Our warehouse had no designated parking, so we hired six spaces in an underground car park at a short walk along the narrow alley which hid the alcove granting entry to my home. Our only neighbour, Judge Smith, reserved the six spots opposite. It was not Fortescue’s British racing green Mini or my beloved custard yellow Vespa that captured my focus as we climbed from the Bentley, my limbs jelly with travel. It was the hulking black custom-built Ducati Monster 696 lurking in the gloom opposite.
My pulse spiked. So the judge’s son, Vegas, was in tonight. Unless he was too drunk to ride and opted to be responsible by taking a cab to whatever party or nightclub he planned on hitting later. Although responsibility and Vegas Smith were mutually exclusive concepts. His modified bike, an illegal ride for someone barely eighteen, was a prime example of its owner’s disrespect for all things representing authority. I beat the curiosity away. We used to be tight, but were no longer on speaking terms and I refused to waste a moment more on him. I’d already wasted an excess.
“Quit dawdling.”
I was too fatigued to argue and permitted the indignity of Hugo’s arm firmly around my waist as he hustled me towards the automatic roller door securing the car park. He glared resentfully as the barrier rose ponderously, ducking under to hustle me up the steep ramp and out into the warm embrace of a summer night in Sydney. The briny tang of the nearby harbour was proof I was finally home. I had no chance to appreciate it.
Hugo bundled us furiously along the narrow lane, cobbled by worn sandstone blocks harking back to the days of the First Fleet. The street made a divide between old and new. On one side, veiled behind a fenced-in well-maintained garden of Australian natives, sat the judge’s towering glass-and-metal-beam addition to the original brick structure beneath. Opposite, occupying almost an entire block, hunched our building.
Tucked away in a forgotten part of the city, the three-storey edifice was of elaborate Romanesque design. Tall, thin arched windows and rowed circles of stained glass abutted by long columns with squared capitals were reminiscent of Sydney’s beautiful Queen Victoria Building. The facade’s attractiveness was somewhat lessened by the wire mesh covering every expanse of glass and the thick metallic doors Bea had apparently installed prior to our arrival here.
We reached the inset doorway flanked either side by imposing stone columns, the porch floor tiled in a lovely geometric mosaic. The shadowed portico hid a sophisticated array of security devices, which seemed at odds with the building’s colonial exterior. Hugo thrust his face up to the discreet video camera nestled high in a corner to the right, which utilised facial recognition software to permit automatic access. The steel arched door glided aside on well-oiled hinges.
“Is there an emergency?” I asked, a little breathless.
“No talking. Straight to your room.”
“What are you? My nanny? And you actually have access to our house?”
This enigma topped them all. He was the first. Ever! Bea had always maintained that the fewer people who knew about the fortune in antiquities she possessed, the smaller was the likelihood of theft or worse. Such as my kidnapping and ransom. The constant paranoia usually provoked an eye-roll from me, but Hugo’s presence was a breach of rules that had never wavered over my entire life. It was most disturbing.
We vaulted inside and he abruptly stilled us on the landing, which spanned the front of the ground floor hall overlooking the sunken display three steps down. Hugo turned to face me, cocking his head, hands lightly on my shoulders. My spine zinged. The door sealed with finality at our backs. Would he enlighten me about all the rushed travel and madness? He grinned, a ferocious expression. I shrugged from his grip and took a couple of steps back. One of his hands now rested on the grip of a huge pistol holstered at his hip.
“I am not your nanny or your nursemaid or your fiancé eloping to Mauritius. I owe a blood debt to your benefactors. A life for a life. I am an assassin. If necessary, your mortal shield.” He chuckled, a dry, menacing sound devoid of real amusement. “My job is to give my life for yours, should it come to that. I have permission to do anything and everything it takes to assure your safety. Satisfied, Winsome? Have you other questions or topics for debate?”
I readjusted my hanging jaw and gulped, shaking my head. “To my room, then.”
“I thought so.”
I barely registered our progress through the vast collection space, despite the endlessly fascinating wonders kept there. We ascended the single set of stairs at the hall’s end, leading to the first floor gallery ringing the warehouse’s central atrium in a rectangle. Inlaid marble of intricate patterns and hues, gleaming polished wood and balustrades that reminded of fine golden lace added to the refined aura of a museum. A soaring stained glass dome painted the atrium in a dazzling kaleidoscope of sunbeams during the day, almost enough to hide the criss-cross of wire hugging its underside.
Hugo shepherded me around to the right, past the kitchen, and onto the wing where my own private suite sat alongside the study-cum-library and then Aunt Bea’s private quarters. Fortescue and Mrs Paget’s apartments sat directly opposite on the other side of the void, along with two other rooms locked up for storage.
“Okay! No need to push.”
This was not the gleeful arrival I’d fantasised about often during long, lonely periods at school. Until I got to my room. Two humongous blurs galloped forwards, yowling with joy. They knocked me flat on the threshold. Bea’s hunting cats, Vovo and Cherish. This was more like it!
“Puddytats.”
We tussled with a flurry of licking steel-brush tongues, batting paws the size of hubcaps and purrs, as I scrubbed their broad heads. These were no ordinary felines, but some extremely rare breed Bea had imported from lands obscure to take care of the rodents common in our old building. My least tolerable phobia – I could not stand rats.
But Vovo and Cherish were more than up to the task, overkill actually. Nearly the size of tigers, they had wise yellow eyes and black silky pelts. Their claws could easily disembowel a wild boar. They were my most consistent, adored, playful childhood friends.
“Okay, kitties. Let me up.”
I sat and felt Hugo’s presence behind me in the doorway. An assassin. Oh, it was simply too silly. The prankster messed with my already muddled head. Cherish bared his teeth. Vovo hissed, the fur at her neck rigid. I’d had no idea they were such excellent judges of character. I decided not to believe ‘anything and everything’ he said.
I surveyed the cream and chocolate extravagance of my room, a magazine-perfect space minus Chablis. No more dorms that smelled of wet wool, desperation and other people’s feet. No more evading the barracudas cruising the school in search of prey. No more Mallory and Chad and their pet vulture, Bird.
My gaze roved appreciatively over rows of shopping bags and shoeboxes from designer boutiques lining one long wall beside my built-in wardrobe. As well as the new clothes, Mrs Paget celebrated my arrival with bowls of hot pink orchids on my nightstand and desk. She was a brilliant gardener, although like many of the other mysteries of my existence, I’d never actually seen the hothouse where this occurred.
The excitement of my homecoming finally overcame the weirdness, but before I could revel in it, something tucked in the far corner near the ensuite snagged attention. “No way!” A made-up cot was plonked in a cleared space where my reading chair had been. “I absolutely draw the line. I don’t care if you’re a Terminator. You are not sleeping in here with me.”
Hugo chuckled again, only this time it was genuine. That he was capable of proper mirth came as a shock. I craned up at him to see shoulders the span of the Harbour Bridge jiggling, as if I was the butt of the most hilarious joke.
“Bea,” I wailed at the top of my lungs, any delight at my homecoming disintegrating by the second. “Beeaaaa!”
His laughter lessened the intimidation of a military knife strapped at his thigh, in case the gun didn’t suffice. “This will be fun. Like a sleepover.”
“Oh, now you’re using your words?” I said waspishly.
“I’ll let you paint my toenails. We can do the quizzes in the Cosmopolitan.” He laughed until tears stained his cheeks.
“Honestly, Winsome,” Bea reprimanded as she squeezed her way past Hugo. She stepped over me and went to lay a thick white towel on the end of his bed. She fluffed my pillows and used the remote to close the motorised blinds, dimming the brightness of my bedside lamps. “You are behaving like an infant. The gun will be stored in a lock box, if that is your concern. I fail to appreciate the joke, Hugo.”
That made two of us. He gathered his composure, swatting moisture from his cheeks, while I wore my best denied toddler pout from where I sat cross-legged on the floor. “Sorry, Ma’am.”
“You may wish to rise from there, Winsome, please. You’ll create a bottleneck for Fortescue, who’s bringing along your tea presently.”
Good! At least they’d all be stuck in the hall until I moved. And where did my concerns even begin to begin? Perhaps Bea worried if she left a loaded gun close by I might shoot Hugo. It was a fair observation. As her promises were probably as reliable as her answers to any of my dozens of questions, I gave up. Scraping together my remaining shreds of dignity, I hauled myself upright, smoothed my rumpled shirt and said with a righteous huff, “Thank you, Aunt Bea. But food won’t be necessary.” Lucky I’d eaten those nuts. “Unless the courtesy of an explanation is forthcoming, I’m going to bed.” I would formulate a counter tactic in the morning.
I startled awake to muffled city sounds and the whine of the blinds. “Ahh, you’re awake, Winsome. Excellent!” I peered blearily at Fortescue, who placed the remote in its holder by the window across from my bedhead, balancing a breakfast tray one-handed and eyeing me with a raised brow in expectation.
“Things must be real slow if that’s how you define excellent.” I flung an arm across my face to block the morning sunshine, but it was all too bright, painting the inside of my lids a throbbing red. Worming beneath deluxe Egyptian cotton, I threw the sheet over my head and groped for a pillow to plonk on top.
“Now, now, Mistress Winsome. Carpe diem and all that. We have a full programme to get through, not the least of which is properly welcoming you home.” A teacup tinkled against silverware as the platter was set down. I’d already caught a delicious waft of strawberries. “Out you come.”
“I hold grave fears for my retinas. The sun in Austria’s a candle compared to Sydney’s spotlight.”
“I am sorry for your distress, Mistress Winsome.” He had an aggravating way of ignoring my melodrama. “However, it is difficult to catch your meaning mumbled from under layers of goosedown.”
“A guilt trip this early?” I mumbled some more.
Fortescue bustled around noisily, pretending to tidy non-existent mess. “It is almost 9 am. Come along, now. Peanuts and sodium hardly make for sufficient nourishment over almost two days.”
My traitor stomach growled loudly. Besides, he’d wear me down with professional cheer and slamming wardrobe doors as he packed away my new clothes. I wriggled from my sheet-bound womb in defeat. At least Hugo was nowhere to be seen. I guessed he was off polishing his pistol or bruising iron in the gymnasium I’d never used in the sub-basement. I sat up, my hair probably resembling that of an electrocuted yeti, and groaned on sighting the garment bags draped over Fortescue’s arm.
“I can’t believe Aunt Bea dobbed me in for the nuts. Please tell me that is not evening wear.”
“Of course it is. Judge Smith is holding an art showing tonight at his penthouse. You will attend with your aunt, chaperoned by Hugo. Your breakfast is served, Mistress Winsome.” Fortescue flourished a white linen napkin, draping it across my doonahed lap. “I see your fondness for the Australian colloquial has reached rock bottom?”
I treated this as a rhetorical question. My vocabulary was a topic I ignored with a studiousness rarely applied to homework. Along with the subject of nutrition. The only food endorsed by my minders was so organic it originated steaming fresh from the compost heap and tasted as appealing.
“Would a hug before breakfast be too much to ask, Fortescue?”
“Changing the subject?” He smiled tightly, reaching in for an arm-lock that was so brief it rivalled a nerve impulse. I hadn’t even removed my hands from the bedclothes before he snapped back to attention. “Very wily, Mistress Winsome.”
“I’ve learned from the best.” One day, I’d scratch that impenetrable outer coating of his and catch a glimpse of the real human being underneath.
“I have a full range of summer-wear for your perusal. Winter woollens will render an unbecoming baked look. Shall I take the liberty of laying something out, Mistress Winsome?”
“Thanks. I really can’t understand how I managed to avoid nudity without your assistance at boarding school.”
“Oh, dear. Sarcasm – the province of the intellectually stifled. It is beneath you.”
“Yes, well, stifled intellect aside. Please, for the love of all that’s normal cease with the ‘Mistress’. I might be tempted to slip into black leather with spikes and purchase a knotted whip. And Fortescue?”
“Yes, Mistress Winsome?” he inquired earnestly.
I grinned. “If you force me to ask one more time, I’m turning the tables and addressing you as Jerome. Maybe, J-Dawg or Big J. It’d be the perfect title when you accompany me to the S&M shop to help pick out my new studded doggy collar.”
Fortescue’s mouth twitched at the corner. He tilted his shiny, bald head and regarded me with what I chose to interpret as affection. I wondered idly if he used a buffer of some kind.
“9.30 am sharp, then … Winnie. It is very good to have you home.”
“It is very good to be home.” Good, but baffling.
He reversed his perfectly groomed and lanky frame out the door, making walking backward seem as natural as any other direction. I’d tried it and ended up with a collection of bruises. Fortescue reminded me greatly of the man who played wheelchair-bound Professor Xavier from the X-men movies, only with less actor’s whimsy and better mobility. I reached over to collect the tray from my bedside table and deposit it on my knees, enthusiastically attacking strawberries and yoghurt. While I slurped freshly squeezed juice, I dwelled not so enthusiastically on the coming night’s torment.
Chaperoned by Godzilla, how quaint! What an utter spectacle the judge’s party would be. And based on previous experience, getting out of going was as likely as world peace. The single saving grace was Vegas’ guaranteed absence, which saved me the tribulation of seeing him.
He’d adopted an anti-dress code when puberty first hit. His shocking blue hair clashed with anything not ripped or adorned with chains. Black nails and piercings weren’t exactly bow tie and tails. He’d been banned from the judge’s events for wreaking finely tuned chaos. Lucky, lucky boy. If I shaved myself a mohawk and dyed the rest of my hair purple, maybe I’d be banned too. It was worth a thought.
“Please, get out of bed, Winsome. We are waiting,” Aunt Bea called from the cavernous depths of the warehouse.
How did she always know when I wasn’t on task, whether in the vicinity or not? Surely they would not bug my room? Detangling myself from linen, I slid from the bed to mosey over and inspect the contents of the shopping bags Fortescue hadn’t unpacked yet. After rifling a mountain of high-end fashion, some of it too expensive to mention, I braved a bikini top, overpriced singlet and board-shorts, probably closer to lingerie in chilly Europe. Getting about in something less than a thermal cocoon would take adjustment and demanded an instant suntan.
Well, this was not strictly true. In contrast to Bea’s fair skin and freckles, I had a naturally olive complexion and dark hair, emphasising our distance on the family tree. She’d taken me in after my parents died in a bus crash when I was a baby. I never stopped blessing her intervention and generosity, and for rescuing me from the foster-care system. I threw a hat, a book and my iPod into a drawstring beach bag.
Sun was the first priority on today’s schedule. I planned to ride to a beautiful coastal waterhole an hour south of Sydney in the National Park, and read and sunbake and swim in the surf. Alone. I could give Everest the slip in the city traffic. He would never fit on my moped, forced to follow in a car.
I hastily showered and tightly braided my hair, which fell in messy spirals and in this climate, there would be many unruly escapees. It was Friday. How many chores could my minders find for me at this short notice? I prayed Bea hadn’t received a shipment of new antiquities to catalogue. When home, I was her first assistant, which was a blessing and a curse.
She was both a collector and a dealer of rare artefacts, some of which were ghastly. Bea’s rationale for this career path was to record ‘the gamut of human capacity, from the sublime to the depraved’. Apparently, remembering history’s evil encouraged a higher appreciation for its opposite: kindness towards others and the betterment of the human condition. Or something. The justification had always seemed a tad woolly to me.
But then the realisation slapped me. My homecoming was as sudden and out of the blue for them as it had been for me. Normally, Aunt Bea’s staff performed their duties with unobtrusive efficiency. Never before had I been left unsupervised long enough to smuggle peanuts onto the jet, or come home to find shopping bags full of clothes in my room. Usually everything would be tidied away perfectly before my arrival. Such lapses just didn’t occur. And Bea had wanted me home so desperately, she’d had someone else collect me from Austria. Unheard of. What did it all mean?
“Stop procrastinating, Winsome.”
“I’m on it, Aunt Bea,” I shouted back. “Where’s the fire?”
“I may light one under you as an incentive in future.”
Concerted thinking could wait until the beach. As I hurried towards the door, I was stopped by a strange noise behind, like the first heavy splat of raindrops on pavement before a true downpour began. I twisted to scan the room, listening harder while edging towards the source on the parquetry at the end of my bed.
“Eww!” Maggots.
A pile of fat squishiness seethed on the floor. I detested insects – anything smaller than my foot – and these horrible little sacs were at the front of the pack. How did they get in here? What were they feeding on? Mrs Paget barely let a crumb hit the plate. Could they have fallen from the bouquets of flowers? An acceptable explanation remained out of reach. It seemed to be going around.
But there was something far more peculiar about the teeming cluster. It rested in a glistening puddle. I clenched my jaw and willed myself to take a closer look. The hair on my arms stood up. It was blood. They wriggled in an oily slick of blood that spread like an oozing wound. I pressed the back of my hand hard against my lips to stop my breakfast from jettisoning.
A sound from the doorway competed for my attention. I spun wildly. It was Cherish, the coat at his neck stiff. He snarled as he crept towards me, baring long white incisors, claws unsheathed, eyes slitted in anger. Muscles bunched beneath his fur. This was no playful adored pet. He’d transformed into a hissing demon capable of gutting prey with one taloned swipe.
Could he see the maggots too? Or was he simply responding to my panic. “This is no time for a pat.”
My voice was hoarse as I reluctantly flicked my gaze back to the gory invasion. The usual immaculate span of floor replaced the horror-film scene of ten seconds earlier.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
The vision had been so real. I struggled to still my nerves. Cherish twisted around me, rubbing my waist with his big head and rumbling happily.
I stroked him absently. “Alright for you, you’re not going insane.”
“Winsome!” Bea surprised me by bellowing.
“Coming.” I retreated and angled for the door.
First supersonic hearing, then the smell of carrion in my cranium, now visions. Was I truly losing my mind? Whose blood was it supposed to be, anyway?
