First Night in Melbourne

Gabrielle was already awake by the time her trunk—six feet long, three feet deep, cushioned and lightproofed—was unloaded from the liner Barrabool. Moving slowly, so as not to alert the dockhands jolting her across the cobblestones towards the warehouse, she rolled onto her side, out of the supine position in which she always met the deathsleep, and stretched as much as she was able to. This was Melbourne, then. Already, the air in her close confines smelled different from the staleness of weeks in the Barrabool's cargo hold.

She braced against the sides of the trunk as it was lifted up and set down, none too gently, on top of another wooden case. Now, all she had to do was wait until the rest of the liner's cargo was unloaded and the workers locked up for the night. Gabrielle hoped they would respect the many firm notices pasted to the outside of her trunk, alerting them to its delicate contents and forbidding anyone from placing more boxes on top of it. It wasn't that she would be incapable of escape in such a situation, but tidying up the resulting damage would delay her entry to the city, and by now she was thirsty: not just for blood, for the promise of draining a victim to death after weeks subsisting on the Little Drink, but for the experience of a new country, a new continent even.

By one in the morning, Gabrielle was forcing the lock on the warehouse's door and slipping out onto the streets that led away from the harbour. The air was cool, a scent of rain still lingering from a downpour that must have happened earlier in the evening. She stepped silently around the puddles that had formed in the gutters, reflecting the electric street lights above. It didn't take her long to find part of the city that was still awake and merry, hidden though it was behind rolled-down metal shutters. A painted sign informed passersby, in a strained attempt at respectability, that this was a members' club.

Gabrielle was standing just outside the door of the club, her head slightly tilted as she listened to the cacophony of thoughts coming from inside, when the car pulled up a few feet away from her.

She would have disregarded the vehicle and ignored its driver, too, but for the sharp flare of curiosity that came from his direction. When she looked across, the man had opened his door and stood at the side of the car, watching her over its polished hood.

"You're looking for Miss Fisher's party, Miss, ah..." he said, in a voice bright with a confidence that trickled away from it by the end of his sentence.

Gabrielle fixed her eyes on him coolly. "I don't know who that is," she replied, not bothering to keep the French accent out of her voice. He paled slightly under his cap.

"No. I, ah—excuse me, Miss, I must have mistaken you for someone else." He shook his head. "Something about you just reminded me of..."

She didn't volunteer any words to help his discomfort.

"But you are looking for a cab, am I right, Miss?" he asked in the end.

"No," she said.

"Right. Pardon me, then, Miss. Have a good evening."

The car drove off, more rapidly than before. Gabrielle pushed open the door to the club and entered a steamy bubble of light and noise, merely nodding to the bouncer as she made her way to the bar. Technically speaking, everyone in this room was a criminal. She could feel the tension that rose in them as they ordered their glasses of beer and brandy, forbidden at this hour of the night, but that did not an evildoer make. At the far end of the room, surrounded by a cloud of his own misdeeds, sat an unrepentant rapist. Gabrielle was going to enjoy this kill.

She had written to the hotel from Cape Town, explaining that she would be arriving in the small hours of the morning and requesting someone to sit up and wait for her. Now, as she finally approached the stately building, its wide verandah deserted in the darkness, she was pleased to see the dim lamplight that showed they had done so.

The body of her victim was cooling in an alleyway two miles from here and, she knew, his blood had warmed her pale cheeks into roses. The young man who drooped over the reception desk did not require such magic to be fooled that she was an ordinary guest; in his sleep-deprived state, it would have taken much more than Gabrielle's appearance to disquiet him. Nonetheless, life was more convenient when she had less to explain.

"You've got no luggage with you, madam?" he asked when she had signed the register in her current alias.

"I have a trunk at the P&O warehouse at the Melbourne Dock," she said. "Please have it collected tomorrow and left outside of my room. I require absolute silence during the day to recover from my travels. There must be no interruptions by maids or other staff."

"Of course, I understand," he said, glancing up at her and then quickly back down to the desk, at the large tip she slid across its polished surface to him.

As she climbed the staircase to her room, he was already turning off the lamp and leaving for his home.

There were still a few hours left in the night. Gabrielle took off her knitted sweater and hung it over the end of the bed, keeping on her shirt as well as the plus-fours and long socks, so amusingly reminiscent of the breeches and stockings she had worn in her first nights in the Blood. Pulling out a notebook, map, and a couple of thin bound volumes from her pockets, she sat at the roll-top desk to make a plan of her time in this city. Her goal was the Outback, of course. In its famed wilderness of red dust, she would run under new constellations on land that had a history different from any she had known before. She looked forward to encountering the night-time creatures of these strange habitats, to sleeping amid the roots of unknown trees with new soil pulled over her.

Not much time had passed before Gabrielle paused in her writing and focussed her hearing keenly on the sounds around her. An unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation passed through her: the inkling that she had made a mistake. Beneath the rustle of hotel guests rolling in their bedsheets and the whisper of the acacia leaves outside was a sound that she had only rarely heard, and never so close. It was the deep, slow heartbeat of one who had been a blood drinker for hundreds of years.

A tap on the window made her jump, and then curse herself for being surprised. The net curtain showed the shadow of a figure standing on the windowsill outside. Gabrielle stepped back from the desk, knocking the chair to the floor, and retreated closer to the room door. She adopted a cautious stance, ready—she hoped—for anything. The figure at the window bent down, and the lower sash began to slide upwards.

When the vampire stepped down into the room, the first thing Gabrielle noticed was her shoes: fashionable heels, not what one would usually wear to shimmy up the wall of a hotel in the dark. Of course, that needn't make a difference to one like them. Gabrielle could have constrained herself to women's shoes and still ranged out into the world, if she had wanted to... but why would she want to? The second thing she noticed was the wide, red-lipsticked smile, just on the edge of flirtatious, and the fang teeth that flashed in it.

"I'm Phryne Fisher," the elder said, one hand held out to be shaken. "The Honourable Phryne Fisher, that is. And you're new in town."

For want of anything better to do, Gabrielle reached out to take the white hand with its glassy nails. She met the Honourable Phryne Fisher's eyes, blue gems imprisoned between black-painted eyelashes, because she had no intention of giving the impression of someone who would back down from a challenge.

"I'm Gabrielle," she said. Just the one name, freed over a hundred years ago from any claim her husband's family had had on it.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Gabrielle." Phryne sat down on the edge of the desk, the folds of her gown, covered in narrow jet beads, swishing as she did so. Identical beads hung on long wires from her ears, just peeking out from the modish black bob that brushed against her cheeks. Something Gabrielle couldn't identify rose in her when the elder pronounced her name.

"Now, to go back to my previous point, I can tell that you're new in town. And the reason I know this is because every other vampire in Queensland... let's be honest, in Australia... knows not to make a kill in Melbourne. Every other vampire knows that Melbourne is my city."

The pause that followed stretched into a silence. Gabrielle had barred her mind as best she could, as soon as she had heard the uncanny booming of Phryne's heart, but she wasn't sure how effective her defenses were against one of such evident age.

"This conversation normally goes very differently, if you can call what usually happens a conversation," Phryne said at last, with a quirk of her scarlet lips. "But you interest me, Gabrielle. I'd like to get to know you better before you leave Melbourne."

"I'd like that too." Gabrielle heard herself speak before she realised she was going to reply.

"Here's my card." It was thick and cream-coloured, and it landed neatly on top of Gabrielle's open notebook. "I'd like for you to visit me tomorrow night. You won't be intruding; I have a regular salon. Something tells me we'll have a lot to talk about."

Phryne's eyes twinkled and then, before Gabrielle could make a move either towards her or away, she had vanished again. Not even the faint clatter of beads betrayed the direction she had taken.

Although she slammed the window sash down and locked it, drew both the blinds and the curtains, and jammed the chair under the door handle, although she rolled herself in the blanket like a mummy and slid under the bed to wait out the deathsleep, although she had been certain—too certain!—that she was alone in Melbourne, Gabrielle could not make herself feel at ease. The knowledge of her vulnerability made her tremble until the dawn had risen over the acacia trees, birds she could not name cackling a greeting to the sun. That, and the memory of the feeling that had stolen over her when those glittering blue eyes had looked into her own.

The last thought that passed through her mind before sleep seized her was an inventory of the clothes in her trunk, to calculate the smartest outfit she could wear to the elder's salon.