The place looks ordinary enough. It’s cute: dingy little entryway lapping the street, long thin corridor that’s dim and cool leading into four big rooms filled with shadows and incense. Out the back is a walled, stone paved courtyard that’s generally not used during the daylight hours except by stray Normals. Above is a tightly-twined roof of leaves and vines, enough to keep the sun and rain out, but not quite enough to hide the snakes that lurk there. I could see through the wide archway: the space was packed in the bruised evening. A man with a sitar was accompanied by another playing a theremin and the seated crowd swayed along contentedly. Two emo-Weyrd waitresses sloped between tables delivering drinks and finger food.
Little Venice does good coffee and amazing cakes (fat moist chocolate, rich bitter citrus and a caramel marshmallow log that will stop your heart). The three sisters who own the place, the Misses Norn, take turns reading palms, cards and tea leaves—each has her preferred method and each tells a different thing: one genuinely lays out your choices, one will make your future with her words, and the third simply lies. Problem is this: you can’t really tell which does which. They’re not malicious; just Weyrd. It’s what they do.
Aspasia was working the counter in the main room, which wasn’t too full, but the low hum coming from the other rooms told me they might be a different matter. Behind her was a mirror that looked like lace made of snowflakes. She gave me a smile as I limped in. Ziggi was driving around and around—it’s easier to find a good park in Hell. This sister was all dark serpentine curls, obsidian eyes and red, red smile. When her lips opened I could see how sharp her teeth were.
“Verity, my sweet. Come to hear your future?” Her smile widened and I re-thought my malice assessment. She gave a shimmy and gracefully extended her hand. “Cross my palm with silver, girly.”
I shook my head. “My answer’s the same as it’s been for the past ten years. But I will take a long black, some information and a slice of that caramel marshmallow log. And a latte and a piece of mud cake to go. Make the latte super-sweet.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You got a new boyfriend?”
“Hardly.” I shook my head at the idea of Ziggi-as-boyfriend and sat carefully on one of the tall stools, rested my elbows on the fossilized countertop and smiled. It’s a good smile, nice and bright, disarming. “Kids are going missing.”
“So sad.” She wasn’t fooled and began to make the coffee, caressing the machine into doing her bidding. There was the bubble and spit of it all, a comforting buzz that made me salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Efficiently she sliced away a chunk of the deadly dessert and plated it in front of me. I took a glutton’s bite then had to wash it down with the coffee. So much sugar my heart did a little jig. She started making Ziggi’s takeaway, slower this time.
“Street kids thus far, so under the radar pretty much. Still,” I said, “it’s only a matter of time before some little Normal goes astray and people in high places start looking at our kind. Well,” I paused, “your kind.”
“Half-breed,” she hissed before she could stop herself. I watch the hair on her head curl and twist, vipers forming there and writhing until she got herself under control.
I gave a cold smile around another mouthful of caramel mush. “All I’m saying, Aspasia, is if you know anything now would be the time to share. And I would be the person to share it with. You know me: I’ll do things quietly. Do you really want Brisneyland’s Keystone Cops traipsing through your place? If word of this gets out, not even your connections will stop them from coming down here. Then where will all the Weyrd go?”
Her shoulders shook with the effort of not hitting me. She didn’t like being threatened and truth be told, I didn’t like threatening—it was cheap and easy. But I didn’t stop. “Although, I’m sure Shaky Jakes would pick up the slack, were Little Venice no longer able to guarantee its clients refuge from the ordinary.”
“It’s not about flesh. We haven’t seen a kinderfresser since . . . ” she said, which was what I’d figured. “But I’ve been offered—wine.”
That sat me back on my arse. Wine? My confusion must have shown because she leaned forward. I did the same and felt one of the hair-snakes brush my left ear, soft as a kiss. It was kind of nice.
Aspasia spoke low. “Kids cry, right? I mean, they’re kids, there’s always something to cry over. But enough to fill two, three, four wine bottles? Like, 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 kids, a lot of tears. You take that . . . ”
You take their tears and you rob them of all the tears they might ever cry. You steal their ability to feel joy, compassion, pain. You remove what makes them human. You take their lives. Not a kinderfresser, no, but something somehow worse.
“Who?” I asked. “Who’s been offering?”
She jerked her head towards a table in the corner. I didn’t turn around but watched in the mirror. A thin young girl sat there, badly made-up, her pale floss hair twisted back in a clip, her limbs so sharp they looked like they might make a break for it, given half a chance. She wore a gray singlet top with an irregular pattern on the front—whatever the design had been was gone along with the sequins. Beneath the table I could see stick legs and a far-too-short denim skirt.
“Why is she here?”
“She pays,” said Aspasia flatly.
“When did she offer you the case?”
“Two, maybe three weeks ago.” She shrugged.
“You didn’t think to tell anyone about this?” How many lives lost in that time?
“You think a couple of the Weyrd Council haven’t taken her up on the offer?”
“The Council hired me.”
“No, princess, Tepes hired you. He’s only one of them.”
Again, I sat back, digested that. The problem was bigger than we thought. I wouldn’t be reporting back too soon. I needed to finish this off-radar and it needed to be fast; then the Council could get purged, weeded, whatever Bela thought appropriate. I flicked my eyes to the girl in the corner; she was looking at me. We stared at each other for maybe five seconds but that’s 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 way I was running after her; no way I’d even bother to try.
“What’s her name and where do I find her?” I asked Aspasia who was casually putting the lid on Ziggi’s takeaway latte and sliding the chunk of cake into a paper coffin. She pushed them towards me and I handed over a twenty. I had the feeling she didn’t want to tell me any more and just as her hand retracted clutching the cash I grabbed at her and held on tight. I felt her wrist bones grind against each other beneath my grip. I may look Normal, I may be a half-breed, but it doesn’t mean I’ve got nothing of the Weyrd about me. I thought about wrapping the other hand around her throat and risking a few nips from the snakes, but decided she might find it hard to talk.
“Sally Crown. Lives on the streets. Sometimes she sleeps behind the West End Library. Sometimes in the derelict flats on Hardgrave Road. Now let me go and get the fuck out.”
“You need to work on your customer service skills, Aspasia. Keep the change.”
The whole way down the corridor I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my neck. Verity Fassbinder in action: winning friends and influencing people.
“I’ll see you tonight.”
Ziggi waved a hand in my general direction as he drove off; it was probably a “yes.” Those drivers play hard to get. Dawn had crept over the horizon about an hour ago and we’d given up watching the West End Library for any sign of Sally Crown. Admittedly, in the first place we tried—Hardgrave Road—I’d nearly been spitted on the umbrella of an especially grumpy old lady whose wings unfurled in shock when she found me in the flat she was using as a squat.
I made my way up the cracked path to my ramshackle cottage. The jasmine was thick on the front fence, lushly green with wh
ite-star flowers like icing. The scent was heady. I felt for my keys in the pockets of my jeans.
“Verity? Verity! Can you get my ball?” High and fluting, the voice came over the side fence. Between the palings was a small face, sharp-chinned, snub-nosed, wide-eyed, with a shock of mousey hair even messier than mine. A little hand pushed through the gap and pointed to a soccer ball lying under my front steps. Lizzie wasn’t allowed out of her yard without a parent in tow. She hated it, but I thought it a good idea and told her so at every opportunity—those were the days she decided not to talk to me.
I limped over and picked up the ball. It was really, really new. “Birthday present? Sorry I couldn’t come.”
“Uh huh. I like the book best.” She smiled and the edges of the crescent went so high that the break in the fence wasn’t wide enough to display them. The book of real fairy tales, the ones with little girls who were eaten by wolves and bears with no rescue; boys who got lost in the forest and weren’t found again ever; where your brother is a danger to you and your sister cannot be trusted; children whose greatest enemies were their own parents. Lizzie’s mother had frowned, but I told her that forewarned was forearmed. Lizzie loved the books in my house, so I knew I was on a winner.
I reached up and dropped the ball over.
“Thanks, Verity. Can I come and read later?”
“Not today, my friend. I’ve had a very long night. Maybe on the weekend?”
“Mmmmm-huh.” The tone told me she wasn’t impressed.
“Have a good day, sweetheart,” I said and headed to the door.
Inside, the hot air was smothering, so I opened all the windows and the double doors onto the back verandah. The breeze did its thing and soon the place was bearable. I carried a glass of cold water and a collection of painkillers out and sat in one of the faded green deck chairs.
I stretched my leg out and rested it on the top of the table. The pain eased. In the gigantic jacaranda tree that took up most of the back yard an extremely fat kookaburra perched. I gave him a nod; he stared, unmoved.
I needed a nap. I needed to do some research. But most of all, I needed the nap. Just a few hours.
I had to dig up the past; exhume my father. I didn’t want to, I really didn’t, but I had no choice. I closed my eyes, dropped my head back until there was a satisfying crack and things sat a little more comfortably.
My father. His murders.
My mother was Normal and gone before I knew her. The everyday things of my childhood were salt in the corners of a room to soak up the curses that might come our way; to keep away the worst of the shades blood was baked into the bread and left as an offering once a week; dust was swept from the footpath towards the house as we chanted “for all the wealth of the city to come home to us.” Took me a long time to work out there were two cultures and I could walk between them. That I could fool the Normals. And I could step into the Weyrd—they’d talk to me, but were wary.
Truth was, with one foot in each world I didn’t belong anywhere.
Twenty years ago my father was jailed as a pedophile and child killer, but that didn’t even begin to touch the skin of what he was.
Most folk, Normal or Weyrd, are law-abiding. But there’s a market for everything, and the law of supply and demand, and some tables demanded the most tender of flesh. Small groups, private parties—it was a particular taste indulged in by the very few, a leftover from the past, when stealing children was an accepted practice; a hobby and a habit. Someone had to source and butcher that flesh.
My father. Kinderfresser. Child eater. Butcher to the Weyrd.
He never touched me—that needs to be clear—and he got caught like so many of them do. He got sloppy. He got lazy. He didn’t take the hunt far enough away from his home. All those fairy tales and my father was the monster.
Grigor lasted precisely how long you’d think a child killer would last in prison. He was a big man, but no match for the six prisoners who held him down. With him gone, my maternal grandparents brought me up; I learned “normal” from them. They loved me, cared for me, left me the house. Some days, though, I’d catch them looking at me as if I were something awful and fascinating, a cuckoo in the nest. It hurt at first, but in the end I accepted it. I let my father fade from my memory as much as I could.
The people Grigor had been supplying just faded into the background—that part never came out, that he was a kinderfresser and that his employers had disappeared without a trace, although the flow of child disappearances seemed to stop for a long, long time—at least, those connected to Brisneyland’s Weyrd. The Normal justice system isn’t really designed to cope with stuff like that. Hell, it can’t cope with its own mundane crimes.
Now, though, something had changed. Something new was on the market.
The State Library was cold, the air-conditioning set to arctic breeze. The microfiche reader made a slight buzz and gave off a lot of heat. I was tempted to rub my hands in front of it and maybe try to toast a marshmallow or two.
There was surprisingly little about Grigor’s murders; Weyrd influence in the corridors of power, I supposed, keeping things on the lowdown. But there were pictures of him being taken to and from the Supreme Court; a large handsome man in a bad suit, with hangdog eyes and a loose-lipped grin that showed off sharp teeth.
I hadn’t looked at these things before; hadn’t wanted to, had chosen not to, as if none of it had happened. But I think some days, when my thoughts turn that way, that everything I’ve done as an adult has been a kind of penance for what my father did. I try to be an atonement for him.
Where Grigor went wrong was to take a cared-for child, one from a happy home, a rich neighborhood; a child loved and for whom someone would look. Had he stuck to the guttersnipes, the unwanted children, who knows how long he might have continued undetected?
I kept scrolling through the black and white projections of words and pictures: glamorous women smiled out from the social pages, their shoulder pads taking up much of the space; school kids celebrated as dux of their school; public outcry over the knocking down of yet another historic building; rubber duck races on the river of brown; writers and film festivals. Other crimes just as awful but not linked to me. Ah, Brisneyland.
When my fingers went numb, I gave up. Nothing there, a wasted afternoon. The need for more sleep buzzed in my head like a determined fly. And I was meeting Ziggi at my place at six. Sure, he could have picked me up from the library, but I was independent and didn’t plan to rely on anyone. My leg told me I was an idiot. I had to agree as I hobbled out the sliding doors and into the last of the stinking summer heat.
Lizzie’s mother stood on the patio of my house, pale and shaking in the late afternoon, knocking hard on the door.
“Hey, Mel.”
She turned and looked at me with desperate hope. I just knew I was going to disappoint her.
“Is Lizzie here? She said she was coming over to read with you.”
Little bugger.
“No, Mel, she’s not. When did she leave?” My heart thumped. No! I told myself, wrong neighborhood. A cared-for child. Another part of my brain chimed in with, Grigor did it.
“Have you checked the tree?” Lizzie liked to hide in the hollow of the jacaranda tree in my back yard. She had comic books in sealed plastic bags, a blanket, and a couple of dolls.
Her mother and I pretended we didn’t know about it—every kid needs a secret spot.
She shook her head. “Not there—it was the first place I looked.”
“Okay, playing with friends in the street? You’ve called school friends?” She nodded, trying not to cry. “Okay, don’t mess around. Call the cops.”
“I don’t want to overreact . . . ” she said, but I knew that’s exactly what she wanted to do, like any mother. She wanted to scream until her baby came back. She wanted to kill the person who’d caused her this tearing fear. I pushed her gently away from my door.
“Go. Call. Better to be safe than sorry. I’ve got to go
out,” I said, eyeing the gypsy cab as it pulled up. “But you’ve got my mobile number if you find anything, if you need anything, okay? I can’t avoid this appointment, but I will be back later this evening, I promise.”
She nodded again and the movement was enough to spill the tears over. I hugged her hard and gave her a nudge in the right direction. I stumbled as I headed towards Ziggi and his chariot. Bernard was keeping him company again and at volume, worrying about paper cuts or something. How many times was he going to play that CD? I’m a big Bernard fan, but everyone has their limit.
If it had been me, I wouldn’t have gone back to my usual haunts, at least not that soon. I’d have waited maybe a week for interested parties to give up. Maybe I’m smarter than most people.
But Sally Crown—now Sally Crown was young and dumb.
Ziggi killed the engine and we rolled to a stop outside the West End Library. Out the front was a community noticeboard covered with flyers for self-help groups, book clubs, writers groups, sewing circles, and one enlargement of a newspaper article. A perfectly coiffed matron’s smiling face gleamed out from a photocopied feature about her handing over a substantial cheque to some charity or other. Someone had drawn a mustache across her top lip.
“You okay on your own?” Ziggi asked around a mouthful of day-old chocolate cake.
“Yep.”
“Only Bela said . . . ”
“Fuck Bela.”
“He’s not my type.”
“If I yell then you come running, okay? Otherwise, finish your cake—it was expensive and I may not be able to go back there again for some time. And I cannot believe you still have some left.”
I got out and made my way around the back, surprisingly quietly, all things considered. I was tired enough to cry tears of self-pity and my leg ached so much it felt like the wounds might have opened again, even though they were well-scarred over. There she was, tucked up like a dirty angel on a clapped-out sofa, a grubby old chequered picnic blanket pulled up to her chin. Mozzies buzzed enthusiastically, but wisely left me alone.
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