was a long time ago, when I'd still had a whole family. Before my eldest sister died at the age of 12, and everything fell apart. Before our parents became useless with loss, and Paul fell into drug addiction and death, and Nanna wore herself out to the point heart failure trying to keep us all together.
And Mum? Well, she had chosen to become a vampire. Then she tried to turn my sister Kate and me. Not exactly a parenting paragon, my mother.
Only Kate and I were left now, really, if you didn't count our alcoholic father. Which I usually didn't.
"Peas and a bag, you reckon?" said Gary, sticking to the present.
"An insulated bag, a bit like a floppy esky," I elaborated.
"Where do we get those?"
Gary followed in my wake as I strode to the nearest supermarket. I paid for the necessities and stood sentinel while he packed the incriminating evidence into the blue padded bag, stacked the peas around it and zipped it up.
Afterwards, Gary stood with a blue bag in one hand, a yellow DVD bag in the other, and a relieved expression on his face.
I felt anything except relieved. I hoped to high heaven that Mundy would be at Magdalene's club to take delivery.
Fretting for that old bastard's wellbeing was absolutely my last concern, but damn. His hand had been literally torn off. His place had been utterly trashed. Mundy himself was missing. I had no idea what had the strength to do that to a centuries-old vampire. It was terrifying to contemplate, let alone consider what it might do next. And there would be a 'next'. There always was.
The best thing that could be said about this whole situation was that the lack of accompanying buckets of blood was a sort-of-nice change.
Of course, the blood would probably come later, along with the mandatory running for my life.
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.
