Between Decisions: The City Between: Book Eight

by Gingell, W. R.

  “You’re fae, though,” I pointed out. He looked a bit fuzzy without his glasses, but not in an obscuring-spell-on-the-specs kind of way: it was more like he was the kind of bloke that always looked a bit less real or clear around the edges without glasses.

  “And you,” he said, putting his glasses back on and then leaning over the table on his folded arms, “are human.”

  “Got it in one.”

  “Be careful about the windows, then,” he said. “Don’t open them, I mean: it could be hard to stop yourself climbing out.”

  “I’ll watch out for that,” I murmured. I’d already felt that tug, urging me to open the window and climb out, but it wasn’t difficult to resist. I didn’t want to tell him that, of course. It’s not a good idea to surprise fae with what you can and can’t do.

  Even if I hadn’t been able to feel the pull of the windows, I would have been fascinated with them. The one right over at the stairs, at the head of the stairwell, was small and double-paned, and it should have looked right onto the brick wall of the place next door, too. When I stepped briefly back into the stairwell and tiptoed to get a look over the sill, I saw the brittle blue sky of Behind instead. As glittering and blue as breathable glass, it was a thing of beauty that looked as though it could kill you just by breathing in its air. Whatever place this window looked out into, it was unfathomably high and perilous: I saw birds flying through the air far away, swooping and darting around each other like eagles, but as they drew closer I saw how soul-crushingly huge they were.

  “Beautiful,” I said, beneath my breath. I had read Sinbad the Sailor: these were rocs, and I was enchanted. The fae laughed from his seat at the table, but he might have been reading his book.

  The birds, sharp and fast and terrifyingly large, spread wings that spanned longer than my house and the two houses next door combined, and spiralled down in a playful dance around each other. I couldn’t help pressing closer to the window as they disappeared from sight, hoping for a last view of them, a sigh of disappointment on my lips.

  A beak larger than me shot upward, making an arrowhead that curved downward into two terrifyingly large wings that were pointed almost straight at wherever the ground was in preparation for a massive upsweep. Feathers whistled through the air, rattling the window panes, and I caught a brief glimpse of the longhorn beef cow gripped carelessly in one dangling claw as the roc shot up past the window.

  “Wonder whose farm they pinched that off?” I muttered to myself, my heart pounding in panicked little beats that timpanied around my ears. It wasn’t likely to have been a human farm, at any rate—or at least, not one from around Tassie. There weren’t too many longhorn beef cattle around the state.

  I let out a shaky breath and moved away from that window, too. It wasn’t that it felt safer away from it, but for the first time in my life, I actually understood what behindkind could see in a world that seemed more inclined to deal in death than in life.

  It was savage, but it was beautiful.

  Just so long as you weren’t the beef cow, of course.

  “These all the same place?” I asked, walking along the back wall to catch a glimpse through the other windows. I knew they weren’t all the same place, exactly. I was pretty sure they were all gunna show parts of Behind, though.

  “That depends,” the fae said, turning a page. “They tend to show different places to different people. They’re very obliging: they like to show you things they think you’ll like to see. If you’ve always wanted to visit a particular country, I’d advise thinking about it; you might persuade the windows to show you something from that country.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was cool or creepy.

  “Is that safe?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “But it’s possible. There’s coffee in the kitchen, if you want it.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I don’t know the rules for regular coffee drinking with fae. Mistakes are pretty permanent around here.”

  He abandoned his book again for a moment to say, “You know the rules for irregular coffee drinking?”

  “I know some of the business rules,” I explained. “Had to go to a contract-signing once.”

  “Contract-signings are very boring,” said the fae. “I don’t attend them if I can avoid it.”

  “Don’t blame you,” I said, moving onto the next window. I wanted to look at the bookcases, too, but the windows were too enticing right now.

  I’d only caught a dark, moonlit glimpse of whatever was in the next one when a cold, amused voice from behind me said, “There you are! I lost sight of you on the street for quite some time; I didn’t expect to find you here!”

  I whipped around, shock making my heart stutter at the back of my throat, and over at the table, the spectacled fae stood up, his book still gracefully open with the leaves wafting up to meet each other in a half-circle.

  He said, “What an unexpected surprise.”

  Zero’s dad visibly moved backward, the rictus of a grimace passing swiftly across his face. Had he not seen the fae, or was he just surprised at actually being confronted about wandering into someone else’s house?

  With a very slight pull at his lips that could have been contempt or anger, he asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” said the spectacled fae. He didn’t come across as antagonistic, but I was pretty sure he was enjoying himself by startling—or maybe annoying—Zero’s dad.

  I was enjoying it, too.

  He added, “You are the one trespassing, after all.”

  “I came in to fetch that little human,” said Zero’s father, once again cold and collected. “It ran away from me out on the street, and I have a few things I wish to discuss with it. We have an agreement of sorts.”

  I slid my hand into my pocket, because I didn’t expect the fae to do anything but hand me over, and I wanted to at least text Zero before his dad nabbed me. That way, I’d have a good chance of living until Zero got there to take me back again.

  Then I heard the fae say, “I don’t see why that’s my business. You came in here without an invitation to take away a human I’m talking with? I think not.”

  Zero’s dad didn’t quite gape, but he did catch his breath on what seemed like an unexpected gasp and said with difficulty, “The human has nothing to do with you! It is completely below your notice, and if I wish to take it back, why should you stop me?”

  “Are we going to have an argument about it?” asked the spectacled one. “Really?”

  “It would be foolish to argue about a valueless human,” Zero’s father said disdainfully, but there was an undercurrent of quivering anger that I didn’t miss. I was pretty sure the other fae hadn’t missed it either. Fae-like, he seemed to be enjoying it, too.

  “Humans are never valueless,” he said. “But that’s something you’ve yet to learn, I suspect. Good day.”

  Zero’s dad didn’t like it, but he left. That didn’t make me feel too much better: he’d probably hang around like a bad smell until I came back out of the alley, too. Luckily for me, I had other options.

  Options that definitely didn’t include climbing out of one of the windows up here.

  I waited until the last of the flowers wilted away before I said to the other fae, “Thanks for that. I’m Pet, by the way.”

  “You can call me the Librarian,” he said. “It’s not my name—”

  “Yeah, figured that.”

  “—but it’s close enough. I wouldn’t leave just yet, if I were you.”

  “Yeah, figured that, too,” I said. “He’ll probably be waiting for me. Reckon I’ll call my um, owner—see if he’s got time to come and pick me up.”

  The Librarian’s brows lifted a little. “Oh, you’re a companion?”

  I couldn’t help chuckling. “Nah. I’m a pet. Couldn’t picture my owner having a companion; he’d have to smile more than once a month, for starters.”

  “I see: not your name, but your function. You seem
to be quite self-governing, for a pet.”

  “Yeah, my owner likes me to be useful,” I said glibly. That was true. It was also true that not a lot of the behindkind coercive methods worked on me, but that wasn’t something I was going to tell him.

  “Sero was pretty concerned about you,” he said, while I texted Zero.

  My brows rose. So they were both called Sero? Zero and his dad? That was nice and confusing.

  “I don’t usually see him that worried; he’s usually very careful about what he gives away. I’m surprised at him coming this far for a human, too; he has agreements with them, but as far as I know, they’re usually the lowest, chattel kind.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and I didn’t try to hide the disgruntlement in my voice.

  The Librarian laughed again and sat down. “Yes, it’s always been like that. The problem with behindkind like Sero is that they see the value of humans only up to a point. It makes them blind to a lot of things that would otherwise be helpful to them.”

  “No need to be opening their eyes, then,” I said, as I pressed the send button.

  It was a simple text. SOS. Courtyard corner of Elizabeth and Bathurst.

  “Will your owner come for you?”

  “Reckon so,” I said, putting my phone away again. “He doesn’t like people playing with his toys, and I told you: I’m pretty useful every now and then.”

  “I got that impression,” said the Librarian. “You might as well go downstairs, then. I’ve got the feeling it’s opened up again. Sero won’t try to get back in right now; he likes to show that he respects the right people every now and then, even if it doesn’t extend to respecting them behind their backs.”

  “Yeah, I got that impression,” I said, copying him. I trailed back across the floor, not quite eager to leave the comparative safety of the building for the more perilous courtyard below. I didn’t want to antagonise someone who had sent Zero’s dad off in a huff, either, and I remembered to say, “Thanks for the help,” before I left.

  I also remembered not to say anything like I owe you one because despite how low-key this fae seemed to be, I wouldn’t trust him not to hold me to it. Athelas would have been proud.

  I didn’t come out of the courtyard until I had a text from Zero that said, Come out. I’m waiting.

  My brows lifted in surprise, but I came out regardless. Zero was leaning against a streetlamp when I did, arms folded and attracting the eyes of pretty much every woman within cooee of him. He didn’t look even remotely drunk now, so whatever he’d been doing instead of talking to his dad, it had sobered him up pretty well.

  “What, didn’t you want to come in?” I asked him, looking around furtively to make sure his dad wasn’t still nearby as I crossed to his side of the footpath.

  Zero looked down at me unreadably for a few seconds before he said, “I couldn’t get in.”

  I stared at him with my mouth open for quite a bit longer than he’d looked at me, and maybe that irritated him, because he pushed himself away from the streetlamp and brushed past me to start up the road in the wrong direction.

  “Hang on, what?” I said, darting after him. “You couldn’t get in? How come? Why are we going the wrong way?”

  “I don’t know why I couldn’t get in,” he said shortly. “Why did you go in there? What happened?”

  “Your dad found me,” I said. “Reckon you can make him stop waltzing around the city streets and growing flowers all over stuff? I’ve already had enough heart attacks for my age. I thought you were talking to him.”

  Zero’s jaw tightened just slightly. “I tried to do so and was prevented. Pet, how did you get in there?”

  “Just walked in,” I told him. “Same as always. Reckon someone was bending the rules for me again?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. You said you met my father?”

  “Well, more like I was running away from your father. We’re still going the wrong way, by the way.”

  “I’m taking a shortcut.”

  “If you say so. Anyway, your dad came after me, but there was another fae in the courtyard who was pretty rude to him in a very polite way, and after they’d both made a few remarks at each other, your dad went away. That’s when I texted you.”

  Zero looked down at me briefly, his brows winging up. “Then you must have met one of the fae lords. Seelie, it would seem, since you’re still alive and still right-ways in.”

  “Okay, that was a mind-picture I didn’t need,” I complained.

  Zero gave vent to a quick, hard sigh of irritation, then grabbed my hand and pulled me down into the nearest graffiti-decorated alley and right into a dark, twisty part of Between where the graffiti grew wild instead of sitting politely on walls. Once there, he stopped and turned me to face him.

  “Pet,” he said. “Please stop wandering into the demesnes of fae lords and consorting with people like the green man.”

  “I would love to do that,” I said earnestly. “And maybe if your dad would stop chasing after me every time I step out onto the streets, I could be a bit more careful about where I go.”

  “I will make it clear to my father that you are assisting me,” Zero said flatly. “And that if he interferes with you again, I’ll take it as a direct attack against myself.”

  “Reckon you’ll want to keep an eye on Athelas as well, then. Your dad wasn’t too pleased with Athelas when I spoke with him last, either.”

  Zero huffed another one of those quick, gusty sighs. “Let me look after Athelas. You just stay home for the next day or two—or go out with JinYeong if need be—while I try to encourage my father not to make mistakes.”

  I made a face, but it wasn’t as if I could really get away from JinYeong after all. I’d already told him that he wasn’t allowed to fall in love with me, and the sooner he got that idea into his head, the better. In the meantime, I just had to live with it.

  “Fine,” I said. There were a couple things I could do for the case from home: contact Abigail, for instance, and see what chatter Marazul could pick up online. I was also overdue a call to Morgana.

  “Home, then,” he said.

  “Steak first,” I said. “Then home. You can carry the bags.”

  The house wasn’t exactly fraught that night, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable, either. Zero might have recovered both his temper and his sobriety completely, but there was a kind of watchfulness to Athelas that made me feel vaguely off-kilter, and the fact that JinYeong came in to watch me cook dinner instead of sitting with the others in the living room left me more unbalanced.

  “What did you blokes find down at the waterfront, anyway?” I called into the living room, to escape the quiet, closed feeling of being alone with JinYeong. How did he manage to take up so much space when he was so flamin’ skinny! “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about the USB, Zero! You can’t go doing stuff secretly and then expect me not to ask about it!”

  There was a moment of silence from the living room before Zero said unemotionally, “It must be very hard for you to bear.”

  Which meant, of course, that he was not the only one who was doing things secretly, and that I was being called out. I grinned a bit.

  “Want me to guess what’s on it?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I do believe that sooner is better than later,” murmured Athelas’ voice, and I looked up to find that JinYeong’s dark eyes were on me, his head tilted.

  His eyebrows went up: an expression that said Really? He’s going to tell you?

  I shrugged at him.

  “If you hadn’t left the merman’s house in such a hurry, you’d already have seen what was on it,” said Zero, appearing in the doorway to lean against the frame.

  JinYeong and I turned our heads to look at him.

  “Yeah, well, someone went and corrupted my source,” I said pointedly.

  “Someone stole my USB.”

  “You can’t say I stole it when someone gave it to me,” I protested. “I bargained with you, a
nd it was mine before that.”

  “You were in the process of stealing the contents.”

  “Okay,” I said, going back to cutting onions. There was a lot more to that story than Zero knew, too: the USB I’d given him hadn’t been the only one I’d had, and I was pretty sure he still thought the glass USB I’d taken to Marazul belonged to the merman instead of being mine all along. “That’s fair. I did that.”

  “Never acknowledge an offense, Pet,” said Athelas, in a pained voice. “In some circles, it’s tantamount to acknowledging debt.”

  “Fine,” I said, and pointed my knife at Zero. “How about this, then? Prove it, mate.”

  JinYeong hissed with laughter and snaked out a hand to steal a round of pineapple. I let him; if you haven’t seen a vampire gleefully chowing down on a round of pineapple with both canines like an oversized fruit bat, don’t judge me.

  Zero pointed at the sight and asked coldly, “What’s that?”

  “That’s a vampire eating pineapple,” I told him. “Don’t change the subject. You were going to tell me what’s on the USB.”

  “I wasn’t, and I meant, why is there pineapple when we’re having a barbeque?”

  I stared at him. “You gotta barbeque the pineapple, too! What are you, a savage?”

  Zero closed his eyes briefly in a pained sort of a way and said, “I think I preferred talking about the USB. I’m not going to eat that.”

  “Suit yourself; more for us,” I said, tilting my chin at JinYeong.

  That was a mistake: he smiled at me over the top of his pineapple, warm and glad and a little bit questioning. I looked away at once and snapped at Zero, “You might as well tell us what’s on the USB; it’s not like Athelas doesn’t already know.”

  “You,” he said, “are not Athelas.”

  But he came into the kitchen anyway, which was a relief, and Athelas followed behind, languid and silent. I left the onions to make us all a cup of tea and get away from JinYeong’s pineappley face.