Between Homes (The City Between Book 5)

by W. R. Gingell

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, it isn’t. I mean, some of ’em think this sort of thing brings about the death of the current leader. Like, if he can stop it happening, he can reign for another cycle, however long that lasts. There was a bit of a scandal about it when this king came in. They say he tracked down and murdered all the heirlings and the harbinger for good measure, and that kicked everything into a new cycle. I’m told it happens every now and then. It’s why the Family is being so careful about Lord Sero now that he turns out to be an heirling for this cycle. The King Behind won’t mind one or two heirlings around, but once the harbinger shows up as well, things are gunna get messy pretty quick.”

  I thought of the old mad bloke, who had been wandering around the neighbourhood for years. If he was afraid of being killed for being a harbinger, it was no wonder he was so lost, and mad, and scared. He probably didn’t even know enough about what was happening to know exactly why fae were trying to kill him.

  “Oi,” I said, lowering my voice as we got closer to Morgana’s room, “reckon it’s possible that Sarah Palmer’s part of all that stuff?”

  What if Upper Management weren’t after Sarah Palmer because they didn’t like loose ends, but because they actually needed her? They hadn’t killed her or her family, after all, and from what I’d seen of Behindkind, that was the standard response to loose ends. It had definitely been the Family response.

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” Daniel said, drawing in a breath. “I don’t like the way this sort of trouble keeps following us. We get away from it, and up it pops in another spot. It feels like it’s being forced on us, and I wasn’t ever one of the Behindkind that thinks harbingers are catalysts, either.”

  “Not to worry,” I said. “I’ve got a plan.”

  “Yeah? Well, so do the Family, Upper Management, and the Troika, not to mention the King, so it better be a good one.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I’ve got a good mind not to give this to you,” said Detective Tuatu, when I went to hassle him at work.

  “What for?” I demanded. My already nebulous plan was very quickly on dangerous footing. “I gave you a body, didn’t I? Just ’cos I didn’t give you my new address so you can pretend to bring around info and and poke your nose in there while you’re at it—”

  “I didn’t want a body! Why would you even think that’s an acceptable exchange?”

  “You’re a cop, you’re meant to like bodies.”

  “We’re not meant to like them; we’re meant to investigate them!”

  “Well, now you can investigate it. Can’t believe your lot didn’t find it before me.”

  Goaded, the detective said, “We can’t help it if people go back to crime scenes after they’ve been processed to clear out their desks. We certainly don’t encourage—”

  He stopped, and I grinned at him. “Glad to know you’re not encouraging murder, anyway.”

  “I’m not so sure, these days,” Detective Tuatu said, and his eyes weren’t on me. They were on a red USB that balanced between his fingers, and a deep line had etched itself between his brows.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

  “There’s a lot I don’t tell you, thank you very much,” he said. “You’re not even in the force—I shouldn’t be telling you anything!”

  “Okay, fair enough,” I said, grinning. I nodded at the red USB. “I s’pose the stuff you were looking into for Athelas is in that? C’mon, you said you’d give it to me.”

  “It’s not much,” he said, giving up and tossing the USB at me. “But maybe it’ll mean more to you than it does to me. I don’t see what use it’s going to be.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Still having trouble talking about it?”

  He glared at me. “Yes.”

  “What?” I protested. “You can’t blame me for that!”

  “I blame you for all the things I can’t talk about!” he told me. “And let me tell you that the little tree you gave me is selective about who it lets in and out!”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “What, it wouldn’t let you out the other night? Or it wouldn’t let a date in?”

  “Never mind!” he said grumpily. “And next time bring me a cuppa if you’re going to invade my space and grin at me like a scrawny Cheshire cat.”

  I could have gone to an internet lounge to take a look at what I’d been given, but that seemed about as ideal as checking out the USBs at Morgana’s computer or at the library: far too much chance of being overseen by someone who definitely shouldn’t be seeing the kind of stuff I was kinda afraid would be on the USB.

  Yanno. Someone normal.

  So I went home. Not to Morgana’s place, mind you: back to my actual home.

  You say crazy, I say crafty. I mean, I knew they were out; Athelas was trying to track down whatever had come after North, not to mention North herself, and Zero was already out there as well, probably scouting out wherever it was that the Palmers would be going whenever they left the house.

  And yeah, the psychos might have put up something magic to stop me getting through, but I doubted it. Behindkind constantly underestimate humans because they think we’re stupid and confuddled half the time. They don’t take into account that ignorance is our biggest problem, and that we’re perfectly capable of dealing with fae and other Behindkind if we have the knowledge to do it. Physically, there’s a big difference, but when it comes to the mind, Behindkind are definitely not as clever as they think they are. I think most of them are just used to dealing with humans who don’t know about Behind and are interacting without the full set of rules.

  Me, I’m operating with a full set of rules and an advantage. They’d still wipe the floor with me if they caught me but I had a really good chance of not being caught, especially since I wasn’t planning any fancy footwork to get in. I was going to sneak in the human way—by breaking in.

  Besides, I needed more cash before I ran into trouble, and if they caught me at it, I could just show them the money I’d come back for. Reasonable. Normal.

  So I sneaked in the way I’d always snuck in. The window at the back on the second floor was still cracked open by about a finger’s width: I suppose none of the three thought there was enough of a threat from human housebreakers to bother shutting it properly after I wasn’t there to use it anymore. Typical.

  The familiar smell of the house hit me like a blow to the chest: a mix of coffee, Between, and JinYeong’s cologne, with the faintest smudge of lavender from Athelas’ tea. Familiar, overwhelming, and nostalgic, even though it had barely been two weeks since I lived here.

  I cleared my throat, settled my shoulders, and went for one of my money stashes. It was no use allowing myself to be distracted by feelings. This wasn’t my house, and they weren’t my psychos anymore. They hadn’t ever been.

  I emptied out the stash in my bean bag and raided half of the one that was seeded between the pages of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, then came back out into the upper living room to sit down at the computer. I started it up and then took a couple of minutes to stuff my boots with cash while it warmed up. It wasn’t likely that I was going to be mugged on the way home, but I’d prefer to make sure there wasn’t anything for anyone to find if it happened.

  It was just going on for twelve, and I knew I shouldn’t need to be out of the place too quickly, so I took my time. I knew exactly how long the Troika could stay out while they were engaged on a job, and if they were trying to find North, I figured they had a decent bit of work ahead of them.

  I tried the glass USB first, of course. The stuff on it was probably even less my business than the red one, but despite that—or maybe because of it—I didn’t even have to think about it. I put it in the right way first time around, which was pretty impressive. It slotted right in, but nothing happened.

  “Rude,” I said. I pulled it back out and put it in again, and this time an icon flickered on the bo
ttom taskbar for a few seconds before a dialogue box popped up, asking for a password.

  Well, that was flaming typical. What sort of passwords did fae put on their computer files? I would have bet a pretty hefty amount that Zero didn’t even know about passwords, let alone how to enter one—or make one, if it came to that. Fae might be clever and stuff, but when it comes to technology, they’re mostly granddads. That’s probably the only thing that stops humanity from being wiped off the planet—the fact that fae don’t seem to be able to work out computers with any more literacy than your average eighty-year-old.

  That’s why it was so flamin’ annoying to be stopped at this hurdle. I knew a bit about North, and I knew a bit about Zero, but I didn’t know enough about either to be guessing at a password for either, let alone a password that they had in common. I didn’t even know how they knew each other.

  What I needed, I thought darkly, was a hacker. Someone who wasn’t close enough to Zero to want to shield him, but probably not a human, either. I had distinct concerns about asking humans to do fae stuff for me. There was too good of a chance that they’d be hurt, especially since the ‘good guys’ wouldn’t prevent it.

  “This is your fault, too,” I said testily to Zero, even though he wasn’t in the house and couldn’t hear me.

  Fine. I’d find a hacker who wasn’t afraid of fae lords or their fathers—or of the North Wind, for that matter—and they could do their technological wizardry on the USB. In the meantime, I’d go on to the one Detective Tuatu had given me.

  It didn’t ask me for a password when I put it in, but when a window opened on the screen, it didn’t have in it the kind of things I’d expected. I’d expected to find documents, or files—and yeah, they were documents and files, but they were photos of the documents, not the actual documents.

  What the heck? If Detective Tuatu had wanted me to see them, why hadn’t he just shown me the paper originals, or copied the files? Unlike the fae, the detective knew very well what he was doing when it came to computers and files. It looked like he’d ferreted out a series of documents, taken photos of them, and put the photos onto the USB.

  And I mean, maybe he hadn’t wanted to send them to me via my phone when I wasn’t sure how badly I’d been hacked, but what use was a photo of the current rental agreement on my old house, or the power bills for the last…was it ten whole years he’d gone back? Why? I quickly scrolled through the rest of the images, but it was all the same sort of thing.

  “Flaming heck,” I said crossly. “What’s the use of this garbage!”

  I’d been hoping for something more interesting. Something…at least something to do with me that wasn’t about bills or rent, or maybe something about Zero. Whatever Athelas was up to when he wasn’t around Zero, wasn’t just for the fun of it. Or at least, that’s what I’d always assumed. I’d always assumed that he was off doing things in ways that Zero wouldn’t approve of rather than stuff that had nothing at all to do with the others.

  I printed it all out, anyway, two sheets to a page, and hoped I’d have a bit more luck with figuring out what it meant later. Maybe Morgana could have a look at it. That was an idea.

  It took a good half hour to print all the documents, and another half hour to rearrange the paper stacks so it didn’t look like I’d used any paper. Then I put the chair back exactly where it had been, checking carefully for stray hairs, too. You never knew what Zero and Athelas were going to notice. JinYeong wasn’t too good at getting a scent of me when he wasn’t expecting me to be there, so at least I didn’t have to worry about being smelled out. I cleaned my fingerprints from the window on my way out, too. No use taking chances.

  A chilly breeze tickled my ears, sharp and cold with the early promise of autumn, and I eased up the hood of my hoodie. That meant it was harder to hear, but at least my ears weren’t hurting. All I had to do was sit still and do nothing. No movement, no giving my position away if anyone was watching.

  Preferably no breathing.

  I was outside the Palmers’ house—in a tree, to be exact. I’d taken my documents home earlier and had a bit of kip and food before I came out again, prepared for a long night. I’d already done a circuit of the house in the shadows, and I couldn’t find a way in from the first floor that wasn’t likely to have the cops called on me by the family in the other side of the semi-detached house.

  I clung to my tree, fingers sinking into the soft paperbark trunk while the same bark tickled my ears. For a few moments it almost felt as though the breeze that swept through and stirred the curls of paperbark also stirred my hair, which was somehow more paperbark than hair just now. I held onto that feeling as much as the tree, my breathing slow and shallow, and traced my route with my eyes once again. Up and across the tree limb, right into the shadow of the limb and through the wall. I could see the way it looked Between, and I knew I could do it.

  I waited until the breeze was moving through the trees, creating shadow and movement and noise, and then I walked across the branch and straight through the wall.

  Nice! That was easier than I’d expected. Maybe my accidental walking-through-walls back at Morgana’s place had been good for practise or something.

  I came out in the kitchen—or at least, that’s what I guessed it was. The outside light might have been left on downstairs, but there were no lights on up here. There were tiles under my feet, though, so kitchen seemed likely. I fumbled for my phone and turned on the flashlight. Yep. Kitchen it was. It looked a bit grubby and dusty at the corners, but it was a pretty normal kitchen apart from that.

  I wandered around the connected living room, peeking behind pictures and knick-knacks, thankful for the thick curtains that would do a good job of hiding my light from the outside. The top floor looked like being kitchen, laundry, and living room, so downstairs must be the bedrooms. I couldn’t decide if that was safer or not—Zero would have been the one who could tell me. Maybe Athelas.

  I panned my light over the pictures on the wall as I went down the stairs, too. They hung along the wall in descending lines, and I felt a chill of discomfort and danger. That was another thing my family hadn’t kept around the house—photos.

  “We don’t keep anything we can’t pick up or burn in five minutes.” That’s what dad had said. I didn’t remember having to pick up or burn anything, but dad had been a bit funny like that. As I stepped quietly down the stairs, it seemed to me that a few of the pictures were missing: there were empty spaces on the walls that should have been taken by photos or at least paintings, the wallpaper beneath just a little darker than the surrounding areas.

  I stopped in my tracks, and headed back upstairs, leaving the bedrooms for later. I’d seen the photo albums upstairs, under the coffee table. I hadn’t thought anything of them at the time—they were at least portable, so they could be picked up in five minutes—but now they were the first, tiny not-quite-right thing. I needed any tiny, not-quite-right thing that might turn out to be a not-so-tiny wrong thing.

  I propped my phone against a candle holder on the coffee table to illuminate the albums without shining directly at the curtains to test their thickness, and plopped the two fat albums on top of the table.

  I went through the first album page by page for a while, but it looked like just normal family stuff. Surprisingly familiar, but that could have just been the fact that it was hard to see the faces properly with the glare of the flashlight against the glossy paper, and my mind wanted to insert familiar faces in the glaring white.

  Or, I thought, frowning, was it because I’d seen the exact same family in photos at North’s unit?

  Soon I was leafing through it a couple pages at a time, and it wasn’t until I began flipping through the second album that I came across the missing pieces there. It wasn’t just one or two missing like on the walls, either; here, it was a whole year or two missing. They hadn’t just not taken photos that year or two, either—there were empty leaves where they hadn’t replaced the pictures, along with a slight yello
wing of the album. The photos directly after those ones were subtly different, too; the Palmer parents each had a hand on their daughter in every photo, or both hands. As if they were afraid she would run away—or as if they were afraid she would be taken from them.

  I put the albums back where they had been and went looking for the missing photos downstairs in the master bedroom, but I already knew exactly where they were.

  Those fifty or so empty spaces had once held the photos that I had found in North’s unit.

  Why had North taken from the Palmers photos that had absolutely nothing to do with her? I could understand it a bit more if she’d actually shot the pictures as a family friend, but this looked more as though she’d literally lifted them from the family photo albums and taken off with them.

  When I was sure the photos weren’t still in the house, I finally went to Sarah’s room. Something shuffled beneath the soles of my feet as I crossed the threshold, a small, almost musical clutter of sound. I crouched down, directing the light from my phone at my feet, and saw a wide, curved swathe of dark sparkles across the doorway.

  Hang on. Were those iron filings?

  I stared at them, then sat back on my heels, a laugh of disbelief soft in the darkness.

  Heck. Whatever else the Palmers had gone through, they were very much aware of fae and their basic conventions, at least.

  I tidied up the shards I’d accidentally moved and stepped over the dark line to check the window. Sure enough, there were iron filings there, too. More than that, there were iron filings all around the room, a trail of them following every wall to completely surround everything in the room.

  Okay, so the Palmers also knew that Behindkind didn’t necessarily use doors and windows, too, which probably meant they knew a bit about Between. Which meant they most likely knew about Behind as well, not just that their daughter had vanished and come back from somewhere Other. Enough to know exactly what Sarah had escaped from?