He looked appalled. “Did you taste this before you gave it to me?”
“Nah, I stole some of JinYeong’s.”
“That was very understanding of him,” Athelas said faintly.
“I gave him some of mine!” I protested. “It’s not like we weren’t exchanging saliva earlier, anyway.”
“What a quaint way you have of expressing yourself, Pet!” he marvelled. “May we assume that you met with some difficulties in your expedition, then?”
“One or two,” I admitted. “Where’s Zero? He needs to hear this, too.”
I could sense him around the place, but I couldn’t see him, and if he was downstairs, I should be able to see him: he’s too flamin’ big and white to be hidden.
“In the backyard,” Athelas said. “He’s been doing some work with the Heirling Sword—and shaking out a few cobwebs, too, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“He’s really worried about this Heirling cycle, isn’t he?”
“I imagine that he would prefer not to die, yes,” agreed Athelas. “I rather fancy he is trying to persuade the sword to be less…obliging when it comes to you.”
I threw him a rueful look. “He really doesn’t like having to tell me stuff, does he? He’d prefer to shove all of this back under the carpet if he could, I reckon.”
“It would behove you to keep up with your own training, too, Pet,” he said, without answering that.
“Yeah, I don’t want to be dead, either. Good grief, do you ever take clothes in with you?”
This was an appeal to JinYeong, who had just exited the bathroom wrapped in a cloud of scent and a towel and nothing else. He was apparently feeling just as jaunty as he had been earlier, too, because he clicked his teeth at me and sauntered across the room toward the kitchen to fetch a blood bag.
His trip back across to the stairs and—ostensibly—his bedroom upstairs, was just as leisurely, and he was only halfway across when a huge, pale figure loomed in the hallway leading from the back door.
“JinYeong,” said Zero’s cold voice. “Get dressed or I’ll send you through the wall again.”
“If you do that,” JinYeong said, taking his blood bag away from his mouth with the wickedest grin, “maybe I will lose my towel.”
I heard Athelas murmur, “Life holds few joys in general at my age, but I admit that I am finding it distinctly enjoyable, these days.”
“Got you bubble tea,” I told Zero.
He ignored me. “I won’t tell you again, JinYeong.”
“At this rate, you’re the only one I haven’t seen shirtless,” I said to Athelas, since it looked like the other two were about to start fighting any minute. “You should work on that.”
He gave a surprised choke of laughter and managed to turn it into a cough. “I shouldn’t like to enliven the atmosphere any further than it has already been enlivened,” he said.
“Can you lot drink your bubble tea and stop threatening to chuck each other through walls or take towels off?” I said loudly. “We’ve gotta report and all you’re doing is arguing.”
JinYeong put his blood bag back in his mouth with a half-shrug and strolled mockingly past Zero, whose cold eyes didn’t acknowledge the provocation by the smallest flicker. I chucked a plastic-wrapped biscuit at Zero and he caught it, too, so he must have been paying attention.
“Thought you said we shouldn’t be using the sword,” I said as he gingerly opened the tiny biscuit packet and pinched the wafer biscuit between his fingers. I wanted to know if what Athelas suspected was correct.
“I said that you shouldn’t pull it out when you’re looking for a weapon on the run,” he corrected, gazing at the biscuit. He tossed it into his mouth and it disappeared. Didn’t even see him swallow; it was just gone. Maybe I’d have to skip the tiny biscuits and get the extra large ones next time.
“You been in contact with your dad lately?” I asked him, by way of a poke in the ribs.
Zero stepped out of the hall and crossed the room to sit in his usual chair. He smelled sweaty, which he didn’t usually when he practised with me—that was a lowering thought. He must work harder when he was training by himself, than he did fighting with me. At least I could get JinYeong on the back foot every now and then.
“I don’t speak with my father if I can avoid it,” he said. He looked very tired, all of a sudden. “I’ve managed to avoid it for some time now. Why?”
“He came to say hello to us today.”
The rumble of his voice fairly shook the room. “What?”
“Well, he says it was JinYeong he came to see, but since we were together—”
“What happened?” he said sharply.
At the same time, Athelas murmured, “Good heavens! Will wonders never cease?”
“Reckon he knows a bit more than you lot will be happy with,” I told Zero. It was more than I felt happy with, myself. “He came to tell JinYeong to support you in a play for the throne. Spent a bit of time threatening us, and when JinYeong said he’d support who he wanted to support, he got pretty stroppy—sent some things made of flowers after us.”
Zero gazed at me for quite some time before he said, unexpectedly, “You don’t look injured.”
“Yeah, we did all right,” I said. “I’ve had a bit of vampire spit, too, so I healed up pretty quickly. Look, I don’t wanna say nasty things about your family, but he’s being pretty chirpy at JinYeong considering the fact that a bit of vampire venom would see him laid out on top of his own flamin’ flowers.”
“My father has never thought much of vampires or humans,” Zero said, with a very slight smile. “I’m glad to know he underestimated you both.”
I nearly made a cheeky remark about how underestimating humans, at least, seemed to run in the family, but this was probably one of those times when it would be a bit of over-egging to do it. Let him catch the implication himself.
I saw Athelas direct a small, prim smile at the ceiling, and grinned at him when he looked back down again.
“It would seem, my lord,” he said to Zero, ignoring me, “that we made the correct decision by further initiating the pet into Behindkind politics.”
Oh, so they’d been discussing that, had they? And Zero had still been complaining about telling me things. Flamin’ typical.
Zero made an unconvinced sort of grunting noise, and said grimly, “We can congratulate ourselves when she makes it through the year alive.”
“Cheerful,” I said. “It’s not like I’d be likely to live any longer not knowing stuff.”
“That is the only reason I agreed to tell you anything of this business,” he said.
“Especially now that your dad’s poking his nose into stuff,” I said gloomily. “He got in my head again and I don’t like little worms in my head talking to me.”
That made the two of them exchange looks.
Zero asked, “What did he say?”
“Nothing much: he had a few remarks to make about how there wasn’t much going on in my brain, but he was leading up to something when JinYeong pulled me out of it.”
There was silence in the room for nearly a full thirty seconds while Zero passed a hand back and forth over the white stubble on the top of his head and Athelas watched him in what felt like fatherly affection. I remembered again, briefly, the darkness of a forgotten, bloody memory flitting across my mind, and pushed it away. Home was warm and that memory was cold and sharp-edged.
“Would you stay at home if I asked you to, Pet?” Zero asked, abruptly breaking the silence and making me jump.
I stared at him. “What?”
“If I asked you to stay at home: go nowhere, do nothing but stay here safe until the trials are done with, would you do it?”
Part of my brain wanted me to do it: agree and be done with it. Stay at home, be safe, never have to venture for real into the representative messiness upstairs that was my past life and my parents’ past lives. Never really do more than poke at little bits of paper and decide every now and then that I
would investigate properly—tomorrow, next week. Make a little nest for myself again and sink comfortably into it while stronger people than me did the heavy lifting.
“Can’t,” I said, before I could agree. It scared me how much I wanted to agree. It scared me how similar I was to Morgana, and it scared me to think that I could end up more dead than alive, never more than a shadow on the outskirts of life and forever hiding in my house. “Sorry, can’t. There’s…there’s stuff I gotta do. Stuff I need to know.”
It sounded weak, but I knew I had to say it now, with or without actual reasons.
“Very well,” said Zero, and there was a hard edge to his voice that was expected, even if it made me sad. “Then be it on your own head.”
I opened my mouth to ask exactly what he meant by that, but Athelas asked, “How went it with your human friends, Pet? Or was the fracas enough to cause them to abandon the scene?”
“Nah, they hung around and waited for us to get rid of the petalmen,” I said, relieved to escape the heaviness of the previous moment. “They said they’ve noticed more Behindkind popping up here and there lately, too, and they have a theory for it that’s pretty flamin’ interesting. They also gave us a couple of names to go nosing at to see if we turn up anything—ones like that file you’ve been looking at.”
“Go on,” said Zero, and a flicker of cool humour had returned to his blue eyes. “And if you can refrain from cracking jokes about how useful the humans are when you get to know them, that would be useful. I have already acknowledged that a working relationship with them may be expedient.”
Relationship, he said. Not partnership. Still, it was a good start, and I couldn’t help grinning at him, too, because I had been planning on waxing a bit cheeky to remind him that Abigail and her crew were looking like they’d turn out to be very useful.
“I would never,” I said solemnly, instead. “But actually, I reckon you’re gunna be pretty interested in what they said about why Behindkind are popping up more than usual lately. They say that this sort of thing happens in cycles.”
That got their attention at once, the fact betrayed by a faint flicker of dismayed understanding in Zero’s eyes that was quickly masked by his usual, cool exterior, and a glow of sudden interest in Athelas’ eyes.
“Dear me,” said Athelas. “I do wonder what else they know!”
“So do I!” I said frankly. “And it looks like they might be willing to share a bit of info with me, at least. Don’t reckon they know about the King Behind and the Heirling cycle, but they did say that whenever it goes into one of the cycles that they noticed, more monsters come out, whatever cell is trying to go around and fight those monsters tends to die pretty quickly, and then everything resets itself.”
“They have information,” said JinYeong, prowling down the stairs. He was still barefoot, but he’d put on a pair of loose trousers and a likewise loose shirt. “They will share with her.”
It’s hard to explain how irritating it is when he says it like that. In Korean, pronouns are different, and if I translated it as that girl or that female, the feeling and translation would be a bit more correct.
Irritating. I mean, at least he wasn’t calling me just that anymore, but still.
He caught my scowl and returned a mouthed mwoh? at me as if to say “What? What did I do wrong?”
“What an interesting position in which to find ourselves!” marvelled Athelas. “My lord, I really do think it might behove us to join hands with the humans—at least temporarily.”
“What sort of information do they have that we can’t get elsewhere?” Zero asked.
“Technically, I don’t know that it isn’t anywhere else,” I said. “But Abigail said she’s got records from previous groups: apparently they keep them in a safe place because they know they’re likely to die, and then whoever finds the cache starts a new group until the next cycle. They’ve got records from the eighteen hundreds, twenties, fifties, and eighties. Hard copy, and she doesn’t seem to think much of it is on the ’net.”
“And?” Zero’s eyes rested on me, considering and not yet satisfied.
“And she reckons she might have seen a couple of casefiles that are similar to the one we’re looking at now—kids who disappeared with their parents, or whose parents were murdered, in a neighbourhood where there were a series of other murders first. Says she’ll share ’em with us if the others agree.”
I waited for him to ask why it had been so easy; to ask why Abigail was willing to share with us on such a small condition after our relationship had soured. But he didn’t. He took it in his stride and merely asked, “Did you tell her why you were asking?”
“Not specifically,” I hedged. “Just said we were looking at solving the murders, that’s all. I told her the information would be put to good use, and she seemed to be willing for me to have a look at the stuff if the others agree. She just doesn’t want to let you lot paw over it, apparently.”
“How appallingly bigoted,” said Athelas smoothly, his grey eyes mocking.
“I know!” I said straight away, matching his affability. “Can’t understand how someone could just lump all of one race together and always talk garbage about ’em like that.”
“How delightfully subtle you’ve become, Pet!”
“Haven’t I just?” I held his eyes for just a moment longer, then looked at Zero. “What sort of partnership were you thinking of?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I’ll meet with them if need be.”
“Yeah? How you gunna do that, then? They don’t like you much.”
There was a slight beat while he took a moment to get his exasperation under control before he said, “See if you can set up a meeting with the humans for me: somewhere they feel safe.”
“I’ll try,” I said. A while ago I would have said it was impossible, but I felt safe to only mention, “I reckon it’s going to be a hard sell, though.”
“Do the best you can,” he said. He didn’t seem particularly perturbed. Must be nice to be so confident all the time.
“What are you gunna do about your dad?” I asked him tentatively. “Seems like he knows or suspects that the cycle is starting again, and I dunno what else he knows but he’s not real fond of me and JinYeong.”
I saw the look that passed between him and Athelas, and wasn’t surprised when he said, “Leave my father to me. If he approaches you again, run as fast and far as you can.”
“JinYeong kept me safe,” I said. “Kicked your dad out of my head.”
“Then JinYeong did one good thing today,” said Zero shortly, but the look he shot JinYeong was far from friendly.
JinYeong received that attention with the sunniest of smiles, which was a turnaround for the books. Usually it’s JinYeong needling and glaring and snarling while Zero takes it all without any sign of being goaded into a fight.
I wriggled myself off the couch and said, “I dunno what’s up with you blokes lately, but if you’re just gunna glare at each other, I’m going to get lunch. Happy with corned beef sandwiches?”
“Double stacked with seeded mustard,” said Zero immediately, and then looked faintly ashamed of himself. “I mean—”
“Hungry, eh?” I said, grinning. There’s no way he’d admit it, but despite everything Zero says about humans, there isn’t a better way to his heart than through his stomach, and with human food. I don’t know what they get by way of food Behind, but it must be pretty flamin’ bad. “Double stacked it is. I got some mustard the other day, so I’ll load it up. What about you, Athelas?”
“Seeded mustard, but I implore you not to double stack mine this time. I greatly dislike depositing my lunch on my lap midway through a bite.”
“No more double stacks for you,” I agreed, and trotted off to the kitchen. JinYeong had already eaten, so there wasn’t really any need to get him food, but there also wasn’t much of a likelihood that he wouldn’t demand food, either.
When I brought the tray back out, I heard Ath
elas say as I crossed the room, “Does it strike you as odd that there is so little time between cycles according to the humans, my lord?”
Oh, we were back to talking about the humans, were we? I managed to bite my tongue and made myself busy unloading the tray on the coffee table so that I’d stay that way. I had a lot of things to ask and a lot of information I wanted shared, and it wouldn’t help my case if I antagonised two of the Behindkind at the table before we were fairly begun.
“Kindly don’t elevate your nose at me, Pet,” said Athelas, amusement in his eyes. “I refer to humans in the basest, most factual way.”
Mollified, I gave him his sandwich and a cup of earl grey with two biscuits on the side. Zero got two double stacks that would probably last him about two or three hours before he was wandering into the kitchen silently when he thought no one was looking and helping himself to whatever was left in the fridge.
“We can’t verify that each of them was an actual cycle,” Zero said, ignoring Athelas’ aside but not the sandwiches. “To be recognised as the beginning of the changing of a monarch, we have to reach a point where the Harbinger is clearly visible and the Heirlings start appearing.”
“Like the old mad bloke running around and chucking bubble tea at Behindkind who are trying to kill us?” I asked.
Zero’s eyes flickered shut and open again. “That’s all it needed,” he said, beneath his breath; a man overcome by circumstances and flamin’ tired of it. “I suppose at least that’s a good sign: those the Harbinger tends to favour often make it out alive, even if they don’t become king.”
“Yay for me,” I said.
“That aside, for a past cycle to be recognised as an actual changing of the monarch, we’d still need to see heirlings that are clearly visible and aware of their function. There would be preparation to compete in the trials, for example.”
“Hard for ’em to appear if they’re being killed off as soon as someone realises they’re likely to be heirlings,” I muttered. “Reckon your king has been up to his old tricks more often than you lot realised.”
Zero scrutinised at me for long enough to make me worry that I’d said something unintentionally cheeky. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind being cheeky, but I like to be able to do it purposefully.
Between Cases (The City Between Book 7) Page 12