Between Decisions (The City Between Book 8)

by W. R. Gingell

  “What,” said Zero, his voice dropping nearly a full octave, “was that?”

  “That’s a kid dancing and lip-synching to a song,” I said helpfully. “They upload it to that app, what’s it called?”

  “Click-Clock, or some such thing, I believe,” said Athelas, surprising me more by the gleam of amusement in his eye that proclaimed his statement to be a subtle joke at his own grandad status than at the fact that he obviously knew exactly which site we were talking about. “No doubt a reference to the appalling noise in the videos.”

  “Close enough, Grandad,” I said. “That’s flamin’ impressive; you got a computer hidden somewhere else?”

  “Not at all,” Athelas said. “I merely pay attention to what the children are doing these days. The application has impressed me with its susceptibility to manipulation for some time now. It appears that I was not the only one to think so.”

  “I don’t think it’s the site,” Tuatu said. “That’s just where the videos are being uploaded. I think it’s the—well, I don’t really know what it is, but I don’t think the site has anything to do with it. If it did, we’d have videos from all around the world, but they’re only here, in Hobart, at the waterfront.”

  On the coffee table, the video looped on itself and started again, which must have fascinated Zero with the same kind of fascination I feel toward spiders, because he stared at it with his lips pulled back very slightly from his teeth as if he couldn’t look away until it finished again.

  When it did, he shoved the phone back toward Tuatu. “What is this? Why would anyone do that? And why did you show me that video? No one fell or tried to commit suicide.”

  “Don’t ask me why they do it,” said Tuatu. “I’m old and grumpy, and no matter how many times North tries to make me—never mind. I showed it to you because I wanted you to understand the format that these videos are appearing in. Once they’re on the site, they’re shared to other social media, but this is where they all start.”

  “Show me one of the real ones,” Zero said. He could have been faintly exasperated, but it’s always pretty hard to tell with him. I know him better than anyone except Athelas, and even I still have trouble telling his emotions apart occasionally. “Now that I understand the format—”

  “Sure about that?” I asked, grinning. “Doesn’t look like you understand it to me.”

  Ignoring me, he said to Detective Tuatu, “Now that I’ve familiarised myself with the format, there’s no need to show me useless clips.”

  This time, the brief look that Tuatu shot me was bright with laughter. He was enough worried about his own health not to grin at Zero the way I had, though; he just flicked his finger sideways across the screen and tapped play on the next video.

  “This is the first one,” he said. “We managed to get the one of the girl hitting the deck off the site, but these ones are still allowed to be there for now. We’re going to need a lot of international co-operation if we’re going to get anything done about the others. There’s a lack of blood, and I’m pretty sure the official stance is that it’s just a joke.”

  “I’ll have them taken down if it seems as though it’s likely to jeopardise the investigation,” Zero said.

  Tuatu’s brows went up. “I suppose you’re useful for something after all,” he said, but he said it pretty quietly, so I reckon he was saying it to me.

  On the coffee table, a gangling fifteen-or-so-year-old boy in skinny jeans danced across the surface of Tuatu’s phone to the upbeat strains of “Walkin’ On Sunshine”, in and out of a doorway and then back out onto deck. I could have thought he was actually listening to the song if I didn’t know better: he wasn’t lip-synching, but his face was bright and he didn’t miss a beat.

  “He’s hitting all the right beats,” I murmured, propping my chin in my hand.

  Across the coffee table, JinYeong’s eyes met mine; this time, instead of being provocative or challenging, they were thoughtful. “She is right, Hyeong,” he said to Zero. “This boy dances as though he hears the music itself; this flourish—” he tapped the screen, where the boy shimmied his shoulders for the exact duration of the flourish of brass—“is in exactly the right spot. He behaves as though he is following it like a dancer.”

  “Heck,” I said, staring at him. “Can you dance?”

  “Of course I can dance!” he said, lifting his nose. “I am a very good dancer. I am known in all of the clubs in Seoul, and—”

  “Yeah?” I interrupted. “What clubs? ’Cos you can’t listen to this old-as-the-hills song and know where all the flourishes are and then try to tell me you go to regular clubs.”

  “I am the fastest swing dancer in Seoul,” he said coldly. “You will see.”

  “Heck I will! I’m not following you to South Korea to watch you dancing in clubs!”

  “Naturally you will not watch; I will teach you—”

  “JinYeong,” said Zero, his voice sharp and withering, “If you’re going to be talking in the living room with everyone else, you can take the trouble to make sure everyone understands you.”

  I sat up a bit straighter. “Flamin’ heck! He can do that? Exclude you two?”

  “We do not speak Korean, Pet,” said Athelas. “If JinYeong chooses not to translate for us—”

  “I thought you blokes did that yourself?”

  “We do,” said Zero coldly. “But if he chooses to actively exclude us—”

  “What are you doing?” I asked JinYeong.

  JinYeong shrugged, and I saw his lips curve very faintly. “This is our business, not theirs.”

  I saw Zero’s lips form the word ours, a deep line between his brows, and before he could say anything else, I said hurriedly to JinYeong, “There is no ours! Just talk to everyone! And before you start burbling about dancing again, all we need to know is that this kid might have been listening to the song live, right?”

  JinYeong gave a small, precise nod. “Kurae.”

  “Isn’t that why we’re hearing the song?” asked Zero, but his eyes were on JinYeong, not the phone. “He’s dancing to it and recording it at the same time?”

  “Nope,” said Tuatu. “You’d hear background noise, and the sound as a whole would be different. What you’re hearing is a track laid over the original recording, noises and all.”

  “Why can’t I hear the original recording?”

  “It doesn’t exist,” Tuatu said. “Not as far as we know. It’s as though it was done live, already overlaid with the music. We don’t know how, because it’s not supposed to be possible.”

  Zero nodded. “All right. We’ll have to start with the ship itself, then. You said it came from Antarctica? Do you have a travel log for it?”

  “I’ll send it to your phone once I get it,” said the detective, nodding.

  That made me smile a bit. We’d come a long way since he first met my three psychos; he’d originally been outraged to find that they’d pretty much been given the key to the station.

  “Let me know if anything turns up,” he added. “I’ve got to try and figure out what’s going on along Collins Street for now—in the whole of the shopping and business district, actually.”

  “Yeah, you said there was something going on around the place,” I said. I was pretty sure I knew what it was; the psychos had to be thinking the same thing I was thinking, too. The human world, linked to the world behind, was experiencing the magical equivalent of sympathetic labour.

  While the world Behind spiralled into a freefall of chaos in the lead-up to a change of management—well, of kings, but the whole thing was terrifying enough to make me want to push it away with a healthy dose of flippancy—the human world couldn’t help but experience the fallout from that change. We’d known it was coming, but I think we’d all been hoping for a bit more time before it actually began.

  “What exactly is it that bothers you so much about Collins Street?” asked Athelas.

  “I told you earlier,” said Tuatu, shrugging his shoulders in
discomfort.

  Athelas nodded. “Yes, but I’m more specifically interested in your observations of those newly occurring phenomena.”

  “It’s…uncomfortable,” he said. “The world doesn’t feel balanced right now, and I don’t know how else to explain it. It probably sounds stupid.”

  “It doesn’t sound stupid,” said Zero. I would have said he was trying to comfort the detective if it wasn’t for the grim edge to his voice that suggested he regretted a state of affairs wherein a human could notice any such thing.

  “It is, in fact, distressingly perceptive of you,” Athelas said, confirming my suspicion. “For a human.”

  “And that’s not to mention—” The detective hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure how to go on. There was a bit of a quirk to his lips, and I wondered if this was another thing he thought we might already know about.

  “What else?” I prompted, elbowing him. It was no use holding back stuff; and besides, he might not trust the other three fully, but I was pretty sure he trusted me enough to tell if I asked. “Don’t tell me North has been learning to drive?”

  Tuatu went very white. “No, thank goodness! She says she prefers to walk, but I’m fairly certain she doesn’t walk anywhere.”

  “That would be a fair assumption,” said Athelas, smiling into his tea. “I’m surprised she hasn’t offered to take you along with her.”

  “She has,” said Tuatu. “I said no. I get airsick.”

  “A very wise decision, then.”

  “That’s what I thought. No, it’s nothing like that: someone tried to kidnap me the other night. I was hoping you knew them.”

  I stared at him, forgetting JinYeong for a blissful moment. “Hang on, you hope we know the people who are trying to kidnap you?”

  “Are those people still alive?” Zero asked.

  I mean, it was a fair question. North is pretty protective when it comes to people she likes, and the incarnation of the North Wind can do a heck of a lot of damage when her back is up.

  “I just thought that on balance I’d rather it was someone you knew than someone you didn’t; I didn’t actually think you were trying to have me kidnapped. And yes, they’re still alive. North wasn’t there.”

  “Bet she was a bit stroppy about that,” I said, grinning.

  I wondered if he knew how softly the smile came and went on his lips. Tuatu is Islander born; with lips as full and wide as his, all the smiles are pretty soft, but this one was different.

  “I’m surprised she’s letting you walk around by yourself today, then,” I said.

  “I’m a fully grown man and I’ll walk where I want,” Tuatu said, with some indignation. He added, after a moment, “Anyway, I’m pretty sure she followed me. You might as well let her in if she’s out there.”

  “She can get in by herself,” I said. There was a stir around the house that I’d just thought was my own disturbed state of mind, but now made more sense. I called out, “Come in, North! There’s tea!”

  It started as a bit of a tickle around our ankles, sweeping from the back of the house toward the front door, then became a gust, sweeping dust bunnies along the hall and past the kitchen. When a banshee tumbled past, wailing, it heralded the small, soft sound of North’s footsteps along the hallway, then the frothing, windswept edges of her frock. The North Wind herself whirled into the living room a moment later, her black hair fluttering and coiling around her on the breeze.

  “My lady, the tea!” said Athelas reproachfully.

  “I knew there was something,” North said, stepping lightly down into the living room with a flutter of skirts and breeze, her eyes on Tuatu. “I knew you weren’t telling me everything when you came home with a black eye.”

  I raised my brows at Tuatu, and Athelas did much the same in North’s direction. North only shrugged her elegant shoulders and perched herself on the arm of the couch by Tuatu, leaning on his shoulder while he darkened in his version of a blush.

  “It wasn’t your lot,” he said up at her. “They weren’t superhuman or anything—they were tough to fight, but they didn’t have extra arms or spit poison. I don’t think they were trying to hurt me, either; they grabbed me behind the bottle shop and tried to drag me off somewhere. That’s why I said kidnap instead of kill.”

  “Flaming heck!” I said, realising what must have happened. I sent a look in Zero’s direction and asked, “Reckon this was Abigail and her mob?”

  JinYeong made a soft tch of laughter. “Ah, jaemisseo! They were not trying to kidnap you.”

  He spoke in Korean, as he always did, but the curling edges of Between translated it for Tuatu.

  Tuatu said grimly, “It felt a lot like an attempted kidnapping to me.”

  “Yeah, they’re a bit…funny about being seen in public,” I explained. “Reckon they were just trying to get you somewhere quiet for a bit of a talk.”

  “I think I can do without that kind of a talk,” the detective said. He still sounded pretty unconvinced.

  “I recommended you to them.”

  North shot me a rather cool look beneath her dusky lashes.

  Tuatu said, “Thanks. Do you think you could not do that?”

  “I didn’t think they’d try to mug you behind the local bottle-o!” I protested. “Figured they’d approach you like professionals and introduce themselves. You hurt any of them?”

  “I don’t think I could have if I wanted to,” Tuatu said, a bit grimly. “I don’t know what they were using as armour, but every punch I landed felt like hitting memory foam, and they didn’t even grunt.”

  “Looks like those two know something about it,” I said, tilting my head at Zero and then Athelas. They might be good at communicating only through looks, but once you know how to interpret them, there’s a pretty good chance of being able to eavesdrop whenever you need to.

  Zero looked faintly exasperated, but he said, “Your human friends—”

  “Never going to get used to people qualifying nouns with human,” muttered Tuatu.

  “—already mentioned that they had something to share. I imagine they’re using the same things that they would have shared with you.”

  “Ohh!” I said. “You mean they used the artifacts they were talking about to help ’em fight against behindkind magically?”

  “I think it very likely that they’re using fae elements,” Athelas said.

  North said delightedly to Tuatu, “Let’s take them! They’re fun!”

  Tuatu eyed her askance. “What are fae elements, and why do they want me to take them?”

  “They wanted to talk someone into taking care of ’em,” I explained. “They said they weren’t getting much good out of ’em anyway, but I s’pose they figured that out. They reckon life is gunna get more dangerous for them from now on, and they want somewhere to store the stuff so that humans can keep looking after themselves when their little cell is…gone.”

  I nearly said dead, and even though I’d already talked about it with Abigail before, I felt a chill for the first time. It wasn’t just the little cell that was in danger: from now on, things would continue to get more and more dangerous for me, too. I had Zero in front of me and JinYeong behind me, and Athelas somewhere in the shadows, but Abigail and the group had no one else. If Hobart was going to start getting dangerous again like it apparently had a few times over the last century, there must be another way to protect them.

  “A sensible way to look at life,” said Athelas. His eyes dwelt on Tuatu and North in turn, and he asked, “Will you accept the humans’ appeal?”

  “We haven’t made up our minds yet,” North said, with a particularly bland smile at him.

  That smile said don’t interfere and don’t try to trick us into accepting all at once.

  Tuatu jerked a thumb up at her and said, “What she said. Right, we’ll be off; I have a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Are you a part of the police force too, now, my lady?”

  This time, North’s eyes danced when she answer
ed Athelas. “I could ask you the same thing, old man.”

  “Yes, it’s appallingly quick-witted of you. Oh, are you really going now?”

  “I have about four reports to follow up on, starting from Collins Street and flowing up toward the Brewery,” said Tuatu. “And I’ve got the feeling it’ll be best to go on foot, so it’ll take some time. I’ll call you if I find out anything else; please do the same.”

  They didn’t promise him, but Zero did nod, which was enough to get Tuatu and North out the door with at least one of them thinking there would be a phone call if we discovered anything. I mean, never say never and everything, but my three psychos aren’t the most communicative people out there.

  When the door closed behind Tuatu and North, there was a brief flurry of action as Zero retreated to his alcove to start strapping on weaponry and JinYeong went to change his shirt. Even Athelas stood and, removing his houndstooth jacket, laid it neatly across the arm of his chair.

  I watched him do it, then gazed at him as he stood there in his vest and shirt-sleeves, tidying his cuffs, and said, “That’s flamin’ scary.”

  A couple of lines creased beside his eyes. “Is it? Why?”

  “Never seen you take off your jacket to fight before,” I said. “You expecting trouble?”

  “One never exactly expects trouble at the correct moment,” he said. “The human world is presently in flux, and I think it wise to be ready.”

  “Okay, but don’t come back half dead again,” I told him, as Zero and JinYeong returned from different directions.

  “You stay here, Pet,” said Zero, with a brief glance toward JinYeong. “Try to contact Abigail—at least tell her not to try to kidnap the detective again. We’ll check out the waterfront and see if we can find anything obvious there. Athelas, see what you can find in the main business district: start with the older buildings and whatever infrastructure you can find out about that might be problematic.”

  “I should come with you,” I said, shifting uncomfortably. I don’t like being left out of the action. “What if someone tries to come through the linen cupboard?”