loss, and loss is pain. Sometimes though, if you're lucky, you can find some grace. I'd seen it enough at funerals, a kind of beaten dignity. Maybe that's all you can hope for. Maybe that's all I can hope for.
I'd promised my parents that I'd do my best to go on, and that drove me, hard. Jesus, I'm lucky I had a chance to say goodbye, most Pomps don't even get that. Shit, I'd only managed because of Lissa. And now she was gone. Alex is waiting for me. He smiles, though I know he really wants to tell me that I look like shit. It's one of the ways he's different from his father. Don would have told me straight up.
'You got that aspirin?' I have a headache, but that's not what it's for.
He nods and passes the packet to me. I take a handful of the pills and swallow them.
'You sure that's a good thing to do?'
'It's not a good thing at all. But aspirin's the quickest way I know of to thin my blood,' I say. 'Have you got the suit?'
He nods. 'Oh, and I got something else.' He chucks a heavy black vest at me. I catch it with a grunt.
'What's this?'
'Something you didn't think of. It's Kevlar, the best I could manage.'
'Good work.'
'It won't protect your head, but it's better than nothing.'
It's far better than nothing. The suit and the vest are even the right size. I don't ask how he managed it. I just change. The suit's an affectation really, ridiculous. But if I am going to my own funeral, if I am doing the work of a Pomp, then I want to be in a suit. I look at myself in the car door window. If it's at all possible I look thinner than I've ever been, but the suit fits well, partly because of the bulletproof vest. I almost look good. Even my hair.
Alex has managed to get me everything else I wanted. 'Thanks. You did good.'
'The CBD's virtually deserted.' He grimaces. 'I had to do a little bit of looting. For the greater good, I kept telling myself, for the greater good.'
I shove everything in the sports bag (another item on the list) and dump that on the front seat. Alex is standing there, formidable as always, waiting. But probably not for what's coming.
Suddenly I'm telling him about Lissa. It's pouring out of me, and by the end of it Alex, Black Sheep or not, is looking at me sternly.
Then he grins, and chuckles. 'You fell in love with a dead girl. Even I know that's unprofessional.' Alex shakes his head. 'But then again, Tim said you were always getting into trouble.'
I laugh even though there are tears in my eyes.
Alex grabs my arm, and scowls. 'Steve, if you have any chance of getting through this, and believe me when I say I want you to, you're going to have to put everything aside, or Morrigan's won. You're not dead yet, and that's got to count for something, don't you think?'
'I've let stuff slide all my life,' I say.
'Yeah, but that's different. Stuff was never going to get you killed. Morrigan murdered my dad, Steve. He murdered your parents, too. Now we both know the score when it comes to death, but it still hurts. I'm still not even sure how I feel about it. But there's one thing I do know-Morrigan's trying to kill you, and he'll succeed if you lose focus.' He pats my arm. 'Maybe Lissa's out there. Shit, man, you've been to the land of the dead. You went there and you came back. Just stop and think about that for a minute before you face the end of days, eh?'
'It isn't,' I say.
'What?'
'It isn't the end. I'm not going to die.' We both know that this is unlikely, but we both know that I have to try.
Alex grins. 'Yeah, bloody right, you're not.'
'Maybe you should think about leaving town for a while.'
'And extend the misery a little longer? No thanks, mate. If this doesn't work, I'm going to the Regatta to drink till I want to die. You think Tim's alive?'
I shrug. 'I haven't pomped him, but that doesn't mean anything. Morrigan could have, or his spirit's been left wandering. I'm sure there's plenty of souls in that position.'
Alex takes a deep breath. 'Let me come with you,' he says.
Christ, I wish he could. Alex is a thousand times more capable than me. For one, he managed to get everything that I needed. I reckon he could storm Number Four in his sleep.
I shake my head. 'There's too many Stirrers.' I point over toward the center of the city. Their presence is a choking foulness in my throat. 'Even you must be able to sense them now. You wouldn't last a minute being so close to so many. I could brace you, but if I go under, you're gone. I don't want to have that on my conscience.'
I don't know if he looks angry or relieved. But I'm sure I've made the right decision. Alex is a Black Sheep, and a cop. He knows what I'm up against-and so do I. I'm trying not to think about it too much, because I need to believe that I might have a chance. I desperately need to believe that.
'Well,' I say. 'It was nice knowing you.' I hand him a tin of brace paint. 'This will keep you safe for a little longer.'
Alex nods then slides the tin into a pocket and we shake hands, which seems at once ridiculously formal and apt.
'Good luck,' Alex says.
'You too.'
We stand there awkwardly, then the moment passes and we head to our respective cars.
Number Four is waiting for me. Morrigan is waiting, and I'm going to give him what he wants.
It's time to end this.
34
Number Four is on George Street, so I park in the Wintergarden car park. The big car park is empty but for a couple of deserted cars-all nicer than the Corolla, but it hasn't let me down yet. I'm less noticeable as a pedestrian, and I can reach George Street and Number Four directly from here. It's only a few blocks away and there's a nice circularity to it-though I only think of that once I've parked. The last time I was here I could have convinced myself that my life was normal. I yearn for that time. But it's lost to me now.
I pass through the food court where I first met Lissa and fell in love or lust or whatever it was at the beginning, just before she told me to run-in the other direction. Even then I knew to avoid Number Four, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.
Everywhere I look I see Lissa, the places she filled. I struggle to stop the rising anger that it brings, a bleak force that threatens to overpower me as much as any Stirrer.
It's now late in the afternoon and normally the CBD would be crowded with Sunday shoppers, but it's a virtual ghost town as I walk up Elizabeth Street, past empty boutique stores and bus stops. None of the pubs and clubs are open, their doors are dead mouths gaping, their windows blank eyes staring. There are so many Stirrers in the city that my senses burn with them. What I'm feeling is far worse than the Wesley Hospital. It's a deep and sickening disquiet. Get too many Stirrers together and people sense the wrongness of the situation, in the same way they could sense Lissa on the bus seat next to me. The buses and trains would have been crowded this afternoon but people have stayed away, shops have shut early and no one would have been able to explain why.
It feels as though most of the Stirrers in the city have gathered here. Better near me than out in the suburbs.
As I approach Number Four, the key starts tingling in my grip, then it begins to burn. For all its heat I refuse to let it go. I'm not Death, and the key knows it, but that's the thing, there is currently no Regional Manager. I'm hoping that I haven't set off alarms, I just don't know.
But when I turn into George Street, that's the least of my worries.
Stirrers have gathered around Number Four. There are at least a hundred of them, and that density of death
