He grabbed it straight away, making me jump, and bowed at me. “Million thanks, lady!” he said, and grabbed for the leftovers as well. “Good tuck, good tuck!”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone reckons,” I said. “Oi.”
“Oi,” he said back, with a mouth full of banana.
“You’re the one that ate that pie I left out, aren’t you?”
His eyes gleamed at me. “How’d I get inside the house? Huh? Can’t prove it, can you?”
“Yeah, that’s what I wanted to know as well,” I said. Zero had said he’d done wards around the house to stop humans getting in, so how had the old bloke got in? “How did you get inside the house? And how’d you know when to come in? If my three—”
He shook his head violently, flicking banana chunks in every direction. “Nope, nope, nope. Don’t go in the house when they’re there.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Oi.”
“Oi.”
“You’ve been following me as well, haven’t you?”
This time his eyes were sly. “Can’t prove that, either.”
“Nope,” I agreed.
“A lady shouldn’t go into that house,” he said, nodding at the wall of the house across the road. He took the lid off the leftovers container and tipped it up to slurp up the stew, ignoring the plastic spoon I offered him. He gulped down a mouthful and said in a potatoey sort of way, “It’s not safe.”
“I know,” I said. “But there’s someone who keeps me safe, so I’ll be all right. You should keep away, too.”
“No one can keep someone else safe,” he said seriously. “Even with an umbrella.”
I had to stop myself from saying yeah, but an umbrella can keep off the rain really well, as if we were talking to each other in code. The bearded bloke sent me another surprisingly sharp look and grinned a bit, then gulped the rest of the stew in a few noisy mouthfuls.
I waited until he’d swallowed a few times before I asked, “You know anything about funny noises around this place? People coming and going?”
“I’m coming and going. So much coming and going!”
“Yeah, but other people. They might not look like people.”
He tilted his head, eyes bright. “What do they look like, if they don’t look like people?”
“Maybe I’m the one going mad,” I muttered to myself. To him, I said, “Just people. But maybe they were taking other people who didn’t want to go with them.”
“No one comes in and out here,” he said, licking out the plastic container. “Only me. It’s warmer sleeping out here, anyway.”
“Reckon it would be,” I said, thinking of the cold draught that came from Between. “Want me to get you a blanket?”
He looked at me for a long time, his eyes fixed and bright above that dirty birds nest of a beard. At last, he said, unexpectedly, “That was a good pie. Threw the dish away in the bins over there. If you want it back.”
I followed his pointing finger, and wasn’t surprised to see the two public bins he’d been climbing out of earlier.
“Thanks,” I said, turning back to him.
He was already gone.
“Sneaky beggar,” I added, with respect. No wonder he’d been able to sneak in and out of the house without me seeing or hearing him. I’d probably need to figure out how he managed to get in the house, if I wasn’t going to tell my three psychos about him. Not telling them was one thing, but them being injured by what I didn’t tell them was another.
I’d also have to find a way to smuggle a blanket out to him without my three psychos finding out.
I wandered over toward the fence that was nearest the bins, my curiosity roused. He was definitely hinting at me, crazy old coot; what was in the bins, then? He’d been messing about in them when I saw him from the window, so there must be something there. With my luck, it was probably his earthly hoard. Maybe that’s where he kept his other holey shirt.
Still, I thought, gazing at the bins, if you thought about it—if you thought about the fae and their superior attitude to humans, and if you thought about the way Between depended so much on how people thought, a rubbish bin was probably exactly where they’d put the entrance to a group of stolen humans.
Flamin’ superior fae.
I narrowed my eyes at the bins, and it seemed to me that they didn’t sit exactly right in morning sunlight. I tried to think of the cans as a door, but that made it harder to see instead of easier, so I stopped.
“Just wait,” I muttered at them. “I’ll get Zero; he’ll set you straight!”
I tilted my chin at them to make sure they knew I meant business, and waded back through the long grass to the house over the road. Zero had told me to stay at home, but I’d discovered new information, after all.
He’d be pleased to see me, right?
I grinned and opened the door anyway. Even if he wasn’t, he’d be glad for the info.
Maybe it was because I’d seen a bit of Between on the garbage cans, but the hallway seemed more Betweeny than they had last time I was here.
Quiet, I told it mentally, stepping lightly across the floorboards. I didn’t want to come across anyone except my three psychos; and if I did, I wanted to be able to run before they heard me. Nice and quiet. Socks on feet. Gluggy air. No sound. Nice and quiet.
I don’t know if it worked, but I could see a little puff of something that could be dust every time one of my feet touched the ground in a step. Dust, but more sparkle to it.
I was concentrating on my dusty steps so completely that I almost didn’t see my three psychos in the master bedroom when I came upon them. They were all looking at the window, Zero expressionlessly, Athelas with a faint frown, and JinYeong with a slight pout.
I grinned. They hadn’t seen me.
“Still looking for some Between storage?” I asked.
JinYeong didn’t jump, exactly, but his eyes flashed up at me, and I grinned to know that I’d startled him. I didn’t know if my experiment had worked, or if I’d just walked quietly enough not to be noticed until the last minute, but it was satisfying to startle him.
“Still,” Athelas agreed.
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t reckon you’re gunna find it inside.”
“I told you to stay at home,” Zero said, his eyes hard. “I won’t come looking for you if you get into trouble by yourself.”
“Yeah,” I said again, “but I reckon I figured out something.”
Zero paused a moment; probably trying to decide whether to listen to the pet or send it home with its tail between its legs.
“All right,” he said. “What was so important to tell me?”
“You said you’re looking for another place, right? Somewhere the Waystation Behindkind can store stuff or people?”
JinYeong muttered something, and Athelas said, “Something big enough for several prisoners at least.”
“Definitely human prisoners, though? Like the people that went missing around here?”
“What exactly are you getting at?” Zero asked, his tone briefer than before.
“Well, they’re fae, aren’t they?” I said, a bit more quickly. “Where else would they make a place to get to human prisoners Between than in the garbage? There’s a couple cans outside the yard, and it looks to me like they’re not really sitting right today.”
Athelas blinked. “Good heavens. Perhaps I’m getting old, but that wouldn’t have occurred to me. What a good little pet you are, sniffing that out by yourself!”
“I know a few fae,” I said, and if my voice sounded dry, well that was understandable, wasn’t it? “Seemed like a good bet.”
Zero’s eyes narrowed in his version of a grin. “We would have looked at the perimeter eventually,” he said. “Don’t be too proud of yourself, Pet.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” I said. “Just a human, me. Nothing important. I’ll go sit in the garbage, shall I?”
JinYeong grinned.
“Since I found it,” I added, whil
e they were all still in a good mood, “does that mean I get to come along and see what you find?”
“If it’s what we’re looking for, and if there are no traps, you can come along,” said Zero. “I’m not looking after you if there are traps to dismantle as well.”
“Okay,” I said cheerfully. I was pretty sure he’d look after me anyway; call it instinct, or maybe the suspicion of fellow feeling from someone almost human toward someone human, but I knew Zero wouldn’t leave me to get hurt, even if he threatened to do it.
I would have led the way out, but JinYeong grabbed me by the ear and hauled me backward, tossing me in Zero’s direction. I saw the malicious grin on his face as I attached myself to the hem of Zero’s jacket, and hoped that the bearded bloke was long gone by now. I felt a bit protective of him; he’d been around so long, and no one seemed to look after him. It wouldn’t be fair to sic the three psychos on him.
He wasn’t around the yard when we got out, though; and he wasn’t hanging around the garbage cans, either. I hoped he’d had sense enough not to go back inside them, and when Zero, with a brief nod at Athelas, lifted the first can’s lid, I breathed a sigh of relief.
The can was empty.
Really, really empty. There was scum around the top to make it look real, and a tatter of black plastic bag showing when the lid was on, but there was nothing actually inside.
Except maybe a twinkle of starry sky.
I blinked at it, and the stars shifted.
“Who the heck thought it was a good idea to put stars down there?” I demanded.
“Those aren’t stars,” said Athelas, and his smile was all moonlight, even if it was still sunshine around us. “Well done, Pet. This isn’t the door in—it’s someone’s back door out.”
“That mean there won’t be traps?” I asked, hopefully.
“There could be traps,” Zero said, “but it’s not likely they’ll be from this side. I think we know how that human escaped the fae at the Waystation.”
“He got out here?”
Zero put a hand on either side of the bin and stuck his head right in. When he pulled it out again, his white hair was slightly ruffled. “It looks like it,” he said.
The poor bearded bloke! No wonder he was a bit mad. He must have seen someone climbing out of the garbage can; maybe he even caught a sight of the night sky in there. He probably hadn’t been too sound in the mind already, and that would have been enough to send him over the edge completely.
Or was it possible that he was the escapee the fae were looking for? Zero and Athelas had said it was almost impossible for a human to wander Between without being taken or lured there, but he would have been escaping, not going in.
Yeah, he was definitely the escapee the fae were looking for.
In that case, he was almost definitely the witness Zero was looking for, too.
Oh boy. Good pets should definitely tell their owners when they knew about a witness to their murder investigation.
“Pet?” Athelas said curiously, his voice quiet. “Is there something else you would care to share?”
“Just curious about something,” I said. “What are we gunna do when we find that witness?”
“I see that it’s occurred to you that our witness and their escapee are one and the same,” said Athelas.
His congratulatory tone felt like a pat on the head, and I was a bit annoyed to find that I felt pleased about that.
“Question him and then turn him over to the Order Force,” Zero answered. “They’ll want to question him, too. Humans shouldn’t be able to wander Between as easily as this one seems to be able to.”
That settled it; I was never going to tell my three psychos about him. He’d had a hard enough life already. If they couldn’t solve a fae murder without him, they should give up their badges. There should be some protection for humans, even if I was all that protection was.
“Reckon they haven’t got him back again, yet,” I said. “Otherwise they would have found this door, wouldn’t they?”
“More than likely,” agreed Athelas. “Now I’m no expert in matters of magic—”
Zero coughed suddenly.
“—but it does seem to me that if we were very careful, we could use this back door to our advantage when it comes to visiting the Waystation again.”
Zero looked at him. “You’re no expert in matters of magic?”
JinYeong, his eyes glittering with amusement, asked a question that lilted up at the end.
“My expertise lies…elsewhere,” Athelas said, with a small smile. “I shouldn’t like to claim expertise in magic. Shall we?”
“Shall we what?” I asked.
Athelas began, “If you’ll look on the inside rim of the garbage can, Pet—”
“Don’t teach the pet how to see Between. It doesn’t need to know.”
But it was too late; I’d already seen what Athelas meant. On the inside rim of the garbage can there were chalk marks, a whole series of them that looked like piano keys or maybe just…stairs. If those stairs were flat and a bit cylindrical, that is.
“Cool!” I said. “How far down does it go?”
Zero’s light blue eyes rested on me for a moment or two. “Far enough to see the stars when you look up,” he said. “I’ll go first. Pet, behind me. Put your hand in my pocket this time.”
I grabbed his pocket where the inner lining joined the thick outer leather, my fingers catching fast to the seam; and, following Zero, I stepped into the garbage can and onto the first stair.
I wish I could have said whether the garbage can got bigger, or if we got smaller. It could have been both or either, and none of them made any sense to be actually happening. But I could see the stairs, and from my last outing Between I knew that if I could see them, I could walk down them; so I did.
I heard Athelas walking behind me, humming beneath his breath in a way that set off whispering echoes all around the cylinder we were descending, but it grew so dark so quickly that I couldn’t even see more than Zero’s hulking outline in front of my nose.
When there were no more stairs to descend and the floor grew hard and cold beneath us, I looked up. Zero was right; I could see all the stars as clearly as if it was night. I could also see the fog of my breath rising against the stars. So cold. Why was it so cold in summer?
“Pretty,” I said, and I heard Athelas laugh softly.
Well, that couldn’t be good.
I narrowed my eyes at the darkness all around, trying to see through the gloom. It wasn’t really big—well, it was the inside of a garbage can, so I suppose the space had to stop somewhere—but it was insanely cold. Piles of something lumpy made shadows against the faintest edge of starlight, and I squinted at them. The whole floor looked lumpy. What was it, rags? Tyres? No, it was too sharp and bumpy to be tyres.
“Perhaps some light?” suggested Athelas.
A soft, cool blue light wafted from Zero’s fingers, spreading out over the bumpy ground, and all of a sudden I knew exactly why it was so cold.
It wasn’t tyres. It was bodies. The entire place was a Behindkind morgue with human bodies stacked on top of each other around the circular space, mostly clean and entirely devoid of colour.
“I thought you said they were abducted,” I said, shivering. There were so many of them; twenty, maybe even thirty bodies, men and women. “I thought you said it was disappearances!”
Zero tugged my hand out of his pocket effortlessly, and tossed me by my wrist in Athelas’ direction. “Take the pet home,” he said. “It’s no use to us here.”
“Hang on,” I said, swallowing. I felt sick, but at least there were no entrails on show here. Just coldness and lack of life. “That bloke—that one with the blue jumper. I know that bloke.”
“A friend of yours, Pet?” asked Athelas, in mild interest.
“No, just someone who goes to the café I worked at.”
Zero prodded the body gently. “JinYeong. How long have they been here? Any of them. All
of them.”
JinYeong pursed his lips and turned his head to one side. Was he sniffing?
Yeah, he was sniffing. He leaned in close to the body, eyes closed, and drew in a deep breath through his nose once again.
Oh well, so long as he didn’t—
Yep. There he went. He stroked one finger across the small, dark trail of blood on the guy’s hairline and touched it to his tongue. I mean, it wasn’t even still wet, for pity’s sake.
“That’s so flamin’ gross,” I muttered.
One brow went up at me; JinYeong spoke, his voice certain.
“As long as that?” Zero’s brows went up as well. “What about the rest of them?”
“As long as what?” I asked sharply. “It can’t be that long—I saw him last week. He comes in for a bacon, egg, and cheese muffin every coupla days when he’s in Hobart.”
“How very talented of him,” said Athelas, crouching briefly by the body, “considering he’s been dead a good four weeks, according to JinYeong.”
“He can’t have been,” I protested. “I saw him last week! He didn’t have his usual muffin, but he was drinking coffee and he can’t have been dead if he was drinking coffee!”
JinYeong narrowed his eyes at me.
“Not much good glaring at me,” I told him, feeling sharp and cold and off-balance. “Your sniffer is probably wrong again.”
He only made a pft sort of noise at me and looked smug, which was worrying. One of the most annoying things about JinYeong’s smugness is the fact that it’s usually pretty merited.
“I don’t think so,” said Zero. “Pet, take pictures of all the dead people.”
“What?”
“Photographs. Take photographs of them.”
“Yeah, but what with? I don’t have a camera.”
“Modern—” Zero stopped, and started again, “You can take pictures with your mobile phone, can’t you?”
“I think our pet is trying to say that she doesn’t have a phone,” said Athelas gently. “Is it so, Pet?”
“I didn’t have money for a phone!” I said. “I had to buy food and stuff.”
Unsaid was the fact that and stuff was my parents’ house, that I had planned one day to put down a deposit on with the cash I had hidden around the house, even if that money was now no longer needed.
Between Jobs (The City Between Book 1) Page 18