Between Frames (The City Between Book 4)

by W. R. Gingell

  I passed her the coffee and plopped down on the bed, shuffling backwards until my shoulders hit the wall. There was a good spot there where I could see nearly everything from the windows without being seen myself.

  That put my sandaled feet in view, and Morgana tilted her chin at my toes. “What happened to your sneakers? They were really cool.”

  “Yeah,” I said gloomily. They’d been flaming comfortable, too. “I know. I was at a crime scene and they got bloody. The v—my um, partner cleaned ’em for me, but they haven’t come out right.”

  Morgana made a face at the tv. “I probably wouldn’t want them after that, anyway. That’s gross.”

  I couldn’t help grinning, and she must have caught it in the reflection of the telly.

  “What?”

  “Dunno. You just look all goth and hardcore, so I didn’t expect you to be worried about blood.”

  “Me either!” she said. “The concept’s okay, but it turns out I faint at the sight of blood, so…”

  “That’s pretty inconvenient, isn’t it?”

  Morgana looked surprised. “Why? It’s not like I see blood every day. I can go for years without seeing blood.”

  “What, so period blood’s okay?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t get periods. Don’t ask me why.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Yeah,” said Morgana, grinning. “But pretty convenient!”

  “What about when you cut yourself on stuff?”

  “I don’t cut myself. I mostly stay in this room, too—where am I gunna get hurt?”

  “Yeah, but still—”

  “Wouldn’t it be weirder if I was seeing blood every day?”

  I opened my mouth to disagree, but I remembered just in time that my life was hardly the yardstick by which to measure normal. “I s’pose.”

  “Even in your job, you wouldn’t see blood every day.”

  I thought about JinYeong’s blood bags in the fridge, and grinned. “Yeah. ’Course not. That would be weird. Oi. He been moving much?”

  “Daniel? Yeah. He saw me last night when I was looking out the window.”

  “What’d he do?”

  To my surprise, Morgana chuckled. “Flipped the bird, what else?”

  “Yeah, he’s a pretty rude bloke,” I said, more careful than usual when I peeked out the window. I didn’t want Daniel—or, worse, his handlers—to catch sight of me.

  I saw the top of his head: he was sitting backward in his bed, with his feet on his pillow and his back to his handler. Either he didn’t want to look at the bloke, or he was still annoyed with him for not letting him out of the room.

  “He’s stopped throwing his food at ’em, though,” added Morgana. “I think he was getting too hungry. He’s had a visitor today, too.”

  “Really? They let someone in to see him?”

  “Nah, but I reckon the bloke was there after him. He stayed out on the street, but I’m pretty sure he was looking up at Daniel’s window. He a cop, too?”

  “Nope,” I said sharply. “What’d he look like?”

  “I thought you might ask,” Morgana said, sounding pleased with herself. “I got a couple pictures for you.”

  “Beauty!” I said, forgetting that I was supposed to be a cool policewoman and not a soon-to-be-eighteen year old. “Nice work! He didn’t see you, did he?”

  “’Course not!” she said, with a bit of indignation to her voice. “I’m good at not being seen!”

  “Then how come Daniel flipped you the bird?”

  She grinned. “I wasn’t trying not to be seen, then. This is the bloke. Recognise him?”

  I looked at her phone, and felt a chill. There was a big, slightly balding bloke wearing a jeans-and-jean-jacket combo that didn’t hide his muscles, and beside him was a tall, thin figure I recognised very well. I asked with a tight throat, “What about the other bloke next to him?”

  “What other bloke?” She took the phone back, and tilted it. “You must need glasses. That’s not a bloke, that’s a shadow on the house.”

  “Yeah, my bad,” I said, grabbing the phone again. It wasn’t a shadow on the building—it was the same kind of mothman type Behind creature I’d met once before. The sorta creature where you look at it and forget that you’re looking at it straight away. The sorta creature that has another face underneath the face it wears on top—all feelers and twittering antennae and huge, unblinking black eyes that burn themselves into your soul. “I don’t recognise the human. The bloke, I mean. I don’t recognise him.”

  Morgana made a disappointed face, but said, “I’ll send it to you anyway. What’s your number?”

  I gave it to her, and when the photo came through, I looked at it again, more closely. Yeah, the mothman was definitely there. I would have to figure out a way to ask Athelas, without making him suspicious, why some Behind creatures didn’t show up on film to humans. Well, to normal humans, anyway: obviously I wasn’t a normal one. Or maybe it was just that I’d seen one of the Sandmen’s real faces. They’re kinda hard to forget.

  I only stayed for a couple of hours; long enough to be talked into being trounced in poker and drink another mug of coffee, long enough to make sure Daniel was starting to eat, and that he looked pretty much as happy as I could expect to see him. I still had to make dinner for the psychos, after all.

  I headed home, nipping into the grocery store to buy a few token groceries to prove I’d been doing what I said I’d been doing, and make sure we had dinner tonight. I also stopped briefly at the specialty tea store in the Wellington Court. There was a good selection of teas there, and I’d had my eye on a Tassie-produced lavender earl grey that I thought might come in handy to soften up Athelas a bit every now and then.

  Athelas and JinYeong were in the living room when I got back home, but Zero wasn’t in the house. I made a bee-line for the kitchen to put away the few groceries I’d bought and make tea and coffee. It was more likely that Athelas or JinYeong would talk to me than it was that Zero would. Moreover, both of them were much more likely to talk when they were fed up with tea-and-biscuits and blood respectively. I didn’t want them to know that I’d met Detective Tuatu, but I did want to know what else I could find out. It might be fae dying that they were interested in, but it was never just fae dying. I had to make sure that the humans were looked after, too; and that was very hard to do when they wouldn’t include me.

  I didn’t even know why they wouldn’t include me. It wasn’t like they took me with them everywhere, but lately they’d started to include me more and more in their investigations: like a sort of useful beast of burden, yeah, but at least I was there with them.

  So why hadn’t I been allowed to go to this crime scene, or even know what was happening? Was it because of what it was, or the people who had brought it to the psychos’ attention?

  Whatever it was, I was going to find out. So I put a blood bag in my pocket to warm it up for JinYeong as the jug boiled, and carefully made Athelas’ tea.

  The scent of lavender wafted gently after me as I stepped down into the living room and plopped JinYeong’s bag of blood gently down beside him instead of just chucking it at him. I saw the way that Athelas’ eyes almost closed before resting, curiously, on me.

  “Allow me to congratulate you upon your interrogation skills, Pet,” he said.

  JinYeong, looking up from his blood bag with eyes half-lidded in contentment, sent me a mocking look. “The blood is good,” he said in Korean. “Am I grateful, I wonder?”

  I stuck my tongue out at both of them. I hadn’t thought I was that obvious, but here we were. They were both letting me know they knew what I was up to, and that I wasn’t going to get anything out of them.

  “Shove over,” I said to JinYeong, who was lounging over my side of the couch as well as his own. I reinforced the demand by pushing his shoulder away from my side of the backrest. “Let me guess—Zero said I’m not allowed to know what’s going on?”

  “Maja,” said JinYeong, nud
ging his shoulder back to where it had been, which meant it was touching me.

  I glared at him and nearly said “Look, blood breath,” but I remembered just in time that I was meant to be winkling information out of them both, and said instead, “This is my side.”

  “Don’t care,” he murmured around the blood-bag, the meaning crystal clear with a Between edge. “This side is warm. I’m sitting here.”

  “It’s warm because a human is sitting here,” I complained. “You can’t just sit on my side ’cos it’s warm—yours will always be cold because you’re flaming cold.”

  “Pet,” said JinYeong, tilting his head back to gaze up at me, eyes as liquid as the blood he drank. “Was I not warm when I held you close and murmured in your ear?”

  “Dear me,” said Athelas, his voice lightly amused.

  “Don’t say it like that!” I protested, shoving JinYeong’s head away this time. “It makes it sound weird! Are you drunk?”

  “Maja,” he said again, and chuckled a bloody chuckle against my shoulder.

  “You’re quite invested in our work these days, JinYeong,” Athelas said, breathing out a whisp of steam. “How singularly pleasant to see you intent on ah, pleasing my lord!”

  JinYeong made a soft tch! of a laugh and purred a short stream of Korean at Athelas that began with something very like invested? What investment? and ended with food is good, that’s all.

  It was obvious that he hadn’t meant me to understand it, because there was no touch of Between to aid my understanding. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my cooking or my blood, so I said, “You better not be talking about me,” just to startle him, and added, “You know what I think?”

  JinYeong’s eyes flicked up to my face, as startled as I would have liked, but Athelas only sipped his tea. “I am positively agog, Pet.”

  “Yeah, I bet. I think this murder of yours is—”

  “I don’t believe,” said Athelas lightly, “that any of us mentioned a murder.”

  “Yeah, but Zero came back with blood on him that you said wasn’t from him half killing someone, so I reckon it’s a pretty good bet. Is Zero keeping me out of it ’cos of the murder, or ’cos of who asked him to investigate it?”

  “Yokshi, Petteu!” said JinYeong, laughing softly.

  “If you think that the application of this very delightful tea will cause me to become in any way more open-mouthed, I fear you are doomed to disappointment.”

  “Reckon that means it’s because of who asked you,” I said.

  “At any other time, I would be fascinated to discover exactly how you arrived at that conclusion, but since I fear you’ll only interpret that as something else wholly unintended, I think it safer not to do so.”

  “Oh, is that why?” I said, unconvinced. Athelas was technically harder to read than the other two, but there was a kind of twisted logic to him that made him easier to read than Zero, in general—and even than JinYeong, on occasion. I was pretty sure I was right. “Anyway, I’ve been helping you lot with your investigations for the last couple of months, so I reckon there’s something different about this one. Those fae asked you to investigate, too, so I reckon they’ve offered you something in exchange. Reckon it’s something I’m not supposed to know about.”

  “Good heavens, Pet!” Athelas said placidly. “Don’t overtax yourself, will you?”

  JinYeong, wedging his shoulder against mine even more firmly, tilted his head and said in Korean, “Annoying Pets shouldn’t yap yap yap.”

  I elbowed him, and yelped when he bit my shoulder. “Oi! You can’t do that! He can’t do that, can he?”

  “It’s certainly inadvisable,” said Athelas, as JinYeong threw his empty blood bag on the coffee table.

  I had the feeling he was talking to JinYeong rather than answering me, but I said anyway, “Great. Am I gunna go to sleep again?”

  “Did not bite so much as that,” murmured JinYeong. Oh, so now he wanted to be understood?

  “I think not,” said Athelas; but even if he hadn’t said it, I would have been able to guess.

  I was still a little bit faster and stronger than usual with the last bit of vampire spit I’d had running through my system, and instead of the lethargy I’d felt spread through my body the first couple times it happened, only my shoulder and arm grew numb. The rest of me, though—the rest of me felt sparkling and alive and very slightly inclined to bite back.

  “Hajima,” said JinYeong warningly, catching my eye.

  “Wasn’t doing anything!” I shot back. “Stop biting me, you flamin’ blood sucker!”

  He grinned, and lounged back to take up even more of the couch.

  “I reckon,” I said again, stubbornly going back to my point because I was pretty sure JinYeong had only bitten me to distract me from it, “I reckon that they offered you something. Maybe some information. And I reckon—”

  “I think not, Pet,” said Athelas, with finality in his soft voice. “I’m of the same mind as Zero when it comes to this particular matter.”

  “You mean you lot are gunna keep ducking in and out and not telling me anything?” I demanded.

  “Maja,” said JinYeong, far too cheerfully.

  “’S’pose that means it has something to do with Zero, then,” I muttered. Even JinYeong told me stuff sometimes. He told it to me in Korean so that there was only a thirty percent chance I’d understand him, but at least he talked. And Athelas liked to tell me stuff without really telling me—probably for the fun of watching to see if I’d get it or not—but again, at least he talked.

  And that—that made me realise exactly what it must be that was stopping Zero from talking. Or at least, a part of it, because there had to be more to it than that.

  I said, “Someone’s been murdering people like my parents again, haven’t they?” without surprise. Of course the murderer was back. The psychos were just waiting around here until someone else was murdered like that again, after all. If the fae had bargained with them to take a case, they would have had to offer something big enough to tempt Zero. Information on the murderer might just be enough to interest him, but I was betting it wasn’t all he’d been offered.

  “Who has been talking to the Pet?” demanded Zero, striding into the room. “I told both of you—”

  JinYeong spluttered a laugh into the corner of the room, and crinkles appeared by the corners of Athelas’ eyes. Zero breathed out the faintest sigh of annoyance.

  “I see,” he said.

  Athelas sipped his tea, and said to me, “My lord evidently prefers that you refrain from polluting the atmosphere with your suppositions.”

  “Pretty sure he just wishes I hadn’t caught on,” I remarked, catching Zero’s eye. If his face had been expressionless before, now it was pretty much stone. “What else did they offer you? ’Cos I reckon they had to offer you more than that.”

  “Whether or not they did is not your concern,” Zero said.

  “Reckon that means yes,” I said, catching a brief flicker of surprise from him. I grinned. “Anyway, who’s gunna save Athelas if I’m not there to help you lot?”

  There was a very small, tea-soaked cough from Athelas’ side of the room, but his voice said easily enough, “I suppose I will simply have to do the best I can, Pet.”

  “What am I supposed to do while you’re all gone?” I asked. Oh, there was no way I wasn’t getting in on the investigation. They were my psychos, and if the golden fae had offered something important enough to make Zero change his mind on something he’d been so much against, I was going to make sure he got that information.

  “Behave yourself,” said Zero. Maybe he saw the determined expression on my face.

  “Oh. Well, wouldn’t it be better if—”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No.”

  I sighed. “You’re no fun, you know that? The bloke killed my parents, you know—I should be allowed to know what’s going on.”

  Zero’s mouth opened, but
he didn’t speak. Just as I was about to prompt him, there was a hurried bang bang bang! from the front door. Like someone had decided to knock and then done it in a hurry because they were scared.

  “Flaming heck!” I said, jumping. “We’re getting pretty popular these days, aren’t we?”

  Zero strode across to the window, carefully twitched one of the curtains aside, and then shut it again. “Don’t open the door,” he said, as I was getting up.

  “Yeah, but it’s the front door!” I protested. “They’re not trying to get in through the linen closet, at least!”

  “We don’t have time for visitors,” he said.

  “Why? What are we doing?”

  Something metallic flickered in the air, and I caught at the black part of it without thinking. There in my hand was one of my practice knives, point facing out as if I’d meant to do it.

  “Come upstairs, Pet,” said Zero.

  “What, we’re doing practice again? Beaut!”

  “I was under the impression that you were finding your training more irksome lately.”

  “Yeah, well, being killed six times changes a person’s mind.”

  Zero’s eyes lightened with amusement. “No matter how well I teach you, you’ll never best Athelas.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve got a handicap because JinYeong bit me, so you gotta go easy on me.”

  At least I was a bit more hopped up on vampire spit at the moment; that was bound to help a bit, even if my arm still felt dead. Maybe I’d even get a chance to score a hit against Zero if he’d take it easy on me.

  Chapter Three

  Get in a hit? Take it easy? Fat chance! All I got were bruises, all up and down my legs and a toe that might have been broken or might just have been me being a wuss.

  “Next time, wear your boots,” said Zero, when I was a sweaty, pulpy mess of welts, already colourful bruises, and new carpet burn. Upstairs is not my favourite place to train.