Between Floors

by W. R. Gingell

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, if you know the place is full of humans instead of fae, why didn’t Athelas? And if he knew, why did he stay?”

  That, I thought, was a flaming good question. “Dunno,” I said. “But maybe that’s something I have to talk to Zero about, too. Right, I’m off; be careful today.”

  “You too,” he said, and hung up.

  I found myself outside the grocery store, which was pretty handy, because while I’d been talking to Detective Tuatu I had come to a conclusion in the back of my mind. That conclusion was that if I wanted to find out where Daniel was, and Zero wouldn’t tell me for safety reasons, the best place to find out where he was, would be at the grocery store where he worked. I hadn’t met any of the other lycanthropes other than the one who was trying to kill me, but I was certain it was the best place to find another one of Daniel’s pack. There’d been enough of them around to make trouble in the area for a while now.

  I went around the back instead of through the store, heading for the smoking area. It was nearly smoko time, which meant there would be a good cross-section of the store coming out soon. If I couldn’t find a werewolf there, at least I could ask some questions. The speck of vampire spit running through my system must have been still pretty strong, because the whole back dock and smoking area smelled like dog to me. I didn’t remember it smelling like that when I worked here.

  I hadn’t been hopped up on vampire spit when I worked here, either, mind you. The smell of the place made me want to hunch my shoulders up, which reminded me of my talk with Zero about vampire spit and biting people—or Behindkind. I hadn’t thought I’d have a problem with it. I hadn’t bitten JinYeong, and he was about the most annoying person I knew. I hadn’t expected just the smell of lycanthropes to set me so much on edge.

  I’d just reached the turning into the alley that was the smoking area when one of the workers loped past me and across the parking lot out the back. He had the same type of look to him that I’d often seen on Daniel, and to a certain extent on JinYeong; wild and frustrated, and just barely contained. Either this kid was being bothered by his boss, or he was feeling cooped up in the store.

  I made a slight adjustment to my plans and nipped off after him, abandoning the smoking area. He was exactly the sort of possible-werewolf I’d come to find. He didn’t smell more like dog than anything else around the store, but I hadn’t expected him to; even JinYeong hadn’t been able to tell for sure when they weren’t actually in the wolf state.

  More importantly, he was carrying a takeaway bag of food, and if my nose wasn’t good enough to be sure whether or not he was a lycanthrope, it was definitely good enough to smell the steak sandwiches that were in the bag. This kid was going off to feed someone who wasn’t himself, and I was betting on that someone being Daniel.

  Lucky for me, I’d been getting some practise following people lately. I hadn’t been much good at it, but I was getting better. Hopefully I’d be good enough to keep out of sight of one long-legged puppy dog with a very distinctive smell of steak clinging to him.

  I shoved the empty coffee mug and my hands in my pockets and sauntered after the smell of steak. Flamin’ nice to be able to fall back a bit further if I wanted to; if I lost sight of the bloke, I could just follow the smell. I took care with my footsteps anyway. I couldn’t do the cool look away spell thing that Zero did to stop people seeing him, but there was enough of Between around Hobart that I could make my footsteps quieter if I really concentrated on it, and that had to help a bit.

  It must have worked, or maybe I’d just gotten a lot better at following people, because the bloke didn’t see me. He didn’t have far to go, either; just a couple of streets up and across until we were heading toward North Hobart again. Then we took a right that dipped toward the Brooker Highway, with older houses on both sides of the street, and the kid and his steak sandwiches vanished into one on the left.

  “Gotcha,” I muttered. It was possible the kid was just going home for lunch, but I still preferred to think that Daniel was up in the house somewhere. Zero had said he was in a hospital, and it didn’t much look like a hospital, but things around Zero didn’t usually look like what they actually were. Umbrellas that were really swords, for example.

  There was a slight touch of Between to the place, too. Not so much in the feeling of it—maybe it was something about the way it looked. I didn’t know what it was, but I was pretty sure I would be able to use it to get in without anyone noticing me.

  Only problem was, I wasn’t allowed to go Between without Zero or one of the others. Zero had also been pretty dour about me seeing Daniel, and while I didn’t think I was going to get the sudden urge to bite Daniel, if Zero found out about what I was doing, I wanted to at least tell him that I’d been careful. It wouldn’t stop the icy glare, but hopefully it would stop him kicking me out of the house.

  I threw a look around at the other buildings, hunting for a possible vantage point to see into the building. There was a building opposite; a three story, old fashioned house with balconies in the middle and big windows up the top. It was a pity I couldn’t get into the room up there; I’d be able to see into pretty much every building around, from there.

  I kept walking, nice and slow, until I was nearly at the bottom of the street, then turned back toward Hobart when I was parallel with the highway. If it really was where Daniel was holed up, there was no sense in giving myself away by taking too long—or by turning back, for that matter. That left me not much else to do but come back tomorrow.

  Regretfully, I headed back toward the grocery store. Someone had put a couple more blood bags in the fridge since yesterday morning, and if I was going to make the blood snacks I’d promised for JinYeong, I would need to get a bit more pastry.

  The house was quiet when I got back; no psychos anywhere in sight. I chucked my coffee-stained travel mug in the sink and made myself another mug of coffee so I could stop yawning before I got to work on JinYeong’s blood snacks. That didn’t seem like enough to keep my hands busy, so I made a few for Zero, too; ones that were more mincey than bloody, and a lot easier to make. The trick with JinYeong’s snacks was to precook the pastry in little knots before I added the blood mix so that they were still properly bloody; I was a bit worried at how good they smelt to me, and I was glad not to have the scent of them cooking, too. Mind you, with vampire spit coursing around my body, it might have stopped smelling nice once it was cooked. Zero’s pastries didn’t smell anything like as nice to me, and they were decently cooked.

  I made a face at JinYeong’s plate of pastries and made myself yet another coffee. At least coffee always smelt good—and it covered the smell of the blood. I didn’t want to be salivating at the smell of human blood.

  I was pulling Zero’s pastries out of the oven just as Zero and JinYeong came home, arguing all the way. I heard it first through Between, like the squeaking of tree-limbs rubbing together outside the window, and as Between opened to allow them out, I could hear words and recognise voices.

  JinYeong’s voice, startling in its comprehensibility, said something like, “…raze it to the ground to find him. It’s here or there, and if we slash deep enough, go quickly enough—”

  “If we slash deep enough, we still risk not being quick enough to find him,” said Zero. “We need to know exactly where he is. With the two of us, we’re spread too thin.”

  “The Pet?”

  “The Pet needs far more training before it’s ready to join a raid.”

  “It will have to free Athelas before we can reach him,” warned JinYeong, his voice fluttering through ahead of them. “It will have to come with us to that extent.”

  I grinned. There was definitely something Betweenish involved in how Zero and Athelas could understand JinYeong—when he chose to be understood, that is. If I wanted to understand him when he didn’t want to be understood, I would have to keep learning Korean.

  As he stepped through into the living room, Zero jus
t a step after him, JinYeong cut himself off mid-sentence, eyes narrowing on my grin. “Ku olgul wae?”

  “This is how I usually wear my face,” I told him. Oh yeah. I was definitely going to keep learning Korean, if only to annoy him.

  “Hajima.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do with my face. Oi, Zero.”

  “What?”

  “They know you’re looking for Athelas now? The ones who’ve got him?”

  “They know. There has been no demand for any kind of ransom, however, so we can be certain it’s information they want.”

  “That mean they’re gunna kill him?”

  “Yes. Whether or not they get information, they’ll kill him—or sell him on to someone who wants him more than they do.”

  “And you reckon he’s in one of two places?”

  Zero nodded, a deep cleft between his brows. This last week was the most human I’d ever found him to be—he never spoke this much. He also never showed this much emotion.

  “So we can go to either one and potentially rescue Athelas—but if he’s not there, we’ve tipped them off that we know where to look. If we don’t go, we risk leaving him there to be tortured and killed.”

  “JinYeong didn’t find a hint of him at the station,” said Zero. “And the fact that you’re dreaming so specifically about the station would suggest either that someone wants us to focus our attention there, or that they don’t know we’ve got a way in.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We dream again,” said Zero.

  He didn’t much like it, I could tell; which meant he was talking about leveraging the dreams.

  “I’m gunna dream again whether or not you want me to,” I told him. “You got a plan?”

  “If you’re willing to help, yes.”

  “’Course. It’s better than doing nothing about it. Maybe if we do something about it now, I won’t have to keep dreaming the same flamin’ thing over and over,” I said.

  Zero hesitated, and I got the impression that he was trying to think of a way to talk me out of it—which was stupid, because he needed the information and I was going to dream anyway. He said, “It will be dangerous.”

  “Yeah, well, so is being killed in my dreams, apparently,” I said. “I’d rather stop it happening as soon as possible than keep trying to avoid it.”

  I thought about it for a bit, and asked, “How dangerous, anyway?”

  “If someone is giving you these dreams, and they find out what we’re doing, they could kill you outright.”

  “That’ll be a change, anyway,” I said. If it came right down to it, I’d almost rather be actually killed by a malevolent stranger than virtually killed again by Athelas. I glanced across at Zero, and he looked more tired than I’d ever seen him. I would have given a lot to know why he’d changed his mind, but I didn’t think he’d tell me if I asked, so I didn’t. Instead, I started to make dinner.

  I was really tempted to just go to sleep on the couch that night, like I’d been doing for the last few days. At least then if I woke up from a dream of Athelas, Zero and JinYeong would be there. They’d probably just be staring at me silently, but that was still better than waking up after being killed in my dreams without anyone being there.

  But I hadn’t been dreaming about Athelas every night so far, and I didn’t want Zero to think I couldn’t do it, now that I’d said I would. I got up and headed for the stairs.

  “JinYeong, go with the Pet,” said Zero’s voice, from his study.

  JinYeong raised a brow, but he stood regardless.

  “Go with me—what? I’m going to bed.”

  “JinYeong will sleep with you tonight.”

  “Heck no!”

  JinYeong’s eyes became liquid. “Musen il, Petteu?”

  “JinYeong will help you if there’s another dream.”

  “I dreamed last night. Don’t reckon I’m gunna dream again.”

  “We don’t know that. You said you were willing to help.”

  “Can’t I just rescue Athelas through the dream, or something?”

  “Yes and no,” said Zero. “He needs to allow you to rescue him, but we’ll also need to find where his physical body is.”

  “Yeah, I know that. But what’s it got to do with JinYeong sleeping with me?”

  “We need more information.”

  “You said they might be listening. How can I get information from Athelas without tipping ’em off?”

  “That’s why I or JinYeong will come with you.”

  “Hang on, you mean come with me into the dream? That’s what you meant?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can do that?”

  “We can try. We won’t be able to come all the way, but we should be able to go through a few layers with you if we’re connected when you start to dream.”

  “Connected, how?” I demanded, deeply suspicious. It was bad enough that I would have to sleep next to either of them; if it involved any more spit, vampire or fae, I was gunna punch someone. Not Zero or JinYeong, but someone.

  “Skin to skin,” said Zero, and there was that lighter blue to his eyes.

  “Don’t you laugh at me,” I told him, but it didn’t come out as adversarially as I meant it to, and the faintest crease came to the corners of Zero’s eyes.

  “No spit this time,” he said. “You just need to be holding my hand or JinYeong’s.”

  “Yours,” I said at once.

  “Ya!” said JinYeong indignantly. “Nae son wae andwae?”

  “It’s too pretty,” I told him. “I’d probably break it or something. Oi, Zero. Is that why you said if they figure it out, they might kill me?”

  Zero was serious again in a moment. “Yes.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  I frowned. “It won’t hurt you if they kill me, will it?”

  “There’s a possibility.”

  “How much of a possibility?”

  “I don’t know,” said Zero. “I haven’t had much experience with the dreams of a Sandman. Considerably less than that of a human dying under the same circumstances, I imagine.”

  “What about Athelas? Will he be able to see you?” A sudden hope lit in me. I’d thought of trying to get Zero in there with me, after all—I’d thought it would encourage Athelas to trust me, or at least to tell me where he was.

  Zero shook his head. “No one but you will be able to see me.”

  “And maybe the bad guys.”

  “No, the bad gu—the people who have Athelas won’t be able to see me. They might sense me, however.”

  “And try to kill everyone,” I nodded. “All right. But you’re just gunna have a poke around and see if they’re watching us.”

  “That, and try to find out where Athelas’ body is.”

  “Okay, but you’d better give me the thumbs up if they’re not listening.”

  “The what?”

  “The thumbs up,” I said, and demonstrated. “So I know it’s safe to ask any questions again.”

  Was that a touch of suspicion to Zero’s face?

  “What questions do you want to ask?”

  “Dunno, just questions. He won’t answer about important stuff ’cos he doesn’t want to give them any answers, so you don’t have to worry.”

  “Yes,” said Zero, but he still sounded wary. “Don’t ask too many questions, Pet. It’s not safe.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Don’t wriggle,” growled Zero, a huge rumble of sound that reverberated through my ribs.

  “There’s no room for me,” I muttered. “Why are you so flamin’ big?”

  “I asked you if you wanted to sleep on the bed—”

  “Pets aren’t allowed on the bed. And mine’s not big enough for you.”

  Zero sounded exasperated. “Then don’t complain.”

  “Yeah, but you’re so flamin’ big! I can’t even scratch my leg without falling off the couch.”

  “Don’t scratch your leg
.”

  “Yeah, but now that I’m not allowed to scratch it I need to scratch it more.”

  “Pet.”

  “You got a spell for itchy legs?”

  “Go to sleep, Pet.”

  “I can’t sleep sitting up.”

  “You’re not sitting up, you’re leaning on me.”

  I huffed a breath against his arm. This couch was just the right size for me and JinYeong—long enough so that I could sit away from him if I wanted to, short enough so that I could throw stuff at him if I wanted to—but it was nothing like big enough for me and Zero. If I leaned against him I could just fit my backside on the seat of the couch, but I was in danger of falling off if I wriggled too much.

  “Don’t think I can sleep,” I muttered.

  There was a big silence, then Zero said, “You drink too much coffee.”

  I would have pointed out that coffee wasn’t preventing me from being able to sit on the couch comfortably, but that would only have brought us back full circle to the whole bed or couch issue, and if it came right down to it, I’d still rather sit uncomfortably on the couch with Zero than sleep on the bed with him.

  Like I said to him, Pets shouldn’t sleep on the bed.

  The heavy silence grew and spread out in the darkness, and maybe Zero was doing something with it, because I started to get sleepy again despite my itchy leg. I floated in creamy half-light for a while until it occurred to me that the opposite wall wasn’t the opposite wall anymore. So gradually I hadn’t noticed it happening, it had become billowing, creamy silk instead of a wall; almost as if Between had opened to let me see what it could be instead of what it was here in the human world.

  “This is a dream, not Between,” I said to it. “Why are you doing that?”

  I got up anyway, and a huge weight dragged at my shoulders.

  “Oi!” I said in surprise, turning back to look at Zero. “Stop it!”

  But he was still on the couch—asleep, snoring—and so was I. Well, I wasn’t snoring, but I was asleep, and there, but still here. That weight dragging me down must be the version of Zero that was as nebulous as my current consciousness.