air
Come to me, flames
Come to me, molten earth
I beg thee return to heart and sun
I beg thee be quenched, now my work is done.
Naturally, they searched for Alex. They found him huddled and bleeding under tin from the fallen roof, his throat torn. Sal cradled the dying man in his arms.
‘Kurt.’ Alex was sobbing. ‘They killed my Kurt.’ He turned blazing eyes on them. ‘You killed my darling. He’s dead. You burned him.’
‘He wasn’t Kurt any more,’ Steve said, as gently as he could.
Alex, on the cusp of human and monster, sobbed again. ‘I’m not Alex any more. Soon. Oh my god, oh my god. Steve. Steve?’
Steve’s hands trembled. ‘Okay. Shh, Alex. I’ll do it.’
Not-Alex glared at him again. ‘Yes. You’re good at it. Watching the people you love die.’
‘Don’t,’ Steve begged.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ muttered the human part of their friend.
Sal stroked Alex’s hair. ‘It’s all right, Steve. I’ll do it.’
Steve tried to protest, but he gave in when Sal insisted. Anyone could see that Steve didn’t have the heart to insist.
‘You don’t have to stay,’ Sal said.
‘Oh go on,’ Not-Alex jeered. ‘Watch. It’ll be educational.’ Then he looked horrified and cried tears of blood.
Steve gave Sal all the garlic remaining in his pockets. Yuka, too. Laszlo didn’t have any garlic – he’d thought the whole thing nonsense.
‘Laszlo,’ Alex rasped.
‘I’ll take care of them,’ Lazlo found himself promising.
Alex laughed. ‘Good. They need a roadie.’
Sal took out a bowie knife and held it to Alex’s throat. ‘Wait outside.’
‘Save me,’ Alex whispered to Sal as the others left them among the ashes.
‘Of course. You saved me, didn’t you?’
When Sal joined the others outside, he looked like his soul had gone with Alex’s into the beyond.
CHAPTER TWO
Melbourne, Australia, 2014
The smell of funeral flowers was cloying. Two weeks ago, Kitty Carrasco had finally convinced Grandpa to let her hang all the arrangements from Grandma’s funeral in the laundry to dry, but now the living room was full of lilies, carnations and roses again.
Orphaned twice in her 21 years, it felt like the grieving would never be over. She didn’t recall her parents at all, and her grandparents had raised her with a stern, puritanical kind of love. The silence of their house had been a lifelong, songless lamentation.
Kitty breathed through her open mouth to avoid being overwhelmed by the scent of mourning. Far from making her want to cry, the smell made her want to scream. She wanted nothing more than to build a bonfire and to replace the stench of sweet, decaying things in this musty old house with clean air.
The pressure of the silence on her ears was painful, but lacking a record player or even a radio, her options were limited. She couldn’t bear the thought of the television and all those yakkety voices.
In her restlessness, Kitty threw open the kitchen window to listen for traffic on Lygon Street. A few crows in the cemetery over the road cawed melancholy notes over the bass hum of the cars.
Music had been forbidden all her life, but she heard it everywhere.
Grandma and Grandpa had forbidden outings where she might even hear music; they’d discouraged friendships that might take her from their orbit, so her unintentional school status as a lonely weirdo had been guaranteed. They’d found her work experience and later a job at the business where Grandpa was an accountant and Grandma arranged garlands and wreaths, the best in the business. The ones for her funeral, and for Grandpa’s, had been done by someone else and were disappointing by being perfectly adequate.
In a sudden fit, Kitty gathered all the flowers in her arms and dumped them in the bathtub. She stormed to her room next and threw the cloth cover off her little work table, revealing crudely painted white and black keys. This she dragged to the centre of the living room, placed her fingers on the painted keys and banged away at it.
She heard the notes in her head, memorised from the times she’d snuck into the music room at school. The living room heard only a dull thud. She stopped abruptly.
Kitty glowered at a photograph: her smiling grandparents, and her squashed between them, smiling too. Her skin was paler than their olive tones, thanks to her Scottish mother’s heritage, but her hazel eyes were the same as Grandma’s, the same as her father’s eyes, Grandpa always said, when he spoke of her father at all.
‘I know you loved me, but I’m tired of living in a cage,’ she told that photograph. ‘This week I’m buying a radio; and that proper keyboard I want that I knew you’d never let me have.’
Agitated and filled with the need to move, Kitty swooped to the telephone and called her boss.
‘Schumacher Funerals. How may I help?’
‘Marcus. Hi, it’s Kitty.’
‘Oh, Kitty. How are you doing? Do you need anything, dear?’
‘No. I just. It’s too quiet at home.’
‘It must seem very strange.’
Not as strange as it should be, Kitty Carrasco wanted to tell him. This house is always oppressively quiet. Losing Grandma and Grandpa a month apart had only emphasised the solitude of it.
‘It is odd,’ she said.
‘Let me just say again how very sorry Trudy and I am,’ Marcus said with his usual compassionate warmth. ‘We valued your grandparents’ contributions here enormously, and of course they introduced you to us.’
‘Thanks Marcus. Speaking of that. I was wondering if I could come back to work today after all.’
She counted the beats before Marcus replied. He never replied to anything in a hurry.
‘I’m concerned that you need more time, Kitty.’
‘I don’t.’
Another few beats and then, ‘Why don’t you pop in for the afternoon, if you like. You don’t need to stay if it’s too much.’
‘The Driscolls are coming today, aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘I
