Between Homes (The City Between Book 5)

by W. R. Gingell

  I stayed behind JinYeong with the clothes and my coffee cup, and was surprised to see him flash a very official-looking ID along with his too-rapidly-spoken Korean. It reminded me that he and the other two psychos were officially adjuncts of the police force here, and impressed me just slightly—if JinYeong was trying to avoid leaving traces of himself behind, this was a good way to do it. If I had correctly understood a few of the words I’d been able to make out, he was telling the counter girl that we needed footage from their CCTV to help catch a shoplifter. He must have vamped her just enough to make sure she didn’t find it weird that her customers from before were back as police to look at the camera feeds, because her eyes were still pretty bright when she took us out the back into a small, elegant office.

  “You can use the computer here,” she said, double-clicking an icon on the desktop that spawned a split-screen of four sections, and a control panel on the right. “I’ll be out in the shop if you need me.”

  To my relief, she also shooed away the other three girls who were trying to crowd into the room with JinYeong. It would have been a bit hard to talk freely with them in the office, even if they were at least partially starry-eyed from vampire proximity.

  “This one,” I said, opening the camera feed that pointed directly at the customers and the register from behind the counter. “Looks like we just have to enter the time and select a section of the record.”

  We settled back to watch, me in the chair and JinYeong hovering to look over my shoulder, as the video went through its frames. I was watching closely, but I was still taken by surprise when JinYeong said, pointing, “Chogi.”

  “What? Really?”

  I’d forgotten that Behindkind often look different in modern image capture: I’d been able to pick the Sandman out of a photo when other humans couldn’t see it at all, but I hadn’t expected it to look completely different in motion capture.

  I could still see the grey suit—that was the one thing that never seemed to change, no matter what else did. And with the Sandman, when you could see its real body, a lot else seemed to change. Its face, for example. And its hands and body, and—

  Let’s just say that you don’t want to meet it out on the streets.

  Its face looked like an ordinary face in the video. Not a fuzzy sort of mess that just suggested a face directly into your mind, and not the mothy face with the fluffy antennae I knew was the real face beneath it, but an actual, human face. It was ovular and tidy, with a high hair line and an air of quiet self-possession. Ordinary and kind of nice. If I didn’t know what was underneath, I would have thought he was just another bloke.

  “How come it can do that? It looked like itself when I took a photo of it.”

  JinYeong shrugged and said something about more sides and movement, without an edge of Between to the words.

  “You mean it’s got more dimensions to play with, like time? So it can layer the idea of itself onto the security feed or something?”

  “Maja,” he said.

  “Your translator turned off, or what?” I demanded. I could understand most of what he said, but maybe I’d gotten used to him being more understandable lately, because I resented having to go to the effort of understanding his Korean without the edge of Between.

  “Choshimhae, Petteu,” he said, glancing significantly toward the door.

  “Oh, right,” I said. Fair enough: there was no use triggering anything in the assistants’ heads, if they’d been programmed in any way by Upper Management.

  I turned my attention back to the computer, and watched the Sandman approach the register. From this perspective, I could see it picking up a package of two handkerchiefs that it placed on the counter, and its lips moved briefly.

  “So it’s the handkerchiefs and the words?” I mused aloud. It didn’t do anything else before she handed it the card, so it must have been that.

  The Sandman left, and my attention wandered to the right side of the screen, where numbers ticked over, second by second.

  “Flamin’ heck!” I said. “Just as well we came today!”

  JinYeong frowned at the computer. “Wae?”

  “It’s one of those cameras that rewrites,” I said, pointing at the display to the right of the multiple camera screens. “Look, there’s only twenty-three hours left before it writes over the files. Wouldn’t think that’s much good for a shop, but what do I know?”

  “For shops, not much good,” agreed JinYeong. “For Behindkind, it is convenient.”

  “Good point. Right,” I said, clicking out of the screens. “It’s probably asking a bit much to try getting a card today.”

  “I can do it,” said JinYeong. “But it is unwise.”

  “Yeah, figured. I’ll get Daniel to do it tomorrow, or maybe wait until we’re ready to go in. On our way out, make sure you tell ’em we didn’t need to make copies of the files, all right? Don’t want ’em getting spooked.”

  “Jal haesseo, Petteu,” he said in a congratulatory sort of way. “Kurolgae.”

  “You don’t need to sound surprised about it,” I told him, following him back outside. “I’m running my own investigation these days—if I’m not careful, I’ll end up like Mr. Preston.”

  JinYeong narrowed his eyes at me again. “Petteu—”

  “Forget it,” I said hastily. “I’m not investigating Mr. Preston and I’m not telling you what I really am investigating.”

  “Wae?”

  “Don’t want it getting back to Zero,” I explained. I already suspected he’d done something to my phone; I wouldn’t be surprised if JinYeong was still reporting back to him.

  JinYeong grumbled something in Korean that might have been Rude! then added, “Caja!” and led the way out. He spoke briefly to the girl at the counter, but it wasn’t until we were walking up the street toward North Hobart that I realised not only had I started up the street toward my old house, but that I also still had the bag of clothes dangling from one hand.

  “Flamin’ fantastic,” I said gloomily, dodging across the road before the lights could turn. Now I was stuck with a few hundred dollars’ worth of clothes that I couldn’t—didn’t want to—afford.

  If I’d hoped that JinYeong would have to hustle across the road after me in a way that was unbefitting him, I was doomed to disappointment: he stared down the drivers of the cars that tried to start forward when the light turned, and they each stopped as if entranced until he’d finished crossing the road.

  That was enough to put him in a pleased mood all the way home, his steps light and jaunty and his mouth smug. I felt the itch to destroy that smugness but restrained myself. He’d actually helped me—helped me without asking for anything in return, and without any reason. Well, without any reason that I knew.

  I asked suspiciously, “Zero tell you to do this?” but I didn’t need his derisive sniff of laughter to tell me that Zero had given no such order.

  “Ani,” he said, still sauntering. “Nae maum daelo.”

  So he’d done it because he wanted to.

  “Okay,” I said, and continued along beside him silently all the way home without trying to irritate him out of his good mood. It wasn’t exactly payment, but it was a kind of acknowledgement: I don’t think I’d really expected him to help, even though I’d asked.

  A good half of the lycanthropes were home when we got back. A good half of those growled or glared at JinYeong as he followed me into the house, but he only showed the tip of an incisor in a very small snarl, so he must have still been in a good mood.

  By the time we’d had a cuppa and I’d put on a pot of coffee to percolate for the lycanthropes, half of them were still either growling or glaring, but at least it was a different half this time.

  JinYeong looked at them beneath his lashes and sent a derisive laugh in their direction, which they took a lot worse than I’d taken the one directed at me earlier, and said, “Practise, Petteu. You wriggled away yesterday. Today there will be no wriggling.”

  “Says you,
” I told him loftily. Daniel must be upstairs, so it wouldn’t hurt to exercise for a while before I saw him. “I can tell you, if you’re gunna be trying to pin me to the wall with a couch again, I’m gunna be doing some flamin’ wriggling!”

  “I do not need to use the couch,” said JinYeong, lofty in his turn.

  “Lost your temper last time, did you?” I asked, grinning at him. I knew he had. The couch had come just after I ruined his tie, and I’d had to move very quickly to avoid being pinned between the couch and the wall.

  JinYeong turned away and stalked out the back door, but it was too late: I’d seen the sudden grin that he tried to close his lips over.

  “I knew it!” I said, chortling as I followed him out. “Better watch out for your tie this time!”

  JinYeong in normal life was irritatingly beautiful, thoroughly exasperating in his carefully groomed elegance. In the fight, he was lean and deadly in a swift-moving streak of raw energy that was somehow more elegant than his coiffed and perfumed self.

  I don’t even know why I noticed. Maybe it was because it wasn’t so terrifying fighting JinYeong as it was fighting Zero. I felt like I had a chance to breathe, to watch, to appreciate—to learn. Maybe it was just because JinYeong’s hair couldn’t help but be disarrayed, his tie loosened, and I found that less irritating than JinYeong all dolled up, so I could appreciate his beauty instead of being annoyed by it.

  I mean, it actually seemed like there was a good chance I could mitigate JinYeong’s annoyance to me on a personal level if I could just destroy his tie or mess up his hair every now and then.

  We had stopped to rest, me crouched below a tree and him leaning against it like some kind of knightly hero. I leaned on the two handlebars I’d grabbed after he swatted away the original stick I had, my eyes narrowed at him consideringly.

  JinYeong, still panting a little, said, “Wae?”

  “Nothing,” I said innocently, pulling my weight back from the two handlebars. They might look like handlebars from the windows of the house, but I could see their curved, sharp-edged other form, and that form was far too quick to slice into the earth. “Just I’ll have to make sure I get your tie next time.”

  “You,” he said, pointing at me with a stick that wasn’t a stick, “are a frightening little whirlwind. Why do you always take up two weapons? Will you really try to cut off my tie?”

  I shrugged, trying not to grin my pride. “Dunno. It just happens: I keep finding two of stuff when I’m reaching for weapons.”

  “Then why do you not remember what I showed you?”

  “Dunno, been busy trying not to die,” I said, with a touch of sarcasm. He had shown me how to hold them, a couple of months ago, but training was always such a scramble that it was hard to remember. “Thought I was keeping up.”

  JinYeong made the same, small tsk of annoyance he had made when he first saw me take up two blades. “No. This one, lower—that one, above, like so.”

  He demonstrated, and I rose with far less ease to copy him. The stance felt comfortable but still kinda perilous. Like I could cut off someone’s head, but also maybe my own.

  Suspiciously, I asked, “Are you just trying to get me to cut my own head off?”

  “Not like that,” he said, casting down his own weapon and stepping toward me. He observed me from directly in front, then twitched my upper blade into a better position by adjusting my right wrist. “Lower, like so. I showed you.”

  That put his tie in a very tempting position proximate to both blades—blades that were now near enough to being scissored. I blinked at the tie, then gazed up at JinYeong, who was very close and utterly still, watching me intently.

  He probably knew what I was thinking.

  “Your hair’s messy,” I said to that intent face. It wasn’t what I’d meant to say, but that’s what happens when you open your mouth a bit too much.

  JinYeong stiffened, then stepped back. “If my hair is messy, it is your fault!” he said accusingly. “I am going home. My tie is still alive.”

  “There’s always next time!” I called after him. I must have hurt his feelings—we’d only been practising for about half an hour so he couldn’t be tired already.

  I reckon he must have meant to walk home—to just step through the thinning patch of reality that leached the feeling of Between, avoiding humanity and human traffic.

  I had a moment of panic. How many mirrors did Morgana have pointed at the back yard, and exactly how much could she see? But since it didn’t seem very likely that Morgana, who liked to know what everyone else was doing, had very many mirrors on her own back yard, and since I didn’t remember seeing any that focused in that direction, I squashed back the panic.

  Still, I’d have to tell JinYeong to stop pushing through Between when he was near Morgana’s house, anyway. Fighting was okay if it looked like we were only practising with sticks, but disappearing into thin air because he wanted to take the familiar route home was far less explainable.

  That’s what I thought JinYeong was doing, anyway, but when I’d finished tidying up the mess we’d made of the back yard and started to head for the house again, I stopped short.

  At the back door, just stepping through the frame of the door, was JinYeong again.

  Why was he coming back? And how was his back to me, as though he’d walked through me to get to the back door that he was currently entering?

  I turned a considering look at the outline of the house, and it seemed to me that I could see something else layered over it as if someone had put Christmas decorations for a two story house on a three story house instead. The roof was lower, the shape different. Familiar.

  “Oi!” I said. “That’s my house!”

  JinYeong’s head tilted a fraction, and I shut my mouth. He couldn’t hear me, right? Despite his apparent presence here, he was definitely entering my old house through the back door, and he shouldn’t be able to hear me. I mean, I shouldn’t be able to see him, either, but here we were.

  It must have been a coincidence, that faint tilt of what had looked like acknowledgement: he continued on back inside, and I dashed to follow him. As I ran up the few steps to Morgana’s back door, the world smudged around me and I saw the doorway of my old house as I passed through it on JinYeong’s heels.

  That doorway layered over Morgana’s, the soft green of my old house’s hallway paint fluttering against the bold striped wallpaper of Morgana’s hallway. I saw the faint traces of a door where the bathroom was, the linen cupboard opposite, and the stairs that led to the upper floor just beyond that, even though the room around me was a huge living room filled with lycanthropes and old, dusty furniture. I softened my footsteps and put my hood up almost by instinct, which earned me a few weird looks from the nearest lycanthropes before they turned back to the tv, ignoring me.

  For a moment or two I considered trying to walk up those stairs that rose faintly to my right and vanished into the more solid ceiling here at Morgana’s house, but JinYeong was still walking, so I followed him into the living room instead. He threw himself onto his side of our usual couch and sent a look of dark dislike across at Athelas, who was also sitting in his usual chair and sedately sipping a cup of tea.

  “Ah,” said Athelas, his voice just a thread of sound in the tapestry of the air. “I see the Pet has kicked you out yet again.”

  JinYeong snarled at him, but said only, “There is no coffee, I suppose.”

  “Who would make it?” gently asked Athelas.

  I left them to their fight, since in Morgana’s house I was still in the part of the living room that was filled with a lot of lycanthropes and led toward the stairs, and threaded my way slightly dizzily toward the almost matching doors that led to the kitchen in either house.

  I took a moment to make sure I knew which one was the one I was supposed to be walking through, but I still managed to get it wrong. If I’d gotten it wrong in my old place it would have been fine: the framed doorway between living room and the combined kit
chen-dining area was about the width of three doors. As it was I had the unpleasant experience of walking through the wall of Morgana’s place with my eyes wide open. Somehow I usually close my eyes when I’m walking through stuff to get Between.

  “I knew it!” said Daniel, his voice triumphant and far too loud, just as I caught sight of Zero, sitting at the dining table in my old house, books spread out before him.

  I jumped, the sudden loudness of Daniel’s voice vibrating against the faint framework of my old house that lingered in the air and shivering it nearly to nothing.

  “What?” I said in annoyance, and my own voice was too loud, too. When had Daniel come down to the kitchen?

  Faintly, very faintly, I heard Athelas say, “Did you take care of the other thing?”

  It vibrated against the world around me like the tap of a spider’s leg against the web. I would very much have liked to know what they were talking about, but Daniel’s voice, unwelcome and disruptive, said, “You walked through the wall! Again!”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to speak a bit more softly. I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but it had started with the little cracked tile. It was as though my house, as stubborn and unwilling to give into unreasonable Behindkind demands as I, was trying to find me again. “Hang on. Shut up for a bit.”

  “If you want me to give you some of the toasties I made for afternoon tea, you’re going about it the wrong way,” Daniel said.

  “I’m trying to hear something.”

  He snorted and said, “Good luck, around here,” but I pushed his voice to the back of my mind with all the other lycanthrope noise, and concentrated on seeing Zero.

  When I could see him again clearly, I heard Athelas’ voice again. Zero was listening, too: I could see his eyes resting on the kitchen wall instead of his books, even if he wasn’t looking toward the other two.

  I turned my eyes curiously toward JinYeong and Athelas, and it seemed like their voices became just a little easier to hear once more.

  “I really advise you to be more careful,” said Athelas, and sipped his tea. Despite his words, his tone was tranquil. “I have the feeling that you’re more deeply enmeshed than you would like to admit.”