“How did you see that? You couldn’t have seen it!”
“Too late to tell me that now,” I said. “I told you this house is mine. Kick me out, and it just tries to come to me.”
Zero, with the very faintest hint of darkness to his pale cheeks, said stiffly, “I was waiting for—I was waiting for a better—”
“A better time?” I suggested, when he stopped. “You mean when no one knew you were taking it, no one knew you had it, and you could have had the info you actually wanted?”
This time he managed to say it. “I thought it would be safe to leave it there until I knew how you’d gotten it into the house to leave it there. I would have taken it without a second thought if I knew I wouldn’t get the chance to look at it.”
I didn’t believe him, but I couldn’t prove it. It seemed as though Athelas had given me a way to negotiate, but Zero had allowed me to have the leverage to do so.
“Anyway,” I said. “Pretty sure your problem isn’t a lack of empathy: it’s too much. You shut it off after a while when it hurts too much to keep. And North had two good parents for a while—you only ever had one.”
“Don’t make excuses for me, Pet.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I still remember that you let a bloke die, and too much empathy isn’t an excuse for that. But I reckon you can be better than that, so I’m just gunna keep hoping that you start thinking like that too.”
“Don’t expect the best of us, Pet,” said Athelas, making me jump.
I don’t know when he’d got out of his chair, but he was standing beside me with a cup and saucer in one hand, and a coffee mug in the other. He passed the coffee to me, which startled me even more.
“Spent all me money,” I said, sliding off the desk.
“No charge, Pet,” he said, smiling tranquilly at me. “But rest assured that this momentary lapse is not something in which you ought to think of me more highly.”
“I don’t,” I said, and hugged him before he could step away with his cup of tea.
I heard him say, “Good heavens,” and with the warm scratchiness of his wool waistcoat beneath my cheek, I was almost certain that I felt one of his arms curl around me slightly, his hand resting lightly on my back for a bare moment.
“Don’t corrupt my steward,” said Zero, tugging me away from Athelas by my hood.
I staggered backwards, sloshing coffee, then turned around and hugged him around the waist for good measure, too.
“Don’t—don’t hug me, either!” he said.
“Too late!” I said, hugging him tighter when Athelas gently removed my coffee mug and took it with him to put on the coffee table. “You blokes are really bad at hugs, you know.”
“No one is bad at hugs,” protested Zero, awkwardly patting my back with one huge hand. “Stop it.”
“You’re very bad at them. You’re meant to hug me, not pat me; that’s weird.”
For the second time, Zero tugged on my hood, this time to pull me away from himself. “It’s not weird. I know how to hug people.”
“Says you,” I muttered, following Athelas over to the coffee table to reclaim my coffee.
JinYeong, looking put upon, stood up from his usual seat and said as if conferring a very great favour, “Be quick. I wish to shower.”
“Go shower, then,” I said, sitting down and picking up my coffee with relish. “I’m not stopping you.”
“Ya!” said JinYeong indignantly. “Naman wae an junun koya?”
“Because you lied to me,” I told him. “No hug for you.”
“I saved your life!”
“Saved yours, too,” I pointed out. “You’ve probably still got my blood doing loop-de-loops in your veins or wherever it is it goes.”
“Petteu—”
“Nope,” I said. “No hugs for you.”
“I do not want your hugs!”
“Good—”
“Dwaesso!”
“—’cos you’re not getting one.”
Sign up to The WR(ite) Newsletter and get a free book, plus all the latest news! You’ll be the first to know when a new City Between book comes out!
Between Homes (The City Between Book 5) Page 24