Between Homes (The City Between Book 5)

by W. R. Gingell

  I was expecting a knock at the door the next morning, but not the person who did the knocking. North had said she was going to send her assistant, but I didn’t expect that assistant to be waist high and apple-cheeked, with bright, button-like eyes.

  She also had a serious dandruff problem. It flaked the shoulders of her fluffy cardigan, and when she bashfully scratched her head with the pen in her left hand, a few more flakes drifted down.

  “Hello,” she said. “My lady North sent me. I’m here for your answer.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I haven’t found a way yet, if that’s what you mean. I’ll know more tomorrow, hopefully.”

  “All right,” the girl said, and carefully wrote my exact words down on the little clipboard she held, in huge, blocky letters. “I’ll be going, then.”

  “You can come in for a cuppa if you want,” I said. “Just boiled the jug.”

  “No, thank you,” she said politely. “Oh! My lady also asks whether you trust the human detective with the pendant.”

  “With my life,” I said. Flaming heck! How had she gotten a bead on Detective Tuatu? “A couple of times now, actually. She doesn’t have to worry about him. You sure you don’t want a cuppa? It’s no worries.”

  She smiled at me with much less reserve. “My name is Hyacinth,” she said, as if it was a thank you. Maybe it was.

  “Pet,” I said.

  Hyacinth turned her head to the side as if she was thinking about that. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was offended I’d given her my title rather than my name, but it wasn’t like I had a proper name to be called these days, anyway. Maybe one day if I got away from dead people and Behindkind and stuff—maybe I could go back to being called by a human name then.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow,” said the troll girl. She didn’t look offended, which was nice.

  I went back inside to the slowly stirring house and put on two pots of coffee for the lycanthropes that were just starting to stagger out of bedrooms and picking themselves up from a drooling mess on the living-room carpet.

  The house looked a bit different today, as if a filter had been laid over it to silver it into an old fashioned photo—or as if things weren’t quite exactly where they were meant to be. I was still trying to figure out whether it was the colour or the placement of things that wasn’t quite right when I walked into the kitchen.

  Over by the stove, Daniel froze, mid-yawn. He abruptly shut his mouth and asked, “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?” I asked, looking askance at him. “Oi! Your eggs are gunna burn!”

  “They’re not mine, they’re yours and Morgana’s,” he said, hastily scooping them out. “Didn’t you—you just walked through the wall, I swear!”

  “Reckon you haven’t woken up yet,” I told him. “There’s a doorway there.”

  I pointed at it without looking, then glanced over my shoulder and found my aim was off by a of couple feet and corrected it. “See? Came through there.”

  “Okay,” he said, but he didn’t sound exactly convinced. “There’s bacon, too.”

  “Thanks!” I said, pinching some of the bacon out of the pan before it could get to the plate. I slipped one of the eggs onto a piece of toast. “How come you cook so well?”

  “Because when the new ones turn I have to make sure I can feed them without finishing off the job of killing off the human part of them before the change is complete,” he said. “It’s safer if they don’t hunt right away, but the meat also needs to be just raw enough to appeal to the wolf part. But if I don’t cook it enough—”

  “Food poisoning,” I said, nodding. I licked up the few drops of runny egg that had spilled onto my fingers. “How come you were looking after the newbies?”

  “I still do,” he said. “That’s what an alpha’s meant to do: look after the ones that can’t look after themselves. That, or—”

  I looked up at him, aware of a change to his voice. His face didn’t look too different, but there was a shade of sorrow to it.

  “You have to kill the ones that are savage, as well?”

  “Yes. If they’re a significant danger to humans and there’s no hope, it’s my responsibility to kill them. Most of the packs don’t do it unless there’s danger to the pack as well, these days, but originally there was the expectation that we’d live safely by the humans.”

  “But that’s what you were already doing when Erica was still—”

  “Yes,” he said briefly. “Are you going out today?”

  “Changing the subject, huh? Yeah; I’m gunna go see Detective Tuatu. Reckon he might have some info for me by now.”

  “That North’s assistant at the door before?”

  “Yeah. What’s the go with North, anyway? Being the latest incarnation of the north wind, I mean. How does that work?”

  “I thought we were trying to investigate the little girl—Sarah Palmer—and Upper Management,” said Daniel. “Why do you want to know about North?”

  “Because she’s protecting this girl for a reason, and I reckon it’ll end up being important. Personal stuff is always important.”

  “All right. I’ve got a bit of an idea about how to get some intel on Upper Management, so I’ll—Pet, if you want some, come upstairs and eat it! Stop pinching it out of the frying pan!”

  “Nah,” I said through a mouthful of bacon, and shoved in a piece of toast for good measure. Thickly, I added, “I’m off. Call me if ya need me, but be careful what you say—reckon they’ve done something to my phone.”

  I left him with a frying pan in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, muttering sourly about why would stuff ever be easy? Where’s the fun in that? and took myself off to the police station again.

  Detective Tuatu was at his desk, looking a bit more frazzled than usual.

  “G’day!” I said cheerfully, and he jumped. I raised my brows at him. “You’re a bit jumpy this morning, aren’t you?”

  “I get that way when I haven’t had enough sleep,” he said pointedly.

  “What? I didn’t keep you awake.”

  “Someone came to visit me last night,” he said.

  Oh. That explained the twitchiness: visiting Behindkind are never a good thing. Still, he was alive, so the dryad I gave him must still be doing a good job of looking after him.

  “Who was it?”

  “Someone with more arms than they should have had.”

  “Ohhh. Yeah, those ones are pretty flamin’ creepy.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Dunno. Fae, maybe. If I had Zero’s library, I could look ’em up. Oi—”

  “Nope,” he said, straight away.

  “I haven’t even asked you yet!” I protested.

  “I’m not pinching one of the Troika’s books for you. I already have more contact with that world than I really want.”

  “Fine. Maybe JinYeong will pinch it.”

  “Maybe,” said Detective Tuatu, but he sounded pretty unconvinced. “Pet, why am I being visited by four-armed fae?”

  “How come I’m to blame? If you’ve been doing stuff you shouldn’t have been doing, don’t blame it on me!”

  “I did something Athelas asked me to do,” he corrected me. “And straight afterwards, there were four-armed blokes at my windows.”

  “You did what?”

  “Athelas asked me to find some information for him—said it would go some way toward the debt I owed him.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. I’d known that would come back to haunt him some day, but I’d been hoping I’d misjudged Athelas.

  “I don’t know why he wanted the info, but I didn’t seem to be able to not do what he asked me to do. Any idea about why that is?”

  “Yeah,” I said grimly. “An idea that says next time you’re with Behindkind, don’t say stuff like I’m happy to pay whatever you think it costs in exchange for your safety. They’re pretty flamin’ serious about collecting on things they think they’re owed. They love balance—especially when the b
alance is in their direction.”

  “So you’re not working together at all?” He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. “I just thought you were coming to a more healthy living arrangement and doing your own thing.”

  “We’re definitely not working together on anything. What did he ask you to check on?”

  There was a moment of silence before the detective said, “I can’t say.”

  “What, you’re not talking to me now?” I said indignantly.

  “No, I mean it won’t come out. I can show you what I showed him, though. I made a copy for myself: I’ll bring it around tomorrow. Make sure you tell me where to bring it.”

  I grinned at him without acknowledging the attempt to find out where I was living these days. Instead, I said, “You’ve gotten braver lately.”

  “Nope. I just don’t like not being able to say things with my own mouth. What about the terrifying little woman with black hair?”

  “Heck,” I said. No wonder he looked frazzled. I knew she’d gotten a bead on Detective Tuatu, but I hadn’t expected that she’d actually go to see him.”

  “Pet, who is that woman?”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “North? Dunno if I can exactly say it. Definitely can’t prove it.”

  “She said she was the North Wind! Why did you send the North Wind to my house?”

  “I didn’t send her. How come she came to see you?”

  “She said she was concerned about me looking into her case.”

  “Why were you looking into her?” I hadn’t asked him to do it, even if I’d been thinking along the same lines.

  “Because every time I tried to explore a facet of the Palmers’ lives, there was a connection with her as well.”

  “Hah!” I said. “I knew it! What’s her human name?”

  “Selma North. I dug up everything on her—including her present legal troubles, I might add. Pet, you do know that she’s on trial for murder, don’t you? I don’t even know how she’s walking around free—her bail was massive.”

  “Came by to tell you to get your mitts off, huh?”

  Detective Tuatu, looking very ashy for an islander man, closed his eyes briefly and opened them again. “I wish that’s what she came to do,” he said fervently. “No, she wants my help, Pet! What did you tell her about me?”

  “Just that I trusted you.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Oi.” I grinned at him. “Reckon it would have been better if I told her you weren’t to be trusted?”

  I think he actually went paler. “Good point. She would have been a lot less happy with me digging into her. Is she a murderer?”

  “Don’t reckon she killed the bloke they say she killed.”

  “That makes me feel much better.” He thought about that for a while, then said unexpectedly, “Oh well, I suppose it does. The dryad went mad trying to keep her out, then let her in. It was a bit of a shock.”

  “What did you find out about the family, anyway?”

  “From our side, not much until recently: there was a report filed when Sarah disappeared as a baby, but she was found again so quickly it never became an alert. Then there was a spate of attempted abductions in the last few months that led to a uniformed patrol past their house every half hour starting a few weeks ago. It’s weird—the Palmers aren’t into anything dangerous, and they don’t have biker or mob connections: I couldn’t even find a parking ticket on them, for pete’s sake!”

  “You said you kept finding traces of North while you were digging into the Palmers.”

  “Ridiculously many for someone who isn’t connected to them by blood.”

  “What sort of traces?”

  “The first traces of her are in Claremont. It’s also where Sarah Palmer was born, and where the Palmers still live. They’ve been offered very good money for their house several times and turned it down every time, but that’s another story. Until she was arrested, your friend North was also the librarian at the school Sarah attends.”

  “So they live in the same town and go to the same school. Not a huge deal, yeah?”

  “Not alone, no. Interesting, but not suspicious. But then a friend of mine who works at a certain law firm tells me that North’s will is made out to Sarah Palmer.”

  “Is your friend allowed to do that?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Legally, no,” said Detective Tuatu. “If she told me straight out. And if she were a lawyer. She’s actually corporate counsel, so she can get away with a lot of things that lawyers can’t. And more than that—”

  “There’s more?”

  “In the last three months, North has been there just in time to prevent the abduction of Sarah Palmer five times. That’s not including the time where she was accused of murdering the bloke who kidnapped the girl.”

  “She’s really invested in this kid,” I said. It looked like I would have to ask North a few questions myself. There had to be something important in why North was so invested—something that would help when it came to breaking the contract Upper Management had with the Palmers. “All right. You got an address for her? I’d better go and see her.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “Dunno. Oi, that reminds me.”

  “Of what?” asked Tuatu. He looked wary, and I really didn’t blame him.

  “Don’t dig too much into North’s case—keep to her connection with the Palmers. If you come across anything about that Mr. Preston, leave it alone for now.”

  “Why?”

  “Or keep away from water for a while if you gotta look into it.”

  “Pet, if I’m going to have Behindkind coming up through my toilet, I’m going to—”

  “Yeah? You’re gunna what?”

  “Pee somewhere else,” he said. “Literally.”

  I grinned at him. “See, I knew you were getting braver. Just stay away from the case and you should be fine.”

  “Should be, that’s nice,” he muttered.

  “Oi,” I said. “There’s one more thing.”

  Detective Tuatu sighed. “What is it?”

  “Take it easy, it’s not about North or the Palmers. You said you’d been keeping an eye on my house since my parents’ murders.”

  “Off and on.”

  “So how come you didn’t know I was in there? At first, I mean? And there’s something else, too: how come the power was still on? I could still take showers and use the jug. I mean, I wasn’t dumb enough to use the lights, but they were still on, too.”

  “I wanted to know the answer to that as well,” the detective said. “They didn’t tell me at the agency that someone was paying to have the water and power kept on, but they must have known. I’ll look into it, if you like.”

  “Oh,” I said. I’d been hoping I was wrong, and that it wasn’t weird. “I thought that was just so that they could keep showing the house to people.”

  “Not for years like that,” said the detective decisively. “Not for a house that had seen a double murder. And as for how we missed you in there—we didn’t see lights or movement, no one coming through the front door. And the house itself is easy to walk past if you’re not looking for it. I presume someone was responsible for that.”

  “Well, yeah, I usually used the door at the back,” I admitted. I didn’t know what he meant by easy to walk past. I’d never had the kind of trouble I’d once had with the house across the road. It had been spelled to make people look past weirdness. “Oi. You reckon you could get the file on my parents’ case for me?”

  “Pet—”

  “S’pose it’s illegal?”

  “Very,” he said dryly. “But anything hardcopy we’ve got is already over at your house: the Troika took it all with them as soon as they turned up. If you want to look at what there is, you’ll have to ask Zero for it.”

  “Flamin’ heck!” I said, disgruntled. “Talk about bad timing! They’ve still got my money, too.”

  “They took your money?” Detective Tuatu stood up. “Come on. W
e’re getting it back.”

  Startled, I said, “What, this is something you’re all gung ho about? They didn’t take it, I just didn’t get the chance to grab it before I left: it’s hidden all over the house.”

  “Still—”

  He didn’t look convinced but lucky for me—or maybe him—my phone rang.

  “Sorry, gotta take this,” I said, scribbling down the address of Sarah’s house from the notepad beside Tuatu’s mousepad. “You can bring me copies of whatever you’ve got from Athelas as well as anything left of my parents’ case tomorrow. I’ll make you lunch.”

  I left while I was still talking, and answered the phone as soon as I was out of earshot of the detective’s desk. It was Daniel.

  “Hey, Pet,” he said. “I’ve got some good news for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  Carefully, he said, “You remember you wanted me to find out what some old friends of mine were up to these days?”

  “You found out?” I said, almost astounded enough to say something without thinking it through first.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “Got a good chance of finding out where they are at the moment, though, if we play our cards right.”

  “What—I mean, how did you do that?”

  “Still doing it,” he said, a bit tersely. “That friend of mine who was looking for me—”

  “Did you let—”

  “Gave ’em a quick look at me. So if you wanna wait where I got the clothes last time, you might be able to follow ’em back somewhere useful after I lose ’em.”

  “Gotcha,” I said. “Gimme fifteen minutes to get there.”

  I’m starting to learn that there are certain places that are more likely than others to have bits of Between clinging to them. Places like the building restoration at the corner of Davy Street and Salamanca Place, for instance, where there’s an old building being restored—that’s prime real estate for Between. It’s old, it’s in flux; constantly changing between old and new, with pieces of the old that will never be new, and bits of new plastered over the old. The exact sort of spot where things never look exactly like they are.

  That was useful to me, because that was where Daniel had told me to meet him. We’d fought off a Sandman and dropped in for some clothes afterward, so that he didn’t have to run around Hobart in the nick. There are a lot of things that locals don’t see when it comes to Between and Behind, but a naked teenager isn’t one of those things.