I resisted the urge to reach out and touch the ancient stone walls through which we passed, with their moss-deepened carvings, and got the impression that, like the carvings, Athelas’ words were a lot deeper than they seemed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about anymore,” I said.
“Do you not?” Athelas glanced down at me with the same smile, and now there was a touch of real amusement to it. He stopped me walking by pulling back slightly on the pinch of fabric he held. “I mean there’s no reason for a fae—for any fae, Pet—to be concerned whether their pet lives or dies.”
“Are you warning me about Zero again?”
Athelas blinked a little, and the amusement in his face grew. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose.”
“And you’re warning me about yourself as well?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said again.
I blew out my cheeks, wondering if Athelas’ information would ever, like the books in Zero’s bookcase, grow easier to understand without me having to work so hard at it.
“What are the symptoms?” I asked him. If I couldn’t make any sense of the information he was giving me, I’d try to get some different information to work with.
“I wouldn’t like to ruin the surprise,” Athelas said, and pulled me out of Between and into the house with a flick of the wrist.
Zero and JinYeong were only a step behind us, JinYeong strolling past us and into the living room, and Zero reaching past me to open the front door in the face of Detective Tuatu, who had just raised his fist to knock.
The detective jumped, and I wondered fleetingly if he’d been thinking about using his picks on the door again.
I grinned at him and he went slightly pink, so he probably had been thinking about it.
“You’re just in time,” I said. “Coming in?”
He came in, but he still looked uneasy. “In time for what?” he muttered.
I was pretty sure he was talking to himself, so I didn’t answer. I just grinned at him again, and that was enough to make him look uneasy all the way to the living room, where he sat down as far away from JinYeong as possible.
Zero didn’t sit down, which was as little surprising as the detective moving away from JinYeong, but JinYeong didn’t sit down either. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to intimidate Detective Tuatu, or if it was normal for them when they met with other humans.
“All right,” said the detective. He sounded pretty cool, but I could see his eyes shifting between Zero and JinYeong, and I knew they could, too. “First, I want an explanation.”
JinYeong, stalking back and forth with his mouth mockingly pursed, asked, “Wae?”
“What explanation?” asked Zero, and now he did sit down, propping one foot up on the coffee table.
I thought at first that he was trying to make Tuatu feel better, since JinYeong wasn’t helping, but that was silly. Athelas had just reminded me that fae like Zero didn’t care about the comfort of humans, regardless of what their pets were trying to make them do. Maybe he was feeling relaxed since recharging at the falls.
“You all appeared and disappeared in my interview room without so much as a warning,” Detective Tuatu said. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I want to know who—what you are, and why you’re interested in my cases.”
“If I remember rightly,” said Athelas, “you were the one who called us.”
“I’m told you were investigating the previous case before I was.”
“We don’t give explanations,” Zero said. “If you want our help, we’ll give it; but don’t expect anything else.”
The detective’s lips tightened, and he pointed at me. “What about her?”
“I’m right here, you know,” I complained. “Didn’t your mum tell you it’s rude to point?”
“She said she’s your pet.”
“It’s true,” Zero said coolly. “What of it?”
“You can’t keep girls as pets.”
“They can,” I argued.
“It’s creepy as all heck!”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do it.”
Detective Tuatu opened and closed his mouth before finally saying, “Why are you arguing with me?!”
“I agreed to be their pet,” I told him. “Don’t have a go at them!”
“They call that Stockholm’s Syndrome,” said Detective Tuatu.
I shrugged. “You can call it what you want. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
Maybe that was the wrong thing to say.
His eyebrows went up. “I’m almost one hundred percent sure that you’re still underage,” he told me. “So—”
“Actually,” I said coldly, “I was born in 2000.”
“It’s only February.”
“Yeah? Know what month I was born in?”
Another silence.
After it, the detective said reluctantly, “No.”
“Yeah, well for all you know, I was born in January or February.”
“Were you?”
“That’s enough,” said Zero, and the ice in his voice froze me as well as Tuatu. “You’re not here to question the pet. Coffee, Pet.”
“Right,” I said. I stuck out my tongue at the detective on my way through to the kitchen, which made JinYeong look startled. I s’pose he’s the one I usually stick my tongue out at, so it must have been a nice surprise for once. I mean, he looked offended, but he looks offended at pretty much everything I do, so that was nothing new.
I made tea for the detective, too; he was almost a part of the family now—well, if your idea of family was two twisty-minded fae and a sulky vampire. I couldn’t remember if he had sugar or not, but they were talking about the case and I didn’t want to interrupt them to ask about it in case they remembered I was there, listening.
If he needed sugar, he could get it for himself.
I made up the tray at the kitchen island while the jug boiled, and watched the detective pass out files between my three psychos.
“It’s not much,” I heard him say. “But there’s a bit in there that isn’t official, too. Think it’s enough to get you started?”
Zero thumbed through the paperwork, his eyes thoughtful, and asked, “Who collected the blood samples?”
The detective cleared his throat, and Zero’s eyes flickered back over to him.
“You collected them?”
“The results in the last two cases are from independent labs, tested on samples I gathered myself. The official ones for the first two cases kept getting mislabelled or contaminated, so I began to collect my own samples. None of them will hold up in court.”
“Human courts aren’t our concern,” said Zero.
“They’re my concern!” the detective said, a bit sharply.
“Very well,” said Zero; and maybe Detective Tuatu thought he was agreeing with him, because he looked relieved.
Oh well. He’d learn better later.
I prepared the tea tray as slowly as possible, hoping to hear more, but when I looked up from the teapot, Athelas was there in the doorway. He must have wanted to speak to me, because it was suddenly hard to hear what was going on in the other room; sort of muffled and indistinct instead of clear like I was used to it being.
That was annoying, and rude into the bargain. I glared at him.
Athelas smiled and said tranquilly, “I had no idea we figured in your mind as creepy, Pet!”
“Nah, I’m used to you now.”
“That’s a great relief.”
“Not that I can see,” I told him, still trying to hear what was going on in the other room. “Since when do you care what I think of you?”
“It is always wise to care what other people think of you,” Athelas said. “One doesn’t need to do anything about it, of course, but it’s always useful to know.”
For a moment, I heard Zero’s voice say, “The pet is already involved. That’s our affair,” and Tuatu protest, “It’s a dangerous case!” but then e
verything went fuzzy again.
I asked glumly, “Why would it be useful to know what I think of you?”
“Say I wished to manipulate you into doing something for me,” he suggested.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. I was pretty sure I already understood, and I didn’t like where this was going. “You mean if you wanted me to do something, it would be useful to know what I think of you and work on me from there? Like, if I thought of you as a psychopath—”
“—I could attempt to frighten you into doing what I wanted you to do. Direct, neat, and very likely to succeed.”
“Yeeeeah,” I said, even more slowly. Disorientingly, I heard Detective Tuatu’s voice cut in— “There aren’t any vacancies, but I’ve heard you can be persuasive, so—”
Athelas’ voice continued through or around or maybe in it, drowning the detective’s voice out again, “Now, if I were to think you thought of me as, perhaps, someone to be trusted—”
I opened my mouth to say fat chance! but stopped the words just in time. Since my mouth was open anyway, I said, “You mean you’d be making an effort to keep me thinking you could be trusted,” instead.
Athelas inclined his head. “Having done so, I would work on those expectations you have of me to manipulate you into doing what I want you to do.”
“Look, I thought you didn’t want me to think you’re creepy?”
“I’ve no objection to anyone finding me creepy,” demurred Athelas. “So long as it suits my purposes to be thought so.”
“Yeah, that’s not creepy at all,” I said, and gave him the thumbs up. “You lot want biscuits in there?”
“Of course.”
“Oi.”
Athelas’ eyes rested on me. “I won’t answer that question, Pet.”
“You don’t even know what I was gunna ask!”
“Do I not? You were going to ask me what I came in here to distract you from.”
“All right, who told you to do it, then?” I demanded, feeling hard done by.
“I believe I shouldn’t need to answer that particular question,” Athelas said, and his voice was chiding.
“Yeah, but you do stuff off your own bat, too,” I protested. “It’s not just Zero you do stuff for.”
“If I were you,” said Athelas, and he said it very quietly, very chillingly, “I would not repeat that again, Pet.”
I shut my mouth and took the tea tray into the other room. The moment I stepped down into the living room, I could hear their voices clearly again.
Detective Tuatu, his lips tight, was saying, “…and whatever it is, don’t do it again! You might be running the Hobart Station from upstairs, but I don’t have to obey your orders.”
Good for him. Zero must have been trying out the same thing JinYeong had once tried on the detective and found not to work, either—that thing where they used their vampire and fae abilities to enthral or control the person they were talking to. They hadn’t tried it on me—or at least, I assumed they hadn’t tried it on me. I might not have remembered if they did it, but I was pretty sure they would have used it a lot of times I remembered them not using it.
Sometimes I’m not a very obedient pet.
I was also pretty sure I knew why the detective wasn’t susceptible to their influence; that pendant of his had turned up some interesting things when I looked for it online a week ago. I still didn’t know exactly why it didn’t work on me. Maybe they just didn’t try.
I was pretty sure they had, though.
Zero didn’t exactly look startled, but he did exchange a look with Athelas. He said to Detective Tuatu, “We’ll collaborate. If you need to get in contact with us for the duration, speak with the pet.”
I looked from the detective to Zero. “The duration of what?”
“The most obvious place to investigate is the supermarket,” said the detective. “I can’t go myself, because you aren’t officially with me, but if one of you can get in there using your…skills…it will probably be useful.”
I grinned. “We’re going undercover?”
“We’re going undercover,” Zero said shortly. “Not you.”
“Yeah?” I gave him his coffee. “How you gunna convince anyone that you’re checkout chicks? I’m the only normal one here. They’ll sniff you out in a minute.”
There was a definite glow of amusement to Athelas’ soft eyes as he took his teacup from me and sat down. “The pet is not entirely wrong,” he said. “And we might want to consider that a pet at home alone is potentially more trouble than a pet at our heels. Perhaps we can send her in with a handler?”
“JinYeong can look after it,” Zero said, abruptly switching his decision without a correlating change of emotion to his face.
“Ah, Hyeong!” JinYeong said reproachfully.
Stupid vampire. It was his fault, anyway.
He didn’t make any other complaint, though, and I was a bit surprised. He and Zero were always either fighting each other or fighting together against all other comers; but since they got back, JinYeong had been pretty civil. Usually he had a snark at Zero once every couple of days.
“Next time, don’t smear blood on me,” I told him, by way of testing the waters. I didn’t trust his good streak, especially not where it came to me.
The detective said in surprise, “Blood? What blood?”
“All right, don’t get your knickers in a knot!” I told him. “It wasn’t anyone he killed, it was the dead bloke.”
Detective Tuatu didn’t look any less sick. “Why did he smear blood on you from the crime scene?”
“That’s what I’m saying!” I said, in mild victory. “Who does that!”
“You can come out of here with me right now,” the detective said. “I’ll take you with me.”
I don’t think he expected me to laugh, and maybe the others didn’t, either, because my laugh cut across Zero’s growl of, “We discussed this. Leave while you still have legs to do so.”
“That’s pet-napping,” I told the detective, and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. “C’mmon, I’ll show you the way out.”
“Isn’t it useful, having a pet?” murmured Athelas, as I towed the detective toward the door. “And so very amusing!”
Chapter Five
I started out to work with JinYeong the next morning. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was walking with JinYeong, it might have been an enjoyable morning; it was fresh and cool, but not too cool, and it was the first day of the first legal job I’d had.
I mean, okay, it was a job I was probably getting because of JinYeong’s manipulative vampire wiles, but it was a real job. At least I wasn’t going to get paid in cash.
Actually, was I going to get paid at all?
I stopped in the street and said to JinYeong, “Hang on. Am I getting paid, or what?”
He smirked at me and kept walking.
I trotted after him and asked, “How exactly are we getting these jobs, anyway? Detective Tuatu said something last night about there not being any vacancies.”
This time JinYeong smiled a lazy, toothy smile.
“Is that where you and Zero went last night? You were getting rid of staff to make some vacancies?”
“Mwoh,” said JinYeong, and the smile was leaner and grimmer. “Bisutae.”
I should probably remember to ask Athelas what had happened to the people we were replacing; the detective wasn’t gunna be happy if my three psychos were out there injuring more humans. I wouldn’t be really happy about it, either, if it came to that.
I frowned worriedly. Zero wouldn’t hurt humans just to get us positions undercover, would he? I was sure he wouldn’t.
JinYeong must have seen my frown; he grinned a bit wider, and this time there was definitely the sharpness of canine teeth there.
“I don’t believe it,” I told him defiantly. “Stop smirking at me; we’re gunna be late for work at this rate.”
JinYeong shrugged. He probably didn’t care whether or not I believed him.
/> “I don’t believe it,” I told him again; but I did wonder why they hadn’t taken me with them last night. I was probably just being a jealous pet, but I didn’t see why JinYeong should get to go out with Zero when I didn’t get to go. I’d had to sit at home with Athelas, who, when he wasn’t drinking tea, merely sat and smiled dreamily to himself. Where the recharging seemed to leave Zero bright and sharp and deep-water icy, it had left Athelas smooth, mellow, and cat-with-creamy.
I wasn’t sure which one was more worrying.
JinYeong was mellower today, too though. He strolled along with his hands in the pockets of his crisply ironed suit—which he hadn’t made me do over more than once—and pouted serenely at the street around him until we got to the supermarket.
When we got to the service desk we were met by a girl with big, blonde hair and a smile that appeared and disappeared so fast it could have caused whiplash.
She flashed the smile at JinYeong and said, “You’re working with me today! This way!” and said over her shoulder to me as she led him away, “You wait here. Someone will come for you.”
Even JinYeong’s back looked smug. Most times that would have annoyed me, but maybe the recharging last night had mellowed me, too. I grinned and settled myself against the service desk to wait.
The service desk attendant, all sabre-tipped nails and eyeliner, with a name tag that read Carmen, said, “You’re the new one, are you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Hope you’re better than the last one,” she said. “He didn’t even show up to his shift yesterday.”
“I’ll show up to my shifts,” I promised cheerfully. Being undercover wasn’t much good if I wasn’t there. “I’ll even work while I’m here. Any advice?”
She stared at me for a few seconds before she grinned back at me. Maybe she’d had a long day.
“Make sure you don’t get on the wrong side of the queen bee out the back there,” she said. “And you’ll be fine.”
“Which one’s the queen bee?”
“You can’t miss her,” said Carmen, as an older woman in uniform powerwalked toward us. “Just watch your back, that’s all.”
The older woman was Rhonda, and she powerwalked me out to the storeroom like it was a race. Lucky for me, I’ve always been a quick walker, and I was used to keeping up with Zero’s long stride now. There wasn’t much in the way of training—Rhonda seemed to think I’d come from another store, so she just put me with one of the stock boys to get used to the place and left me there.
Between Shifts (The City Between Book 2) Page 7