, I killed his wife—’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘But again, if it’s Nadasy, then
why
is Anders Baker still alive? What’s he holding that’s staying Nadasy’s hand?’

‘Add it to the list of things we don’t know.’ Bela gave his hash browns one last unforgiving look. My pancakes could have
been used to line a rubber room.

*

Bela gave us a lift home; Ziggi needed a break, not to mention a chance to sleep somewhere other than the front seat of a
vehicle. I mulled over angelic hatred for sirens and what a mating of the two species might have produced, while Lizzie sang
along to some pop
earworm on the radio, a Britney or a Taylor or a Jessie, that Bela – less grudgingly than I’d expected – tuned in to for her.
Calliope was presumably normal enough to go to the crèche, so no chicken legs. I wondered about her wings. Her mother must
have bound them, but what happened when Serena was killed? Had her magic died with her, or was there something more tenuous
about such witchery?

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ I said in frustration.

‘Mum says you shouldn’t swear,’ came a small voice.

‘Me in particular, or adults in general?’

‘You know, people.’

‘Uh huh.’ We drove past a school as all the kids started tumbling out onto the playground for recess. Vacation time had obviously
ended with me none the wiser. We non-parents usually revelled in our ignorance of school terms, but I had new responsibilities
now. ‘Hey, shouldn’t you be at school?’

She blushed and looked away.

‘I’m calling your principal, young lady. Who is that, by the way?’

Bela snorted.

‘Interesting décor. A certain
je ne sais quoi
to it.’

The
je ne sais quoi
was actually excessive amounts of chintz, doilies, hall tables, sideboards, woven rugs, wood panelling, coat racks, umbrella
stands and vases containing dusty silk flowers. Essentially, it was an antique store with no cash register. Ziggi was out
in the taxi, apparently not good enough to meet the Inner Circle. We waited in a small parlour just inside the front door
which was dark and cool and smelled of mothballs and incense. Two large Weyrd, each roughly the size of double-door refrigerators,
stood at attention in the hall; in my head I’d named them Hairy Jerry and Monobrow Mike.

‘We’ve only had access to this place in the last couple of years, so no one knows about it except me and the Council,’ Bela
said.

‘And me. And them.’ I looked meaningfully at the heavies, who ignored me Coldstream Guard style; I kind of wanted to poke
them but I doubted they shared the restraint of their martial counterparts.

‘
Yes
.’ Bela rolled his eyes and checked that his gold cufflinks were perfectly aligned with the pristine cuffs of his perfectly
tailored shirt and his perfectly tailored Armani suit. Though my contrarian instincts had urged otherwise, I’d once again
dressed as presentably as I could manage, though honestly, my wardrobe was getting a bit thin. My pinstriped trouser suit
in light grey was a classic cut, so no
one could really tell how old it was. The rebel in me won out when it came to footwear: black Docs with red roses embroidered
on the sides.

I looked around the room again. This was a pretty good hiding place – after all, who’d look for the Weyrd Council in a
rectory
? The golem had breezed through magical wards and protections, but sometimes holy ground presented barriers that things which
had started out as human couldn’t – or wouldn’t – cross. Maybe it was a genuine mystical barricade or maybe it was just in
the mind, playing on every bit of religious mumbo jumbo stuck in the psyche. St Barbara’s Church, located in the far-flung
suburb of Waterford, ministered to a small flock of devout ageing dowagers, repentant old men and a few very enthusiastic
youngsters. The house was big and creaky, once a seminary designed to hold about twenty priests. The encroachment of worldly
things meant it hadn’t been able to fill its quota of blokes-in-training for a long time.

Our host, Father Tony Caldero, had been a member of the Vatican’s adjuristine-exorcism squads. That either made him an unlikely
ally, or at least the sort of man who understood there were more things in Heaven and Earth than were dreamed of in a tidy
philosophy. Bela had explained the situation to him and he’d quickly realised that the golem was a threat to both Weyrd and
Normal, religious and heathen alike. He stuck his head around the door, and said, ‘They’re ready for you, Zvezdomir.’