Between Frames (The City Between Book 4)

by W. R. Gingell

  I opened my mouth to choke out a call for Zero, and one soft, slender hand reached out to rest on my shoulder. It felt like it sank into me instead of touching me, like dough sticking to an un-floured benchtop, and a curiously muffled voice said, “Where are you going?”

  That was weird, because it didn’t have a mouth.

  “Get off!” I said, jerking my shoulder away, and my voice sounded muffled, too. That should have shrugged off the hand, but instead, it came with me, soft and sticky and viscous.

  A muffledness sank into my limbs, beginning at my ears and shoulder and meeting somewhere in the middle to spread out again. Distantly, I heard a dog snarling. White fur sprang up between me and the Sandman, disconnecting the hand on my shoulder, while a terrible growling filled the air between us, clear and loud.

  Daniel. It was Daniel.

  I nearly said his name aloud in my relief at being able to hear and feel properly again, but I shut my mouth on it just in time. Whoever or whatever the Sandman was, Zero hadn’t been happy about it knowing about me. The less it knew about what I knew, the better.

  “You should sleep,” said the Sandman, in its odd, multilayered voice, and tried to lay its hand on Daniel’s head instead of my arm.

  He snarled and bit its wrist, shaking his huge head to snap the bone, and the Sandman gave a sighing gasp that made me feel sick. I didn’t understand why he didn’t try to pull away until I saw the way that hand was shaping and growing around Daniel’s teeth, filling his mouth with pliable whiteness while Daniel shook his head, eyes rolling.

  Ah heck. What was I supposed to do against something even a lycanthrope couldn’t beat?

  I looked around wildly for something, anything that looked like it could change into another form, but we were well and truly in the human world. There was a glimmer of Between to the pillars that made a doorway into St. David’s Park beside us, and I took off for that sliver of hope.

  The Sandman’s voice rippled through the air behind me, giving chase, and the flicker of Between around the park entrance bled toward me as I ran. A couple of steps before the park itself, the world dropped down half a foot—or maybe it just went a bit sideways. Whatever it was, it jarred my teeth and set the world into shades of grey around me. I wasn’t quite Between, but there was a shade of it over everything I was looking at.

  And the Sandman, dragging Daniel behind it on an elastic, swiftly lengthening hand, flickered between the trees along the edge of the park as it grimly made its way toward the entrance.

  Flaming heck. I still needed a weapon.

  But now the world around me was full of possibilities—grimy, leafy, spray-painted possibilities—and I felt the stirring of hope. I knew how to work here. I still couldn’t beat Zero, probably never would, but all I needed to do was put the Sandman off its game for long enough to run away.

  I was good at hitting stuff, and running, and hiding.

  I flicked a glance around me, and there were sticks everywhere. Sticks that might not be sticks if I could be persuasive enough. I picked up the closest, a thin, long one that was almost impossibly straight, and said to it, “You’re a golf club.”

  Maybe it already was a golf club. Maybe it had always wanted to be one. When I picked it up, there was no doubt about it—it was a golf club.

  I sprinted back toward the entrance of the park, and as the Sandman turned the corner, I let it have it around the head with the golf club, hard and fast. It impacted like I’d hit a piece of well-rested dough, sinking into the plastic-y face the Sandman wore on the outside, and somehow closed around the haft of the club.

  The Sandman staggered, its elongated arm shuddering, and tried to reform. Daniel collapsed to the grass on four tangled legs, but scrambled to his feet in a moment, lurching at me. I grabbed his scruff and turned to run for it, unsure if I was pulling him along or if he was pulling me.

  Gotta get to the end of the park, I said savagely to myself. Just to the end of the park.

  I could see the exit as we ran; a distant, not-quite-right version of itself from the inside of the world, brightly coloured with a patch of the human world between its pillars.

  Something gibbered at us from the trees as we ran, but I didn’t dare look up. I knew that there were still some doll parts hanging from the trees further up, an art display from far too long ago, and I didn’t want to see what they looked like here. Mostly I was just afraid that they’d still be doll parts.

  We tumbled into the buzzing colour of the human world and legged it up the hill toward Davy Street without stopping until we got to the construction site at the top. Then we stopped, panting, and Daniel nipped in past the fluttering plastic, me following his tail. It wasn’t until he started changing back that I remembered he’d be coming back without much to cover him, and hastily turned around.

  I heard scrabbling, then shuffling, and Daniel’s voice said, “It’s all right; you’re pack.”

  “Might be all right for you, but there’s stuff I don’t wanna see,” I said.

  There was a bit of a snort from behind me, but he said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got dead-drops around the city.” He came into view, feet bare and hair rumpled, but at least he had on a wrinkled t-shirt and jeans.

  “Thanks for the help,” I said. “How come you were following me, anyway?”

  “I wasn’t following you, I was following it,” said Daniel. “I’m trying to trace it back to somewhere useful.”

  “Yeah? How useful is that gunna be to you when you’re dead?”

  “I’m not going to attack them or anything,” he said impatiently. “I’d call my pack in.”

  “Yeah, and get all them killed.”

  “I’m not trying to get anyone killed,” Daniel said, even more testily. “I’ll talk to the Troika once I’ve got a location. They’re pretty keen to know where Upper Management keeps themselves these days.”

  “Make sure you tell me, too,” I said.

  “Of course,” he said. “I told you: you’re pack.”

  “They’ll tell you not to tell me.”

  He shrugged. “They’re not pack. They don’t control me.”

  I felt a warmth of friendship with him that even being part lycanthrope hadn’t bought about. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said uncomfortably. “What else would I do? I’ll walk you home, okay?”

  “Better not,” I said. “I’m already gunna have to run for it to get home on time, and if they see you with me as well, I’m going to be in for it.”

  “All right. I’ll go with you as far as the mall, then.”

  I was very nearly late home, after all that. I managed to catch a bus that was heading up into North Hobart along Elizabeth Street in the nick of time, and caught a glimpse of Athelas strolling up the path to the house as the bus passed just beyond my street to the next stop.

  The flaming sneaky so-and-sos! I thought indignantly. What was the bet that they’d sent me off to do something errandy while Athelas was sent off to do the Real Thing.

  Scowling, I came down the bus steps and hurried toward the house. Annoyed or not, I had the feeling I’d better not be late, especially today. I was already going to have to find some way of telling Zero that I’d been attacked by the Sandman again, without mentioning the appearance of Daniel. Whether or not Zero already knew about Daniel’s attack and escape, I didn’t want to let him know I’d been seeing Daniel.

  There wasn’t a sound of wailing to the house when I let myself in, and the air was heavy with JinYeong’s body spray, so I was betting Zero was done with whatever he’d been doing to the can earlier. Maybe he’d turned the cologne into anti-banshee spray or something.

  I trotted into the living room to hand him the envelope and tried not to look like I was dying to know what was inside it. Now, I thought, sitting down on my side of the couch, all I had to do was figure out a way to bring up the Sandman. I puffed a sigh into the living room to disperse a bit of the perfume, and considered my options while JinYeo
ng said something sniffy to Athelas.

  “Pet,” said Athelas, in such a ruminative sort of way that it took me by surprise when he said softly and unexpectedly, “You seem to have picked up an admirer.”

  I looked up to find his eyes on me, and tried not to swallow. Beggar me. Had he seen the old mad bloke following me lately? “Yeah? What d’you mean?”

  “JinYeong says you smell like…dog.”

  I glared accusingly at JinYeong, but he just raised a brow at me, mouth pursed. Like he was miffed at me. What the heck did he have to be complaining about? He was the one who’d just ratted on me!

  “Ran into a wer—lycanthrope. That’s all.”

  “I told you not to go looking for the lycanthrope,” said Zero briefly.

  “Nan mariya,” JinYeong said. “Ah, nemsae!”

  “Look who’s talking,” I shot back at him. “The whole house smells like you! It’s a flaming pong!”

  While he was muttering, “Pongi mwohji?” I said to Zero, very carefully truthful, “I wasn’t looking for Daniel. I was minding my own business, walking along the street to get home after running my errand, and that mothman thing—”

  “It is in fact, a Sandman,” Athelas reminded me. Like I’d really forget that fa—well, that was kinda the idea of a Sandman. You did forget their faces. Or couldn’t see them. Or something.

  Anyway, I’d seen its real face, and I wasn’t gunna forget it in a hurry, even if humans usually did.

  “Yeah, the Sandman,” I said. “I was minding my own business, and it tried to grab me. Daniel must have been following me like you said, ’cos he came out of nowhere and went for its arm.”

  “Interesting, wouldn’t you say?” Athelas said, to Zero. “That’s the second time it’s taken an interest in our Pet.”

  “Hang on, it? It’s the same one? How do you know?”

  “There are very few Sandmen in the world at any one time,” said Zero. “It would be unlikely for there to be another in the whole of Australia, not to mention Tasmania. And I would like to know why it has an interest in my pet.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said approvingly.

  Zero, looking as annoyed as I had seen him, said, “This…complicates matters.”

  “Indeed,” said Athelas, but his eyes were more amused than annoyed. “Quite the conundrum. Then shall we bring the Pet with us, or leave her?”

  “She gets into too much trouble when we leave her alone.”

  “Oi!” I said indignantly. “I’m right here, you know.”

  “I told you,” Zero said, leaning forward across the coffee table, “not to visit that werewolf.”

  “I didn’t go to visit him,” I said, nose to nose with Zero and unblinking. “And actually, they’re lycanthropes.”

  Zero coughed. “Don’t push things too far, Pet,” he said threateningly, but there wasn’t the coldness that’s usually in his eyes when he gives orders. “Put on your coat.”

  “Beauty!” I said, and went and grabbed my hoodie from my bedroom.

  Zero came down into the living room as I was leaping down the last couple of stairs, and looked frowningly at my sandals.

  “You can’t wear those if you’re coming with us,” he said. “Put on your sneakers.”

  “Can’t,” I said. “They got ruined while we were getting Athelas out of that place.”

  Across the room, JinYeong’s brow went up, and I shot him a narrow-eyed look. He sniffed and looked away. The shoes weren’t exactly ruined, they’d just been soaked in so much blood that despite JinYeong’s cleaning, they’d kept a rusty-red shade to them. It wasn’t just that—they’d gone all stiff and weird from the soaking, and no matter how often I tried to tell myself they were clean, it was hard to think of them as clean when I knew they’d been soaked with so much blood.

  “Fine,” said Zero. “But you’re not coming Between with your toes uncovered. You can go the long way around with JinYeong.”

  “Don’t see why you can’t piggy-back me,” I muttered, but since I didn’t really fancy the idea of going Between with my toes out there for any passing goblin to spear with their little needles, I only muttered it.

  Maybe Zero heard anyway. I saw the edge of one eyebrow up as he turned to go with Athelas, and there was that lighter blue shade to his eyes that meant he was trying not to show that he was laughing.

  JinYeong sniffed and said the Korean equivalent of “as if!” but he got up, too. With Between edging the words into my understanding, he asked, “Where do we go?”

  Zero looked at me. “Where is the closest sea?”

  If I’d been under the impression that we were going to the sea for any reason that had to do with the murders, I was wrong. We went so that Zero and Athelas could recharge their fae batteries or whatever.

  Oh well. I didn’t much fancy being left alone in the house if the Sandman worked out where to find me, after all, and Kingston Beach was nice if you knew where to go. JinYeong talked someone into driving us there, then stared out the window the whole time without looking at me.

  He was still looking pretty sulky when we got to the beach and found the other two, so I sat next to Zero, nudging myself against his side to avoid the rocks he used as a prop, and watched Athelas watch the sea with half-closed eyes. After a while, even JinYeong sat down near Athelas to glare at me; and after a while, that glare turned into a more mellow expression, his eyes half-lidded against the golden evening sunshine.

  I wriggled a bit to dig my sandaled feet into the sand, and leaned my head against Zero. He wasn’t very warm, but he was comfortable to lean against, and the sunshine was warm enough, anyway. I stuck out my tongue at JinYeong, who was now watching me with more of a smouldering resentment than an active dislike, and shut my eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  We pets take our sleep where we can get it. You never know when you’re going to have to go out in the middle of the night, or when you’re going to be staying up until all hours. So it could have been the prosaic wisdom of sleeping when I could, or even extreme tiredness that made me fall asleep on the beach. But I was inclined to think it was mostly because it was nice to be sitting in sun-warmed sand with the huge, slow in-and-out of breathing that was Zero relaxed and recharging, behind me.

  I woke up once to a feeling of steady, running footsteps, then the sensation of flying, my feet tucked safely away in Zero’s leather jacket and my arms folded against his chest. Brickwork fluttered past my eyeline briefly, and I came to the conclusion that Zero had sprinted up a construction ramp and leapt into space that grew green and feathery around us.

  We landed lightly in something that was much softer than the concrete I expected, and I fell asleep again, secure in my safety. There was no Sandman who could catch me now.

  I dreamt of flying and woke at about noon on the couch, my sandaled feet hanging over the edge of the cushions and still sandy. I yawned up at the ceiling, then lifted my head to see all of the psychos around me. JinYeong hovered by the kitchen, as if he didn’t care to be seen paying attention, but Athelas was wearing one of his more amused looks.

  I sat up, about to demand, “What?” when something boxy hit me in the stomach. I caught it instinctively, and said “Oi!”

  “Open it, then make lunch,” said Zero.

  “What is it?”

  “Open it,” he said briefly.

  “Yeah, but it’s a shoe box.”

  “One inevitably finds shoes in a shoe box,” remarked Athelas. “Thus the mystery ends.”

  “No, one flaming doesn’t,” I said. “Sometimes one finds a dead pet.”

  But there were shoes in this one: boots, to be exact. They were black and leather, with buckles around the ankle. They weren’t light like my sneakers had been, but they looked like they might be comfortable once I’d worn them in. And they had enough sole to them that I wouldn’t have to worry about blood soaking in.

  “Ugh,” I said, grimacing.

  “If you don’t like them, I can take them back,” Zero said
stiffly.

  “What? No, I was just thinking that I live a life where I have to think about what kind of shoe is best to stop blood getting into ’em,” I explained. “These are perfect.”

  “Nae malun,” said JinYeong smugly.

  “What, you picked ’em out? Rubbish. Athelas did it, didn’t you, Athelas?”

  “JinYeong picked them out,” Zero said. “I was going to get you the same sneakers again. Athelas wasn’t there.”

  I gave the offended JinYeong a slightly approving nod. “All right, your taste isn’t so bad.”

  JinYeong said coldly and clearly, “My taste is always perfect.”

  “When did you get them, anyway?” I asked. It had been well past Tasmanian shop hours when we were at the beach, even if I could have seen any of the three psychos striding into a shoe shop to purchase shoes. “And how did you get the right size?”

  “Play with them later,” Zero said briefly, apparently at the end of his capacity for answering questions. “Lunch first. What of the surveillance footage you watched, Pet?”

  “Pretty much what you saw,” I said. “Blokes getting their hearts torn out by someone who knew where the cameras were. Oh. And one woman copping it as well.”

  “Was there anything odd about any of them?”

  “Apart from the fact that a bloke was punching people in the chest and pulling out their hearts? Not really. Did you ask Detective Tuatu if he figured out how the murderer knew where all the cameras were? S’pose you got the footage from him, so I bet he’s been looking at a bit more than that.”

  “Take another look at them after lunch. I want to be sure there’s nothing more there.”

  That was all well and good, I thought gloomily, as I went into the kitchen to make pancakes; but if Zero wasn’t looking at the footage himself, it was because he didn’t think there was much there. And that meant it was a distraction. Still, I already had a few questions for Detective Tuatu, and this was just one more. If the murderer knew where all the cameras were, he must have been scoping out the place earlier. Maybe he’d been picked up on the cameras while he was learning where they were.