Between Floors (The City Between Book 3)

by W. R. Gingell

  Was that why I was here instead of in the hallway? I didn’t know, any more than I knew if it was really Zero pulling me back, so I started walking toward the wall that was no longer a wall again. It billowed to meet me, soft and cool, and drew me in.

  I lost sight in the coolness and softness of it, and when I was able to process sight again, whiteness was all around me like a cloud, nothing solid beneath my feet, nothing solid to the touch around me. I was still pretty sure that I was on my way to the hallway where I would find Athelas, but there was nothing touchable to prove it. Maybe it was because I drifted to sleep instead of falling asleep, a sort of nightmare-bound Alice, trailing a Zero-shaped weight behind me. Maybe it was Zero that was the problem.

  Whatever it was, it had me drifting through unresolved whiteness for long enough to make me think I’d actually been killed by Athelas’ captors before I’d really begun. To my relief, the whiteness resolved itself into halls just as I began to really worry about that.

  Behind me, a huge warmth grew up, not quite with me, but not too far away. When I turned around, there was a version of Zero there, as big and impressive as he was in real life, but not quite as present.

  “We made it!” I said, grinning at him. My grin didn’t feel quite straight, so I stopped pretty quickly, and added, “We didn’t die.”

  The Zero presence frowned and mouthed something.

  “Can’t hear you,” I said. “Is that meant to happen?”

  Zero shrugged, which was a bit worrying.

  “Thought you knew what you were doing?” I said accusingly; and he must have been able to read my lips, because I swear he looked guilty for the briefest moment.

  It was only a moment; the next, he jerked his head toward the wall that I had twice passed through to get to Athelas. Right. Down to business.

  It must have been enough that we were connected physically back in the waking world, because when I moved toward the wall, Zero drifted along with me without the stepping motions that I was still using to move around. Did the floor feel as real to him as it did to me, or was he not real enough here? Did the frigid air tickle his nose uncomfortably the way it did mine?

  Zero looked at me enquiringly, and I jerked myself back into motion. I was going to have to learn to think and walk at the same time. Especially now that I was stepping through the wall—another Between-like action that felt odd here in the dream world now that I thought about it—and especially now that I was going to face Athelas. I could ask questions, but they had to be safe ones. Just in case my being here was someone’s plan—just in case someone was listening. Stuff about myself, maybe. That ought to be safe enough.

  Just until I knew whether or not it was okay to talk. I looked over my shoulder instinctively to see if Zero was still following me into the room, and heard Athelas’ voice say, “Ah, and so it begins again.”

  I looked across at him warily. Mentally, I was aware that he must be in a lot of pain, and a distant part of me wondered how he could function so fully. Emotionally, I could only feel sick because I knew there was a very good chance I was going to be killed again, and even if it didn’t stick, it was still horrible.

  It cheered me a little to think that Zero was here now, too. I could see the not-quite-presence that was him drifting around the room, and maybe I was a bit too obvious about watching him, because Athelas said, “Do we have another visitor, Pet?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m just creeped out. I don’t like being killed in white, airconditioned rooms.”

  “Do you not? One wonders why it is you keep coming back, in that case.”

  “Just the pleasure of seeing your face, I s’pose,” I said, and he laughed. “If it bothers you, you can always flamin’ stop killing me! I’m just trying to rescue you.”

  “Your rescue is somewhat lacking,” said Athelas, turning his head stiffly back to the ceiling. He was almost yellow today, and I wondered with a pang if someone else had been visiting him again. “Even if you free me here, what then? I kill you, escape to the waking world, and find myself captured between floors once again. Why go to the trouble?”

  “Why not just escape to the waking world without killing me?”

  “I’ve told you often enough that I am imprisoned—”

  “Yeah, in moonlight, and hell bars the way. That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  Across the room, Zero stopped circling the perimeter of the room and drifted nearer to observe Athelas. There was a line between his brows and a sorrow to his eyes that I wasn’t used to seeing, but he studied Athelas more coolly than I expected before his eyes rested on me instead.

  “Anyone listening?” I asked.

  “The same as before, I believe,” Athelas said. There was more weariness in his voice again today, with just a thread of his usual amusement.

  Behind him, Zero shook his head, and gave me an uncharacteristic thumbs up. Heck yes! No one was listening. I could ask questions again—if I could only get Athelas to answer them.

  “You just gotta tell me where this room is,” I said, as Zero crouched by the strands of moonlight. “Simple. Then we can come get you.”

  “We’re not in a room,” he said. “It’s a construct. You’re a construct, too; not a physical being—a thing created by the Sandman to play with me.”

  “That’s not an answer,” I said, but I was distracted enough to ask, “Is that why I didn’t die properly when you killed me?”

  Athelas’ head dropped back with an exhausted laugh. “Even so.”

  “Why bother to kill me, then?”

  One of his shoulders moved slightly. “Why not?”

  “Athelas,” I said. “It’s me. Actual me.”

  “Even if it were actual you—what then? I can’t kill a pet?”

  “That’s flaming rude,” I said resentfully. “But I’m gunna be the bigger person and still ask you where you are again.”

  “I don’t know where I am,” he said. “Why should I?”

  I frowned a bit. Did he really not know, or was he lying? If he was lying, why? Did he think they would move him if they thought he knew where he was? Did he not want to be moved for some reason?

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, experimentally.

  There was only silence from Athelas, and when I drew closer, I saw the deeper lines beside his eyes. His eyes were closed, too, which worried me. How tired was he? Was it possible for fae to die from torture?

  I didn’t want to find out, but I was also pretty sure that there was only one way of prodding someone like Athelas into strenuous life, and that was to really get under his skin as the person he thought I was. I didn’t want to do that.

  If I did…if I did it…

  If I did it, Athelas would be absolutely merciless in his killing of me this time. And he would likely never trust me again, either.

  On the other hand, Athelas already didn’t trust me, and I’d freed him from his imprisonment twice now. He was also at the edge of what he could endure, I was pretty sure—he needed something to push against.

  I glanced up at Athelas and found him watching me; behind him, Zero looked, I dunno…apprehensive. Athelas looked more like someone had winded him, all silent, contained pain.

  “What?” I asked, alarmed. “Something happen?”

  “I’m curious,” said Athelas, and his voice sounded just slightly stifled, too. “What conclusion is it you just came to? If you were really the Pet, I would be feeling distinctly worried at this point. She has such a way of doing exactly the wrong—or exactly the right—thing when she looks like that.”

  “You know a lot about the Pet,” I said.

  “Ah, are we giving up our pretence?”

  I shrugged and crouched by the outer strands of moonlight. I had to free him one way or the other, so I might as well get on with it. “You don’t believe I’m the Pet, anyway.”

  “Oh, are we still doing this? An interesting choice!”

  “Might as well, since I’m here,” I said, setting my jaw.
It hurt a bit, so maybe I’d already been clenching it without thinking about it. “I’m only gunna let go of your body, though. Not your arms.”

  “Do you really think I can’t kill you thus?”

  “Dunno,” I said, refusing to look at him. “But it’s gotta be better than letting you have your arms. What’s your problem with the Pet, anyway? Why are you so happy to kill her?”

  “A clingy little thing, the Pet,” he said, ruminatively. “Always following someone, always stuck to someone like a limpet. Very useful.”

  “She was alone in her house for four years,” I said, stung. “No parents, no safety. She’s probably just trying to survive.”

  “Perhaps the Pet’s parents should have thought of that before giving their lives.”

  “It’s not like they died on purpose.”

  Athelas made the faintest suggestion of a shrug. “No? Perhaps not. But humans don’t die in that manner merely because they lived a quiet life.”

  “There’s some sick humans out there as well as sick Behindkind,” I said. “And what do you know about the Pet’s parents, anyway?”

  I was too careless with the moonlight in my anger, and Athelas gave a ragged groan.

  “Sorry! Sorry, sorry!” I said, releasing the threads I was holding. They held for a moment, then shivered away into twinkles of moon-dust.

  “The Pet’s parents,” said Athelas, panting. “Were killed some time ago.”

  “Z—Lord Sero knows about it?”

  “He knows its parents were killed. It was living in our house before we took it as our Pet—a very susceptible house, as it happens.”

  “You really think it was Behindkind who killed the Pet’s parents? What Behindkind?”

  Athelas exhaled a small laugh. “I see,” he murmured. “You haven’t got the Pet! I’ve become too careless, it seems. Allow me to congratulate you on some very fine interrogation at last! It would work far better if I had anything to tell you, of course, but you weren’t to know that.”

  “What are you talking about? ’Course we’ve got the Pet; how else did I know all this stuff?”

  “As you’re always telling me,” said Athelas, his voice mocking, “you’re the Pet! Of course you would know.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Be like that. I’m not gunna let you down, then.”

  “Are you not? That will make for an interesting change. Perhaps the people who put you in here did not make you sufficiently well aware of the terms and conditions for getting out: It is, of course, far easier to get in than out.”

  I wrapped my arms around my legs and caught Zero’s eyes. He was frowning, but I was pretty sure it was because he couldn’t hear what was going on—he could only see that I’d stopped freeing Athelas.

  “What terms and conditions?” I asked.

  “Surely you felt the difference in the room the first two times you freed me? There’s no easy access to Between for mortals like you; it’s all high stakes and widdershins walks to edge you in carefully.”

  “I don’t need those things,” I said. Actually, I hadn’t felt the change to the room, but both times I’d been here previously, I’d been pretty busy being killed at that point. “You know that.”

  “It is not something I know. The Pet is human—though I’m beginning to suspect that you think it something else entirely—and humans do not make their way deliberately through Between or Behind.”

  I grasped at a last straw. “What something else entirely?”

  “I’m certain you know that better than I,” Athelas said. His eyes, reflective and frightening, rested thoughtfully on me. “Do you really think that my lord wouldn’t know if he had a changeling in the same house? Ah! Or do you go further and suppose him to be harbouring an Heirling? For what possible reason?”

  “Beggared if I know,” I said. I didn’t even know what an Heirling was, and why on earth would anyone think I was a changeling? “’S’pose he can have one in the house if he wants to.”

  “Allow me to remind you that Lord Sero’s fate is to sit on the throne of Faery as Lord of Behind. An Heirling is a direct challenge to that claim. He would be a fool to allow such a human to live, Pet or otherwise.”

  Right. So Heirlings were humans?

  “And if you had the Pet as you would like me to believe, you would be utterly convinced of its humanity,” continued Athelas. “I therefore conclude that you are merely throwing bait—though for what purpose, I can’t imagine. If you are the Pet, you will need a human way out. Will you free me or not?”

  I stood again as strands of moonlight dissolved to dust at my feet. “What human way out?”

  “Freeing me is the first step,” said Athelas, and he smiled. His eyes didn’t smile along with his lips. “I’m sure you knew that much already.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe I don’t want to be killed again.”

  “Then you must take your chances, must you not? There is no other way out for you.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. If Athelas was telling the truth, and the room somehow changed to open access to Between, maybe I could sneak out after he was free. Already his lower body was drifting toward the ground, free from moonlight but tethered by the strands still piercing his upper body.

  If I was quick enough. If I didn’t die first.

  I stared down at my shoes, reminded of—dreading—the inevitable. Athelas’ feet settled to the floor just a pace away from mine, accompanied by a dripping of blue, and I heard his breath, ragged in and out, as his arms stayed pinioned above him.

  I gritted my teeth against the regret. I couldn’t release his arms straight away; he’d only kill me. Watching the blue spread toward the toes of my sneakers, I said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

  There was a flutter of movement to my left, and I turned my head to see Zero leaping for Athelas, fast and furious. Leaping for Athelas, whose arms were free, whose right hand came up to cup my cheek without being disturbed by the passing of an insubstantial Zero right through it.

  I said, very softly, “Ah heck.”

  “Thank you, Pet,” said Athelas, smiling a blue, bloody smile at me. He wasn’t standing straight, but this time it wasn’t to fool me into thinking he was weak.

  Run, said my thoughts. Run, fight, while he’s weak.

  But I knew it wouldn’t change the outcome, and instead, I heard myself say, “Can’t you trust me?”

  I knew I was pleading, but I couldn’t help it. I hated to die by his hand again. “Can’t you just…trust me? This once?”

  “How could I do so?” asked Athelas, his eyes as dark and glittery as a moonlit well. “Knowing I’d be betrayed?”

  “At least it wouldn’t kill you,” I said, and there was some bitterness in my voice.

  “No,” he said, and a blade of pain slipped between my ribs, cold and piercing. “That would really kill me.”

  I felt the hand cupping my cheek catch my head as it dropped; as I died.

  I woke to see Zero’s face. “Dry your tears,” he said, and propped me up against the back of the couch with the hand that had caught me before my head hit the seat. He settled back beside me without objecting when I leaned against him with my arms wrapped around his, and said, “Tell me what you remember.”

  I woke up the next morning, still sitting on the couch with my arms wrapped around Zero’s huge forearm and my head cushioned on his shoulder. I would have been content to go back to sleep, feeling safe—and above all, dreamless—but someone was throwing small pellets of something at me.

  I opened my eyes and glared at JinYeong, who sat on the coffee table with half a slice of bread in one hand and a narrow, stormy look to his face.

  I shook my head slightly to dislodge the pellets of bread that had fallen there, and a hot, angry something woke in me. “What the heck?”

  “The morning has come,” said JinYeong, in painstakingly understandable Korean, picking another pellet of bread from the half-torn piece he was holding. “Get up.”

  I opened my mouth to say somet
hing I would probably have regretted, but the movement woke Zero. He stared at the opposite wall, then turned his head to look down at me.

  “Now you woke him up!” I said angrily to JinYeong.

  He shrugged.

  “I’ve already slept too long,” said Zero, brushing away pieces of bread with a faintly questioning look at JinYeong, who only looked innocently back. Zero’s eyes turned to me and lightened a touch; he got up and went into the kitchen.

  That left JinYeong watching me with narrow eyes, so I narrowed mine at him. “What? Going for creepiest psycho? How long have you been staring at us?”

  “Ireona,” he said.

  He’d probably been staring at us for at least ten minutes, willing us to wake up, before he went for the bread.

  “Wae?” I asked, copying him. There was a sharp edge of restlessness to me, and I was very willing to pick a fight. What could he do to me? Kill me? I’d already died three times.

  “Hajima,” he told me. Stop it.

  I opened my mouth to say wae again, this time more mockingly, but JinYeong leaned forward, his nose unnervingly close to mine, and said very softly, “Ha. Ji. Ma.”

  “What?” I asked. “Haven’t had your coffee yet?”

  “Ireona, Petteu.”

  “Whatever,” I said, but I did as I was told and got up, following him as he stalked toward the staircase. His socks disappeared at the top of the staircase as I got there, and when I got upstairs, he was waiting by the first painting on the wall. Ah. So he’d finally realised what was wrong with them. It was about time—it had been more than a week since I went around the house, misaligning them all by a millimetre or two.

  I stood next to him and said, “Yeah, this one’s nice, isn’t it? We picked it up in a car boot market in Queensland. Only five bucks.”

  “Petteu,” said JinYeong warningly. He said something else that ended with, “Balli!” which meant he was telling me to hurry up and do something.

  I could guess what that something was. I looked at him coldly, then at the picture. “What’s wrong with it?”

  JinYeong said a single word—probably, “Crooked,” and since it still annoyed him to be understood by me if he didn’t choose to be understood, I decided to understand anyway.