Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine

by Gingell, W. R.

  Morgana nodded, but she was a touch paler than she had been earlier as she watched me cut up brain, a faintly squeamish look on her face.

  “It’s probably better if you don’t look at it,” I said. “Why don’t you keep an eye out for JinYeong instead? He usually comes back at around dinner time; let me know when he gets here, all right?”

  Morgana nodded silently and turned her eyes on the living room, where two lycanthropes in wolf form were curled up together between the back of the spare chair and Zero’s bedroom nook, and Zero’s broad back moved occasionally as he leaned forward to take something from the coffee table.

  I didn’t notice the first time her hand reached out absently and took a slice of pink meat and slipped it into her mouth as if it was a snack, but I definitely noticed the second time.

  Heck. Was that normal?

  I opened my mouth to ask, but Daniel scowled a warning at me from the kitchen table and I shut my mouth again. It wasn’t like I wanted to cook brain, and if she was going to eat it raw…

  It wasn’t until the chopping board was nearly empty that Morgana turned her head again and said, “There he is.”

  I caught a glimpse of JinYeong at the window in the living room just as Morgana caught sight of the chopping board, then the slices of brain, then her own hand.

  “Oh no,” she said, her voice tiny and horrified. “What did I do? Did I…did I eat that?”

  “Yep,” I said, biting back the addition of, “Nice and raw, too.”

  “But it isn’t—I didn’t—”

  “How do you feel?” I asked her, since she seemed to be having trouble getting past the raw brains concept, herself. “Lively? Healthy?”

  Her eyes met mine, and I didn’t have to see the faint, almost iridescent ring of red around her irises to read the fascination there, though there was still a bit of horror. “I feel really good. As good as the first time, too; I was afraid I’d only get that kind of energy from eating straight from the…straight from the source.”

  “Red eyes look good on you,” I said, shrugging one shoulder and putting down my knife. It was hard to know what else to say when your best friend is turning into a monster and it’s the most healthy thing for her. Humans are meant to avoid monsters; they’re not meant to approve of their friends turning into monsters.

  Mind you, I was pretty used to monsters by now, I thought, meeting JinYeong’s eyes and smiling involuntarily.

  “You might as well go over,” Morgana said resignedly. “You’ve been waiting for him all day, after all! I’ll just sit here and try and pretend to not eat.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at that, because her hand slipped out and pinched away another slice of pink brain as she said it. She didn’t look at it as she put it in her mouth, but this time I was pretty sure she knew what she was doing, regardless. I left her to Daniel’s watchful eyes, then washed my hands and crossed the room to go and greet JinYeong.

  Something must have happened on the way over, because when I copped a full sight of him, his hair was more than fashionably askew and the tail end of his tie was only hanging on by a thread. There was also more than a bit of dirt on his left hip that looked like it continued around to the back—like someone had sent him flying onto his backside.

  “You’re looking a bit messy,” I said, grinning. “What happened to you?”

  He shrugged one shoulder, mouth pursed in what seemed to be mingled pride and amusement. Whatever had happened, he’d come out on top. More, it was something that had been useful to him.

  He didn’t try to talk too much this time, which was nice. It wasn’t as though we could understand each other, anyway, and it was nice just to have him there. He hadn’t brought along anyone else to try and get through the window, either, which made me wonder whether he’d given up, or had something else in mind instead.

  He seemed content to lean on the windowsill there on the other side of the worlds and look me over to make sure everything was healing all right, and I was conscious of being glad that I’d finally taken the time to shower and clean up the mess earlier. I saw JinYeong gaze at the very nearly healed wall behind me, too, and smile. Then he caught sight of Athelas’ slightly-more-battered chair and one brow shot up.

  I shrugged and grinned. “Can’t stop strays from getting in,” I said.

  He didn’t understand, but he still looked amused. It would have been nice to have been able to explain to him that Tuatu was coming to him with a private network badge if another could be found—or even to explain that he needed to be findable for the detective—but he wouldn’t have understood that, either.

  My breath hitched on a sigh and I leaned against the window, perched on the arm of one of the kitchen chairs that someone had thoughtfully put there for me.

  “You gunna stay there all night?” demanded Daniel, appearing in the living room from somewhere toward the back of the house.

  “Mind your own business,” I said mildly, throwing the seat-pillow from my chair at him. “Shouldn’t you be having a bath or something? You lot smell flamin’ terrible—been rolling in dead stuff out there?”

  “Pet, there are banshees in the bathroom.”

  “They’re fine so long as you don’t antagonise ’em,” I advised him, turning back to the silent shadow that was JinYeong. He was drawing now, which was interesting. It looked like it might be a person, but time would tell.

  “I’m not taking a bath while the banshees watch!” Daniel said firmly.

  “Put the tie frog outside the bathroom door; they love that thing. They might get a bit noisy, is all.”

  “I don’t care if they do their haggis-and-dance celebration, so long as they’re out of the bathroom,” said Daniel, and went away again—probably upstairs to find the tie frog as I’d suggested.

  My phone rang shortly after JinYeong grew irritated with his drawing and ripped off the page he’d been working on to start another. He saw me answer the phone and his eyes narrowed, but it was more of a thoughtful narrowing than an annoyed one: JinYeong wanted to know why I was able to use my phone but not able to use it to talk to him.

  As soon as I picked up, Tuatu’s voice said, “Pet! Why haven’t we heard from you!”

  “Been bearding a bunyip in its den,” I said. “It was flamin’ unpleasant, too. And Zero was out for a while, so—”

  “He isn’t back yet?”

  “He got back just a while ago: we got Sarah. It just took a while longer to do it than we thought. She’s fine, but we haven’t got her parents. Apparently she isn’t sure whether they’re inside or out; they were on their way out of the house when everything went down. They weren’t in the same room when everything happened, so you’ll need to check on your side, too.”

  He let out an audible breath, and I heard a second whistle of air that passed across the phone receiver a second later.

  I grinned. “Tell North I say hi. And that she owes Zero, because he was the one who got Sarah out. We’ll try to get to her parents as soon as we can; apparently we’re going out again tomorrow. Morgana needs to power up with a bit of brain, and—”

  “Please never tell me what that means. We’ll look for her parents as well, all right?”

  “Fine,” I said. “What’d you find out about the building and bit of land I asked you about?”

  “It’s only been a couple days, Pet.”

  “I know. Figured you’re pretty resourceful, though; and if North was helping…”

  “I found something,” he said. There was a grin in his voice. “But I don’t think it’s anything you’d be interested in.”

  “I’m interested in everything,” I said. “Chuck it at me.”

  “There was a wedding there—some sort of invite-only, star-studded thing in the twenties. Apparently the press tried to get in but couldn’t. It was in the papers, but without photos—and some of the Hobart cops were moonlighting as security.”

  I sucked in a swift breath. “Any of those men known to be…special? Different?”r />
  “Don’t know,” he said, with a shade of frustration in his voice. He must have spent a bit of time trying to run that idea down, himself. “It was a long time ago. The records were paper and we lost a lot of them in a fire fifty years ago.”

  “Flamin’ typical,” I muttered. “Any record of the marriage?”

  I heard the satisfaction in his voice. “Yes. I managed to track it down with the help of your computer hacker friend—your other friend isn’t answering his phone. The hacker is a bit jumpy, by the way. Are you sure he’s trustworthy?”

  “’Zul’s always a bit jumpy,” I said. “He’s not comfortable working with the good guys.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better, Pet.”

  “Nah, I mean he’s not comfortable working with the good guys when the good guys are Zero and can potentially kill him if they don’t like what he’s doing. He also knows that the bad guys don’t want him working for the good guys, so he’s a bit insecure.”

  “I can understand that,” Tuatu said. “He managed to find a few things, anyway; the marriage record was for a Miss Emily Simmons and Dr. Lukas Lin, and he was apparently a big deal in the 20s. She was a nobody, if what the papers said was true. Rich socialite marries poor nobody, that sort of story. I haven’t been able to find much else for either of them, though; even your hacker hasn’t been able to find much else.”

  “Oi, Tuatu,” I said, my thoughts sharpening. “Did Abigail and her lot manage to get any of their…things to you? Any books?”

  “Got a delivery the night before everything happened,” he said. “And one of them—the little cricket bat kid—put a download on my phone. It’s been laggy ever since.”

  “Yeah, it was a pretty big download,” I said, delight growing in my chest. “Perfect! You’ve got some of their records, then!”

  “Their—they downloaded some of their records onto my phone?”

  “Yep! Reckon it’ll come in pretty handy, too.”

  “It’s also making my phone slower than a wet week.”

  “So buy a new phone!” I said cheerfully. “Anyway, check there: look for any mention of that Emily Simmons, in particular. I want to know how things went.”

  “I don’t think it went very well,” said Tuatu. “There’s a death record for her just a few years later. That was one of the few things I could find.”

  My heart went cold. “Flamin’ fae,” I said savagely. “Reckon you can find out if there was a kid?”

  “I can, but why? You think he killed her?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “But there’s something important about that bit of ground that kept the—someone there for a flamin’ long time. If he got married to a human, that would have done it: for cold-hearted people, fae spend a lot of time ruminating on the past and holding onto trauma. It just doesn’t make sense if he was the one who killed her.”

  “I’ve heard that it’s not too safe being close to behindkind in general and fae in particular,” Tuatu said dryly. “Someone I know is always being attacked.”

  “Good point,” I said. “Someone else might have done the deed. See if you can find out more about that Doctor Lukas, too, though, all right?”

  “Will do. You any further toward getting out of your cage?”

  “Nope, but we’re not dead yet, so that’s nice.”

  “How likely are you to get out soon?” he asked, carefully neutral. “North wants to know.”

  “Things getting messier out there?”

  “A bit.”

  There was a heaviness of experience in those words that made my brows rise. Whatever was going on outside in Hobart, it was bad. Maybe it would be just as well if JinYeong stopped coming around to the house and started helping Tuatu instead.

  And thinking of JinYeong…

  “You manage to get one of those badges?” I asked.

  “I’m working on it. If I get one, where am I supposed to take it? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the vampire since we were working together on the waterfront. I could have used his help.”

  “Just bring it to the house, I suppose,” I said. JinYeong was coming back to the house twice a day at the moment, whether it was to drag another potential helper to assess the situation or to lean up against the window and make sure I knew he was there, and warm. “I’ll have a word with him about helping out, all right?”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Tuatu said, and there was a repressed relief in his voice that worried me.

  Heck, how bad was it out there?

  “Look after yourself,” I said, catching a flutter of movement in the window. “I gotta go now. I’ll call again when we know about Sarah’s parents.”

  I hung up without hearing his reply, because JinYeong was starting to make signs that he was getting ready to leave, and I didn’t want to waste the time I had left with him. Unluckily for me, JinYeong was swift and decided; he had finished his drawing and now flipped it up against the window so I could see it.

  I took a look at it and said in astonishment, “What the heck?”

  He pointed at it wordlessly, more insistently this time.

  “All right, all right, I’m looking,” I said. It was a drawing of a faceless figure like you might see when a fashion designer sketches concepts into their sketchbook; the figure wore a pretty loud grey chequered suit with lines of yellow through the chequers. It was something I wouldn’t have been surprised to see JinYeong wearing: just loud enough to appeal to him, and just fashionable enough to suit his dignity.

  JinYeong waited just another moment or two, then flipped shut the notebook and tucked it into his pocket. He made the smallest of air-kisses in my direction, then turned on his toes before I could react and sauntered away.

  “Flamin’ typical,” I said, pushing myself away from the window so I wouldn’t find myself stuck there for the next hour.

  Someone had thrown the chair-seat pillow back at me, and it was leaning drunkenly against the wall. I crouched to pick it up and after that it was easier to sit on the floor with my back against the wall, taking the cushion’s place, one leg propped up and the other stretched out in front of me.

  No one was trying to kill us, and none of the lycanthropes were trying to kill each other; all in all, there didn’t seem to be much point getting up right now, so I sat gloomily where I was for a little while longer and watched Morgana absentmindedly eat slices of brain while watching the lycanthropes.

  She wasn’t watching them closely enough, because a moment later, Kevin kicked the chair next to me for what seemed like the sole purpose of making me glare at him and asked, “What are you moping for?”

  I scrambled up off the floor, immediately defensive. “I’m not moping; I’m resting! Anyone cooking for you lot needs their rest. And I fought a flamin’ bunyip yesterday, so—”

  “Yeah? Then how come you get tired right after the vampire goes away every time?”

  I glared at him. “I don’t!”

  Kevin looked around and then leaned closer, confidentially. “I’m saying this ’cos you saved me,” he said. “So don’t hit me. Do you even know how much your face lights up when that ankle biter is at the window? You look like Dylan when he gets a sniff of giblets.”

  “If you want dinner you’d better belt up now,” I told him, scowling. “JinYeong isn’t giblets and my face doesn’t light up.”

  “All right,” he said. “But I’m only shutting up because I want dinner. Don’t forget that.”

  Chapter Eight

  By the time dinner was ready most of the dining room wall had knitted itself back together, and the dining table was beginning to look like a table again, even if it was a bit sway-backed.

  Zero threw a look at it and took his bowl of veggie-mince-and-rice down into the living room instead. The lycanthropes followed him, arranging themselves around the living room so as to leave the seats for Zero, Daniel, Morgana, Sarah and myself. No one seemed to want to sit on Athelas’ chair, and I didn’t blame them. Associations aside, it had a kin
d of black glimmer to it that was probably due to it being out in whatever the blackness was outside our dining room window.

  When we were all more or less settled with our bowls, Daniel shot a look at Zero and asked, “Have you changed your mind?”

  Sarah, her face immediately pinching, said, “You can’t! As soon as you start playing the game, you have to keep playing!”

  “I haven’t changed my mind,” Zero said flatly. “I told my father I wouldn’t participate in the trials, and I won’t be doing so. I haven’t thrown my hat in the ring through my childhood, and I’m not about to do so now.”

  “Hang on,” I said sharply, looking at Sarah. “What do you mean, you have to keep playing? Did you—”

  She flushed. “When I was first taken Behind, they taught me how to fight. I agreed to compete in the trials, so there were already people outside the house, waiting to treat, when I got here. In order for the trials to end, I have to be either among the dead or triumphant: the trials won’t end otherwise.”

  “Then it seems like a pretty bad idea for any of us to agree to compete,” I said. “I mean, it sounds like the king is the sort to be waiting outside for whoever comes out anyway, but—”

  “The king hasn’t yet done anything illegal in this round,” said Zero.

  Daniel said gloomily, “True.”

  “Funny thing I noticed,” I said, pushing my suddenly tasteless mince around my bowl with my spoon. “You lot keep saying how nice it is that the king is doing things all proper and legal this time, but out of all the people I’ve seen in this flamin’ closed system that I didn’t want to meet, do you know who I haven’t seen?”

  “The king,” said Daniel, nodding without surprise. Seems like he’d been thinking about it, too.

  “He gets it,” I said, pointing at him. “If we all have to be in here to pick out the next king, how come he’s not either in here or dead?”

  “I’d prefer dead,” said Daniel.

  “Exactly!” I said triumphantly. “So why isn’t he? How do we even get to grips with him like this? The only person from the outside that we’ve been able to get up close and personal with is your dad, Zero; and we don’t really want to be getting up close and personal with him.”