“Pet—”
“They seem like nice people, so they’ll probably adopt him too,” I added. JinYeong grinned and settled his shoulders against one of the patio beams, eyes liquid with malicious enjoyment. “He doesn’t take much to look after, either; just a bit of electricity and water to play with, and make sure you don’t let him trap visitors in the walls.”
“Pet, the Palmers are not going to want to adopt a skeleton and—”
“He’s only a small one!”
“I’m not discussing skeletons over the phone,” Tuatu said firmly. “Are you all right, Pet?”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Yeah, of course. Talking to you, aren’t I? Sarah’s in really good nick, too, so—”
“I wasn’t asking about Sarah,” he said. “I already know she’s okay. I wanted to make sure that you’re not leaking blood or missing any important body parts.”
I sniffed a bit, unexpectedly overcome, and JinYeong stiffened.
“Oi, Tuatu,” I said.
“What?”
“I love you.”
He gave a long-suffering sigh. “I love you, too, Pet. Please try not to die or disappear before we get there, all right?”
“All right,” I said, and hung up to a narrow-eyed JinYeong.
He shot a molten look at my phone and said, “You told that human you love him.”
“He’s basically my older brother at this point,” I argued. “Of course I love him!”
“Also you told Hyeong that you love him.”
“He’s my uncle! I’m supposed to tell him I love him!”
“Only I was not told that you love me,” he said moodily.
“That’s because I don’t love you like a brother or an uncle,” I said. “I already said I’ll date you, but you’re going to have to wait for a little while before I give you any other I love you. Unless you want a sisterly—”
“I will wait!” he said hastily. “I will not be an uncle or a brother to you!”
“Oi!” said a lycanthrope. “Reckon you two can stop canoodling for long enough to find out why this bloke is looking into our yard?”
“Did you just say canoodle?” demanded Morgana.
“What did I tell you?” I said to Kevin. “Your vocabulary is from at least five decades ago and—oh heck, that’s all we need!”
It wasn’t just a bloke looking into our yard: it was a golden, shaggy-haired man with slightly stooped shoulders and a pleasant, golden retriever type of look to him.
“Get away from the fence!” I said sharply to the others, and strode down the path toward the gate. He couldn’t see any of us—couldn’t hear us, if I was correct—but as soon as I spoke to him directly, he would be able to. “Sarah and Ralph—get back inside where you won’t be seen. Morgana—”
“I’m staying,” she said. “Until North and Tuatu get here, anyway. You might need the backup.”
“Me too,” said Daniel, when I turned to him.
I didn’t bother to appeal to the other lycanthropes or JinYeong, who was a warm presence at my side. I just waited until Sarah and Ralph were out of sight, then I stopped short of the gate and addressed the King of Behind.
“Coming to mop up the mess?”
His eyes sharpened on me at once, then flickered across to JinYeong’s face and the small group behind us.
“Something of the sort,” he said. “But possibly not in the way that you’re expecting. I’m…a little surprised to see so many of you crowded here. And yet, when I think about it, it’s not so surprising.”
“You’re gunna be a bit more surprised when other heirlings pop out of the woodwork again,” I advised him. “We’re not the only ones who came out.”
He studied me for a while as though perplexed. “That’s not possible,” he said. “Not unless every one of them swore fealty to you. They swore fealty to you? I think you’ll regret that.”
“Nope,” I said. “I don’t want people swearing fealty to me so that I don’t kill them. That’s your bag.”
“Not at all,” he said pleasantly. “I prefer to clean up loose ends completely. Those swearing fealty always find the fealty burdensome after a certain amount of years, or service. It’s far better to make a clean cut with things.”
“Don’t reckon you’ve managed that this time,” I said. “Thought you were a bit cleverer than this: it isn’t much good for you if an heirling is chosen, is it?”
“No good at all,” he said. “I wasn’t responsible for this round of the heirling trials—if I had been, I would have made sure to be in a position to observe the proceedings.”
“You mean participate, don’t you?” I said, glad to have that particular suspicion confirmed.
“I’m certain Lord Sero had that thought, at least,” he said, without answering directly.
“You reckon Lord Sero knew it was coming and got himself into a good position to be in the arena.”
“You don’t? I would have thought you’d have seen him in there.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” I admitted. I didn’t want to give away too much, because I didn’t know what was important. “He made a bit of a nuisance of himself.”
The king gazed at me for some time, then at JinYeong, who snarled very slightly and silently to display his canines. I saw the amusement spring to his eyes. He said, “I see. I think I’d like to speak with Lord Sero.”
“Sorry,” I said. “He’s dead. We left his body in there somewhere, so you can go talk to that, if you want to, but it might be a bit squashed, if it even still exists.”
Cautiously, he asked, “Did—did you let the vampire kill him?”
“S’pose you could say that,” I said, pinching JinYeong’s fingers as he opened his mouth to—presumably—rectify the incorrect part of the king’s assumption.
“It seems as though Lord Sero made a mistake by not arranging for the two of you to be separated.”
“He tried,” I said. “Didn’t work out real well for him.”
“I see,” said the king again. The amusement was more pronounced now. “Unfortunate from a purely informational point of view, of course, but he has been a…thorn in my side for quite some time now.”
“Ah,” said JinYeong, suddenly and softly, for my ears only. “There is a story here.”
“Kuroegae,” I said, and caught the immediate delight in his dark eyes. Before he could do anything ridiculously hasty, like kiss me in front of the king, I said, “Don’t get carried away. There’s no need for everyone to understand what we’re saying, that’s all.”
“You should certainly be separated,” said the king. There was no amusement in his face now; instead of an affable, golden-haired puppy, he looked like a shaggy, age-cragged, stony version of himself.
Now, more than wondering exactly what Lord Sero had had on the king to make it too difficult to kill him, I was wondering what we were going to do to stop him killing us if he could get into the yard.
He probably knew what I was thinking, because he let the underside of his face show for just an instant longer before he went back to looking like his usual, puppy-dog self. He said pleasantly, “If speaking with Lord Sero is impossible I would like to speak with the steward. I’m quite certain that one is still alive, by hook or by crook.”
“Yeah, can’t do that, either,” I said.
“Um, Pet?” said Daniel, shuffling a bit closer. “Are you sure about that? We don’t want him, do we?”
“I don’t see what use you could have for him,” the king said. “Nor is he your subject. He is mine—and so is every person in your vicinity.”
JinYeong gave a small, contemptuous tch! of laughter. “I have no king,” he said.
“I mean, technically you’re not my king, either,” Daniel said to him. “We’re not proper behindkind and we don’t have the same rights, either. But Pet—what’s the use of keeping Athelas? You know how sick it makes Morgana, and it’s not like he didn’t—”
“I don’t like giving stuff to peopl
e when I don’t know what they’re going to do with it,” I said, patting the hand that Daniel had put on my arm.
“You’re a charming human,” the king said, almost disarmingly. “And I don’t want to hurt you, but I really do insist that you hand over Lord Sero’s steward. I have some…burning questions that I don’t believe will be answered without him.”
“Look, I get that you’re the King of behindkind,” I said, “but you’re not my king. Athelas is my prisoner, and I’m not giving him up. We’ve got our own burning questions, and they’re more important than anything to do with the succession.”
Two very faint lines appeared between his brows—confusion. His head tilted slightly to the side, the king looked more than ever like a golden retriever, trying hard to understand the inexplicable fact that the ball seemed to have been thrown and yet unable to see said ball because it was behind its owner’s back all the time.
“There’s nothing more important than the succession,” he said.
“Yeah, there is,” I said. “Zero’s more important. So is JinYeong. Everyone here in this yard is more important than your little feud with Lord Sero or your pathetic attempt to stay on the throne forever and always.”
“I beg your pardon? Pathetic?”
“Dunno what else you call it when a bloke goes around killing kids to make sure he stays on the throne.”
“They were by no means all children.”
“That’s the stupidest defence I’ve ever heard,” I told him. “That’s like saying that you didn’t personally kill all the people you had murdered.”
“I’m not defending myself to you.”
“What are you doing, then? How come you’re here?”
“I came to see exactly what had happened to bring an end to the heirling trials early. I suspected that your house would be most likely to return for one reason or the other.”
“Scoping out the competition?”
“There isn’t much competition here,” he said, his eyes flicking around the yard.
We probably didn’t look like much; half of us were injured, the other half mucky as all heck, and only four of us around the place were actually heirlings. Of those four, two were technically dead. It wasn’t like the king knew that we had the harbinger here, either, so I could understand why he wasn’t impressed.
That’s all right. Being underestimated has its perks.
“Yeah? So you’re just here for the fun of it?”
“I told you. I came to see what—or who—had brought about the end of the trials. And I really do insist on speaking with the steward.”
“Okay, well you stand there and insist,” I said. “We’re all going back in to have some tea and bikkies—Morgana’ll probably have some brains, but you probably don’t want to know about that. You can leave whenever you get tired of standing out here.”
To my everlasting glee, everyone turned around when I did and started filtering back into the house. JinYeong, one hand lightly resting on the small of my back like he was afraid the king might have a go at me while I was walking away from him, even grinned, his eyes liquid and amused.
“You should remember that I gave you a gift!” called the king.
“Told you that I didn’t owe you anything for it,” I reminded him. “And it was mine to start with.”
JinYeong’s arm tightened at my waist, and I smiled reassuringly up at him. The king had already known that both the book and the name were mine; he had shown as much when he found his way to me in order to give the book to me.
As we kept walking, the king called out again, “I don’t like to threaten people—”
“Yeah? ’Cos I’m pretty sure that book was a threat,” I said, stopping and half-turning.
“A very polite, non-confrontational one,” said the king, shrugging disarmingly. “I’m about to become very much less non-confrontational.”
“It’s nearly worth getting Zero to fight you, just to make sure you can’t keep ruling,” I said, and this time I turned to face him properly. “But he doesn’t want that, so you can go and be confrontational elsewhere, thanks.”
“And get out of the street, you bozo!” yelled Kevin. It could have been Kyle, though. “The postie can’t get past while you’re standing there!”
I heard Daniel’s voice say in a gravelly undertone, as if with the last thread of patience, “Will you lot stop antagonising the King of Behind!”
I didn’t wait to see if the king did as he’d been told; I let JinYeong usher me back into the house and felt the faintest huff of air as the door shut behind us. Then I let out a shaky breath and grabbed a handful of his shirt to steady myself.
“Heck. That wasn’t fun. Wonder if Zero knows what’s been happening?”
“Hyeong is busy,” said JinYeong. He seemed content to lean his shoulders against the wall while I held onto his shirt. “We will tell him later.”
“Reckon he’s hurt Athelas more?”
“I think that Hyeong is trying very hard not to disappoint you right now,” he said. “And I think there is not much that can hurt the old man.”
“Maybe nothing physical,” I said, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck to get rid of the crawling feeling there. “But there’s definitely stuff that can hurt him.”
JinYeong gave me a long, thoughtful look and said unexpectedly, “Maybe you should not spend too much time with the old man, either.”
“Maybe,” I said. I wasn’t sure what disturbed me more: the fact that I could so clearly see how I could hurt Athelas, or what that fact meant. I didn’t want to examine either thought too closely, and it was a relief to have Sarah interrupt us.
“What if North and my parents get here while I’m inside?” she asked. She didn’t seem anxious so much as determined: she obviously trusted North to safely bring her parents to her. “Can North get in?”
“I’ve never seen North not able to get in anywhere,” I said, and added hastily, “unless you count the heirling trials, anyway. But if you’re worried, keep an eye on the window: I reckon the lycanthropes are keeping an eye out for—yep. Join that lot over at the window in Zero’s room. If you want to share the window, just shove them a bit. They respond to shoving better than words.”
“I noticed that,” said Sarah, wrinkling her nose. “I think Zero took the scary fae upstairs, by the way.”
“Yeah,” I said. I’d already felt that. He’d taken Athelas upstairs to my parents’ old bedroom, if I wasn’t mistaken. I would have been angry about it if it hadn’t already occurred to me that the room, like my relationship with Athelas, was already tainted beyond repair by his occupancy. He couldn’t ruin the atmosphere any more than he already had.
So instead of stomping upstairs to tell Zero to move Athelas into another room, I said, “Time for coffee,” and went into the kitchen to put both the jug and percolator on, followed by my vampire shadow.
The lycanthropes who had accompanied Zero into the house earlier came back to the kitchen while the jug was boiling. They’d probably heard it—or smelt the shortbreads that I’d dug out of the back of the cupboard in delighted surprise.
“Where’s Zero now?” I asked them, frowning. There was a spot upstairs that should be him, but it didn’t seem to be very firm, and that worried me.
“He’s all right,” said Kyle. “Reckon he’ll be down in a bit. He’s settling the creepy one into his room and making sure he can’t get away. He said he wants some coffee.”
That sounded promising, but when the tea and coffee were made and everyone was settling themselves around the living room and the dining room, Zero still hadn’t appeared.
I met JinYeong’s eyes across the kitchen island and picked up Zero’s mug. “I’ll go get him,” I said. “I don’t think he should be up there for too long.”
“I can do it,” he said, and there was a slight upward lilt to the sentence that turned it into a question. Do you want me to do it? was that question.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll only
be a minute. Make sure that lot doesn’t pinch my bikkies.”
I went upstairs with the feeling of lead in my stomach, but it was hard to tell if it was because I was dreading seeing Athelas again, or if I was dreading seeing what Zero might have done to him.
I headed toward the feeling of Zero and Athelas, and was led right toward my parents’ room upstairs, as I’d thought. The house still shifted around me a little, but I felt as though I understood and felt each part of it better than I ever had before.
The first thing I saw when I entered the room was Athelas’ chair; Athelas in it, bound by magic and Between and something else that I didn’t recognise. It was physical but not rope, and it passed through the leather of the chair while binding Athelas to the wood of the chair beneath.
“What a charming surprise,” said Athelas, lifting his head as with a mighty effort. “I didn’t think I would see you again so soon, Pet!”
“I’m not here to see you,” I said shortly. “I’m here for Zero.”
“As you see, my lord is not here.”
He wasn’t, either. I could feel the lingering sense of him being there, but it was fading quickly, as though he’d just left the room. I couldn’t help the small step I took toward the door to go and look for him, even though I could already feel that he was nowhere upstairs—nowhere in the house anymore.
“Perhaps you might answer a question for me, Pet?”
I didn’t recognise my own voice when it snarled, “What did you do to Zero!”
“May I remind you, Pet, that I am restrained?”
“You don’t have to remind me, because I still remember you killing me six times when you were restrained!” I spat. “What did you do with Zero?”
I heard yelling from downstairs in the silence that followed my question; the sound of startlement, then fear and bewilderment. Still inclined to respond to the immediate thought that the house had been breached and overtaken by other heirlings, I made another small, involuntary movement toward the door.
“How very interesting,” said Athelas, his head cocked. “Perhaps you’ll be more inclined to listen to me now that the same trouble is brewing below stairs? You can’t think that—”
Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine Page 26