The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Read online

  One drawn out blink, and then another, and I’m sure Lissa’s face is pressed against the window or through the window. Then it’s just the moon, full and blue. “Luminous,” I whisper, at the pale light.

  The moon says something, but I can’t read her lips.

  The window rattles as a car mutters in an eight-cylindered tongue down the street. Exhaustion has its hooks in me, and I’m too far gone, and full, to find a pause from my fall into slumber.

  No wakefulness. No dreams. Just dark, dark sleep: that’s where I’m headed. And Lissa, the moon, and all the questions rushing around me like Mr. D’s crows, cannot follow me there.

  5

  My status on Facebook isn’t the only thing that’s dead.

  Someone has jimmied open my skull and poured highly flammable liquid migraine directly into my brainpan. I can taste stale vomit, a night’s worth of spewing crusted to the roof of my mouth. I open my eye a crack and admit a jack-hammering Brisbane morning light that ignites all that potential pain at once. I shut my eye again. The room, windows closed, smells delightfully of sick and ashtray.

  The phone rings, and I’m immediately regretting the decision to have a handset in my bedroom. The ringing is an ice pick swinging into my forehead.

  I ignore it. Let it ring out. A second later my mobile starts up. Fucking ice pick all over again.

  I open my eyes. The light is merciless as I scramble around hunting for my mobile, and it keeps ringing and ringing and ringing. This has to be some sort of cruel and unusual punishment. Sliding out of bed, I realize that I’m still half in my jeans: the other pants leg has the pocket with my phone in it.

  I snatch out the mobile, consider hurling it against the wall, then see the number and moan.

  Mortmax. And whoever’s calling has disengaged the message service, which gives me more than a clue as to who is responsible.

  I flip the phone open. “Yes.”

  “Steven,” Derek says, “we need you in the city. No later than ten.”

  He hangs up.

  Yes, king of bloody small talk. And do I have a thing or two to talk about with him! Starting with Lissa, and ending with Terry. Derek’s messed up a few too many times in the last couple of days.

  I look at the clock. 8:30.

  Shit! I can’t imagine this hangover leaving before late afternoon. It has teeth and cruel hangovery hands that are less than gently clenching my stomach, engendering an argument over which end of me is most likely going to be needing to evacuate the evils of the evening before. There are good odds it could be both at once. It’s a finger-in-all-pies sort of hangover.

  How do I get myself in these situations?

  My phone chirps with a text. Tim. Hope you’re feeling OK :-)

  Prick.

  Just chipper, I text back. Even texting is painful and nausea inducing. I fish through cupboards, and drawers, until I find something strong for the pain. I manage to keep it down. Molly’s waiting, eyes lit with a weary impatience, to be let out the back door. Opening it only lets in more of that brutal morning light. I wince, leave the door open for the dog, and make the trek to the bathroom.

  Oddly enough Molly follows me. I shrug at her. “Suit yourself.” There’s blood in the bathroom. On the walls; a little on the mirror. I wrinkle my nose at it. Molly sniffs at the walls, doesn’t bother licking them. This ectoplasmic blood is mildly toxic. The first time she encountered it, gobbling down what she obviously thought was a marvelous, if peculiar, free feed, she had diarrhea for two days. Now that was pleasant for the both of us. Whenever there’s an increase in Stirrers this happens. These sorts of portents come with the job. I do my best to ignore the sanguine mess. Cleaning is for post hangover.

  The shower, alternating hot and cold, helps a little. I even manage to think about Lissa, wondering where she is and how horrible that state of limbo must be. Her having been a Pomp at least explains some of the why of it. She’s got the know-how. Though I don’t understand how she’s managing—but maybe she isn’t, maybe she was pomped last night. I finish my shower with that disturbing thought, and reach for a towel. The movement sets my head off again. It’s as though the shower never even happened, except I’m dripping wet.

  This is hell, self-inflicted or not. I stand still for a while, taking slightly pathetic little breaths. Then get dressed, moving like an old, old man in a particularly didactic anti-alcohol advertisement.

  Molly barks from the backyard. I stumble out, and she’s there with her mini-football in her mouth, wanting a game. One look at me and she changes her mind, dropping it to the ground with an expression that breaks my heart.

  “Sorry, girl,” I say.

  I step back from the door, into the kitchen and I consider breakfast, and then ruefully laugh that idea off. Besides, I’ve run out of time. I fill a bottle with tap water.

  Molly isn’t too happy to come back inside, but she does. I pat her on the head, tell her how sorry I am, that I’m such a lousy fella, and make a mental note to take her for a long walk tonight, no matter how awful I feel.

  People go on about the quality of light in Brisbane. Whatever it is, there is far too much of it today. My sunglasses only cut it down by the barest fraction; the migraine ignites again. If I had a better excuse there’s no way I’d be going in today. But I don’t. I still have all my limbs, and I’m not dead.

  Now, Derek and I have our differences, but there’s one thing I’m sure we’d both agree on: if I don’t make it to the office, I’m gone for sure. I look at my watch. 9:30.

  Half an hour’s cutting it fine, but I manage to catch the next train. It’s crowded for this time on a Wednesday morning. Someone’s mp3 is up so loud that we’re all getting a dose of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” That pounding rhythm is pretty much in time with my headache. I glare at the culprit but he isn’t looking in my direction.

  Derek’s been hunting for a reason to fire me for a while now, and I’ve never been a favorite of the other states’ administrators either. I do tend to get into a bit of trouble. I can’t help it if people don’t get my sense of humor. Really, how can that be my fault?

  The only thing that has kept me in the job is that I’m good at it, and that Morrigan likes me. Morrigan’s influence as Ankou can’t be denied. Mr. D’s close working relationship with Morrigan tends to piss off the state admins mightily—and Derek cops that because Morrigan is a person you don’t want to cross. All of which pleases me no end, because Morrigan is virtually family.

  Morrigan and Dad rose through the ranks together. Dad, a traditionalist; Morrigan, an innovator. Dad coordinates the cross-state linkages, pomps, and helps oversee Mortmax’s non-death-related industries—the various holdings in supermarkets, petrol stations and other businesses. He used to run the scheduling too, but a couple of years ago the side businesses expanded to such a degree that he had to let that slide. Morrigan had been pushing to stop him pomping as well but Dad prefers to keep his hand in.

  I’d like to think that I could have taken over the scheduling. But a desk job’s dull. Derek, on the other hand, loves it. Too bad he’s doing such a miserable job.

  I glance at my watch. It’s going to be close. Not showing up for a meeting is the fastest route to unemployment. Punctuality, under all manner of stress and duress, is an absolute necessity in the pomping trade. A hangover doesn’t even begin to cut it as an excuse.

  I’m pretty sure I can make it, even riding what seems to be the slowest train in existence, but whether or not I can avoid spewing over Derek’s desk is another matter. But it would be a pathetic vomit at best: the last thing I ate was that Chiko Roll.

  Anyway, getting into work is going to furnish me with some answers. There’s just been too much weirdness in the last couple of days. Too many things are unsettling me. If I wasn’t so miserable, they’d be unsettling me even more.

  I get off at Roma Street Station, ride the escalator up and out onto George Street, taking small sips of unsatisfying water as I go.

  I
don’t notice anything is wrong until I touch the front door to Number Four.

  I push, and the door doesn’t give. So I push harder.

  Nothing but my knuckles cracking. The door doesn’t even draw its usual drop of blood. That’s the way it is with Pomps. You need blood to close certain doors, and blood to open them. But not today.

  Number Four is locked up tight and toothless.

  My first thought is that this is Derek, that he’s getting his revenge. Except the two wide glass windows either side of the door are dark. Not only that, but the brace symbol above the door has been removed. That symbol, an upside down triangle split through the middle with a not quite straight vertical line, keeps away Stirrers. It has to be refreshed every month or so, redrawn with ink mixed with a living Pomp’s blood. Now it’s gone, and that’s crazy.

  The door should have opened. The lights should be on inside. But they’re not. I peer through the window to the left of the door, or try to. It’s totally dark beyond. My reflection stares back at me.

  I touch the door again. There should be a buzz, a sort of hum running through me on contact, but there’s nothing, no sense at all that this is a point of interface between the living world and the dead one. It’s just a door. A locked metal door. I glance around, there’s no one I know standing around ready to tell me this is all some sort of joke.

  The door leads into the vestibule of the building. There’s a desk at the front. Some chairs, a couple of prints, including Mr. D’s favorite painting, Brueghel’s “Triumph of Death.” Beyond the desk is a hallway leading to old-fashioned elevator doors, lots of brass, glass and art nouveau designs. The elevator has twelve floors marked, but our building only has eight storeys here. The other four are in the Underworld. That linkage between the living world and the dead should have me buzzing. Hell, standing this close to Number Four should have anyone buzzing.

  It’s the reason we don’t get a lot of hawkers.

  I reach toward the door again, then hesitate. Because in that moment it… changes. The door suddenly possesses a sly but hungry patience: as though it’s waiting for me to touch it this time. Just put your hand up against me, eh.

  Instead, I press my face against the window to the right. Again, nothing but darkness. The hair rises on the back of my neck. Then something slams against the glass.

  I get a brief sensation of eyes regarding me, and of blood. A soul screams through me. It passes, as though thrown, so fast that I don’t even get a sense of who it is I’ve just pomped. I stumble back from the window. They may have moved fast, but they’d been holding on. Their passage a friction burn, I’m seared a little on the inside.

  I don’t tend to get the violent deaths but I’ve pomped enough to recognize one. Someone has just died, savagely and suddenly. Someone I know. Maybe Tanya behind the desk, or Clive from records. Brett was always down there, too—had a thing for Tanya. “Jesus.”

  And then there’s another one. The second death is so quick on the back of the first that I moan with the fiery biting pain of it, then retch a little. Another violent exit, another desperate but futile clawing at survival.

  “Get out of here, Steven.” The voice is familiar.

  My mouth moves, but nothing comes for a moment. I turn toward Lissa, fight my almost instinctive desire to pomp her. At least that would be normal. But the urge passes in a wave of relief. Here she is, at last. How can she do this to me, this rising excitement, even now? But she does.

  “What?”

  “You have to get to Central Station,” she says, sliding around me, slipping out of hand’s reach, then darting in to whisper. “You need to get as far away from here as possible.”

  I blink at her, expect her to disappear, but this time she doesn’t. In fact she seems much more together than I have ever seen her—a layer of confusion has been sloughed away and replaced with a desperate clarity.

  “Hurry. We don’t have much time. Someone is killing Pomps.” She smiles at that, then frowns, as though the first expression was inappropriate. “You’re the first one I’ve managed to save. And I’m getting tired of repeating myself.”

  The door picks that moment to open. Just a crack. A cold wind blows through it, and it’s not the usual breath of air conditioning. From within comes the distant rasping of the One Tree, the Moreton Bay fig that overhangs the Underworld. That sound, a great sighing of vast wooden limbs, dominates the office. Hearing it echo out here in the street is disturbing. Christ, it terrifies me. It’s as though Hell has sidled up next to the living world and has pulled out a bloody knife. I hesitate a moment. I know I should be running but those two pomps in quick succession have scattered my thoughts. And this is meant to be a place of refuge. There’s a gravity to that doorway, born of habit and expectation.

  Lissa swings in front of me. “Don’t,” she says. “You go through that door and you’re dead.”

  And I know she’s right. It’s like a switch finally turns off in my brain.

  I sprint from the doorway, glancing back only when I’m at the lights (fighting the urge to just run out into the traffic, but there’s too much of it and it’s moving too swiftly) to see if anyone, or any thing, has come through the door after me. I get the prickling feeling that someone’s watching me.

  I blink, and the door’s shut again, and that sensation of scrutiny is gone. I take a deep breath.

  “Roma Street Station’s better,” I say, trying to keep focused, even as my head throbs. This really is a bitch of a hangover.

  “What?”

  “Central’s too obvious. If I was looking for someone trying to get out of the city I’d go to Central.”

  Lissa appears to consider this. “You’re probably right.”

  I know I’m right. Well, I hope I am. I need to have some semblance of control, or I am going to lose it right here in the middle of the city.

  We’re on George Street, heading to Roma Street and the train station, stumbling through late-morning crowds: all the business and government types up this end of the city, heading out for their coffees, oblivious to what’s going on. People are being killed. My people. It can’t be happening. Part of me refuses to believe it, even now, but those violent, painful pomps tell me otherwise.

  I could feel resentful, but that’s going to serve no useful purpose. The further I get away from Number Four though, the better.

  To the left are the council chambers, reaching up into the sky, looking like a Lego tower of Babel constructed by a not particularly talented giant infant who nonetheless had big ideas. Just to my right is Queen Street Mall where, only yesterday, I was running for my life. Who’d have thought it would become something of a habit? Behind me, the state government building looms shabbily, a testament to, or rather an indictment of, eighties’ architecture.

  Tim works in that building.

  “Where are you going?”

  I turn around heading toward Tim’s building, hardly realizing I’m doing it.

  Lissa’s in my face, hands waving, sliding backward to keep out of my reach. “Are you stupid? This is the wrong way.”

  I stop and stare at Lissa. How do I even know I can trust her? But there’s something there, surely. Something in her gaze that tells me I can.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t want you to die.”

  “I know,” I snap. “That much I get.” And I don’t want to die either, not with her around.

  Her face creases with irritation. “You’re making the concept easier for me, though.” She slides to my right. Turns her back on me. I’m almost relieved; the fire in that gaze would consume me. She passes into a patch of light and is almost completely devoured by it. But then she’s out and staring at me.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to keep moving?”

  We cross George Street, pass the stately sandstone edifice of the Treasury Casino. The street’s not as crowded on this side, away from the shops. There are a few buses coming and going and people are heading toward the government building,
or office towers; suits and skirts of the power variety. The Riverside Expressway is a block away, and a cool breeze blowing up from the river carries all that traffic noise toward me. Traffic, not the creaking of the One Tree.

  I get to the glass doors which front the government building and stop. A couple of blocks down, the door to Number Four is waiting. My skin crawls—that sense of being watched again. Still, I hesitate. I reach into my pocket, pull out my phone.

  No, I can’t draw him into this. Not yet. I put the phone away.

  I have to figure this out. On my own, or with the help of my kind. This isn’t Tim’s problem, he’s a Black Sheep—government liaison or not—and my best friend, and there’s no way I’m going to drag him into whatever this is. He made his choice not to be involved in the business years ago, and I’m going to honor that. Besides, I doubt there is anything he can do.

  I turn around, walk back down the street in the direction of Roma Street Station, keeping to as much cover as I can. Lissa’s presence makes me stand out in a crowd—to those who know how to look, anyway.

  I think about that damn disconcerting door, and whoever it was I pomped. The pomps had been too fast for a visual, but the souls seemed familiar somehow. Perhaps Morrigan, or Derek? I can’t imagine either of them dead.

  The day’s warm but I’m shivering in my suit.

  Lissa looks at me. “It’s going to be all right. Take some deep breaths. Try and calm yourself down, Steven.”

  “You really think this is going to be all right?” I growl. She looks away. “How the fuck is this going to end well?”

  “You have to believe it will, or you might as well just sit down now, and do nothing. Wait for whoever it is to find you, if you want. Let me tell you now, they won’t be gentle.”

  “I’ll get home, and we can sort this out.”

  “No,” she shakes her head stridently, “you don’t want to go home. They’ll be there. I went home, and it was the last mistake I made. I can’t tell you how angry it makes me, to have died this way.”