Between Jobs

by W. R. Gingell

  “Exactly,” he said. “I would come after you myself.”

  Yeah, they’re definitely psychos.

  “If not you, then who?”

  “By joining you, I’ve distanced myself from the Family,” said Athelas. “You of all people should know what that means, Zero. I have very little knowledge of what goes on in that side of Behind, and even less say about it.”

  “I see,” said Zero. He went back to his sharpening, and some of the ice in the room melted. “It does seem to push the borders of coincidence to say that they were here for someone else, however.”

  “Perhaps someone has heard that you’re here. It’s not beyond possibility, after all.”

  “Uri wassoyo,” JinYeong said, shrugging.

  “Exactly,” agreed Athelas. “If it occurred to both of us that you’d be here, it’s no doubt occurred to others as well. And if you’re here, it would be a good chance that we’re here. The question should then really be, who has JinYeong annoyed most recently?”

  That was probably a pretty long list.

  “Singularly unhelpful, in other words,” said Athelas.

  This time, JinYeong grinned outright. Nice to know he had more expressions in his arsenal than a sulky one and an angry one.

  “The timing is reasonably coincidental, don’t you think?” Zero said slowly.

  “Quite,” said Athelas, “but we must recall that whoever sent them, sent low level lackeys. Not the sort of thing you expect to take down someone like JinYeong. Or even a normal vampire, if it comes to that.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, passing Athelas his cup and saucer. “They took him out pretty quick, if you ask me.”

  JinYeong gave me a narrow-eyed look that made me shuffle closer to Athelas.

  “That was a silver blade embossed with fae magic,” Zero said. “Rank and file, maybe; but well-armed. JinYeong would have recovered in time if I wasn’t there, but I’d like to know who is outfitting mercenaries with silver, fae-embossed blades.”

  “Wait,” I said, a thought occurring to me. “How did you know we were in trouble? JinYeong got stabbed and then you were there. Like ma—really quick.”

  “There’s a Monitor on you,” said Athelas.

  At the same time, Zero said, “It’s not important.”

  I looked from an annoyed Zero to an amused Athelas. “What’s a Monitor?”

  “You don’t need to know,” said Zero.

  Athelas said, “Think of it as a collar. Every good pet has one, after all.”

  JinYeong asked a question, his voice lilting up at the end.

  “No,” Athelas replied. “Why would Zero put a Monitor on you?”

  JinYeong, outraged, said something swift and sibilant.

  “Be quiet,” Zero said, with finality, to both of them. To me, he added, “You. Don’t think too much of it. I haven’t decided you can stay, but I don’t like things dying when they’re under my protection.”

  “Hyung!” JinYeong sounded reproachful.

  I stuck my tongue out at him. “Nobody cares if you die.”

  “Ya!”

  “Do you want me to throw you out on the street right now?”

  I closed my mouth and JinYeong gave me a smug look.

  “I don’t have a Monitor on JinYeong because he can look after himself. Monitors are for pets.”

  I wanted to say that JinYeong obviously couldn’t look after himself, and to remind everyone who it was who had pulled the knife out of his chest, but Athelas was looking even more amused and it occurred to me in time that everybody already knew that. The only thing I would get out of making that particular remark was thrown out of my house.

  I started chopping garlic again. Pity it wouldn’t make JinYeong sick. Decent vampires ought to get sick from garlic.

  Chapter Five

  They didn’t finish eating until after eleven; then they decamped to the downstairs living room as usual, discussing their investigation. I did the washing up and listened more because it was nice to hear their voices out in the open than because I really wanted to know what they were talking about. It wasn’t like I was part of the investigation, anyway, and I had to go to work tomorrow.

  But maybe it was nice to feel all the subtle little effects of people living in the house again. A warmth; or maybe it was just the constant flicker of sound and movement in the background.

  It wasn’t like I was fond of them or anything. I had to live with them until I could get my house back to myself, that’s all. But for the meantime, I couldn’t help smiling while I washed the dishes.

  In the next room, Athelas asked, “What now? This could prove disruptive to the investigation. If they know where you are, it’s possibly best to—”

  “We’re not leaving.” Zero’s voice was expressionless, but it was expressionless like a brick wall. He wasn’t going to change his mind, and it was no good arguing. Then, as if correcting himself, he added, “I’m not leaving.”

  Despite the tone, Athelas said, “I understand that you’d like to continue your investigations, but will that help you if the Family knows where you are? They’re not particularly fond of you.”

  “I’ll take it into account,” said Zero. “They didn’t attack the house, so they obviously don’t know exactly where we are. I’ll do a working on the house tonight. That is first.”

  “What’s second?” Athelas wasn’t stupid enough to argue again; he could tell as well as I could that it was useless. “Your forays Between have yielded more blood than usable information, and if JinYeong’s nose isn’t working well enough to trace the blood inside—”

  “Hal su isseo!” said JinYeong swiftly.

  “At some distance from the house, his nose seems to recover,” Zero said. “I’ve got a few thoughts about that.”

  “Very well; then perhaps that’s the second thing we could work on tomorrow,” Athelas suggested.

  “Yes,” agreed Zero. “JinYeong is going to try again. The pet can come with me.”

  “The pet can what?” I said to the kitchen tiles, startled into saying it aloud.

  “I thought you hadn’t decided to keep it?”

  “I haven’t,” Zero said. “But if it’s here eating our food, it should be useful.”

  That was rich! I was in here doing the washing up while they were out there talking, after eating the meal I made them.

  Flamin’ superior fae.

  “I’m already useful,” I told the kitchen tiles. At nose-height there was a little cracked one, just like me. I always talked to it while I was doing the washing up; when I was younger, I’d imagined that it talked back. “D’like to see you lot doing the washing up. D’like to see you cooking your own dinner. I’m flamin’ useful.”

  I heard the sound of JinYeong’s dismissive hiss, then an equally dismissive sentence in Korean.

  “It will be useful,” Zero said. “There’s no need for you to know how—or why, if it comes to that. All you need to do is follow the blood. I’ll be right behind you with the pet.”

  Hang on. Zero and I were going with JinYeong? Flamin’ fantastic. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone attacked JinYeong again; and even if I didn’t care about that, I did care about not being attacked myself.

  JinYeong, his voice as indignant as I felt, asked, “Dweye? Waeyo?”

  “Because I’ve got a suspicion about why you haven’t been able to follow the scent easily, and I want to test it.”

  Was I part of the test? I looked worriedly at the cracked tile as I pulled the plug out of the sink, and said plaintively, “I don’t like tests.”

  “And I need the pet there to test it,” added Zero.

  Oh, I definitely didn’t like tests.

  “Do you think it’s wise to be taking the child Between with you? She hasn’t had any experience, and she’s a human. How can she help?”

  “It,” said Zero. “It said it would be useful. It’s not a child, either; it’s half grown.”

  JinYeong said something in a curious voice.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and decided that if I was going to have any chance of following conversations around this place, I’d have to start learning Korean.

  “My point exactly,” Athelas said. He didn’t sound annoyed, but I had the feeling he was. “A human child is no use to anyone Between, unless you’re offering her—it—up as fodder for safe passage. I don’t fancy you need that.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then—”

  “I don’t know yet,” Zero said. “Not for sure. I’m going out to put up the wards now. That should stop anyone finding us—or normal humans getting in, if it comes to that.”

  I heard his footsteps on the stairs and then along the hall, passing through the other side of the kitchen. The front door opened and closed, and the faintest of sighs passed from the other room into the kitchen. Athelas obviously still wasn’t happy about Zero taking me into the house across the road. Maybe I’d make him another cuppa.

  I swiped my damp hands along my jeans and frowned. Hang on, what was that in my pocket? It was either ovular and cool or cylindrical and cool; and when I took it out of my pocket it looked like it still hadn’t decided what it was. It should have been a tin of cat food—wait, had I stolen that?—but it was trying pretty hard to be a stone with a tiny tree growing on it.

  “Oh, that’s weird,” I said.

  I put the thing on the kitchen island top and stared at it as if I could make it decide what it was going to be by staring at it; but that didn’t do much except make me dizzy. It wasn’t even flickering or anything—just looked more like a stone sometimes and more like a tin of cat food at others.

  I didn’t really want it to be a tin of cat food, since that would mean I’d technically stolen it, so I said to it, “You’re a pebble. You have a little tree on your back. Try to remember that.”

  Maybe it needed to be talked to. It changed back to being a pebble with a tiny tree wrapped around it; and this time, it stayed like that.

  “What have you got there, Pet?”

  I jumped. I hadn’t seen Athelas standing in the cased doorway between living room and kitchen, one shoulder leaning against the frame and one leg crossed in front of the other. He looked pensive. I mean, he pretty much always looks pensive, but this time he looked more pensive.

  “It’s a little tree on a rock,” I said. “I got it from the grocery store.”

  “I had no idea the local grocery store carried dryads,” said Athelas.

  “I thought it was a little tree on a rock.”

  Athelas left the doorway and strolled toward me. “It is. So to speak. Did Zero give it to you?”

  “No.” Why would Zero give me anything? “I told you. I brought it back.”

  “From the place where you were attacked?”

  “Yes. The grocery store. What’s the big deal? Should I show Zero?”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Athelas, shrugging. “But it’s entirely up to you, of course. I’ve got a feeling he’d be rather annoyed if you showed him that.”

  “Wait, he’d be annoyed? What did I do? Why would—”

  “And since you seem determined to stay here—”

  My hand closed around the stone, or tin, or dryad, or whatever it was. “Do you want it?”

  There was a moment of very silent stillness before Athelas sighed. “Very much! However, I suspect the price is too great.”

  “I’ll give it to you,” I said. “I didn’t pay for it.”

  Another silence stretched out, long and incomprehensible. Athelas was wearing that slight smile he most often wore, and I thought he looked regretful.

  “Are you determined to put me forever in your debt?” he asked, at last. “I refuse your gift. Don’t freely offer such things to the fae—don’t offer them to anyone.”

  “All right, I won’t offer it to you!” I said in exasperation. I put the pebble back in my pocket; this time more carefully. “Flaming heck! I only asked if you wanted it!”

  “I want it,” said Athelas. “Very much.”

  Strike a light, these psychos were impossible to understand!

  “Well, have a cup of tea instead, then,” I said crossly, and flicked the button on the kettle.

  Athelas looked startled, then laughed. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll accept a cup of tea. Put that thing in your room, and if Zero asks you about it, you’d be wise to tell him it’s always been here, in this house.”

  “Will he believe that?”

  “No,” said Athelas. “But he’ll believe that you believe it.”

  “Oh,” I said. That didn’t make much sense. No, actually, it did make sense; just not enough sense. There was something more that Athelas wasn’t telling me.

  JinYeong, light and elegant, padded into the kitchen, his socks silent against the kitchen floor.

  “You,” I said to him. “You were already in here when I got home this afternoon, weren’t you?”

  JinYeong’s mouth made the satisfied moue I was beginning to dislike as much as his smug look. At least his eyes were glittering with dark humour instead of blood-lust, so I suppose there’s that.

  “Moh—bistandae,” he said, and walked past me to the kitchen island.

  “Where were you?”

  He raised a brow at me and smirked over his shoulder. I didn’t think he was going to tell me, but after a moment he sauntered back around the kitchen island, trying to back me up by sheer personality. I would have stared him down if he hadn’t touched a finger to my forehead and pushed me backward with that one finger, as if afraid to dirty the rest of them.

  “Rude!” I said.

  The other brow went up. JinYeong turned elegantly, flicked open the latticed cupboard door, and slid into the cupboard with a liquidity that was disconcerting.

  “Oh well,” I said. “S’pose that’s fair. Did that myself.”

  It would have been nice to shut the cupboard door on him and make him sit in there for a couple of hours, though. At least he’d only had to wait for a few minutes while I made coffee.

  “You were the one who messed up my room, too, weren’t you?” I asked, as he coiled back out of the cupboard again.

  JinYeong shrugged, but he still looked pleased with himself. “Coppi,” he said, and sat down at the kitchen table opposite Athelas.

  “Isn’t anyone going to bed tonight?” I complained; but since it was obvious that JinYeong was ordering me to make coffee, I put a coffee cup next to Athelas’ teacup and fetched the coffee plunger.

  “You’re very comfortable, Pet,” said Athelas, above the rising sound of the jug boiling.

  “It’s my house,” I said. “I’m always comfortable here.”

  “Yes, there’s that, too,” Athelas added. “I’ve been wondering about that. Well, perhaps for some it’s no more difficult to deal with Between than it is to deal with Fae.”

  “Between what?” I asked, jumping myself up on the kitchen bench. “You all keep saying Between and Behind and I don’t understand.”

  “I mean it in its most basic sense,” Athelas said. “This world of yours, where you eat and sleep and go to work—it’s only the top layer of—ah, how shall I explain it to a human?”

  “Call it an onion,” I said, ignoring the casual superiority. “All right, it’s the top layer of an onion. What about it?”

  “That would suggest more than three layers.”

  “Oh well, call it a trifle, then,” I said, shrugging. I leaned over and snagged the kettle, and poured for them. “I don’t care. Trifles can have as many layers as you like. Yours can have three if you like. So here is the cream with chocolate sprinkles.”

  JinYeong’s eyelashes dropped, then opened again with something of a gleam. This time, I was pretty sure the contemptuous amusement in them wasn’t directed at me—it was directed at Athelas.

  “The—well, here in this house, perhaps not. This is something different. Very well, say that the human world is the cream with the chocolate sprinkles.”

  “Wait, what do you mean that thi
s house isn’t the cream and sprinkles?”

  “Pet,” said Athelas, the word gentle but ice-edged, “I would really prefer if you didn’t keep interrupting.”

  I pressed my lips together to stop myself asking another question. “Sorry.”

  “If the human world is the cream with sprinkles, the next layer is the custard—that is Between. Hm, trifle seems to be particularly apt here. From above, the custard receives the impression of the cream. From below, sponge cake and fruit protrude into the custard. And sometimes something from the custard pushes right up into the cream.”

  I didn’t think that was a particularly good comparison, but that was just me. Nobody in their right mind puts stuff in the custard. You put it all in the jelly. Stupid Fae. I nodded anyway, and carefully pushed the plunger down on JinYeong’s coffee. Probably the only thing I like about JinYeong is that his coffee isn’t complicated. Plunger coffee, black, no sugar.

  “Behind is the very bottom, where all the richness is,” Athelas said. He took the cup of tea I passed to him, leaning forward elegantly to do so. “The jelly, the sponge, the fruit. All the reality.”

  “At least we’ve got the chocolate sprinkles,” I muttered. Superior Fae. As if this wasn’t reality!

  I was half afraid that Athelas would freeze me again with another of his gentle, ice-edged warnings, but this time his eyes grew brighter with amusement.

  “Do you find me disparaging of your world, Pet?” he enquired. “After all, there’s nothing wrong with cream. It’s a little bland for my tastes, but it’s certainly not without its uses.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It was probably the way they talked like that—not without its uses—that made it so annoying. I jumped myself back up on the bench and crossed my legs underneath me. “We make good coffee.”

  “The layers interact with each other, but remain distinct. And once in a while, something from the jelly gets through to the cream.”

  “Like all of you,” I said. I frowned. “Hang on, that’s what you mean by Between? Stuff from there can get here, but not without going through a middle bit?”