Between Cases (The City Between Book 7)

by W. R. Gingell

  There was that brief pause that I’d come to associate with Zero preparing to tell me to mind my own business and then remembering that he was supposed to be sharing information with me.

  Then he said, “It was right at the start. It was what made me begin this hunt all those years ago.”

  There was such a stifled sound to his voice that I asked quietly, “Should I not ask who he killed?”

  Another pause; this one a different kind altogether.

  “Why do you ask that?” he demanded. “I know you’ve been keeping secrets around the house, Pet, but that is—”

  “Heck,” I said, startled. “Am I supposed to have an ulterior motive? You got all chest-coldy, so I got the idea I’d asked about something I shouldn’t ask about. I’m not Athelas, you know.”

  “No,” he said, the stifled sound vanishing from his voice to be replaced with amusement. “You are no Athelas. I was not chest-coldy, whatever that is—and no, Pet. I won’t answer any more questions today. You’ve had more than enough. We’re going home.”

  The nightmare came back that night. It was probably the encounter with Zero’s dad that did it, or the chilling not-quite-there memory that still iced the edges of my mind when I thought of that earlier meeting. It could have been the terrifying reflection that I was about to have to make good on all my self-promises to really investigate my parents’ death that did it, too. I went to sleep with the content knowledge that all my psychos were in the house and woke in the cold of the night, sticky with fear and a prickling shock that sank claws into every inch of my skin.

  There it was: a huge, matte shadow with mass but no face, standing by the door and looming over the foot of the bed despite the distance. I already knew that Zero and Athelas must be out, even before I felt the emptiness of the house, because the Nightmare didn’t dare visit me when they were at home.

  I scrambled up into a crouch in bed, my heart beating madly in my chest, and there was already a sword in my hand, glowing with a warm yellow that glanced stickily off the tarry surface of the nightmare.

  I heard my breath shudder in and out, though I didn’t whimper, and this time, instead of remaining voiceless and terrifying in its menace, the shadow said quite clearly and coldly, “You might as well ask what you want to know, if you’re so determined to understand what happened to your parents.”

  “What’s the use of asking you anything?” I asked it, panting with the effort it took to say the words without crying in fear. “You’re just a nightmare. You can only tell me what’s in my own head, anyway.”

  “What’s inside your head,” it repeated, and took a step forward that squished against the carpet in a way that was far too wet and slick. A laugh, black and tarry as the shadow, slithered in the air between us. “Isn’t that the point? So many people would be better off knowing what is in that head—and yet you would rather be dead than find out.”

  “You’re saying I know a lot more than I think?”

  “No,” it said contemptuously.

  I don’t remember when I started crying, but my face was already wet and my voice rough with fear when I said, “Then what are you saying?”

  “That you’ll bring me out every time you try to find out what happened,” it said. It took another of those awful, squishy steps forward. “Just like today. So stop now, while your little world is still patched together enough to pretend to be real.”

  “Can’t,” I said, trying desperately to lift the sword with shaking hands. “It’s too late now. Who are you, and why did you kill my parents?”

  It laughed again, sending a shudder through me that nearly made me throw up. “Aren’t you asking a little much of a nightmare?”

  “You’re the one who said it was what was inside my head that matters,” I gasped. “And you’re inside my head, which means I saw you. Why can’t I see your face?”

  “Why would you want to see my face?”

  I struggled to my feet, hiccoughing on a sob, and said as clearly as I could, “So I know I have the right bloke when I shove this sword through your actual chest.”

  A strand of fragrance, uncurling from the direction of the hidden door, tickled my nose. I straightened my shoulders, because even if the nightmare was between me and the door, I knew exactly what was about to come through that door and I was pretty sure the nightmare would be wishing our positions were reversed in a few moments.

  “You better watch it,” I said to the nightmare, and this time, my sword arm lifted without hesitation until the tip of the sword was level with that dark, depthless chest. “I’ve got family again, now. They don’t like people messing with me.”

  Beyond the door, I heard JinYeong muttering, then a satisfied exclamation as the hidden door swept aside.

  “Ask what you wish to ask,” the nightmare said once more, as though my threats were beneath contempt. It shouldn’t have been aware of JinYeong behind it, but I saw the brief glance it cast over its shoulder as he stepped into the room and for the first time I felt fear for JinYeong, too.

  Fear that it could hurt him. Fear that he would hurt it before it could tell me what I needed to know.

  I hated that I had to ask it—the monster that had murdered my parents. I hated that I had to ask it, but I couldn’t help myself. “What did my parents decide?”

  JinYeong scanned me, sharp and suspicious, and I saw his eyebrows wing up as he caught sight of the miasma between us. There was a beat of utter silence, and JinYeong’s eyes fastened on the nightmare as it said into the heavy silence, “Your parents chose to die for you.”

  I sobbed, whether with sorrow or gladness, I wasn’t sure, because now I knew: I knew my parents had died for me, and I knew without a doubt that the same murderer had also killed Morgana’s parents. JinYeong snarled and stepped forward, right through the nightmare.

  “Naga,” he said to it, flicking his hands disdainfully as he passed through, and it was gone in a moment, as if it had never been. He swept me off the bed and put me on the floor, then took the sword out of my hands. “This belongs downstairs,” he said firmly, and started out of the room with it over his shoulder.

  I think he was giving me a second to wipe away the tears on my face, because he didn’t actually go: he waited by the door until I’d dried my face and caught up with him. He led the way downstairs, but he didn’t speak until he’d put away the sword in the umbrella stand.

  “You should not be pulling that thing out,” he said directly. “If you do not wish to be tied to the throne, you should avoid it.”

  “Didn’t do it on purpose,” I said tiredly. “How come you came upstairs, anyway?”

  “When hyeong and the old man are gone, it is quiet,” he said, as though that ought to mean something.

  “You’re gunna have to be a bit clearer,” I said, my voice still slightly snubby.

  “Your heart was beating too quickly,” he explained. “Usually I can’t hear that unless I’m hunting, but in the quiet…”

  “Huh. Didn’t know you could do that.”

  “These days,” he said, with a sharp grin, “I am very focused.”

  That made me laugh, and the sickness that had clung to me until now sloughed off. “What, on my heartbeat?”

  He shrugged. “Heartbeat, words, expressions.”

  “Oh.” I set the percolator to bubbling, and took some blood out of the fridge. JinYeong had scared away the nightmare, and that called for special coffee. “How come?”

  “I told you,” he said, leaning on the kitchen island to prop his chin in his palms and gaze at me. “I am doing research.”

  “Right,” I said, shaking a few spices into his coffee cup: cinnamon, ginger, a couple of cloves and a cardamom pod to soak. “You know Zero’s not getting any less cranky about that, right? Things are gunna get messy around the house if you’re gunna start dating people.”

  JinYeong shrugged once again, and his smile was sparklingly, delightedly self-satisfied. “Hyeong will do as he pleases.”

  “Ye
ah, but—”

  “What did that thing say to you?” he asked, so smoothly that I was certain he was just changing the subject. “Why were you crying?”

  “It told me to ask what I wanted to ask,” I said shortly, turning away to add the blood. I skirted around JinYeong and the kitchen island to return the rest of the bag to the fridge, ignoring his constant gaze. “I asked it what my parents decided when it told them to choose between killing them or killing me.”

  “Ah,” he murmured. “So it was that. Just like the other girl.”

  “Yeah,” I said. There was still a cold, wobbly patch in my stomach, because I knew now that no matter what, no matter how hard it was to force myself out of the safety of my house, I would have to do everything I could to find out exactly who and what my parents were. And in the doing of that, I would find out what Behindkind had murdered them and every one else, and make them pay.

  My parents had tried to keep me safe, and now I knew that when it had come right down to it, they’d died to keep me safe. I couldn’t stay where I was, tucked into my comfortable little house, cowering behind Zero for the rest of my life.

  It might have been too much to say that the iron had entered my soul, but—actually, no. It was flamin’ fitting to say that the iron had entered my soul. Just let faekind or Behindkind try to stop me now.

  “Where are the other two, anyway?” I asked him. I didn’t want to talk about the nightmare. Not yet. My decisions and my determinations were still too raw and new to bear too much talking about, and the nightmare itself was still terrifying.

  “Hyeong is with his father, I think,” he said. “The cupboard door was used. I do not know where the old man is. Are you going back up there?”

  The incredulity in his voice made me smile a bit.

  “Could sleep on the couch, I suppose,” I said. Athelas, gone again? I would very much like to know what he was up to so often at night, these days. Especially when Zero wasn’t at home to know he was gone. “But then I’ll probably just wake up when those two get home, and I have a bit of stuff to do in the mornings before I come down, these days.”

  “Papers,” he said, nodding. “Then we will look at papers.”

  “Hang on, what do you mean we?” I protested, but he had already swept both coffee cups out of my hands and was legging it up the stairs, swift and unhearing.

  I chased after him, but somewhere between walking through the door and striding past the bedpost, I discovered that it was somehow more comforting to have a blood-sucking mosquito sitting dignifiedly in my beanbag than it was to enter the same room alone, after a more-than-usually-terrifying nightmare.

  It could have been that I could see his tie peeping out of the suit-coat that he’d thrown over my bedpost, too; or maybe it was just that he’d left his shoes at the door and a shoeless vampire was somehow less worrisome than a properly shod one.

  I plumped myself down on the other side of the beanbag, prompting a shift of beans that nearly upset JinYeong’s dignity, much to his surprise, and said, “All right, but none of this leaves my room and no blabbing to Zero about the stuff that you see here, all right? It’s my stuff until I decide to tell him.”

  It was going to be tricky enough to explain exactly why and how I had all this stuff when the time came, anyway.

  “Ya,” he said, recovering his balance and attempting to recover his dignity as well. “Noh, you—”

  I bopped him on the head with the closest sheaf of papers and said, “Hajima.” Gently bopped him, of course; he’d just helped me to get rid of my nightmare, after all. “My name isn’t you.”

  “Then what should I call you?”

  “Beggared if I know,” I said. Even when mum and dad were alive, I’d usually gone by a nickname. I could give him that, I supposed, but it was weird to give a vampire the nickname my parents had used with me.

  JinYeong clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Ah! This is irritating! I will give you a name.”

  “You can’t just give me a name. I’m not a dog.”

  “But you will not tell me what to call you,” he protested. He thought about that for a while, glowering, and added, “And I will not call you pet. You are not my pet. I have decided.”

  I made a pft at him. “You decided? I decided.”

  “I also decided.”

  I looked at him suspiciously. “Yeah? What made that happen?”

  “Hyeong told me that I must call you pet.”

  “That’s why you’ve suddenly decided not to do it?” It wasn’t like that showed his personality in a particularly winning light. More, I felt disappointed, and that was a weird feeling to associate with JinYeong. “You just want to irritate Zero?”

  JinYeong, looking annoyed, said, “That is not the point! You purposely misunderstand me!”

  “Hang on, why are you the one getting cranky?”

  He took in a deep breath through his nose, and I could have sworn he muttered something in Korean about emotions and too hard. I nearly asked him if he was trying to tell me that I was too emotional, which would have gone down like a lead balloon, but he got in first.

  “I am saying,” he said, “that I do not always obey hyeong. And that when he thinks I am obeying him, I do so only as far as it seems good to me.”

  That brought up an interesting question.

  “When did Zero tell you to call me Pet?”

  A frown moulded itself between his brows, as if it wasn’t the question he had been expecting. “Last year. He…reminded me again yesterday.”

  This time, I was the one frowning. “Is that why you were sucking on a blood bag when I got out of the shower yesterday? Hang on, is that why he threw you through the wall?”

  “Of course,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Why else would he do it?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him exactly why else anyone would do that, but he hurried into speech before I could, as if he was well aware of what I was going to say.

  “That is not important. Today, I need a thing to call you. I do not like Pet, you do not like noh; also you object if I call you another name.”

  He stopped and thought, then said a word in Korean, tentatively.

  In the Between-edged translation, it came out as thou.

  “The heck?” I said, startled. “You trying to give Shakespeare a run for his money?”

  “You have a real name,” he said, looking at me through his lashes. “You could give me that.”

  Was it actually possible to give him my real name? I found myself settling into a thoughtful silence as a series of small thoughts fluttered past to be considered. Now that I’d had my little discussion with Zero about names, I wasn’t sure I wanted it out there, even if Behindkind couldn’t hurt me with it. There were other kinds of hurt you could get from someone who knew your name, and I wasn’t quite sure I trusted JinYeong enough to give him my real name just yet.

  “Maybe later,” I said at last.

  I saw him grin, and he looked satisfied. It didn’t occur to me until a few minutes later that he hadn’t expected me to give him my name at all.

  “You testing me?” I asked him suspiciously. “Making sure I’m not going to do anything silly if someone asks for my name?”

  “Ani,” he said. “It was not a test. Not that sort of test. I want that paper—give me that paper.”

  I gave him the paper, but instead of settling down to my usual scattershot leafing through papers that hadn’t yet yielded much useful information, I asked him, “What do you blokes usually do about memories?”

  He flicked a look at me over the paper. “You already had a nightmare. Why do you want more memories?”

  “The nightmare said my parents chose to die to keep me alive,” I said. I was surprised at how easily it came out. “And there was something that nearly came out yesterday with Zero’s dad, and I don’t remember either of those things.”

  “Ah,” he said, and although it was a small word, it was big with understanding. “You think there are missing memor
ies?”

  “Reckon so,” I said glumly. “That’s what Zero’s dad said—he said there wasn’t much there in my head but my parents and you, and that’s how I stopped him from being able to see what else was there, too. I just let little things bob up where he could see them.”

  He gazed at me for quite some time before he said, “I have something else to say, but for now we will talk about your parents. You think you had some training—training to forget things?”

  “Maybe training not to think about things,” I amended. “It was—the first time I dealt with Zero’s dad, it was like I already had the reflex memory to do it. Only I think I’ve been doing the same thing to myself…”

  That was the only way I could think that the alien flutter of memory could have come from my own head without me knowing it was there.

  “Ah,” JinYeong said again. “Memories are…difficult. The old man will maybe help you.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said, settling further into the beanbag and yawning. “I’m gunna do that. For real this time: I won’t just pretend.”

  While I was still thinking about that and falling into a bit of a doze, JinYeong murmured, “What hyeong’s father said—I am in your head?”

  “Yeah,” I said sleepily. “It’s probably because you were chucking yourself in front of swords for me again.”

  “Is that what it was?” he said thoughtfully. “That is interesting.”

  “No, it’s flamin’ suicidal,” I mumbled. “I already told you: you gotta stop doing stuff like that.”

  He might have said something like, “I told you that I do as I please,” but I was only half awake by then and he was a bit mumbly as well.

  I don’t know which one of us fell asleep first. It should have been me, because JinYeong doesn’t need sleep, but I remember protesting sleepily that there was no room when his head dropped down beside mine on the beanbag, shoving clumsily and ineffectually at the green and grey shirtfront my curled fists had been resting against. Catlike, JinYeong simply stretched around the push and curled up more comfortably on the beanbag, yawning.