Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey Page B

foiled all my noble intentions by being typically warm and friendly to everyone, Kevin included. Reka was as warm and friendly as a glacier to everyone but Kevin, for whom she melted, chatting with him between their scenes as if he were an old friend. I didn’t like the way she looked at him – sort of hungry and grasping – but it was hardly my business to protect Kevin’s virtue, even if he had been inclined to give it away.
    To make matters worse, Reka looked even more beautiful. She was wearing another anachronistic outfit, this one a crisp 40s-style dark-grey skirt suit over a creamy, high-collared blouse. The fitted skirt cut off at the back of her knees, and she wore sheer black pantyhose underneath. In the crowds of students in jeans and layers of jerseys, she should have looked like an overdressed schoolmarm, but with her startling hair arranged in looped braids all over her skull, she resembled a barbarian princess in business drag. In that company, Iris’s pristine grey wool dress and black stockings warranted barely a glance.
    I ran the fights through for Iris’s approval. The boys were still too enthusiastic about their proposed punch-up, and I was worried they’d get hurt. The last thing this show needed was injured lovers. Maybe I could tell them some of my grislier training stories, like the one where I’d taken a sparring pad to the throat, and been unable to swallow solid food for a day. Or the one about the sidekick to the collarbone that had stopped me raising my right arm for weeks.
    Iris called a break, and most of the cast scattered to get food somewhere where it wouldn’t offend Reka’s delicate constitution, sulking out loud about missing out on their Friday night. The vending machines downstairs were definitely calling to me – my dinner had been mashed potatoes and limp broccoli, and not much of either – but Kevin sat down beside me, and Reka with him. Iris slumped, then flicked open a newspaper to cover for her reaction.
    In the nearly empty theatre, the silence was very obvious.
    â€˜So,’ I said, striving to make my tone light. ‘You’re allergic to cooked food, is that right?’
    Reka didn’t bother to make eye contact with me, preferring to lean her arm on the armrest, beside Kevin’s. ‘That’s right.’
    â€˜I guess that must make a social life pretty hard.’
    â€˜Lay off, Ellie,’ Kevin ordered.
    I blinked at him. ‘What do you—’ He put his hand over Reka’s as if to comfort her. ‘Don’t make fun of people’s disabilities!’
    My teeth snapped together so hard they clicked. ‘Sorry,’ I managed, after a moment. Kevin had never used that voice with me.
    â€˜I accept your apology,’ Reka said, and squeezed Kevin’s hand.
    â€˜What do you think about these Eyeslasher murders, Ellie?’ Iris asked, tapping the newspaper’s front page.
    Even knowing she was trying to help couldn’t stop my reply from being curt. ‘I think they’re gross.’
    The headline read Mori Elder Murdered! and the story described the latest Eyeslasher victim as a pillar of the community; a general practitioner with a family practice, he had also been a respected kaum tua . There was a colour photograph with the article, deliberately discordant against the description of the dead man’s beaten and mutilated body. Looking steadily at the camera, a solid, grizzled man with a feathered cloak over his dark business suit stood in the middle of a crowd of kids on a marae , all of them with bare feet, dark eyes, and huge grins.
    â€˜He just went out to buy milk,’ Iris read. ‘That’s so sad.’
    â€˜It can’t be that bad,’ I said sourly. ‘There’s still room on the front page for the sheep that ran away and lived in a cave for six years.’ There was a picture of the sheep, too. It was very woolly.
    Reka leaned over