CHAPTER 2
A peak hour tram ride through inner city Melbourne with a hand in a bag is not the most relaxing way to end the working week. I spent the whole ride thinking that someone was going to notice.
From time to time I sniffed surreptitiously, trying to work out if the stew of close-packed bodies on public transport in summer was going to make the hand go off, despite the insulation and the peas.
Gary, pressed close beside me on the crowded floor, was no help. Mostly we took turns at glancing furtively at the bag, out the window and at the other passengers while willing the tram to hurry the hell up.
Finally, the tension got too much. My eyes were going dry from all that furtive glancing.
"Say something!" I hissed at Gary.
He blinked at me in his owlish way. "Like what?"
"I don't know. Anything. Distract me."
"Ah…" Of course, when anyone asks you to change the subject, you can never think of anything to change it to. Then he brightened. "I got a new film today. About a kid. I haven't seen it yet, and I bet it's all wrong, as usual…"
And he reached into the yellow plastic bag and plucked the DVD out. The DVD that had spent I don't know how long cover-to-palm with a severed hand. I stared at Gary as he held the box out to me, his response to my look of horror one of bewilderment. "It was on special," he said after a moment.
"Oh. Good," I replied faintly. I think I was supposed to take it out of his hands and inspect the cover and film notes with interest, but I couldn't bring myself to touch it.
He flipped it over to look at the back. "There are some special features. And. Um. A commentary."
"Who's in it?"
"That little kid from that film with that guy from the Lestat movie."
I have known Gary long enough for this sentence to actually make sense.
We stuttered through a conversation about this latest find for his collection until mercifully the tram reached Exhibition Street and we piled out with a stream of other commuters. From there it was a short walk down the shady side of the street to Chinatown. Gary wouldn't spontaneously combust if he walked in the sunshine - that had turned out to be one of the many myths - but the light itched like prickles under the skin, he said, and it affected things like his irritatingly acute hearing. Some of the stories were, after all, true.
Our path led us down Little Bourke Street to a familiar alley that dog-legged behind the Chinese Mission Church and a couple of restaurants and finally to a heavy door, inscribed with a yellow beetle. The Gold Bug. I wasn't used to seeing it in daylight. The sinister atmosphere the door generated at night was only partly diminished by being able to see the graffiti on the surrounding brickwork.
I rapped on the door. No reply. The hour was early yet, though someone would be here to watch for club arrivals soon.
"Is there a back way in?" I asked Gary. When you can clamber walls there is usually a back way in.
"Yeah, but Magdalene locks it when she's not around."
I pointed out that opening time would soon be upon us and that however busy she was, Magdalene was never going to keep her bar closed if money could be made from the punters. She'd been running public houses of one description or another since the Gold Rush and had Bar Management 101 down pat; whatever else her undead brain had trouble with. Gary agreed to check the status of the rear entry. This, unfortunately, left me literally holding the bags.
The yellow DVD bag was folded and I reluctantly stuffed it into my satchel. The insulated bag I held gingerly in my fingertips by the blue straps, as far from my body as I could manage. I watched Gary scramble up the side of the building like an ungainly multi-coloured beetle. I could never work out if it was creepy or comical when he did that. He disappeared onto the roof several storeys up.
Long silence. The loneliness of standing in front of a closed door at the end of three lengths of isolated Melbourne alley pressed in. I felt like a rat at the end of the maze, but a rat with a sudden certainty that it was electric shocks and not cheesy treats waiting when the gate sprang open.
Get a grip, Lissa Wilson! And if there is someone brandishing an electric prodder, just poke them in the eye and run like hell.
"Ah. Gary's little friend, I believe. What brings you here?"
My jolt of fear at the voice was certainly electric. I whirled right, left, around, looking for the owner of that silky voice, then remembered to look up. A large woman was poised on the side of a building, several metres above my head. One of her hands was firmly wrapped around a pipe, the other hand and her boot-shod feet giving her purchase in indentations I couldn't see.
I hadn't seen Magdalene for a long time. I had made sure of that. I realised now that I should have made it significantly longer.
"Ahh..." I'm not at my most articulate in the company of people who have previously tried to kill me.
Magdalene was dressed in her usual taffeta and silk gown, looking like a cherubic grandma with a sinful past who wouldn't hesitate to discipline you with a birch stick if necessary. She was all ruffles and generous bosom in the Victorian-era dress. She had a kindly exterior, but inside she was jagged and cold with a wide mean streak.
She delicately pushed away from the wall and with vampire-borne balance and strength, landed lightly in front of me. With the end of the alley at my back, door to my left, brick wall to my right, there was nowhere for me to go.
She took a moment to smooth her hands over her gown, then looked me in the eye.
"I wasn't expecting to see you again. You have made it clear on your few visits that you do not approve of us, Miss…Watson, isn't it? Or, ah, Wilson, yes?"
"One of those." I tried for nonchalance, but my voice shook. I had no doubt her heightened senses could hear my racing heartbeat.
Her smile was sudden and terrifying as she leaned in close to me. She was slightly shorter than me and I was acutely aware that her mouth was close - too, too, too close - to my throat.
"Miss Wilson, I do not like you," said Magdalene, barely above a whisper. Yet I could hear every word. Piercing terror tends to heighten even human senses like that.
"I'm not that f-f-fond of you either." I'm not brave, but sometimes defiance is the only weapon you have left. Besides, I was hanging onto the hope that Magdalene, who normally had such good business sense, would not commit blatant murder at her own door. That would surely be bad for trade.
Magdalene tilted her head slightly, regarding me with cold displeasure. "Do you think," she said, "That you would be missed, should something unpleasant happen to you?"
"Yes," I managed, firmly, then my voice started quivering again. "D-do you think your volunteer blood d-donors would come back here if they found out you'd broken that p-particular rule?"
"How would they ever know?" Her smile grew uglier, revealing her teeth, displaying that expression that said I was nothing more than a potential, passing snack. Not even needed for nourishment or survival. All my blood would do for her is make her feel alive again for a little while.
Then the club door was opened by Becks, the whip-thin, professionally unimpressed door person. I hadn't yet figured out if Becks was male or female and reckoned that on the whole it didn't matter except to Becks and whoever Becks slept with.
"Gary said to tell you he's in the upstairs bar," Becks said, regarding me blandly from behind a long, black fringe. I couldn't tell if the look was tinged with contempt, like most of the looks Gary and I got here. Becks is hard to read in pretty much every way imaginable.
Door-person looked at Boss-lady, who had adopted a bored expression. "I will see you in my office," Magdalene said to Becks, with a sudden shift in tone to 'approving', resulting in the latter's inscrutability receding for a smug moment. Becks was, of course,