“It’s the first time he’s severed the head, though,” said the oldest man. He was still smiling faintly, and that expression on his face while looking up at the body was something of an odd juxtaposition. “Are you sure it’s the same killer, Sero?”
“That’s not my name,” said Leather Coat, even more briefly. “Athelas, if you’re going to—”
“I beg your pardon: Zero.”
How was being called Zero better than being called Sero?
The third man must have agreed, because he did a small, hissing noise between his teeth that might have been a laugh.
The older man’s eyes flicked curiously over to him. “And if I might turn your own question back on you, JinYeong—why exactly are you here?”
JinYeong shrugged that one shoulder again, his hand insolently in his pocket. “Hyungie yogiayo.”
This time it was Zero who laughed, a surprised sound that didn’t show at all in his face and seemed to startle the other two as well. “Why? Are you still trying to kill me?”
JinYeong shrugged for the third time, and turned a circle around the crime scene, both hands in his pockets now. There was still that impression of barely concealed, molten fury that bled through in the predatory way he walked and the dark liquidity of his eyes, but since he didn’t attack either of the other two, I came to the conclusion that Zero had been joking. Weird, but okay.
JinYeong said something I couldn’t understand and jerked his head at me. Well, it was at the house, but it was still hard to believe that they couldn’t see me.
Have you ever played that night-game where you all hide around the yard and someone has to find you and say, “You’re under arrest!” before you jump out and murder-tag them? You’re flat on your stomach in the dirt because every good spot is already taken, and when the policeman player comes around the corner of the house he’s looking right at you. You’d swear he can see you and you feel a right idiot, so you’re about to get up with a stupid laugh and give yourself up. Only then you decide to chance it, scrabble to your feet, and murder tag him. It turns out that he couldn’t see you at all, but you still felt like you should come out.
That’s how it felt. Lucky for me, I’ve learnt to be a much better bluffer since then. I sat still and listened, ignoring the itch to come out and give myself up.
The one called Zero said shortly, “I don’t want your help.”
“He could be useful,” Athelas said mildly. “Especially if you don’t feel like visiting the local police for their forensic help.”
“Hajiman,” added JinYeong, “chigeum nemsaereul matcheul su obseo.”
Zero frowned. “What’s wrong with you?”
JinYeong shrugged that one shoulder and said something else in Korean.
Athelas gave a quiet huff of laughter.
“What do you mean, you’re sick?” Zero said. “You’re a vampire. You don’t get sick.”
Through a frozen buzzing in my ears, I heard the voice in which JinYeong replied, as eloquent as his shrug, and shivered behind my shuttered covering.
“There’s no such thing as vampires,” I said against the window glass, in a dry, tight voice. There were no such things as vampires, or monsters, or things that hid under the bed. There were just nightmares and horrible people who did horrible things.
“There’s no such thing as a vampire illness,” Athelas said. His eyes were still creased at the outer edges. “It’s more likely that there’s something around this place. Can you really not smell anything?”
“Nae.”
“That’s a shame.”
“If you can’t smell anything, you’re no use to me,” Zero said. “Go away.”
“Aniyo,” said JinYeong, and followed that by a swift-flowing, caramel stream of Korean.
“I can take samples to the lab.”
Another sentence, accompanied by a self-satisfied smile that only turned up one corner of JinYeong’s lips and didn’t do away with the dangerous liquidity of his eyes.
“You aren’t better than the lab.”
JinYeong spoke again, this time for a longer time, and Zero hesitated visibly. At last he said, “All right. It could be the house causing the trouble. The local police said there were always problems around it; people disappearing and appearing, that sort of thing. There could be something from Behind or Between affecting the house.”
“Not to mention JinYeong’s nose,” murmured Athelas.
That was the second time Zero had said something about Behind and Between—as if they were capitalised. What were they? Companies? Vampire conglomerates?
I didn’t get the chance to find out, because by then the three men—vampires?—were walking away from the crime scene again.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of the same effect that made the road clear around them as they walked, but a definite sense of relief grew in me the further away they got.
I probably should have been more careful when I left the house to go to work the next morning. I mean; I say that, but it’s not like I wasn’t careful; it’s what you say after something happens, right? Because something has happened, and if you pretend that something you did or didn’t do could have made a difference, somehow you feel safer.
Maybe that’s just me.
Whichever way you slice it, the day started out bad and plunged into a free fall of awful.
I got out of bed and had something for breakfast—can’t remember what, so it must have been flamin’ exciting. I even remembered to brush my teeth, which was a triumph; I don’t always. It’s not like you can threaten to tell my Mum, so what are you going to do about it?
The cops were mostly gone from the scene downstairs, and so were the cleaners, which meant the street was almost looking normal if you couldn’t see the darker patch on the bitumen that they hadn’t managed to wash away completely.
Or the missing line between the power poles, I suppose.
Looking at it, it was hard to believe that yesterday’s waking had been anything but a bad dream. And those men—vampires, did they say?—ha! Just part of the nightmare.
I shoved my arms through the loops of my backpack, and then my hands into my pockets. It was fine but cold, and my fingers were already a bit pink and numb. My threadbare collar didn’t do much to stop the cold chill sneaking down my neck, either, which meant I’d probably get sick again. Not that it mattered; there was no one at home to be annoyed by my perpetual sniffle.
I squinted into the sun as I climbed the slight incline of the street, cautious about any left-behind cops who might be guarding the area. Me and the dead guy were the only ones living right at the bottom of the street anyway, but you never knew.
And it felt like…I dunno, like someone was watching me. Maybe following me. I was probably being paranoid, but it turned out to be a good thing I was on the lookout. As I crested the part of the incline that brought me to the other end of the street, there was a cop with his back to me. He wasn’t in uniform but I knew he was a cop because of the way he stood. You know.
You don’t? Oh well, everyone has their talents, I reckon.
From his skin he could have been Aboriginal, but the tight coils of his spongy, black hair said Islander. I hadn’t seen him yesterday, I was almost certain. I nipped in between numbers 56 and 58 before he could turn and give me the same kind of once-over I was giving to him.
I was so busy trying not to be seen or heard by the Islander cop that I didn’t see the bloke that attacked me until it was too late. One minute I was climbing carefully up through a gap in number 56’s fence to get into the park behind, the next, something hefty and leather slammed into me.
Teeth really can rattle.
Mine did; and by the time I could concentrate on anything else, someone had his arm across my throat, threatening to take that concentration away again. I could smell the leather of his jacket, but I would have recognised him anyway—I hadn’t seen a bloke this white since I went to school with an albino kid in preschool. Even his hair was white.
I mean, I’d seen it yesterday, but that had felt like a dream until just now.
What was his name? Zero?
I made a choking sort of cough at him and he grimaced down at the flecks of spit on his sleeve.
“What?” I croaked. “Got more where—” cough “—that came from.”
“You shouldn’t be playing down there,” he said. He sounded nearly reasonable. Well, about as reasonable as he could sound while still casually choking me half to death with one forearm. I wondered if this was what it would have been like to have an older brother; reasonable and kind of murderous. “It’s not safe. Someone got killed yesterday.”
“Yeah?” And then, because I knew he hadn’t, I asked, “Kill him, did you?”
He looked down at me, and I got the idea I’d perplexed him. “No. Why—”
“Cos you’re gunna kill me pretty quick if you don’t let go.”
“This?” he said. “This won’t kill you. It’s only uncomfortable.”
He let me go anyway, and I felt again the same thing I’d felt when I saw him yesterday; the desire to run, to get away, to be safe. To pick up my heels and scarper for it before this person could reach out and grab me and tear me to pieces with his bare hands.
Maybe if I’d had any sense, I would have followed my instincts and run.
But this was just another version of the murder game, and to run away, I’d have to put my back to him. This player didn’t really see me; not yet. He definitely would if I ran.
And so for the second time, I stayed still.
Chapter Two
While every instinct in me screamed to get away while the getting was good, I read his face instead.
I’m pretty good with faces, and his was sort of—I don’t know, sad? Resigned? Expectant? Yeah, it was expectant; like he was just waiting for me to run away. And there was tiredness to that expectation, though it was mostly covered up by coolness. It was the kind of expression that made me want to offer him a cuppa, but I didn’t think he’d understand the offer.
Anyway, it wasn’t like I could actually follow through on the offer—I was living illegally in my house, and there was no money spare to buy him one. Every skerrick of spare money went toward my savings to buy my house.
“You all right?” I asked instead.
This time, he was the one who said, “What?”
I tilted my chin down at where the crime scene would have been if you could see it from there. “You’re investigating this, right? Bit messy, was it?”
“I didn’t throw up.” He said it stiffly. Was he offended?
“Yeah, but the cops said it wasn’t pretty. You all right?”
“I’m hungry,” he said. Cautious. Like he wasn’t sure if it was the answer he should give.
Well, okay then. Corpses don’t make me hungry. For example, BBQ isn’t the first thing I’m gunna be thinking of if I’ve found a burnt corpse, but the world’s a weird place, right?
Maybe he didn’t understand the question.
“You shouldn’t be playing down there,” he repeated.
“I wasn’t.”
His bright blue eyes narrowed on me. “What did you see?”
“Nothing,” I told him. “I gotta go to work.”
“Where do you work?”
I grinned. “Why should I tell you?”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
“For all I know, you’re a serial killer,” I told him.
To my surprise, that didn’t make him bristle. It didn’t make him look sadder, either, but there might have been a slight glitter of laughter in the depths of those cool blue eyes.
“That’s true,” he agreed. “Where do you work?”
I gave him a look. “Town.” And that reminded me. I was going to be late. In case he was thinking about stopping me again, I said, “I’m going now. Don’t follow me. I’ll call the cops.”
“I am the cops.”
“Yeah, right,” I said, and walked away. This time, he let me.
I should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it. There’s another of those useless should haves for you. But I went to work anyway because when you need money what else can you do but go to work?
There were only a few places around Hobart that pay cash in hand; my café was one of them. I’d been working there since I was fourteen—hence, cash in hand—and now that I was old enough to be legally working, I still wasn’t game enough to make bank and superannuation accounts, let alone accept any payment that wasn’t cash. Dad had always taken cash jobs when he was working, and maybe the prejudice stuck with me.
That meant I only had a few options when it came to a job, and none of ’em were much good. There are only two kinds of jobs that pay cash in hand: those that are taking advantage of the Asian students who come to Hobart, and those that are taking advantage of the population that was born here. In the first case, visa requirements meant that bosses could make foreign students work longer hours without those hours being recorded—or, mostly, paid for—and in my case, it meant that my boss couldn’t get picked up for employing underaged—and much cheaper—staff. It also meant that if he didn’t pay me one week, I had to keep coming back to work the next day to remind him about it.
The first time I walked into his café, thirteen and a half, hungry and desperate, he’d smiled at me, his cheeks moonlike and friendly. I saw straight away that his eyes were harder and colder than pebbles in a creek, but when he said, “You can eat on a tab here, half price,” I was sold. There was no other place that was willing to take a chance on someone as young as me, and I needed food.
’Course, if you left it longer than a week to pay off your tab, he started to get short with you, but it was still a cheaper way of eating, even if it wasn’t healthier. And it meant the boss could make chalk marks on the tab board and let customers know what a nice bloke he was, looking after his staff. They weren’t to know what he was like when they weren’t around, and he was pretty careful not to lose his temper in front of them. I always tried to leave before the last customer did, because then I could be pretty sure of getting away without too much trouble, or being asked to stay later when I’d already signed off on the work sheet for the day. We signed off in pen, and there was no pay for any hours that were scribbled over after we’d signed out.
Today looked like being a bad day, but pay day usually was. It was harder to get out before the café closed when the boss was doing the pays, ’cos if he wanted you to stay longer, he just had to pretend he didn’t see you waiting for your pay envelope.
I was more glad than usual to finish, because the toilet system had back-flushed again; this time worse than usual, and there was muck up to the ankles in there. It wasn’t just a matter of using a plunger this time, either; it would need the plumber.
I shut the door on it hurriedly; the other two girls must have already seen it. I’d wondered why they’d ducked out so quickly after work. They usually hung around with the boss for an hour or two, making him laugh and feel good about himself. It was survival, for them: a way to make sure they could keep working without going mad, being sacked, or having stuff thrown at them.
Hopefully the boss hadn’t seen it yet.
I went out to the table where he was stabbing a finger into the worn keys of his calculator, a few pay envelopes sitting in front of him, and waited for him to notice me. If I interrupted him now, he’d only take longer to finish.
“You can clean the toilet while you wait,” he said, without looking up.
Heck no. It was a soup of floaters and urine in there: it was a job for the plumber—and probably a hazmat team.
“I’ve already finished,” I said, wriggling my toes nervously. I wanted to be back home and safe, preferably before I met with any more weirdos. “Can’t stay back late today. I just need my pay, that’s all.”
He nodded like he was busy thinking about something else, and my heart sank. It was going to be a fight to get my pay this arvo, was it?
“We didn’t make
much profit this week,” he said, after a few more numbers went into the calculator. “That bloke you made a sandwich for was so angry I had to give it to him for free.”
“What bloke?” I asked.
“You put carrot on his salad roll.”
“Sorry,” I said, though I should have known better. “He was a regular and he wouldn’t tell me what his order was. I had to guess it.”
“You should have known his order if he’s a regular.”
“It was my first shift on salad bar—”
“Cost me five dollars to put it right,” said the boss. “If I have to pay for a plumber as well, I might as well not come to work. Do you think that’s fair?”
I hate it when he asks that. He actually thinks he’s in the right, and it’s never any use arguing against that much bull-headed certainty.
I sighed.
Oh well. It was already a bad day, and I had messed up the customer’s order. I didn’t think I’d messed it up that badly, but people are weird.
I went and cleaned out the toilet room.
By the time I was done, the boss had gone home. I was relieved to see he’d left my pay envelope on the table he’d been sitting at, but the relief crumbled away when I saw there was a note with it.
‘Deductions from this week’s pay,’ it said. ‘Tab: $30, Customer error: $5.00. Mop the floor before you go.’
I grabbed it and went, anyway. It wasn’t like I could do anything about it, and if I did try to do something about it, I’d only push the boss into one of his fits a bit earlier than usual.
On the way home, I still had that feeling of being watched; sorta scratchy and uncomfortable between my shoulder blades, like there was a cockroach running down my back. I suppose with what had come out of the toilet at the café, it wasn’t too far off being possible, but I was pretty sure the scruffy bearded dude in the holey shirt who was talking loudly to himself on the bank steps was the same scruffy bearded dude I’d seen washing his face at a tap on the street when I started work that morning, too. His shirt should have said shot but the hole in it made it shoot, so I knew it was the same dude.
Between Jobs (The City Between Book 1) Page 2