Just as I thought I might be able to risk talking, Erica asked me, “You’re new, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “Started yesterday.”
“Thanks for helping me with these. The other girl had to go home sick.”
I shrugged. “Beats working downstairs. At least I can sit down in here.”
“Trust me,” she said. “You’ll want to walk around after a couple hours of this. Oh! Not like that; do it like thi—oh no! I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay,” I said, putting my finger in my mouth. From how panicked she sounded, you’d think I’d accidentally cut off a finger. “It’s just a papercut. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m really sorry,” she said again, darting a look across the room at Shanae and away again.
There was a fed-up sigh from Shanae’s side of the office. “You don’t have to keep apologising, Erica! She said it’s okay! For pity’s sake!”
Erica shrank in on herself and gave me an apologetic smile. “I’ve got a bandaid,” she said. “Don’t put it in your mouth; it’s not healthy.”
She wrapped the plaster around my finger for me, and when Shanae left the office to go buy herself lunch, she said, “Sorry about her. Everyone’s a bit on edge at the moment.”
Heck yes. My opportunity!
“Yeah, I thought so,” I said. “Is it because of the dead bloke?”
That startled her, though I don’t know why. “What? Oh, you heard about that?”
“Heard about it?” I asked, deciding that a bit of honesty might be the best policy. “I found it! I came here the other day to get my groceries and I saw him out in the alley. Made me feel a bit sick.”
She shuddered. “I didn’t see it. I’m glad I didn’t. But you still came to work?”
“Yeah. Still got bills to pay.”
“How…how close did you get to it?”
“Too flamin’ close!” I told her, and had to stop myself from running my fingers over the proof of the danger of that proximity hiding beneath the loose hair on my forehead. I had to fight a shiver, too, because if we didn’t find the right wolf in time, it was gunna be me that was dead next. “Who murders a bloke near a supermarket, anyway?”
She murmured something, though I wasn’t sure exactly what. She’d gone back to looking like she had when I saw Daniel following her across the parking lot.
I pushed it a bit and asked, “Did your friend come to pick you up yesterday?”
“My friend?” She looked at me in surprise, and then flushed. “Oh! Yes. That was you in the locker room. I’ve been having a few problems; nothing too important.”
“Flamin’ men,” I said, nodding. “Can’t take no for an answer.”
She ducked her head over her tickets, but she said quietly, “Yes. You too?”
“I know a few prime specimens,” I agreed. “Did it help, walking with your friend?”
“Yes.” She looked up again, and this time she smiled at me. “It still felt like there was someone there, but I felt safer. I was probably just imagining it.”
“Someone still followed you? You should take it to the police.”
“I couldn’t be sure, you know? I thought I recognised his hoodie—it’s so distinctive—but I can’t prove anything. And now that there’s been a murder at the store, I’m even jumpier.”
“Yeah.” I tore a few more tickets and asked her, “You know something about the dead bloke?”
She shut down immediately. “Of course not! It’s just awful, that’s all, and I’m scared. Why would I know anything about it?”
“Dunno,” I said, shrugging. She knew something, all right; just the fact that she was dousing herself in perfume said so. Only I couldn’t really bring that up without sounding not-quite-human myself. I added, “Just you seem a bit more scared than the others, and I thought you might know something about how he got killed. That’s the sort of thing you need to tell the cops, too.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she said, scrambling her tickets together. “I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see anything!”
“All right, all right,” I said soothingly. “I didn’t say you were. But you’re worried about something else, aren’t you? Maybe something to do with person you were talking about?”
She was scared, yeah. But it didn’t look like her fear was going to be strong enough to make her speak out—or maybe it was because she was so scared that she wouldn’t speak out? I’d seen a fair bit since meeting my three psychos, and it was still putting me into a cold sweat when I remembered I’d be dead or a werewolf in less than two weeks if we didn’t find our man.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know a cop. He’s pretty nice, and if you tell him what’s going on, he’ll help you.”
Detective Tuatu seemed to be a concerned sort of person, so he probably would, too.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Really. I think I just got scared because it was dark. It probably wasn’t even him.”
Okay, so she wasn’t speaking because of whatever it was she was hiding, which meant there was a good chance she’d seen what happened that night, too.
“I just get scared walking home alone, these days,” she said. “Do you think—do you have time to walk with me this afternoon? I don’t have far to go, and my friend can’t do it. Please; it would make me feel less jumpy, I think.”
I was going to tell her no—I knew that Zero would tell me to go straight home, and that it would probably be a good thing for her to be scared enough to push past whatever it was she didn’t want to tell.
But I caught sight of her face, miserable and pleading, and found myself saying, “Yeah, okay. But you’ll have to wait until I finish.”
Her face lit up straight away. “Thank you! Just…don’t tell anyone, will you?”
“’Course not!” I mean, I’d have to tell Zero, obviously.
“Promise,” she said.
“I really won’t,” I said solemnly.
Somehow I actually didn’t tell Zero where I was going when I finished work. In fact, I didn’t even think about it until Erica and I were on Campbell Street after work, walking down toward the city centre, and a text made my phone buzz against my leg.
I fished out my phone, and it lit with the message, What are you doing?
“Whoops!” I muttered.
“What is it?” asked Erica, her face anxious again. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just forgot to tell someone I couldn’t meet him today. He can wait.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Nah, just a bloke I was supposed to meet. I’m learning some martial arts and I’m s’posed to meet up this arvo to practise.”
That was true, as far as it went. It was also the reason why I was so sore just walking today—not to mention the reason it was so nice to sit down instead of walk around the store all afternoon. It wasn’t far to Erica’s place, though; she had a room in a shared home above someone’s optometrist business right in the middle of Hobart, and walking her home only took ten minutes.
She invited me in, but whatever her roommates were cooking turned my stomach right off and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t throw up if I went in. I figured it was safer to go back home.
Especially since I hadn’t answered the text from Zero.
Erica had looked so scared that I didn’t like to do it while she was there. Maybe that’s why it felt as though my neck was crawling as I walked back down Murray Street, tapping out an answer to the text.
Or maybe, I thought, tilting the screen of the phone just a little bit to check out the street in its mirror-surface, maybe Erica’s someone was following me now.
I caught a brief glimpse of something swift and grey disappearing into a street beside me, so close that I felt the breeze from its passing, then someone grabbed me by the collar and pulled me right through the craft store’s front window and into Between.
I yelled and kicked, and the hand dropped me into a dark corner where wild graffiti
was growing.
It was Zero.
I let out a breath that shook, and said, “Why you gotta sneak up on me like that?”
“Why did you leave after work without JinYeong?”
“Sorry about that,” I said, looking around at the piece of Between in interest. “I kinda forgot. That woman I was telling you about—she was scared to go home alone, so I walked with her. Oi! There’s people in here!”
“There are always people Between,” Zero said. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Yeah, but—” His eyes pinioned me, and I stopped. “I’m sorry,” I said again, this time a bit less flippantly. “I forgot to tell you. She was really scared, and I think she needs watching. She knows something about the body, too.”
“We’ll discuss that at home,” he said. “Next time, tell me where you’re going first. And when I text you, answer straight away.”
“Yes boss,” I said meekly. “You still got those photos out at home?”
“Yes,” he said. “Why?”
“Maybe we ought to discuss that at home, too,” I said, shooting another look around us.
In Hobart, I would have been right in the middle of the curtain fabric section of a craft store. Here Between, it was still some sort of a market, and there were bolts of fabric and stuff, but the clientele was kinda different. There were about as many of them as you’d get in there at sale time, though, which was a lot. They didn’t look like the sort to put out your eye with a knitting needle if you got to the fabric they wanted before them, but they did look like they might feel it was all right to enslave you for a few thousand years. Beautiful, haughty, and dressed in flowing fabrics, they were the closest thing to Athelas and Zero that I’d seen since I’d been popping in and out of Between. Even the fae I’d seen at the Between waystation hadn’t been so effortlessly arrogant and lofty.
Zero threw a look around, curious but not worried, and said, “Hold onto my strap. Don’t meet any eyes and don’t talk to anyone on the way out.”
“Got it, boss,” I said, and turned my eyes down to watch his boots. Maybe I was right. Maybe they were the sort to enslave people for a thousand years.
No one spoke to me on the way out, though a few whispers floated on the air, and we were out again in a few seconds. When we were back on the proper Hobart streets, I stuck close to Zero anyway, and shook off a bit of the graffiti that had stuck to my shoes.
“Think there was someone following me,” I said. “Did you see ’em?”
“Home first,” said Zero.
When we got home he didn’t seem very interested in talking, though. He sat back down at his display of paperwork and photos at the coffee table, and didn’t speak until Athelas got home and I came out of the kitchen with our tray of coffee and tea with biscuits. JinYeong, who had been glaring at me since I got home, took his coffee from me coldly and pinched the whole plate of biscuits again.
“Doesn’t matter,” I told him, and smugly pulled the napkin off a second plate of biscuits. “I’ve got another one.”
He made a dart for that one, too, but I’d already started to back away in expectation of that, and Athelas caught me.
“Must you bother the pet, JinYeong?” he asked, in a pained sort of way, and took the second plate of biscuits to put where he and Zero could both reach them.
Through biscuit crumbs, JinYeong made a sharp, annoyed complaint.
“I told you to watch the pet,” Zero said mildly. “Not let it run out on the streets.”
“Dear me, what an exciting day you’ve had, Pet,” said Athelas. “Slipping your leash?”
“Nah, I just forgot to tell Zero I was walking that girl home.” Zero looked at me in a silent, considering kind of way, and I added hastily, “I mean, I thoughtlessly forgot to make sure Zero knew where I was and walked that girl home. Oh. And then I didn’t answer his text, either.”
“Dear me!” murmured Athelas. “How unlike you, Pet!”
I didn’t answer that because I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. But because Zero was paying attention to people instead of just the files, for once, I took the opportunity to say, “Oi. Zero. Where are those photos of the dead people? I wanna check something.”
“What do you want to check?” asked Zero, frowning.
“Really, Pet?” Athelas said, looking amused. “I had no idea that carnage was interesting to you!”
“Not the crime scene photos!” I said hastily, going cold. That was a lucky escape. Seeing one of them in real life had been bad enough; I didn’t want to refresh the memory. “Them before they were killed! Why would I want to look at their mutilated bodies?”
“One can learn a great deal from a mutilation,” Athelas said, sipping his tea. “If one cares to learn.”
“This one doesn’t care to learn,” I muttered. It had been bad enough seeing JinYeong do his creepy blood licking thing again the other night with the blood samples Detective Tuatu had collected. “You can keep your mutilated bodies.”
“There’s very little use in keeping mutilated bodies,” demurred Athelas. “In fact, the idea of mutilating bodies is generally to dismember and deposit them piecemeal over an area in order to dispose of them more thoroughly.”
“Hope you don’t go around saying that sort of thing on the job,” I told him. “Humans start to get worried when people talk like that.”
“They do, don’t they?” Athelas said, smiling dreamily to himself. “No doubt good to remember. I’m indebted to you, Pet!”
“Yeah? Why?”
“What are you looking for, Pet?” Zero asked again, passing a small stack of thin folders.
“Some names, I reckon,” I said, opening the first of the folders. It was thin because there was only a photo and a piece of paper inside. It was a woman, one with a nice face and the name of April Post. The piece of paper was a brief rundown of her life; name, age, physical description, birthplace, workplace, family, connections. “Oi. This one worked at the supermarket, too.”
“The detective said most of them did,” said Zero. “The only one who didn’t was the one they found furthest from the store; a tramp.”
“Maybe the whole supermarket is a shifter supermarket,” I said. “Flamin’ dodgy! How did the police get away with covering it up for so long? This woman was killed a year ago, but the first one was two years ago!”
“That is what I’m attempting to find out,” Athelas said. “I fear the detective is concerned at my presence, but really, where else could I go other than the police station?”
“I told him he should watch out for that,” I said, nodding.
“I’m sure he was grateful,” said Zero. “Have you found what you wanted to find, Pet?”
“Yeah,” I said in satisfaction, tapping the photo of one of the men. It was labelled as Chris Turner. “This one; I know his name.”
Zero looked up. “Why?”
“Rhonda said Shanae from cash office was keen on him before he caught sight of Erica. There was another bloke, too, but he’s still alive; he moved out of state.”
“How refreshing!” said Athelas. “Human drama is such a delight to watch unfold!”
“We know shifters can be possessive,” Zero remarked. “JinYeong, is that the human you mentioned? Shanae?”
“Ne,” said JinYeong, irritatingly self-satisfied.
Oh well. It wasn’t like I had a better suspect. I mean, I had one; it was just that I wasn’t convinced Daniel was really the one. I bit my thumb worriedly. One of us had to come up with something good; I’d already begun to feel sick at the smell of food cooking, and at this rate, I’d be dead or a wolf before I got the chance to do anything with the dryad.
“In that case, you’d better have a look around her house,” said Zero. “See if you can find anything. Follow her if you can do it unnoticed.”
JinYeong said something in a cold, angry-eyed way that made me think he was objecting to Zero’s apparent distrust in his stealth, and threw himself down on his side of th
e lounge.
“I’m gunna follow Daniel, too,” I said.
JinYeong shot me a look and muttered something under his breath, but Zero said, “All right. We’ve both got the day off work tomorrow; we’ll try to find out what’s going on with Daniel.”
That made me feel a bit better, so when JinYeong muttered again, I grinned at him.
“It’s ’cos I’ve got a better personality than you,” I said. “If you want people to work with you, you gotta be nicer.”
“Shall I look in on Erica?” asked Athelas.
“No,” said Zero. “We have need of you where you are.”
“Even if JinYeong’s suspect is the correct person,” said Athelas in gentle disagreement, tapping the pictures, “it would seem that to a certain point, the deaths revolve around this woman, Erica Kroner. The first to die was a man who—”
“The first to die was a shifter,” corrected Zero. “Bianca Terry. JinYeong had a look at the samples the detective collected: there were two shifters and three human deaths. I’ve written the information in each file.”
I looked down at the file I held, the one that said Chris Turner, and there in the back, on the cardboard of the file itself, was a scratching in pencil.
“I can’t read this!” I complained. It was more of the same script that was on the spines and covers of all of Zero’s books.
“Well now, how interesting,” Athelas said. “Perhaps this investigation is within our purview, after all!”
“Thought you said the last body was infected, too,” I said.
Zero nodded. “Infected, but not technically a shifter. The virus is immediately effective, but there are stages before full potency, as in your case. The final stage is when the first change or death occurs. With the blood we can guess at the age of it. The body you found had been infected just before death—a direct result of an attack from a shifter. The other two humans were infected just before death just like the last one.”
“Okay, so the Chris bloke?”
“Human.”
“Looks like she attracts all the weirdos,” I remarked. “A shifter, an obsessed kid, a jealous co-worker—and one of ’em doesn’t want her to have any other kind of relationship at all.”
Between Shifts (The City Between Book 2) Page 11