Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 (23 page)

Now, she and her family were no more than a memory, and a few fragments of stray trash.

‘Are you okay to . . .?’ I started to ask as Bela pushed away from the sink and strode towards an internal staircase leading
off the dining room.

Upstairs were seven bedrooms, each with a different coloured feature wall: blue, green, pink, a darker pink, purple, primrose
and russet. We worked alone, so that every room was searched three times, each hoping fresh eyes might pick up a clue another
had missed. All the beds had been disturbed, the covers thrown back and sheets rumpled. Pieces of golem spoor – a lolly wrapper
here, a shred of newspaper there – were the sole evidence of what had happened. In the primrose room, the only one with a
queen bed, there was no sign of a struggle, no indication that either husband or wife had awakened and tried to save themselves
or their children. They’d been asleep – and then they were gone.

‘How’d it get in?’ Ziggi asked when we reconvened in the hallway.

‘The sliding door leading out to the pool was open. Adriana was always complaining about the kids forgetting—’ Bela started,
and then he stopped and pointed to what looked like a cupboard at the end of the corridor. ‘Panic room.’

The door was reinforced steel, with a range of locks and latches to keep out Normal threats, and wards and sigils against
the Weyrd ones. It wasn’t locked, though, and none of the enchantments had been activated. No one had had a chance to get
in there and find safety.

The windowless space was big enough for a family of eight to wait out a home invasion or a cyclone. Armchairs and sofas, a
large bar fridge, some books and board games made it as comfortable as a lockbox could be. From one wall, closed-circuit TV
screens stared blankly back at us. Bela sat in the creaky leather chair in front of them and fiddled with the control panel.
The monitors flickered to life and Ziggi and I watched intently as he ran through the night’s recordings. Feeds came from
the open-plan living area downstairs, the front and back doors, the pool deck, the internal staircase, the balconies and all
of the bedrooms. It might have looked like overkill, but all the Councillors had similar set-ups. Paranoia kept you safe in
the upper echelons of Weyrd power . . . although apparently not always.

The golem’s hunger might be mindless, but the creature was surprisingly smart: it seldom went in full view of the cameras,
generally sticking to the walls and the corners, so mostly all we got were brushes and blurs of it shifting through the house.
The only time we got a full view was when it went to one of the beds and took a sleeping figure, but I couldn’t watch the
kids disappearing, so I watched Bela instead as he stared hard-eyed at the screens.

‘It’s changed prey: Normal to Weyrd,’ I said, pondering the dietary adjustment. Had the city’s homeless, sensing a tremor
running through their cold concrete territories, found new places to hide, like rabbits realising a fox had moved into the
neighbourhood? With the streets empty and need clawing at its centre, had the golem
wandered further afield, seeking something new? Was it all a coincidence or was this something else? Something more targeted
and purposeful?

How long would it be before the golem lost its remaining skerrick of humanity?

Bela shut off the images and pressed his palms against his eyes. Ziggi’s fingers hovered at his friend’s shoulder, descended,
landed brief as a butterfly, then lifted off. I touched the blacker than black hair and lowered my voice. ‘Do you think this
was intentional?’

‘Attacking one of the Council?’ His fists slammed on the console and he shook my hand away.

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Coincidence, then?’

‘I’m too old to believe in coincidence.’

‘Then I think we need to err on the side of caution, treat Adriana as if she was the intended target.’ I didn’t say,
And the rest of the family was just collateral damage
, though I suspected we were all thinking it. ‘You’ll want to tell the other Councillors that they’ll need to rethink their
security measures.’ I paused. ‘And I’m sorry, Bela. I really am.’

He said nothing.

I left them in the panic room and went back to the stairs. I examined the pieces of garbage as I descended: Mars wrappers,
cigarette butts, old tissues, carpet fibres. Those last, the horrent twists of a most abhorrent shade of bright orange, scratched
at a memory, one I couldn’t quite pull up. Down on the lower floor the house opened onto the pool area. Wards were scrawled
over the frame, but because the door hadn’t been closed and locked, they hadn’t mattered. I stepped onto timber decking which
still held a little of the sun’s warmth, though the breeze whistling by was chill. Plastic chairs and sun loungers
dotted a wide terraced garden that surrounded the far end of the blue-tiled pool.

The golem must have come over the perimeter wall or the front gate, across the lawns and then through here. A sizable pile
of rubbish was caught in the green metal palings of the pool fence, so it must have entered there, leaving behind more debris
than usual. I remembered the day David and I had gone bushwalking and how there’d been an awful lot of rubbish scattered on
the car park asphalt, with twists of bright orange mixed in. I’d joked about mutant wombats, but now I wondered if something
had been watching me even then.

I sat on the end of one of the striped loungers and stared at the grass stretching into the distance.

My phone bleeped with a text message.

You never write, you never call
.

David. I smiled and typed a reply.

‘Are you gonna tell him?’

‘Ziggi, don’t creep up behind me like that!’

‘Sorry,’ he said, not sounding sorry at all as he sat heavily beside me. ‘Are you gonna tell him about Baker’s boy?’

‘You said it yourself: it’s a pretty big leap from runaway to death-machine. And I’ve got no proof – besides, Bela’s suffering
at the moment and I don’t think it’s the best time to share my cockamamie ideas with him.’

‘You’re maturing,’ he said approvingly, so I gave him the finger.

‘What are you doing?’ Bela’s tone was weary, and Ziggi and I both jumped.

‘Do I have to put a bell on you two?’

I swallowed a couple of times, trying to work out what to say. ‘What’s next here?’

He stood by the pool, the highly polished tips of his Zegnas hanging over the edge. ‘What is there to do?’

Bela was right: a quick vacuum and the house would be spotless. There were no bodies, no burials to arrange and no closure
to be had. All he could do was lock the doors and send me off to do my best bloodhound impersonation. He asked, ‘What are
you
going to do now?’

‘I . . . I’m going back where we first spotted the golem, see if I can find anything. And I need to talk to the sirens again.’
His expression told me that my ability to prioritise was questionable. ‘I’m juggling several things at once, Bela, and I’m
trying to do my best. Just let me get on with it, hey?’

He remained silent, but dipped his head. He didn’t ask about my meeting with Baker and I didn’t volunteer anything. He’d remember
later, when he stopped aching.

*

I stretched in frustration and considered kicking the park bench in front of me, then thought better of it. Thanks to the
healer, I was walking as if I’d never been injured; it would have been stupid to abuse that. ‘How’s this damned thing getting
around the city?’

Ziggi muttered something I didn’t quite catch.

‘Huh? Speak up, Zig.’

‘I said
tunnels
. Normals live their whole lives above; they know nothing about what’s beneath.’ He sounded fed-up; he sounded as though he
thought I was Normal.

‘Tell me, oh wise one.’ My tone didn’t improve matters.

‘Tunnels. Sewers, storm-water drains. They run all over, built when the place was first settled. They go to the river. Some
are big enough for a man to stand in; others are small and choked by years of
mud and neglect. Tunnels. That’s how you travel this city without being seen.’

The golem had come from a conduit near the river. I’d thought it had only been hiding there. ‘Is there some kind of Weyrd
underground network?’

He gave me a look, the same sort you might give a conspiracy theorist, the one that said
Go home and take your medication
.

‘Maybe we prefer the dark to the light, but we don’t prefer the damp and the dirty. Who lives in sewers apart from rats? Some
days . . .’ He broke off, muttering, just to make sure I knew his opinion in no uncertain terms. As he wandered off towards
The Lone Cartman, the only vendor in the vicinity, I called, ‘Long black, thanks for asking.’

We’d reached the tired and cranky part of a long day about half an hour ago and sniping was unavoidable. The spot by the river
where Bela and I had first seen the creature was a bust; I’d also found that even the surly waitress from the conclave, the
one who worked at the café, had made herself scarce. I had a sneaking suspicion all the sirens were laying low – not that
I blamed them for that. Ziggi and I had wandered back to the park at the base of the cliffs.

I squinted at the water; in the afternoon sun the glare flashed silver. Across from Kangaroo Point were the Gardens, a mix
of huge ancient trees, thick shrubs and buildings belonging to Queensland University of Technology, some old and ugly, some
new and uglier. I could see tunnels there, too, lurking under the boardwalk like toothless mouths.

Ziggi’s mood had lifted when he returned, which I put down to the caffeine. He handed me a large takeaway cup and we stood
for a while, drinking and staring at nothing in particular.

‘Ziggi?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘You think Bela will be okay?’

‘He’s hard to know.’

‘Not what I asked.’

‘Look, the thing is, he’s
old
. He and Adriana were friends a long time. You’re a blink of the eye to him. No offence.’

‘None taken.’

‘Bela’s kind, they age slowly, but they do age, and sometimes they go a bit strange. You gotta consider how they feed, too,
on human energy and emotions – those things change as the world does, and leave nothing familiar for them to hold onto. If
you’ve got touchstones, at least you have a sense that something remains the same . . . it’s easier to hold it together. He
knew Adriana from
before
, before coming here.’

The meaningful tilt of his head stumped me until I realised what he meant. It hadn’t ever occurred to me that Adriana might
have known Bela rather better than I had. Once upon a time the idea might have turned me green and a little psychotic, but
now even thinking back to the way his real name rolled off her tongue, the way she’d sometimes touched his cheek and laughed
up into his face, I just felt sorry for him. ‘Oh. Sometimes I forget he doesn’t tell me everything.’

Some days I think I will disappear up my own fundamental orifice
.

‘Secrecy’s natural to him – you don’t survive without keeping things close. It’s nothing personal.’

‘It would have been nice to leave the relationship feeling like I knew him better than when I went in.’ I held up a finger
and said proudly, ‘But I’m not angry, see? This is me, not being angry and bitter.’

‘I can see that. The person you know in bed isn’t
all
of the person.’

‘I knew more than his bed-side,’ I protested, but my words sounded empty, even to me.

‘Maybe some of him, sure, but if you’d known more you’d have realised it was never gonna work, you and him.’

I hesitated. ‘You didn’t think to tell me that at the time?’

‘Would you have listened?’ He continued when I gave him a shamefaced look, ‘He was never gonna be the Bela in your head, never
going to be who you thought he was.’

‘Ziggi—’

‘I watched. I ached for you, V; you’re like my little girl, but you were always gonna get hurt.’ He sighed.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s all good now, Ziggi.’ And it was. I thought about what an open book David was and
felt a rush of relief. So many things in my life had to be kept hidden; so many things shrank from the light of day. It made
me uncomfortable, though, to consider what else Bela might not be telling me. ‘So, my friend, tunnels.’

‘Tunnels.’

The battery on my mobile was dangerously low. I wasn’t going to risk using the torch app. ‘Got a flashlight or two?’

‘In the cab.’ We waited a little while longer until he said, ‘Let’s get moving, do this while there’s still some sun. Never
know what darkness might bring.’

I had a fair idea, but I kept it to myself.

*

Liquid refuse trickled sluggishly past my boots and I prayed they were watertight; I wasn’t dressed for urban spelunking and
for a moment I deeply regretted not going home to change. The bricks were slippery underfoot, kind of green and nasty, and
I had to step gingerly. The weak torchlight was about as useful as a firefly’s bum
and I wished Ziggi would hurry up with the fresh batteries. In hindsight, of course we should have tested them while we were
still near the cab.

The mouth of the tunnel was tall enough for me to stand straight. We’d walked until we’d spotted one of the drains – though
not
the one where I’d seen the two young lovers taken up. Behind me was a mud bank with my bootprints embedded in it and a little
beyond that lapped the river. The tide was coming in, deceptively slowly. The circle of sky at my back was a late-afternoon
dark blue. Kids played in the park above me, their shrieking laughter dulled, as were the shouted warnings from parents who
were cooking sausages on gas hotplates, trying to enjoy themselves while simultaneously checking on the children. Life went
on as usual.

Down here were things that had been around for too long, and the scent of rot was overwhelming the BBQ aromas. Further in,
other unidentifiables splashed and plopped. Liquefied household debris whooshed from holes high in the walls and with it came
another rush of stench. There was a limit on my breath-holding abilities, and breathing through my mouth seemed like a terrible
idea. I looked over my shoulder, hoping to see Ziggi, but met only the sight of the Gardens’ boardwalk in the distance. People
moved along it, small coloured Lego figures.