Kitty & Cadaver. Narrelle M Harris

Steve would ever get to grandkids. He was going to do right by her, no matter what it cost him.

      It was high time he retired, anyway. Sometimes Steve couldn’t believe he’d made it this far without being killed or losing a limb. The band had operated under three names – AnnaTomic, Dragonsbane and Rome’s Burning – since he’d joined them at fifteen years old. When Anna died, he’d accepted his probable fate. The idea that he might make it out alive had never occurred to him before Budapest.

      Now, though. Now. He was starting to see the appeal in it. Sitting on a porch in a rocking chair, singing to Gretel as she grew up. Dying twenty or thirty years hence in his own bed, of some nice old people’s condition, not bitten in half by a dragon or poisoned by an enraged witch or murdered by vampires, or any of the ways he’d lost other friends in the last forty-odd years.

      Steve stabbed at the text pad on his phone, squinting at the letters, until he finally sent: Good. See you then.

      He jammed the phone into his pocket, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and ambled towards the centre of Melbourne to see what was going down. All these decades travelling and he’d never made it to Australia before. It had to have more going for it than simply being a long way away from Hungary.

      The stretch of road along which he walked wasn’t giving him much to go on. Perhaps Melbourne’s charms were more of the hidden type. Some cities were like that – garden variety on the surface and all buried treasure once you started poking around underneath. Of course, where treasure was buried was mostly where the monsters were found, too. At least it wasn’t boring, he supposed.

      Today, Steve Borman was not in the mood for surprises. Garden variety was fine by him, if the universe would be so obliging for once.

      His feet led him finally past an elegant, colonnaded Victorian-era building sheltering a café and filled with the enticing scent of coffee beans and toasted sandwiches. The building ended where a traffic-free plaza began, split in two by tram tracks down its middle.

      Steve regarded the collection of tall posts at the top of the plaza, which bore narrow flags advertising a recent art exhibition. At their feet was what looked like a giant, pink, narrow, naked backside. A few steps took him to the front of the thing, which showed it to actually be a giant marble coin purse.

      Well, okay Melbourne, thought Steve, I kinda like your big pink ass-purse. What else you got for me?

      That’s when he heard the music, playing from halfway down the length of the plaza. Even half a city block away, Steve sensed that special something humming through the notes, and promptly went to investigate which one of the band was not garden variety.

      The four-piece was set up in front of a department store, a folded square of cardboard declaring them to be Firedog Brigade followed by a list of their social media sites. The sound was unpolished and threatened constantly to slip out of rhythm. The lead singer strained slightly at the high notes. On the surface of it, they made up a perfectly fine busking indie band. The thrumming core of power in them came from only one of them. The bass player.

      Turn to face the sun

      Blazing bright

      Everything warm and light

      But there’s something colder

      At your shoulder

      Behind you, you know

      There is a shadow

      A young man bent over his bass guitar, fingers flying over the strings, his feet braced wide and steady. From the throbbing low notes to the counter-melody that wove through the higher register, that boy was the one knitting the players into a whole, keeping the drumbeat in line, keeping the lead guitar from wavering off into blurry fingering, tugging the singer back into key and rhythm. His was the power bringing out the inherent threat of the lyric yet also keeping it at bay: a careful balance.

      Keep your eyes on the light

      Keep your back to the shadow,

      Dark as night

      And maybe you won’t see it

      And maybe

      It won’t see into you

      Steve folded his arms and watched the bass player. The kid was in his mid-twenties, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with strong and graceful hands, his focus entirely on his instrument. He seemed unaware that he was guiding the others to be better than they would have been alone.

      That shadow

      Eclipses your better self

      There’s strength in that darkness

      When you need it

      You’d better, you’d better

      Hope to god you won’t need it

      Steve had been playing guitar since he was nine. He’d been manifesting the Minstrel Tongue since he hit puberty. He could see power with his naked eye. And this boy? This boy had power, both musical and magical.

      And it does not forget

      And it will not forgive

      Fight it, fight it

      For as long as you live

      Steve waited until their set was done and, while a flurry of onlookers went to buy a CD from the drummer, he sidled up to the bass player. The kid stood apart from the others, plucking at a string and listening to its vibration.

      ‘Sounds in tune to me,’ Steve said.

      ‘Hmmm.’

      ‘Pitch perfect, in fact.’

      ‘That so?’

      ‘That is indeed a fact,’ Steve said, smiling at the other’s dryness. ‘Though I guess that string gives you trouble, sometimes. Mine used to. Turned out to be the peg.’ Steve forbore to mention that this was because the offending peg had been a last minute fix whittled out of a finger bone found in a Dresden graveyard. It was much too early for that kind of detail.

      ‘Thanks for the tip.’

      ‘Any time, kid.’

      ‘I appreciate the advice and everything,’ the kid said, ‘but I’m sort of busy.’

      ‘I can see you’re plenty busy. You carry this band.’

      That made the boy’s eyes flash. So: he knew it.

      ‘Is there something you’re after?’ asked the kid.

      ‘Do you have a passport?’

      ‘Yeah, but you’ll never pass for me, so I’m not selling.’

      Steve liked this boy. A lot. ‘No, seriously. I got a feeling you’ll be going places soon.’

      ‘That’s a terrible pick-up line and dude, you’re deadly, okay, but you’re not my type.’

      Steve grinned at the boy, pleased at being thought deadly, even while suspecting it meant more like… wicked cool rather than actually deadly. He was certainly the latter when he had to be.

      ‘It ain’t like that at all, kid. This ain’t a proposition. Well,’ he laughed, ‘it is, but not the one you think it is. I’m what you might call a talent scout. No, not like that.’ Annoyance at the boy’s cynical expression crept into his tone.

      Steve’s irritation prompted a sudden laugh from the kid. ‘Hey, all right, calm down, mate. You’re not queer, fine.’

      ‘Never said I wasn’t queer. I said I wasn’t propositioning you in that manner.’

      ‘So you are queer then?’

      ‘You are missing the point of this conversation.’

      The kid, with that infectious grin on his face, folded his arms across the top of his guitar. ‘Which is?’

      Steve closed the