Between Cases (The City Between Book 7)

by W. R. Gingell

  “’Zat the bit where I give it something to chew on that’s the truth but don’t give it the truth it’s looking for?” I asked. “’Cos that’s what I do when Zero’s dad gets a bit nosy.”

  I looked up from my coffee to see that Athelas was gazing at me once again. “I begin to understand exactly why and how you haven’t been able to get to all of your memories,” he said, on a sigh. “My dear, that method is highly effective for discouraging others from poking around your mind, but if you should learn it too well, it is inclined to turn on you whenever you have something you don’t particularly want to remember.”

  “You’re saying I did this to myself?”

  “I’m saying that perhaps you learnt how to do it at such a young age, and with such proficiency, that you’ve managed to draw the wool over your own eyes as well.”

  “That mean you can’t do anything about it?”

  “I can try,” he said. “But as I mentioned earlier, you will very likely find it unpleasant.”

  “I know,” I muttered. “But everything in my life is flamin’ uncomfortable these days, so you might as well do it anyway.”

  I mean, I said that, but even if I’d acknowledged how unpleasant the process was going to be, I’m not sure I really understood how panic-inducing it would be, having that little worm in my head again. Not until Athelas said, “Shall we begin, my dear?” and a horribly familiar bit of magic wriggled its way into my head and looked around.

  “I should like to know about your champions,” said Athelas gently. I caught my breath as the worm began to dig, and he reminded me, “Breathe. You said you don’t remember having champions: I want to know about them, so think carefully.”

  I breathed. Tried not to panic. It was Athelas. He wasn’t going to actually hurt me, I knew that.

  Didn’t have champions; didn’t know what champions were. Parents didn’t say anything about champions.

  A thought was below that, but it was dark and hard and couldn’t be forced out: a stubborn root in frozen ground. The worm chewed thoughtfully on my certainty that I hadn’t had champions, then went on to look for more. Almost without thinking about it, I let other truth bubble to the surface for it to find so that it wouldn’t dig painfully into the frozen ground.

  Learned about champions today. Never heard of them before.

  “Stop trying to find little bits of truth to satisfy the worm,” said Athelas, his voice oddly loud. “That’s just another method of deception: a very truthful one, to be sure, but deception nevertheless. It’s likely to deceive you as much as it is to deceive anyone else. Don’t try to satisfy the worm today. Let it dig through whatever uncomfortable things it finds by itself and don’t try to stop it.”

  I tried. I really did. I managed to stop throwing bits of truth at the worm and let it mumble around in my mind, but then I discovered that I was just feeding it with empty thoughts instead of bits of deceptive truth and gave vent to an annoyed growl.

  The worm froze, scenting lies, and I batted it away out of my mind, shuddering.

  I unscrunched my eyes to see that Athelas was looking rather startled. He said, “Might I remind you that I’m trying to help you, my dear? Surely that was a little much?”

  “Sorry,” I said, hunching my shoulders, and added, “Don’t reckon this is working.”

  “Perhaps if you were to consider me more antagonistic, Pet?” he said mildly. “Or perhaps we have not asked the correct questions yet. I’m inclined to think that now that you know what your mind is doing, if you were truly distressed—”

  “We are not going to throw Pet to my father to get memories,” Zero said, in a deep rumble from his corner.

  “Certainly not, my lord. Even should Pet regain those memories for herself, it would almost certainly lead to your father discovering them as well. I rather think we can get somewhere with patience and application.”

  “I vote for not throwing the pet to the fae lord as well,” I agreed thankfully. “He’d have me killed if he thought I was an heirling anyway—no need to give him other reasons to want to kill me.”

  It was chilling enough to have been approached by him in the mall with JinYeong and offered something I still didn’t understand. I had the uneasy feeling that he wasn’t done with me yet, and as much as I wanted to be prepared should he approach again, I didn’t want there to be a second time.

  “That’s enough for now,” Zero said, rising. “JinYeong will be back soon and it’s time to eat. There’s no further purpose in continuing today.”

  “All right,” I said feeling disloyal for being so thankful about that. There was still a very real drag on me that didn’t want me to explore either hidden memories or my parents, and even if I was prepared to push past it, it didn’t mean I couldn’t rest every now and then, too.

  “We are by no means finished, Pet,” Athelas said admonishingly. “For today, this is enough. One way or another, we will teach you how to reverse what you learned so well how to do.”

  “That’s a nice way to tell someone that something’s their own fault,” I said, trying to smile. “All right, we’ll start again tomorrow. You lot want fish and chips or lasagne?”

  Athelas was significantly less burned the next morning, but when I came down from my room he was seated in his chair and mantled in an air of gentle melancholy that didn’t seem to lift even when I sat down and wished him a good morning.

  He returned the greeting but sank back into silence again, eyes distant, unemployed with any of his usual occupations. His paper sat on the coffee table in front of him, untouched, and I didn’t think he’d even made a delicately insulting remark at JinYeong, who sat on the couch reading another book.

  I had a sudden, horrible thought that Zero might have told him what I suspected, so I asked with the breath held in my chest, “You still hurting?”

  “Merely contemplating,” he said, coming out of his silence with a faint sigh. “It occurs to me that the first of many dominos has fallen, and I can’t yet see how they’ll all fall out. Perhaps I have become accustomed to our life here, but I feel it a shame that things should change.”

  “Reckon you’re just feeling a bit blue,” I said, letting out my breath in relief. “Let me check your arms anyway. Maybe you’re getting a bit more pain than you think.”

  “I’m really not as delicate as you seem to think, my dear,” he said, but he did allow me to roll up his sleeves and make sure of that, although he suffered it with a rather amused light to his eyes. He was right: he was healing very well into a nice pinkish, bumpy sort of finish that looked like it might smooth out some time tomorrow.

  “Yeah?” I left him to roll his own sleeves back down and said over my shoulder as I went to get breakfast, “That why Zero’s out without you? You can’t tell me he didn’t refuse to let you join him.”

  “I will tell you nothing of the sort: I refuse to incriminate myself.”

  From the kitchen, I raised my voice to ask, “Where’s he gone, anyway? The other house?”

  “To what remains of it, at any rate,” said Athelas. “It was fairly heftily salted, so I rather doubt anything of interest to us will be visible.”

  “You know who did it?”

  “Not officially, but I suspect my lord’s father had something to do with it. My lord does, too.”

  “What a surprise,” I muttered to myself. I gathered together a tray to take out; nice and light, because Athelas recuperating tended to stick to tea and biscuits almost exclusively, and JinYeong was reading again, which meant he would probably be content with a liquid breakfast, so long as that liquid breakfast included blood.

  Athelas waited for me to pour his tea and pass it to him, so he must have still been feeling a bit weak. JinYeong looked up from his book, blinked at me, and took his blood-laced coffee with a brilliant smile.

  “Good morning to you, too,” I said. “What are you so happy about?”

  “This is a very useful book,” he said. “I am prepared.”

  �
�Good grief!” I said, catching sight of a distinctly romance cover but not the title. He was still researching? “Anyone’d think you already have someone in mind!”

  I said it partly as a joke, but partly to see if it might actually be true.

  JinYeong put his nose in the air. “I may date a human woman if I choose.”

  I stared at him. “You really are going to try and date a human woman? A specific human woman? Oi, what about all that Behindkind garbage about the superiority of Behindkind and the inferiority of humans?”

  “Even if she is below me in—”

  A book sailed across the room and very nearly hit him in the face. JinYeong, quick to catch and scowl alike, saved his face from damage and sent a smouldering look across the room at Athelas.

  “Do not throw things at me, old man,” he said.

  “I rather fancied you might want to read that one first,” suggested Athelas. He looked a bit brighter, which was nice.

  JinYeong narrowed his eyes, but seemed thoughtful. He flipped the book around, and I saw that despite the cheap paperback cover, it was a copy of Pride and Prejudice. I hadn’t read it yet—had been stuck on Sense and Sensibility with mum for about a year without moving before everything happened—but I was willing to bet that Athelas had, and that there was a dig at JinYeong somewhere in the suggestion.

  “What’s Zero gunna say about it, that’s what I want to know,” I said beneath my breath. Of course, I knew that they’d both be able to hear it anyway, and while Athelas shot me an amused look, JinYeong narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Hyeong will say a great deal,” he said dismissively. “That is not my affair.”

  “What if he chucks you through another wall?”

  “That is my affair.”

  “It’s mine, too,” I said obstinately. “This is my house, and the more walls you get chucked through, the lower the value of it drops. I don’t want you—”

  “I thought you planned on living here indefinitely,” remarked Athelas, crossing one leg over the other again. “It would seem that I’m mistaken, if you’re worried about the value of the place going down.”

  “I don’t have to be planning on selling it to not like people being chucked through walls,” I muttered. I found that JinYeong was gazing at me with his chin resting on his folded arms, and said defensively, “What?”

  “Shall I not date someone, then?”

  “Heck, why are you asking me?” I demanded. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I fished it out as I said, “Shouldn’t you ask her? The one you wanna date, I mean.”

  The text was from Marazul, and all it said was, I’ve got something for you. I caught my breath a little and then glanced up to find that JinYeong was looking expectantly at me.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said,” he said, surprisingly patient, “that perhaps she does not know I like her. Perhaps she thinks I am a friend.”

  “You have friends? You have female friends?”

  I looked at Athelas with wide eyes, expecting him to share my surprise, but he just sat there and watched with an air of quiet delight. It wasn’t like I could say that Zero wouldn’t approve of JinYeong having female friends, either, so that left me with nothing much else to say.

  JinYeong, still contemplating me, asked, “Then how shall I tell her?”

  “Told you before,” I said, with a touch of irritation. “I’ve never been on a date. What would I know? Ask Athelas—wait, no, don’t ask Athelas. Just…I dunno, make it clear to her that you’re interested in her in that way, I suppose. Make sure she can’t misunderstand.”

  “Hae bolkka?” he muttered to himself. “Shall I? Ya! Where are you going?”

  “Got something to pick up,” I said, abandoning my coffee and making a quick trot for the front door. I had somewhere to be, and giving JinYeong romantic advice wasn’t something I felt like I wanted to do right now. “See you two later!”

  The old mad bloke followed me from about halfway down the street, so I took a few minutes to buy him a coffee and left it on the top of someone’s red-brick wall for him. Despite the fact that it was probably wise to avoid the Harbinger if I didn’t want to take up my heirling status, it was nearly habit by now to look out for the old fella. I wasn’t like he hadn’t done the same for me.

  I didn’t see him again after that, so it must have appeased him. That left me to stroll alone in the pleasant morning sunshine, wondering if Zero was following me again or if he’d really let me out alone now that his dad was hanging around like a bad smell. These days Zero and Athelas were more inclined to be open with me, so I s’pose the universal balance was upset or something: there had to be something unpleasant to make up for the extra.

  I should have been legging it to get to Marazul with how long I’d been waiting to get my hands on the info he had for me, but I didn’t seem to be able to move at more than a sleepy stroll, despite that. Maybe it was just a reaction from the last couple of days being full on; the need to stroll in the sun without worrying that anyone was going to attack me, or pat me on the head, or ask me for advice on how to ask someone out on a date. What was I supposed to do about any of it? At any rate, it left me sluggish and disinclined to hurry, and I reckon Marazul had been expecting me to be a bit quicker, because he opened the door as soon as I got there, like he was waiting with his hand on the button.

  It felt cool and refreshing to walk through that tunnel of water and glass after the sunshine, though. The blue-green light was somehow soothing, and with a quickening of anticipation in my heart, I came out in Marazul’s living room, wondering why I’d loitered when it was so good to see his smiling face again.

  “Ah,” he said, “I thought you might have decided not to come, after all.”

  “Sorry I took a while,” I said, smiling back at him. “I was working on my tan: I’ve been a bit busy the last few days, so it’s nice to stretch out without having to fight something.”

  “Perhaps we can go out in the sunshine after you see what I’ve got for you,” he said, wheeling himself out from behind the kitchen counter.

  I wasn’t prepared for the little thrill that ran through me, or for the question that so swiftly followed and crouched at the edges of my mind.

  Was that how JinYeong would ask out his human friend? Nice and easy?

  I frowned a little, then found that Marazul’s eyes were resting on me curiously.

  “We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said. “No pressure.”

  “No—I mean yes! that’d be nice,” I said hurriedly. “You just…reminded me of something.”

  “Something unpleasant, by the look of it,” he observed.

  “No, just a bit weird,” I told him. “Stuff has been…weird at home for the last couple of days. I left home for a little while recently and now it feels like we’re between states and trying to figure out how to work together again.”

  “You’ll have to tell me how you came to be working with three Behindkind one day,” he said. I heard a slight hesitation on the with and wondered if he’d substituted it for for.

  There was no fae food on the coffee table, I noticed, with a little tickle of relief. That wasn’t the sort of relationship I wanted to build with friends, regardless of what Athelas said. I didn’t do it with Five, and I wasn’t planning on doing it with ’Zul, either.

  “Not trying to feed me up on fae goods, I see,” I said to him. “Thanks for that.”

  He gave a spurt of surprised laughter, and said, “I wouldn’t dare. I think you’d manage to find those swords of yours and teach me a lesson. The USB’s on the coffee table, by the way.”

  I don’t know if he meant me to sit down but I did so naturally after I’d taken the USB back, and he passed me a cup of coffee. I took it gratefully, and that seemed to please him.

  “Didn’t get a chance to finish my coffee this morning,” I explained, as he wheeled himself in at right angles to me. “This hits the spot just right.”

  “Yes, I noticed that y
ou’re very fond of coffee. I’ve had to get my own plunger pot since—well…”

  “Since we messed up the café?” This time I was the one who couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, that place did really good coffee. It’s a shame it was run by goblins who were trying to syphon off energy from humans.”

  “Do you—you looked like you really know what you’re doing. Is that the sort of thing you do often?”

  “Zero wanted to make sure I could defend myself if I needed to,” I said, shrugging. “It comes in handy when you walk into a place and find that Behindkind are messing with humans.”

  “I meant, is that the sort of thing you do often—find Behindkind who are mistreating humans and fix it?” he clarified, opening his laptop. Everything in the room pinched and then sharpened with an extra glitter of Behind as it connected to whatever Marazul was using for his not-quite-just-internet. “It seems dangerous for a human.”

  “It’s dangerous for humans, all right,” I said, a bit grimly. “That’s why I do it.”

  “I’m surprised Lord Sero lets you do it, in that case.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s still not too happy about it,” I remarked, trying not to watch him too obviously as he unlocked the computer and went through a couple of password screens. “But that’s my choice, not his.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, looking over at me. “That’s what interested me. Lord Sero isn’t the sort of person who allows others to do things that don’t please him, anecdotally.”

  “At the moment I reckon he’s just waiting for me to skin my knees too badly and come crying to him,” I said, with more than usual honesty. “I reckon he thinks if he gives me my head for a while I’ll change my mind.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  It was impossible to tell him all the things that meant I didn’t have the luxury of backing off; all the reasons that meant I couldn’t do anything but keep going on, protecting humans as best I could. So instead, I just shrugged and said, “Don’t reckon so. He’ll learn, sooner or later.”