Kitty & Cadaver. Narrelle M Harris

smile. ‘Maddie’s cat. Had him since he was a kitten. He’s so lost without her. Breaks my heart.’

      ‘Would you like to put something of Jasper’s with her? We can include something from Mathias, if you and he would like that.’

      In the end, the family decided to bring Jasper’s collar for Maddie’s wrist and tokens from Matthias – a necklace and a mobile phone charm of a cross red bird. The bird had made her giggle, especially when Mathias impersonated its enraged little cartoon face. Beloved things and memories to keep her body company, although her spirit was gone.

      Marcus saw the grieving family out, soothing them with his air of gentle authority. After they’d gone, Kitty cleared away the undrunk tea and untouched biscuits, and took the bag downstairs.

      Maddie Driscoll was on the metal table. Trudy Schumacher, Marcus’s sister, hadn’t needed to do much reconstructive work. The blow from the fall off the brick wall had crushed the back of Maddie’s head, but left the nineteen year old’s face unmarred.

      Calmness settled over Kitty as she put the bag of clothes aside. She’d first come to the Schumachers for work experience in high school, doing office work and helping Grandma with the flowers. By the time she graduated, she’d already started helping Trudy with make-up. It hadn’t helped her reputation for lonely weirdo-ness but she was used to that. She’d given up trying to make people understand that what she did had a sacredness to it, and that it was a service for those left behind. For people like her and her grandparents, who didn’t even have a grave to visit.

      ‘Hello Maddie,’ Kitty said as softly and as kindly as she had spoken to Maddie’s family. ‘I met your parents and your brother today. They’re lovely people. Jayden is watching out for your parents, and for Mathias too. I’ll look after you, now. I’ll help them say goodbye to you.’

      Kitty knew that Maddie didn’t live in that house of bone and skin any more, but that was hardly important. The dead didn’t scare her, and she liked talking to them. The dead didn’t judge, and they were good listeners.

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘Six days.’ Sal’s accent – English undercut faintly with an older accent from Goa – thickened with anger. The fact that he couldn’t seem to get his teeth unclenched wasn’t helping. ‘Six days to be ready to perform, without a lead singer, a lead guitarist or a keyboard player. Without half our band.’ The way he said it, it sounded like he was being asked to play without half his heart, which was much closer to the truth.

      ‘We’ll work it out,’ Laszlo assured him. ‘I’ve seen you do much more with much less.’

      Sal’s brown eyes blazed. ‘Not with much less of the fucking band, you haven’t. Alex and Kurt are dead. How much less do you think we can be and still function?’ He loomed over the older man, his dark skin flushing with emotion. ‘We can only perform so many miracles. Raising the dead isn’t one of them. That is the actual opposite of our job.’

      ‘What do you want me to do?’ Laszlo demanded. ‘You said we needed to be very far away. This is very far away. I’m sorry Alex and Kurt are dead, but I’m not the one who killed them.’

      ‘You sure as hell didn’t save them,’ Sal snarled.

      Yuka pushed her slender body between the two men. Neither of them made the mistake of thinking that because she was small she wasn’t strong. She could probably have broken at least one of them in thirteen places with only her left hand and a well-aimed drum stick.

      Laszlo, in fact, had seen her perform a similar feat against the undead in that factory in Budapest, so when she glared at the two much taller men, Laszlo did the sensible thing. He took a step away, dropping his gaze to his feet. ‘Sorry, Yuka.’

      Sal had backed off fractionally, his expression mutinous, his eyes glittering bright. He transferred his glare to Yuka.

      She glared right back, her accent clipped and firm. ‘Laszlo is not the enemy.’

      A shudder ran through him. Sal closed his eyes and the glittering brightness in his eyes escaped in wet tracks.

      ‘I know. Sorry, Laszlo.’

      ‘And I, Sal.’ Laszlo managed to tilt an awkward smile at Sal. He felt bad that it had spiralled out of hand so quickly. They were new to each other, Laszlo and the others. One week acquainted, when Alex, Kurt, Sal, Yuka and Steve had been a team for years. When three of them were still mourning their murdered friends.

      Laszlo is not the enemy, Yuka had said. It made him… he didn’t know. Sad. Determined. Afraid.

      I am not the enemy, he told himself firmly, I never was.

      That felt like a lie.

      I never will be again.

      There. That felt more like a true thing.

      The sound of Steve clearing his throat garnered everyone’s instant attention. If their bass guitarist – the eldest of their group at nearly sixty and the most experienced in both battle and loss – had something to say, everyone was going to listen.

      ‘You know,’ Steve said in his slow drawl. ‘We can do it as a three piece if we have to. You can sing lead and play lead guitar, Sal, you’ve done it before.’

      ‘I…’

      ‘Ain’t no disrespect to them that’s gone. It’s wrong Alex and Kurt ain’t here, but that ain’t no-one’s fault but the fang-faced bastards what killed ‘em. We got guitars and drums. We got singers. We can do this.’

      ‘It’s not enough.’

      ‘It’ll have to be. Hey, Laszlo,’ Steve nodded at the Hungarian. ‘You played a mean fiddle when we needed you. You told Alex you used to play.’

      Laszlo’s left hand twitched involuntarily. ‘A long time ago.’

      ‘Reckon you can learn some songs in a week?’

      Laszlo shrugged, the gesture disguising the thrum of excitement that travelled from his heart to his fingertips. ‘Yes. If you need.’

      ‘We need, and it’ll be a lot easier to pick up the melodies when you’re not trying to slay vampires at the same time, I promise you.’

      Laszlo snorted a wry laugh. ‘Oh, but it’s so motivational.’

      ‘I can give you motivation,’ Yuka said. Laszlo couldn’t tell if she was joking. She grinned, somewhat savagely, which was not enlightening.

      Steve’s mouth twitched smile-ward and he settled back into his previous taciturn calm, hip hitched on the corner of the small table in their dorm room. They were short on funds – nothing new there – so the four of them were sharing a room at a backpackers’ joint at the north end of Melbourne. Beds were covered in duffel bags and instruments. A small, battered metal chest was shoved between two of the bunks.

      ‘You teach Laszlo the songs,’ Yuka told the band. ‘I will get food.’

      With that, Yuka patted her belt, checking that her drum sticks were held in place, and left them to it.

      She checked her reflection in the hostel’s foyer window, satisfying herself that she was neat enough to venture into public. ‘Foyer’ was putting it grandly. The shabby sofas, chairs and tables were filled with a scattering of equally shabby travellers, and the battered reception desk, jammed to overflowing with brochures and notices, boasted a perky and chaotic receptionist festooned with piercings and bold tattoos.

      Yuka wasn’t tattooed – she’d left the inking to Kurt all these years. Only her earlobes were pierced, and they remained unadorned at present. She had the slightly misshapen once-torn ear to prove that wearing too much embedded jewellery while battling an armed and armoured mermaid, for example, could be a very bad idea.

      What Yuka did have were her wrist cuffs and the necklace; her mementos of