Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 (4 page)

‘—since my father.’ I said it so she wouldn’t; she’d made quite enough cracks about Grigor over the years and I was pretty
sure I could do without one more. But it didn’t feel any better to hear the words from my own mouth.

‘But I’ve been offered . . . wine.’

That knocked me back. Of all the things I’d expected to hear,
wine
wasn’t one of them. My confusion must have been obvious because she leaned forward and instinctively, I did the same. One
of the hair-snakes brushed my left ear, soft as a kiss.

Aspasia spoke low. ‘Some of the old ones – they’ve still got the appetites, the customs they don’t want to let go.’

I nodded; I knew it was true, but smart Weyrd had tried to get rid of those habits in the interests of survival. Indeed, the
Council had made a point of outlawing a lot of activities the Weyrd once considered perfectly acceptable, even banning
Kinderfressers
, because anthropophagia is frowned upon in most circles. The not-so-smart Weyrd . . . well, they didn’t tend to last long
these days.

‘Kids cry, right?’ she continued. ‘I mean, they’re kids, there’s always something to cry over. But enough to fill two, three,
four wine bottles? Wouldn’t that be a lifetime of tears?’

I stared at her.

‘I was offered a case. A
case
, Fassbinder. That’s a lot of children, a lot of weeping. You take that . . .’

You take that, and you rob them of all the tears they might ever have. You steal their ability to feel joy, compassion, pain;
you take their happiness as well. You remove the things that make them human. You take their lives. Not a
Kinderfresser
, no, but something somehow worse. You don’t simply kill them; to get the right quality tears, you subject them to the most
utter and lingering despair.

‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Who’s been offering?’

She gave a sidelong glance towards a corner table and I didn’t turn around, but looked in the mirror. A thin girl sat there,
maybe fourteen, badly made-up, her pale floss hair twisted in a clip, twiggy fingers painting patterns in the condensation
on her glass. She wore a grey singlet top with an irregular pattern on the front, the design long lost, along with most of
the silver sequins. Beneath the table were stickish legs, a far-too-short denim skirt and a pair of green Converse sneakers
that had seen better days.

‘Normal? Why is she here?’

‘Normal. She pays,’ said Aspasia flatly.

‘When did she offer you the case – you didn’t take it, did you?’ I added suddenly, feeling a little sick.

‘Two, maybe three weeks ago.’ She looked me straight in the eyes so there could be no doubt. ‘And no, I’m not that stupid.’

As the knowledge sank in, my stomach turned acidic. ‘You didn’t take it – but you didn’t think to
tell
anyone about it?’ How many lives had been lost in that time?

‘You said it yourself: if word gets around that I’m making nice with the authorities, there goes my business. I’ve got children
to support.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘I might one day.’

‘Chances are you’d eat them at birth. Christ, Aspasia, three weeks? You waited
three
weeks?’

She looked uncomfortable, but it didn’t stop her saying, ‘Fassbinder, did you come down in the last shower? You think she
hasn’t offered it around to others? You think no one’s taken her up on it? You think I’m the only one keeping quiet? You think
she hasn’t been to the old households, for
special
occasions? You think the Council—’

‘The Council hired me.’

‘No, Princess,
Tepes
hired you.’

I straightened and sat back, digesting her words, trying to assess the possibility of one of the Councillors indulging in
this sort of ancient practice. If that really was the case, then my problem was even bigger than missing children – but maybe
Aspasia was just messing with me, seeing if I’d bite or head off in the wrong direction; she was pissy enough to try something
like that. If anyone on the Council had something to hide, why on earth would they agree to Bela having me investigate? Surely
they knew by now what sort of person I was? The sort who compulsively pulled loose threads on sweaters until they unravelled
. . .

I flicked my eyes back to the girl’s reflection to find she was looking at me. We stared at each other, just maybe five seconds,
but that was all it took; she was up and out of her chair and haring down the long corridor before I could so much as turn
around. There was no chance I’d be running after her; no way I’d even bother to try. The first step and my leg would be screaming.

‘What’s her name, and where do I find her?’ I asked as Aspasia casually pushed the lid on Ziggi’s takeaway latte and snapped
the chocolatey chunk of mud cake into a polystyrene box. She shoved them towards me and I forked over a twenty. She obviously
wasn’t feeling communicative any more. Just as she pulled back her hand, clutching the note, I grabbed her wrist and held
on tight, feeling her bones grinding against each other beneath my grip. I may look Normal, but it doesn’t mean I’ve got nothing
of the Weyrd about me; every now and then the half-breed blood shows through. I thought about wrapping the other hand around
her throat and risking a few nips from the snakes, but I decided she might find it hard to talk.

‘I don’t want to do this, Aspasia.’

‘Sally Crown,’ she growled. ‘Lives on the streets. Sometimes she sleeps behind West End Library, sometimes in the derelict
flats on Hardgrave Road. Now let me go and get the fuck out.’

‘You really need to work on your customer service skills. Keep the change.’ Who was I kidding? Change from a twenty at Little
Venice?

The whole way down the passageway I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my neck. I pulled out my mobile to text Ziggi,
who was really not going be happy about my failure to make friends and influence people. A reminder about the earlier missed
call flashed, but I didn’t recognise the number. It would wait.

‘I’ll see you tonight,’ Ziggi said, and waved a hand in my general direction as he drove off. We’d given up watching West
End Library for any sign of Sally Crown soon after dawn crept over the horizon. We’d also tried the derelict unit block on
Hardgrave Road, which had almost got me spitted on the umbrella of an especially grumpy old siren wearing a grubby frock.
Her wings had unfurled in shock when she found me in the flat she was using as a squat. After a lot of swearing from both
of us – I was still twitchy about strange houses at night – I apologised and backed away. As Ziggi pointed out afterwards,
I’d probably have been pretty pissed off myself if I’d found someone trespassing in my living room.

I made my way up the cracked path to my ramshackle home, a pre-war house with moulded ceilings, a huge back garden and a temperamental
water heater so old that it might have come out of the Ark. Jasmine was thick on the front fence, lushly green and dotted
with white-star flowers like icing. Its scent was heady, and as I felt for the keys in my jeans pocket, warm and fuzzy thoughts
about bed danced in my head.

‘Verity? Verity! Can you get my ball?’ The voice fluted over the side fence. Between the palings was a small face, sharp-chinned,
snub-nosed and wide-eyed, with a shock of mousy hair even messier than mine. A little hand pushed through the gap and pointed
to a
soccer ball lying under the three steps that led up to my patio. Lizzie wasn’t allowed out of her yard without Mel, her single-parent,
work-from-home acupuncturist mum in tow. She hated the rule, but I told her it was a good idea every chance I got:
There are bad people, baby, bad people
. Some days she decided not to talk to me.

I limped over and picked up the ball. It was new. ‘Birthday present?’

‘Uh huh.’ I could sense a little chill coming from her.

‘Sorry I couldn’t come to your party, love. I was all ready, and I really wanted to, but there were some people I had to help.’
I made a face to let her know that I truly had wanted to be with her, eating party pies and fairy bread until I was set to
explode, then asked casually, ‘Did you like the book?’

‘I love it best of all – but don’t tell Mum.’ She smiled, defrosting. The fairy tales were the kind we had before Disney got
to them: the ones with little girls who are eaten by wolves and bears with no conveniently timed rescue; boys who get lost
in the forest and aren’t ever found again; the sort where your brother is a danger to you and your sister cannot be trusted;
with children whose greatest enemies are their own parents. The volume I’d given her was old, with a tooled leather cover,
exquisite line drawings and a long red silk ribbon for marking your place. It was beautiful, though maybe it was a little
much for a kid – Mel had frowned when I’d shown it to her a few days earlier. But I told her that forewarned was forearmed.
Lizzie read like a champion and had been devouring the contents of my library like a locust. Well, not
all
of it; some discreet censorship had to be applied.

I reached over the fence and dropped the ball into her waiting arms.

‘Thanks, Verity. Can I come and visit later?’

I frowned. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

She rolled her eyes at the idiot adult. ‘School holidays. So, can I come over?’

‘Aha.’ As a non-parent there was no need for me to keep track of such things. ‘Not today, my friend. I’ve had a very long
night. Maybe at the weekend?’

‘Mmmmm-huh.’ She was less than impressed.

‘Have a good day, sweetheart,’ I said and headed to the door.

Inside, the hot air was smothering. I passed through the front room, which contained a seldom-used asparagus-coloured velvet
reproduction
chaise longue
, a desk with a full complement of dust to show how infrequently I sat there, a bookshelf filled with innocuous novels and
a pristine waste paper bin. I generally used the room as little more than a place to store furniture, but it also acted as
a safe space between the threshold and the rest of the house. I could have used it as a ward-moat, but I’d never really felt
the need – or the requisite level of paranoia. And anyway, the aged wrought-iron security door did its job well enough. When
I opened all the windows and the double doors onto the verandah, a breeze forced its way inside, and soon the temperature
was bearable. I collected a glass of cold water and a variety of painkillers and headed out to plant myself in one of the
faded green deckchairs until they kicked in.

My home might be old, but it was comfortable. There were three bedrooms, one of which had been repurposed as a library, a
kitchen, bathroom, proper lounge room, a dining room with a table covered with books that hadn’t yet found a shelf to live
on, and a broad verandah out the back, where I now sat. It had been my grandparents’ home, and just about all the furniture
was theirs too – I’d seen no reason to change anything when they’d died; I kind of liked it that way. Sometimes I caught the
scent of Grandma’s Lily of the Valley talcum powder, or Grandy’s Old Spice, and the pipe he used to smoke
out on the verandah when Grandma wasn’t home. She would pretend she couldn’t smell it, even though it somehow managed to sneak
inside and embed itself in the curtains and cushions. For a long while I thought that was how relationships had to work: you
ignored all the things you didn’t like, or that annoyed you, in the interests of harmony. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise
then that each and every irritating thing has its own life, its own limits, its own metre and pace and depth of impact. Like
an idiot, I thought I had to tolerate
everything
. Eventually I managed to work out that not
everything
is – or should be – tolerable. I’d put up with a hell of a lot more than I needed to with Bela.

I stretched my leg out and rested it on the battered table my grandfather had cut down to kid-size for me. The top was painted
green and the legs were peeling gold – it was garish and a little too short now, but I’d never been able to let it go. Soon
the pills kicked in and the pain eased. An extremely fat kookaburra perched in the gigantic jacaranda tree in the middle of
the yard. I gave him a nod; he stared back, unmoved.

I needed a nap. I needed to do some research. I suspected I’d need to do other things I didn’t want to do. But most of all,
I needed a nap – just a few hours. Too tired and comfortable to move, I closed my eyes, dropping my head back until there
was a satisfying
crack
and things sat a little more comfortably on my shoulders. There was a chance I might even doze off sitting up in broad daylight.

When you’re so tired that dreams come unbidden, when they seep through even though you’re still a little bit awake – I hate
that. That’s the time when I think about my parents. Or rather my father; my mother, Olivia, was just a blur, a framed faded
Polaroid on the shelf: a Normal, and dead before I ever knew her.

But I remembered my father; I couldn’t forget him in spite of my
best efforts. Grigor had no family to speak of; like a lot of Weyrd he came out here alone. There were no aunts, uncles, cousins,
parents or grandparents, just him and me.