“I didn’t fall over, at least,” said Dad. “But there’s so much blood, and I think my hand got cut.”

  “I’ll get rid of the blood,” said Luca’s voice faintly in the background, stealing the breath from Viv’s throat—in relief or shock, she wasn’t sure which. “Stop talking about the carpet. Tell Viv about the men with knives and what they stole.”

  “Who is there with you, Dad?” Viv said sharply. “What’s going on? Why is Luca there and why is there so much blood?”

  “I don’t think he’s a safe person for you to be around.” Dad’s voice had gone through perplexity and was now edging into querulousness, which meant that he was about to be unreasonable about everything in sight because he hadn’t yet processed what had happened and, childlike, needed a nap to be able to do so. “He was killing people in here, and I think he walked through a wall. You need to come over here, Viv.”

  And then Viv heard it. It was a thin, wiry, whining note wrapped around Dad’s voice, and it blended so well with it that it could almost have been just his voice. Just like Dad’s words themselves, it was a curious mix of push and pull—the acknowledgement that she shouldn’t come, and that she needed to come both twined together so closely that it was hard to tell which one he meant more.

  At first, all she felt was revulsion. That wasn’t Dad’s voice. That couldn’t be his voice—or, more correctly, his Voice. Not something so despicable, so insidious, so whingey! It tugged at her mind and heart, trying to make her forget that he had said it wasn’t safe for her to be around Luca and reminding her that Dad needed her there right now.

  But Dad wasn’t consciously trying to get her to do anything right now, despite his remark that she needed to come over. He was simply existing, trying to figure out what was going on, and he was falling into the same old speech patterns that were the norm. This could only be his own, real Voice, used unconsciously. And perhaps because she was hearing it over the phone, and because she had been trying to hear it for the last few weeks, Viv was hearing it more clearly.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that it might be easiest to try to listen for Dad’s voice over the phone. She already knew that some behindkind didn’t photograph or record well on human technology—and she still hadn’t considered that it would be safest and easiest to try to listen to Dad from a distance.

  That, however, was something for tomorrow’s Viv to sort through. Right now, she needed more information that was more likely to be accurate.

  “I’ll be over very soon,” she said. “Can you put Luca on the phone?”

  There was the sound of a brief scuffle that sounded like Dad trying to hold the phone to his chest while Luca tried to take it from him, and then the distinct chirp of Dad’s indignant voice saying in the prickly distance, “You licked me!” while Luca’s voice said cheerfully, “Yes, I’m here and yes all the other people that were still here are dead. We can’t save the rug but that’s all right because I need something to roll the bodies in anyway.”

  “What happened?” Viv asked, her voice tight.

  “Someone,” said Luca, his voice layered with a meaning that Viv didn’t quite understand, “sent a small group of behindkind in here to steal something from your Dad’s fireplace. Your Dad’s okay; he’s just got a bit of a friction burn from his controller cord. You might need to buy him another one if he remembers that I used it to strangle someone.”

  “They knew about the fireplace?”

  “They didn’t need to,” Luca said. “It was obvious that someone would hide things in it. They didn’t even need to torture your Dad to get that out of him. Don’t bring Jasper with you when you come.”

  “I won’t,” said Viv briefly, and hung up.

  She wasn’t sure whether or not Luca believed her; hopefully he would wait with Dad for long enough to keep Dad safe, at least. She wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted Luca to be at the apartment when she got there, regardless—Jasper aside, she had a horrible feeling that the Forex agents were, somehow, keeping an eye on her even if Jasper wasn’t. They had a habit of saying things that seemed to suggest they knew more than they should about things that happened while they weren’t around to see.

  The nightmare she had left was now only a cobweb of unpleasantness at the corners of her mind, and Viv was swift and business-like as she kicked off her slippers and put on her shoes. Perhaps she was a little bit too business-like, because when she stood and turned to get her heavier cardigan for the cool night air, SooAh was sitting up on her bed, wide awake.

  The little girl had probably been awake since at least the phone call, and had no doubt heard everything.

  Confirming this, SooAh said, “I’m coming, too,”

  “Absolutely not,” said Viv, unlocking her phone to order a taxi. She didn’t know whether or not she would be able to take one of the Tea House’s cars, or whether there was a key to the gate on the parking lot—there were too many things she would have to do before she could get out. “You can stay with Bazza.”

  “Jasper says that I’m only allowed to be out of my room at night if I’m with you,” the little girl said, sliding down to the floor and shoving her feet into her tiny slippers with pompoms on the toes.

  Viv surveyed her sternly. “Is that true?”

  SooAh’s eyes, large and limpid, gazed up at her. “Yes,” she said. Then she added, as if she couldn’t quite help it, “This isn’t what he meant by it, though.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Viv said in amusement. Still, if Luca had taken care of whoever had robbed the house, there was no reason that SooAh shouldn’t come with her. And if Luca himself was sensible enough to be gone by the time they arrived at Dad’s apartment, there would be no reason for SooAh to feel as though she should mention anything about him to Jasper—even if she were inclined to do so.

  Chapter 8

  Fortune Favours The Bold

  It wasn’t until Viv crossed the threshold of Dad’s apartment with SooAh behind her, that she discovered Luca was indeed still there. He was dressed far better than Viv was used to seeing him, in clothing that fit him properly and was made from textiles she wasn’t sure she had seen before, exquisitely tailored for exactly Luca’s shape and way of life, and he had obviously shaved recently.

  His shirt sleeves were rolled up as though to avoid the blood he was scrubbing from the carpet, even though he was already generously splashed with the vivid blue, and a neat linen vest of many likewise neat panels had lost a single button but still displayed Luca’s tidy waistline and made a pleasant curve of his lower back where it met his trousers. Nothing he wore was tight, but everything he wore fell tellingly on hard muscle.

  Since Viv thought it unwise to notice things of that kind, she looked away from him and toward Dad, who looked like a large, sulky egg in his favourite chair, his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms folded across his plentiful stomach. His expression that of a toddler who had been told no, and was still trying to think of a way to do what he wanted to do.

  It probably gave him a great deal of satisfaction to be able to say, “Why are there more people here now?” when he caught sight of SooAh behind Viv.

  “You brought the little cockroach,” said Luca at the same time, sitting back on his haunches and wiping away a dew of mixed sweat and blue blood from his hair line. “You look nice, Viv. Did you cut your hair? I like your trousers; they look soft.”

  That put Viv so much off that she forgot entirely what she had been about to say. At last, she said plaintively, “I don’t think my hair is important right now! Why are you here? What if Jasper finds out that you’re hanging around at my Dad’s apartment?”

  “You’re not going to tell him,” Luca said, with easy confidence. “That reminds me—where has he been going with you every morning for the last few weeks?”

  “That’s confidential,” Viv told him severely. She might not feel the need to tell Jasper where Luca was, but neither did she feel the need to tell Luca what meetings and appointments Jasper had.

  Luca went back to his scrubbing, but he threw a glance over his shoulder when he said, “He doesn’t usually need an escort when he goes out.”

  “He probably thinks that you won’t attack him if I’m there,” Viv observed. “Can we talk about this another time?”

  He sat back on his heels at once. “Any time,” he assured her, his pale eyes bright. “When? Where?”

  Viv bit her lip. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “What I meant is that this isn’t the sort of thing we should be discussing here. Who broke into Dad’s place?”

  “Behindkind with lots of teeth and too many tentacles,” Luca told her. “Seffy helped to deal with the tentacles, and I took care of the teeth, but there were fae here as well. I don’t know what they got away with before I could deal with them.”

  Dad made a small, explosive sort of huff that clearly spoke of disbelief. Viv wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. She certainly didn’t want Dad mixed up in the life that she had been thrown into, but she wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t already involved in it before she had been, and perhaps it would have helped to be able to ask him more questions.

  “I can smell salt,” said Dad. To Luca, he said, “You better make sure you fix the walls. I saw them move.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Luca told him, putting to flight Viv’s nascent hopes that Dad would swiftly forget anything that didn’t fit in his view of the world. “You saw me move through them. It’s no good pretending that you don’t know what happened.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” Dad said crabbily. “And I don’t know why you’re in my house!”

  “I came in because there were behindkind sneaking in, and because I heard you yelling.”

  “I didn’t yell,” said Dad, but he said it below his breath.

  “Is anything missing?” Viv asked. The entire room was a mess, it would probably take a little while to know exactly what was missing, but Dad had evidently been up and awake enough to call for help; he must have seen something.

  “They were here for the safe,” Luca said to Viv. “They wouldn’t have tried to have a go at him if he wasn’t up. They probably thought he was asleep.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” said Dad. “Thought I’d get a cuppa. And I don’t have a safe.”

  “No, you have a safe-box,” Luca said, making Dad scowl again. “Just because it doesn’t lock doesn’t mean it isn’t a safe-box. It was pretty well hidden for a human.”

  Viv, more sternly, asked again, “What’s missing?”

  “Nothing is missing!” snapped Dad. “I don’t know why you’re both picking at me! I was nearly killed in my own apartment, and everything was thrown around the room—he broke your mother’s favourite vase!”

  Viv couldn’t help the regretful glance she sent over in the direction of the mantlepiece where Mum’s pretty little porcelain violet-covered vase had been until then, and saw that only dust and shards remained. She saw the rest of the pieces in the mess at the base of the fireplace, and caught Luca’s worried eyes as she looked away, tears stinging her eyes.

  “That bit was me,” he admitted. “The controller cord is broken, too. Well, the toothy monster’s blood ate through it, but that’s only because I pulled too tightly while I was garrotting it.”

  “It can’t be helped,” she said. “Thanks for keeping Dad alive. SooAh, sit on the chair where there aren’t broken pieces.”

  SooAh, who had been looking around the room with eyes that were far too noticing for a girl of her apparent age, took this as an invitation to climb onto the fat arm of Dad’s arm chair and from there to the solid wooden table next to him, within reach of his lolly bowl.

  Dad looked as though he wanted to protest, but didn’t dare to quite argue with the fluff of pink tulle that currently had pink pompom slippers perched on the arm of his chair. Instead, he unwrapped one of the more difficult caramels for SooAh, leaving Viv to sort through the room to see what might be missing.

  The little table with its single drawer that she had once used as a bedside table was now rather drunkenly listing on three legs instead of four, and the drawer was very slightly open, displaying the stash of batteries, cords, and spare electronic bits that now resided within it. Nothing there. The television was a little askew on its trolly, but despite the controller cord being torn out of the gaming unit below it, it hadn’t fallen off, much to her astonishment. But most of the mess that didn’t look as though it was a mess because someone—or something—had been thrown into it, was concentrated to the area around the fireplace.

  Viv sifted swiftly through the mess at the base of the fireplace, and it was almost immediately obvious that nothing apart from one of the police files had vanished. The file from the day of her mother’s death was still there, but the second one, like the photos that Viv had taken from it just the other day, was gone.

  “There were two here,” she said, perturbed. “Two files. They’ve been here since Mum died. Did you get rid of one?”

  Dad looked so confused that she knew immediately that he hadn’t taken and hidden the other. If he had, he would have hidden both, she was fairly sure. “No,” he said. “Why would they want that? It doesn’t mean anything to anyone except me.”

  “What did it mean to you?” she asked. “The one that wasn’t about Mum’s death? What were you keeping it for?”

  Dad’s expression shifted. “I didn’t even look at it. I don’t really know what was in it.”

  “Then what was it from? Why did you have it?”

  “It was something your mother had,” he said. “I don’t know about it. I should have thrown it away. I’m tired, Viv. I should probably go the hospital for my arm.”

  “You’ll be more tired if you go to the hospital,” said Viv. “They’d have you waiting until the sun comes up if you went to the emergency department. Why did Mum have the report, Dad?”

  “I don’t know anything about it!” Dad insisted. “She had secrets that she wouldn’t share with me. She said I had to trust her or it wouldn’t work.”

  Viv frowned. “Was that the time when you two nearly divorced?”

  “Tonight has been a very dreadful night,” said Dad, with a tremor to his voice. “And I don’t want to talk about it all. Take whatever you want, if it’s that important to you. I thought you might care that I was attacked and hurt, but if you just want to go through my things like I’m dead⁠—”

  “You’re cranky, so it’s nap time,” said SooAh, matter-of-factly. “You’ll feel better when you wake up and then you won’t be cranky.”

  She appeared to have deprived Dad of words. Viv, taking advantage of that and hopeful of restarting the conversation later, when Dad had had some sleep, said, “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t go back to bed, Dad. I’ll ask Tony to come ’round to help clean up the rest of the mess tomorrow—well, later today, I suppose. But in the meantime we’ll find a way to fix up the window so that no one can come in.”

  “I already put something around the apartment,” Luca said, rising and throwing the scrubbing brush onto a plastic sheet that had been laid down near the big, fat armchair that had once been, by night, Viv’s bed. “Viv, did you sleep on this couch when you were at home? I thought there was a secret bedroom, but there isn’t.”

  Dad’s expression darkened and became even more sulky. “It unfolds into a big bed!” he snapped. “And it’s very comfortable!”

  “It’s not a bed,” pointed out Luca, gesturing irritably at it with one blue-stained hand. The same hand made a wide circle around the room. “And this isn’t a bedroom. Where did your clothes go?”

  And it did seem odd, suddenly. It was as though someone had taken a painting that Viv had looked at all her life and known, and turned it upside down, and she had realised that it had been upside down all along.

  “Um,” she said, trying to remember exactly how it had happened that she had spent, not just the last couple of years, but her entire childhood sleeping on an unfoldable couch, and not a bed.

  It had made sense when she moved back in with Dad after everything that happened with her boyfriend, as well as Mum’s death—where else would she sleep but the couch? It wasn’t as though Dad had something else to give her, and she couldn’t afford to get them a bigger place.

  But somehow she hadn’t remembered that this was how she’d grown up, as well. Her clothes had been in a small chest of drawers beside the telly for as long as she remembered. There just wasn’t the money to get a place with more than one bedroom; there never had been.

  But there were other, cheaper places to live than right near the Yarra, too, the sensible side of her brain said.

  At last, she managed to say, “I had a little chest of drawers; I don’t have much stuff, anyway.”

  “You never asked for any more space,” Dad said. “You were a good little thing, always doing what you were told and not complaining. There wasn’t blood all over the furniture when you were still at home.”

  Dad didn’t seem to have noticed that what he had correctly referred to as blood was blue. Perhaps he was refusing to notice it; there was a distant, shut look to his face that suggested he was refusing to accept quite a few things when it came to Luca.

  He looked as though he was going to turtle in on himself for the night, in fact. It wouldn’t do any good to keep talking to or at him, Viv knew.

  “Try to get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll see you later in the day. Nothing else will get in if Luca has fixed it. SooAh, you’ve had enough lollies.”

  She expected Luca to melt away into the darkness when they left the apartment—it must be at least one or two in the morning by now—but he walked with them all the way down to the street level, and then seemed as though he was going to accompany them down the street, too.

  “You should go,” she said, anxiously scanning the street and all the shadows that moved as though something were coming out of them. “It isn’t safe on the streets.”