“You didn’t—you didn’t tell me—”
“I did!” Pet’s voice was indignant. “I told you that the goblins were stupid for kidnapping me because of whose pet I am.”
“Perhaps you should lead with ‘Troika’ next time,” suggested Athelas.
Now that I knew it was the Athelas, I felt as though I should have known from the start. Who else is called Athelas, with a soft, deadly gleam to his eyes, and occasionally accompanied by a vampire? I hadn’t heard any talk of a pet, of course, but it felt as though I could have pieced together that much at least.
“You said his name is Zero,” I said, through numb lips. “That’s Lord Sero.”
“Maybe to you,” Pet said. “To me, he’s Zero. Oi. Where have all the people gone?”
JinYeong cocked his eyebrow at her instead. “Saramdul? Musen saramdul?”
She looked accusingly around at the three of them. “Did you let JinYeong eat ’em?”
“JinYeong is reformed,” Athelas said.
“What, since last night?” demanded Pet. “He took a bite outta the trolley boy! I saw him!”
The vampire grabbed her by the arm and jerked her close, covering her mouth as his eyes flew to Lord Sero. I tightened my grip on the wheel rims to stop the rocking her swift passage created, and looked up just in time to see JinYeong release her again with a disgusted noise.
“Don’t put your hand over my mouth if you don’t want me to lick it!” she said grumpily.
“Well, perhaps reformed is going a bit far,” Athelas allowed. “However, Zero saw the others out safely before they had a chance to notice anything else that they shouldn’t notice.”
“All right,” said Pet, but she still looked suspicious. “Anyway, like I said, this is ’Zul, and he likes to be called Marazul. He doesn’t like goblins much either, and he hacks magic.”
“Exactly how,” enquired Athelas, his voice mild but his eyes distinctly unnerving, “did the two of you meet? I can’t help feeling it was very…coincidental.”
Pet looked slightly pink. “We both get coffee from that café,” she said. “And it was the goblins who thought it would be a good idea to try and trap me too. They probably thought they could get a ransom for me. Stupid little twits.”
“I see,” said Lord Sero, looking down at her. “Perhaps a visit to that café will convince a few Behindkind of the danger of thinking like that.”
“Don’t think there’s much of it left,” Pet said. “And I killed quite a few of ’em when they were trying to stop us from leaving.”
The vampire JinYeong showed his teeth for the length of a rather sibilant sentence.
“Exactly,” Lord Sero agreed. “I don’t like the idea of leaving stragglers. Besides, I’m interested to see what has become of my protection spell.”
I swallowed as Lord Sero turned his gaze inevitably on me, his eyes thoughtful and just a bit considering. I didn’t like that look. It could have been the look of a fae who was trying to decide how many limbs he should remove in case of hurt to his pet, or it could have been the look of a fae who was trying to decide how useful I could be to him. I didn’t much care for either option.
“Don’t go too far away,” said Lord Sero. “We might have a use for you.”
Oh no.
“There is certainly a use for him,” Athelas agreed, those quiet eyes of his dwelling on me in a way that made me cold to the bone.
“I’m really very little use,” I told them both, gripping the wheels of my chair on either side. “I’m not fully mer—I can’t even swim beyond the light or remain beneath the waves more than five minutes.”
“We don’t have any use for a merman,” Lord Sero said. “But we do have use for whatever you call this spell you’ve been fighting for the last couple hours.”
“It’s hacking,” Pet told him again, helpfully. “Sort of magic, and sort of not. I didn’t know people could do that sort of thing.”
“They can’t,” remarked Athelas. His eyelashes had dropped a little, but I still felt chilled by his gaze. “That’s why we’re so very interested. I believe you have to resign yourself to seeing rather more of our Pet in the future.”
Lord Sero, with the slightest of frowns, said, “Yes. We’ll discuss that later.”
I had the feeling that we encompassed himself and me, not himself and Athelas. A little desperately, I said, “But your lordship—!”
“Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you,” Pet assured me. “I’ll make sure.”
I looked from Pet’s thin, waiflike frame to the whiplike JinYeong, and then further to the hulking mass that was Lord Sero, and felt a laugh bubbling up inside me. Best not to let that one out. I had the distinct feeling that it wouldn’t sound quite sane.
“Later, we will also discuss your unique use of magic,” said Lord Sero. “I want to know exactly how you got through my protection spell, and I very much want to know why you did it with my pet in the café.”
“Oh,” I croaked. “Well, your lordship, that’s—”
“Yeah, all right, all right,” Pet said. “Stop scaring him! He’s had a pretty bad day and he’s only been paid half of what he was owed. I’m gonna take him home now: you can ask him questions later.”
She grabbed the handles of my chair again and wheeled me straight at them. Much to my surprise, not one of them tried to stop her; they each merely took a step back to avoid being run over. Athelas looked amused, JinYeong distinctly annoyed but aloof, and Lord Sero might have looked—was it possible?—slightly fond.
I saw it all in a startled flash, and then we were in the elevator and somehow outside the library, the warm summer sun folding around us. I took in a deep, careful breath, and let it out a bit more shakily than I liked. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that there was a great deal more to Pet than merely being the pet of Lord Sero.
It also occurred to me that given that fact, and the fact that she was Lord Sero’s pet, it would certainly behove me to find a new place to live as soon as possible.
I couldn’t see that Pet had any magic to her, but she pushed me up the road so energetically that it had to have been magic that kept her going uphill the whole way back to my flat. Neither of us looked too closely at the café as we passed; there was a blankness to the windows that was unpleasant, and I was glad that Pet kept us to the other side of the street.
“At least there’s another café down the road,” she said a little bit hopefully, as we approached my flat. “They do pretty good coffee, too.”
“I believe I’ve lost the appetite for coffee,” I said, gazing up at my flat. What a shame. I’d gotten so used to living here, and now I would have to find somewhere else. The goblins knew where to find me—worse, when Pet got back to them, Lord Sero would undoubtedly know, too. I was under no illusions that she wouldn’t tell them everything they asked. She was their pet, after all.
“Oh,” said Pet sadly. “Does that mean I won’t see you anymore when I get coffee?”
I was tempted. For just a moment, I was very tempted. It was a long time since I’d seen a look like that from a woman, human or Behindkind. And she was such a nice little thing, too. It could be nice to get to know her little by little, over a cup of coffee, with a smile.
But there was too much hazard to my life to be sitting quietly for coffee and smiles—and if there was too much hazard in my life, there was an overabundance of it in Pet’s life. The kind of overabundance that spills over into the lives of those around them.
And then there was Lord Sero. I had seen the frown when he looked from myself to Pet, and it wasn’t the sort of frown I would have associated with mere fondness for a pet. I didn’t think it was a romantic interest, but it was certainly something. I could still feel that newness of zest to my life that I hadn’t felt in years, and I wasn’t prepared to end that at Lord Sero’s hands if I made a mistake with his Pet—nor was I prepared to end it at the teeth of a vampire, if it came to that.
“I’ll see you from time to
time,” I said, even though I knew it was a lie as I said it. I would be gone just as soon as I could pack my things. “They’ll send you to ask me to do things.”
“They will, won’t they?” she agreed. “Athelas likes discovering new talents, and Zero loves using them. Don’t be too afraid of them, ’Zul. They look mean—yeah, well, they are mean—but they look after their own.”
“That will be more comforting when I feel that I am one of their own,” I said, though I had no intention of being on such terms with the Troika. “They’re not a particularly safe trio with whom to be on first name terms. They may be a necessary part of the Between world, but they’re not a comfortable part of it. Perhaps when I know them a little better I’ll be able to read them more clearly, but for now they’re a midnight blue I’d rather keep away from.”
That shade of midnight blue was the type that hid monsters in the deep with stars for eyes and spears for teeth.
“What about me?” asked Pet.
She asked it idly, but I knew the answer to that one straight away.
“You?” I asked, and found that I was smiling again. “That’s easy. You’re another shade of blue altogether. A deep, dark one with shiny patches that I didn’t know existed.”
Her face lit up, a brightness of happiness that brought the slightest tugging of regret to my heart. “I like that,” she said. “It’s not bad—being a pet, I mean—but sometimes it’s nice to be something else.”
I turned my smile up at her, hoping it wasn’t as sad as it felt. “Then next time we meet, you’ll have to tell me your real name.”
“Yes,” said Pet, and there was no sadness to her smile. As if she knew, better than me, that we would certainly meet again. “Next time we meet.”
Books in the City Between series
Book 1: BETWEEN JOBS
Book 2: BETWEEN SHIFTS
Book 3: BETWEEN FLOORS
Coming Soon:
Book 4: BETWEEN FRAMES
All the Different Shades of Blue: A City Between novelette Page 5