Between Frames (The City Between Book 4)

by W. R. Gingell

  “I mean they didn’t get him; he jumped out the window.”

  I took in a breath. “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t—he didn’t jump down to the ground.”

  “I’m guessing he didn’t fly, so where’d he go?”

  “The building next door. I couldn’t see him for a while, but that dog was back. Pet, I reckon it must be his dog, because it was fighting off the bloke who came after him.”

  “Where’s Daniel now?”

  “Um.”

  “It’s okay if you don’t know. We can find him.” It was gunna be a pain, but at least I knew he was on the mend and not under surveillance of any kind anymore.

  “No, I know. I tried to get over to the window so he could see me calling the cops—figured if I was really loud about talking on the phone with the window open, the bloke might get scared and run off. But I couldn’t get my legs to work, and while I was still trying to get up off the floor again, someone burst into my room.”

  “It was Daniel, right? Not the blokes—I mean the bloke who was after him?”

  “Yeah. But he took my doona off the bed and he won’t come out from under it so I don’t know what to do.”

  I tried not to grin. Mostly it was relief, but it was kinda funny, too. It was a good thing Morgana was so oblivious to the way her world was edging into Between around her. She was already burdened enough; bringing Behindkind into the mix wasn’t a good idea.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said. I slipped my phone back into my pocket and started out at a jog-trot, aware that somewhere behind me, someone was following. This time, though, I knew it was just the old mad bloke—probably looking for a feed, or a drink—and I didn’t let it worry me. His figure was a pretty familiar sight all through my childhood, after all, and he’d never done me any harm, apart from pinching a few drinks from me.

  Morgana’s house was quiet when I got there. That was pretty normal, though the quietness around the outside of the house worried me a bit. I couldn’t see the Sandman or the big bloke in the jeans-on-jeans combo, but I was uneasily aware that it was possible they saw me. With the hair standing up on the back of my neck, I took the stairs two at a time and entered Morgana’s room.

  I didn’t expect to see her still on the floor, which was a bit dumb of me, since it wasn’t like she could easily pick herself up, after all. She wouldn’t want to drag herself over to her bed while there was a lycanthrope under there glaring at her, either.

  “You okay?” I asked, automatically grabbing the arm she held out to me.

  “Yeah. Just—can you help me up and put me on the seat here?”

  She was light. I nearly asked her why, but that wasn’t the most important question right now. I manoeuvred her onto the seat of the exercise machine she’d pointed me toward instead, then went to crouch next to the bed.

  Daniel’s face, flushed and sweaty, glared at me from a mass of doona.

  “You coming out?”

  “I can’t,” he snapped.

  “You can’t stay there. You gotta come out eventually.”

  “I can’t,” he said again, angrily wrenching at the doona. It slipped slightly off one shoulder, and it occurred to me with a sudden spurt of amused relief, that Daniel wasn’t hurt. He was naked.

  Morgana craned her head down to one side, risking a fall. “Is he…is he okay? He wouldn’t talk to me and he wouldn’t come out.”

  I grinned. “He’s fine. He’s just um, naked.”

  “He’s what?”

  “Shut up, Pet!”

  “What? You gunna stay in there all day? She’s not gunna leave—it’s her room, and she can’t walk out.”

  There was the sound of mumbled swearing from beneath the bed before he said, “Just cover me, all right?”

  “You’re already covered,” I pointed out, but I took the top sheet off the bed anyway and held it up. “All right, we’re looking away.”

  “I’m not,” said Morgana. “I can’t see anything anyway. You’re hiding behind half my bedding.”

  “Your dad got anything he can loan?” I asked, while shuffling and exasperated breathing caused the sheet to billow slightly.

  “He can borrow my pyjamas,” said Morgana. “It’s no use looking for Dad’s stuff—he’s the wrong size. My pyjamas are all extra large anyway. There’s a pile next to the bed, I think.”

  “Oi, coming through,” I said, giving Daniel a chance to rearrange the doona again. “Here, use this stuff. The pyjama pants and t-shirt’ll fit you.

  “I don’t have any jocks for you, though,” Morgana said apologetically.

  “I’ll manage,” muttered Daniel, snatching the pyjamas, and hurried away toward the bathroom.

  I tried not to grin, but it was funny seeing him so concerned about being naked when it hadn’t bothered him while he was fighting for the rights to his pack. Mind you, he’d come back from fighting for his life, then. Maybe being naked matters more when you’re under a girl’s bed, who knows?

  I glanced over at Morgana, and saw her looking out the window, her pale face bright with a bit of colour high on the cheeks. “Dude, he is gorgeous!” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The Chinese bloke out there now.”

  That wiped the grin from my face, all right. “What Chinese bloke?” I demanded, leaning over her, but I already had a sinking feeling that I knew what I was going to see. I looked out the window, and sure enough, there was JinYeong looking up at the window. He saw me as soon as I saw him, so it was no use ducking back in and pretending I hadn’t seen him.

  Beggar me. Why was he following me? I was sure I’d gotten out of the house without the lingering smell of cologne drifting after me.

  I said slowly, “Korean. Yeah, he’s my um, partner. He was meant to be doing something else.”

  “Is he coming in too?”

  “Maybe,” I said gloomily. Morgana was far too excited about JinYeong; she was already too pale, and a vampire wasn’t likely to do anything good when it came to people who were too pale. “Just…don’t get too close to him if he does.”

  Morgana looked disappointed, then interested. “Are you dating?”

  “What? Yuck! Definitely not. He’s just…trouble—and you’re not even fourteen!”

  “I am too! I’m sixteen this year!”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, grinning. “I haven’t grown for the last couple of years. Most people think I’m still twelve. You going to bring him up?”

  I looked out again, and JinYeong, very deliberately, pointed one slender finger at me. I know you’re there, that finger said. Come down.

  What a pain in the neck! I was going to have to convince JinYeong not to tell Zero about this. He would definitely know that Daniel had been kept in the house across the street—at least until today.

  There had to be some sort of leverage I could use. Bright side was, he hadn’t already run off to tell Zero what I was up to, so there must be a reason for that. If I could find out what it was, maybe I could use it.

  I stopped at that thought, blinking a bit. Maybe it was bad for me to be around fae so often—I seemed to be thinking like them more these days. How to manipulate here—how to sneak around there. Using people’s weaknesses against them.

  “It’ll be mostly us, though, won’t it?” said Morgana. “The other cop was by himself, too. Said this sort of stuff was usually just a one person job.”

  She didn’t sound disappointed at that, despite her obvious interest in JinYeong, and I felt a stab of guilt. Speaking of manipulating people…

  “Yeah, just us,” I said. “He doesn’t need to come up here.”

  “Who doesn’t need to come up here?” demanded Daniel, emerging from the bathroom. In Morgana’s pyjamas, he looked slender and young and far too defenceless to have been chased around by a stiff breeze without falling over, let alone a Sandman.

  “Stay away from the window,” I warned him. “It’s JinYeon
g.”

  It was Daniel’s turn to grin at my discomfort. “What? Didn’t tell those three what you’re up to, huh?”

  “What three?” asked Morgana.

  “My bosses.”

  Sotto voce, Daniel said, “Is that what you’re calling ’em? Pft.”

  “My two bosses and my partner,” I said, glaring at him. “I didn’t tell any of them about this, so…”

  Morgana frowned. “Are you going to be in trouble? The other bloke said he was going to be in trouble, and then he never came back.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Well, maybe. We’ll see. I’d better go down and talk to my partner before he goes back to our bosses.”

  JinYeong was waiting for me downstairs, just outside the door. When I started out into the garden, looking around for him, he detached himself from the wall and said agreeably, “Mwoh hae, Petteu?”

  “None of your business,” I said. “Why are you following me?”

  He leaned close, and sniffed from my shoulder to my ear. “Petteu,” he said, showing a bit too much tooth, “you smell like dog.”

  “Look who wants to be understood all of a sudden,” I complained. “And it’s pretty flaming rich for you to be complaining about how people smell, with the amount of perfume you’re wearing.”

  JinYeong narrowed his eyes at me. “It is not perfume.”

  “Could have fooled me. Anyway, I smell like d—like Daniel because that Sandman thing tried to get to him and he had to escape.”

  “You helped him?”

  I grinned. “Well, sorta.” I mean, I got him clothes. No need to tell JinYeong that he was upstairs with Morgana if I didn’t need to.

  He tipped his head at the building. “Kogiso wae?”

  “I was up there because I was visiting a friend of mine.”

  “Pft,” JinYeong said dismissively. “Spying.”

  “You gunna tell Zero about this?”

  “Molla,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “Maybe, maybe not,”

  Yeah right. His mouth was already pressed together smugly, and his eyes glittered. He was enjoying this.

  “’F’you tell him, I’ll get chucked out.”

  “Ne,” JinYeong said, lips curving. “What will you do, Pet?”

  “Which means no more homemade kimchi, no more dinners, and no blood snacks. And you’ll have to go hunting when you’d rather just sit down and be lazy with a blood bag.”

  “Pft,” he said again, but he looked thoughtful. “If the dog is no longer at that place, Zero can have no objections.”

  “Yeah, he’s definitely not there anymore,” I said. I was going to have to warn Daniel against changing into his wolf form anywhere in Morgana’s place; JinYeong would definitely smell him on me again if he did. And maybe get him to have a bath or something. It wasn’t like he could stay there or anything, but for the meantime, there were very dangerous Behindkind nearby looking for him.

  “Uri jib caja,” he said, tilting his head toward the gate out.

  “Why are you following me, anyway?” I asked, even though he’d stopped layering his words with Between. Obviously he was finished with everything he wanted understood, which was all right for him, but I still had questions. “And it’s no good just speaking in Korean, you know. In a couple of years I’ll be able to understand everything you say, anyway.”

  He sauntered ahead of me out the gate, and shrugged. “Sankwani obseo.”

  “Yeah? You’ll care a lot when you’re being rude about those two and I tell ’em what you say. Oi! Where are you going?”

  JinYeong stopped. “Uri jib.”

  “Yeah, but I gotta do the shopping first,” I told him. “Unless you don’t want dinner tonight.”

  I started off down the opposite way, toward the Brooker, even though it would have been quicker to go the way JinYeong was going. I wanted the time to text, Keep him away from the window. Call me if you need me, to Morgana.

  I’d just slipped my phone back into my pocket when JinYeong caught up with me and slowed his step to a saunter. If he’d been walking properly instead of like a wannabe model, maybe it wouldn’t have been so annoying, but I couldn’t help the scowl that rose naturally to my face.

  JinYeong gave me an offended look and demanded, “Wae?”

  “Dunno. You’re just annoying.”

  He considered that, and grew smug. “Ne.”

  “S’pose you think that’s a compliment,” I muttered.

  He shrugged, but he was still smiling to himself when we got to the grocery store.

  “You stay out here,” I told him. Shopping with JinYeong was even more annoying than walking with JinYeong was—all the female staff tended to converge on the place he was in, whether or not he expressed any need for help. I still wasn’t sure if that was something his Behindkind vampire nature brought out, or if he deliberately lured them in just to annoy the people around him, but either way, it was irritating. This shop was worse than most, too, because we’d both worked in it briefly while undercover.

  Luckily for me, he didn’t object to waiting outside. Usually, JinYeong prefers to do whatever will annoy me the most. Today, he seemed happy to let his eyes roam Campbell Street as the traffic swept past the pedestrians, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders fashionably curved. Like he was shooting a commercial for the casual businessman outside the local grocery store or something.

  I nipped around the aisles as quickly as I could, snatching up a pack of noodles here, flour and salt there, biscuits from the international foods section to give Athelas something to smile about and more maple syrup for Zero’s pancakes. He still hasn’t told me he loves them, but I’ve seen his face when he eats them. It’s a sort of rebellion of mine—giving him stuff he loves to eat when he refuses to tell me he loves it. Sorta make things harder for him.

  I was in the frozen food aisle when I saw the bloke. It was probably a good thing that I saw him in the reflections first, because I’m pretty sure my mouth was open for a good five seconds.

  It was one of the dead blokes. Last I’d seen him, he’d been sitting on a couch in a private sitting room of the Orient in Hobart, looking up with a smile to greet his murderer. After that, it had just been shock, and blood, and dead eyes staring up at the camera.

  Now, he was looking at frozen fish with those eyes, and dressed in a trakkie-dak and hoodie combo that was a pretty far cry from the brand name track suit I’d last seen him in.

  What. The. Heck.

  His eyes flicked up from the package of fish, and I made a slow blink and let my eyes travel on to the stuff in the freezer in front of me, closing my mouth. If he caught me staring at him—especially staring at him in the reflection of the window—I would completely give myself away. And I wasn’t even sure what I’d be giving away, apart from the fact that I recognised his face. I mean, if either of us should be worried about giving themselves away, it was him—he was meant to be flaming dead.

  I grabbed the icypoles I’d come for and headed down toward the back of the store while he headed for the front of the store. I didn’t want to be seen following him, but I sure as heck was gunna be following him. So I passed along the back of the store and came up the tea aisle again as his figure flickered past the end of the aisle to join the queue for the self-serve registers. I stood at the end of the fifteen-or-less lane instead, where I could keep an eye on him without having to scan my own groceries. I could always give JinYeong the nod to follow him if I needed to.

  The murdered bloke came past me as I paid, and stood at the cigarette counter to ask for a pack of smokes, which was handy. It was handy because he looked pretty young, and if the employee did the right thing—yep. He was asking him for ID.

  Bonza!

  I stepped softly behind him and leaned casually on the glass of the service desk, my eyes flicking to the name on the ID.

  Cameron Michaels.

  Right. I was gunna have to call the detective again and hope that he felt compromised enough from helping me last time, to help
me again. I had no idea if Cameron Michaels was actually the name of one of the murdered blokes. I mean, unless he had an identical twin brother, it had to be him, but I’d seen enough weird stuff to make me check and double check everything.

  I gave his profile another once-over while he waited for his cigarettes, and maybe he felt the interest, because Mr. Michaels’ head turned toward me. I let my eyes slip past him, and past the ID just as he would have met my eyes, looking down at the phones beneath the glass counter instead.

  “That one,” I said to the bloke who was coming back with the cigarettes. “Can I look at it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’ll just finish up here first.”

  “Too late,” I said, as JinYeong’s suited shoulder moved sightly into sight through the front window. “I gotta go. Thanks anyway!”

  I mean, the bloke was dead, and I was only going off security footage, but it really looked like him. Maybe it was Behindkind doing weird things with bodies again. Mind you, if it was a fae body, could they do the same things with them? From what Athelas had said, changelings could only do their work with human bodies. Whichever way I looked at it, it was weird.

  And that made me wonder about the one human body Athelas had spoken of. Which one was the human? Why had a human made it into a list of dead, high-level fae? Was Cameron Michaels the human one?

  I gave him one more, furtive look as he passed me on his way out of the grocery store, trotting casually behind him so it didn’t look like I was too interested in him. I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who used reflections to watch the people around me.

  I was still frowning when I got outside, but JinYeong must have thought I was frowning at him, because he didn’t ask what was up. He was still gazing out on the street. Trying to look cool and suave, maybe, I don’t know.

  “Oi!” I shoved a couple of bags at him. “Did you see him?”

  JinYeong’s brows rose. “Nuga?”

  “That bloke—he looked like one of the murdered men, didn’t he?”

  He shrugged, unconcerned, and a bit more of my surety faded. If JinYeong had been watching the parking lot as closely as he seemed to be doing, there’s no way he wouldn’t have seen and recognised the man.