Between Frames (The City Between Book 4)

by W. R. Gingell

  “Thanks. You sure about the camera, though?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not using it. Anyway, if I loan it to you, you’ll have to come back,” she added, grinning. “I need someone I can beat at poker. Daniel’s too good.”

  “Knew there was a reason you liked me visiting,” I said accusingly. “All right, I’ll play one game of poker, then I’m off. They’ll need me back home soon, I reckon.”

  I left her playing poker with Daniel and trotted back downstairs with my booty, feeling bright and hopeful. There was no guarantee I was right, or that the stuff I’d borrowed would work, but I was pretty sure I was. I wasn’t looking forward to visiting Zero and Athelas at Janna Whiteleaf’s place to take them the idea, but it couldn’t be helped. Whatever it was that was so important to Zero, I wanted to make sure he got it.

  When I got outside, JinYeong was propped against the stones beside the door, looking at his watch with a cocked eyebrow. Since I knew he must have heard me coming, I guessed he just wanted to remind me that I’d been in there nearly an hour.

  I stuck out my tongue and shoved the camera bag at him.

  JinYeong lifted an eyebrow, but he took it. “Igae mwohya?”

  “It’s a camera,” I said. “Reckon Zero’s gunna find it useful for catching that peryton. Just a guess I’ve got.”

  “Good Petteu,” he said. “We will visit them.”

  “Coffee first,” I told him. “If I gotta go back to that place, I’m gunna need coffee.”

  It was a good day for coffee. Especially coffee I didn’t have to make. I had money in my pocket to replace the baking things I’d used to make Athelas’ teacake, but I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store again, and it wouldn’t hurt to use a bit of it on coffee for Zero and JinYeong, anyway. I could be generous. I’d solved their mystery for them, and probably made it easier for them to catch their murderer.

  I mean, the day would probably have been a lot better if it wasn’t for JinYeong sauntering along by my side, doing his impersonation of a model as usual, but I couldn’t have everything.

  “You wait out here,” I said, scowling reflexively at him.

  He shrugged, but settled against a nearby window, smiling serenely at an old woman who was so dazzled that she nearly walked out into the road instead of over to the crossing. I went on to the café, rolling my eyes.

  I didn’t particularly want to go to that house again, but I was pretty sure Zero would want the camera as soon as possible if my idea was correct—and I was very sure it was correct. I turned my head to tell JinYeong, “You fae really need to start keeping up with the times”, before I remembered I’d left him back at the last window.

  Oh well, there was still good coffee to look forward to, even if I couldn’t be snarky at JinYeong. I pushed through the glass door, happily anticipating that my second cup of coffee from the place would be as good as the first, and walked right into trouble.

  I came through the door, looking up to the back of the café for the counter, but there was somebody between me and the counter. It was a man in a wheelchair with black curls, straight, thick eyebrows that looked permanently a bit worried, and an olive complexion that seemed to have seen a lot of time under an Italian sun. But it was his eyes that caught me. He looked over naturally at the opening of the door, just as I was looking up, and our eyes met. His were probably brown, but mostly they looked kind and bright, and his lashes were the longest I’d ever seen.

  I don’t know if I stood there for as long as it felt like. I hope not. He smiled at me, and a crease appeared along the top of his left cheek; a dimple in the wrong place and around the wrong way. I couldn’t help smiling back—even Zero couldn’t have resisted responding to a smile like that—and that shook me free. I made a bee-line for the counter, trying not to look at him again as I went around his wheelchair. I couldn’t afford to be rooted to the spot by someone’s eyes.

  Especially not with one of the psychos outside.

  I ordered my coffee, keeping to the counter and trying not to look around, and when the coffee came up I headed for the door pretty quickly, too. I think he smiled at me again as I left; I gave him another half-smile that I reckon was closer to a grimace than a real smile, and hastily nipped out the door.

  JinYeong was waiting for me by the lights when I stepped onto the street, but maybe I was still walking a bit too quickly, because his brows lifted a little when he saw me.

  “Petteu,” he purred, as I approached. “Musen il?”

  “What? Nothing’s up. Just got coffee, here’s yours.” I shoved his cup at him and hoped I didn’t look as red as I felt. Good grief, it was ridiculous! It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen a good-looking bloke before!

  “Kuroji?” remarked JinYeong, tilting his head to the side with narrowed eyes. “Aninko.”

  “What do you know, you’re just a vampire!” I snapped.

  JinYeong’s eyes hovered on my face for a few moments before they flicked over to the café windows. I saw the faint movement of his foot to go toward the café, and started walking away.

  “Coffee’s gunna get cold,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could.

  To my relief, that seemed to work. It was bad enough that JinYeong was following me around; to have him poking his nose in on this would have been unspeakable.

  “Then we will go,” he said. “Caja, Petteu!”

  Chapter Eleven

  “How long will this take?” demanded Janna Whiteleaf.

  “Dunno,” I said. It wasn’t as if I knew what I was doing, or anything. Actually, I was just lucky Zero was letting me play around with it. I could tell he wasn’t convinced by my explanation, but there must have been enough to it to make him allow it.

  I fiddled with the adjusting screws on the tripod, which nearly sent the whole lot plummeting toward the ground, and Janna said sourly, “Do you know what you’re doing, human?”

  She might as well have said, “filth” instead of “human”, because that was the expression on her face.

  I adjusted the tripod a bit and tilted it, catching a brief flicker of Janna’s narrow, unpleasant face on the screen.

  Immediately, her eyes narrowed at me. “Do not point that thing at me! I refuse to be made a suspect in my own building!”

  “Sorry,” I said. Hopefully I sounded sorry enough, because I didn’t want another run-in with her. I mean, I was mostly feeling safer. Mostly, because Zero had pulled me aside while JinYeong distracted Janna Whiteleaf, and dabbed a spell on one of my ears. Not quite wholly, because I didn’t put it past her to go for me with her letter opener or something, and Zero and the others were down in the lower levels, clearing more staff to come back to work.

  But I was comforted, anyway. Comforted at Zero’s brief explanation that the spell was something to keep Janna from working any more magic on me, comforted by the fact that he was trusting me to set up and try out the camera at all—comforted even by JinYeong’s normal, irritating saunter as he walked out the door, complaining about the smell of human chemicals in the house.

  I’d finished setting the camera up through a series of calls to Morgana by the time they sent up one of the vetted staff with a tray of food and drink. It should have been about midday in the human world, but here where everything was moonlight and darkness it was hard to tell if I was being fed a snack or supper. The girl who gave it to me was human—the same one I’d seen the first day being checked by JinYeong. Unlike that time, her eyes were completely clear, and she shook her head very slightly as she passed me a cup of tea. I took the tea, unsure if I’d really seen what I thought I’d seen, and again she shook her head, then looked directly at the tea.

  Don’t drink the tea, then.

  “Thanks,” I said, grinning at her. “For the tea and biscuits.”

  “It had nothing to do with me,” said Janna. She must have thought I was thanking her. “Your owner must have arranged for them to be sent up.”

  “That’s weird,” I said, watching the human woman leave as u
nobtrusively as possible. She hadn’t left biscuit crumbs on Janna’s desk, so I suppose she was better trained than me. “Usually I’m the one getting tea and coffee for them.”

  “Are you going to be much longer?” she asked. “I have important meetings to get to, and I’ve already had to lose a day’s worth of important business due to this ridiculous charade.”

  Well, pardon us for trying to keep your skinny carcase alive, I thought. I was bright enough not to say it aloud, mind you.

  “Reckon they’re checking the second shift at the moment,” I said, just as the power went off.

  It wasn’t just the Behind lights that went out, either—it was the human lights, too.

  “What the heck?” I said, as the softer lights Zero had installed bloomed into florescence.

  “Someone has hijacked our defences,” said Janna. “From the human side and the Behind side at the same time, it appears. Perhaps we had better leave.”

  She said it as the door opened, and Zero came swiftly into the room, JinYeong half a step behind him. “Do not think about leaving,” he said to her. “We’re going to check outside; everyone has been completely vetted downstairs. Pet, stay here. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I never do stupid stuff,” I told him. “I’m just always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  JinYeong, a slim, snarky twin to Zero’s warning, twitched his forefinger at me and followed Zero back out the door.

  “How utterly ridiculous!” snapped Janna Whiteleaf, sitting back down with a jerk. “Why should I be left here with a human pet while my house is overrun with criminals?”

  “Hey, at least I’m not a criminal,” I said.

  “I have no knowledge of that,” she said, with no less of a snap to her voice. “Your tea is growing cold. Why does it take humans so long to do things?”

  “Yeah, I don’t drink tea.”

  “Why would they get you tea, then?” she demanded.

  She was far too annoyed about it to be normal. Even for being annoyed at Zero and JinYeong, she was too het up. What was the bet she’d ordered the doe-eyed staff downstairs to mickey-finn anything sent up to me? Which begged the question of why the human girl who’d given it to me hadn’t been doe-eyed—and more importantly, why she’d warned me at all.

  “Dunno,” I said, lifting my phone to check the camera view. Oh yay. Janna Whiteleaf, nice and clear. I’d already set up the proper camera, but it would be nice to have my own phone set up in the app, too, even if it wasn’t as good. “Probably ’cos one of those three told them the wrong thing.”

  It was Athelas, I’d bet. He would have very carefully told them the wrong thing, just in case this happened, and then left it up to me to be sensible. He’d warned me, after all. They’d all warned me.

  I still wondered what I would have done if the human girl hadn’t warned me directly not to drink the stuff.

  Janna glared at me in smoothly digital pixels, and I put my phone down on the table beside me. Cranky old fae. It wasn’t like I was filming her, after all. I just wanted to set up the app.

  Oops. Looked like I had filmed her, after all. Not on purpose or anything, but there was a short, thirty second clip stored away in the app. Maybe I could look at it later when I wanted to give myself a few more nightmares. At least these ones would be in slow motion, so I might have a chance to get away from them.

  “What were you doing with that?” she demanded. “Were you filming me?”

  “Why the heck would I film you?” I demanded, forgetting that I wasn’t talking to fae who would excuse me being cheeky up to a point.

  “Humans are always filming on their dreadful little hand-held devices. I refuse to be filmed. Give it to me.”

  I grabbed the phone, instinctively holding it against my chest. “You can’t have it. Zero gave it to me.”

  “I will not,” said Janna Whiteleaf, rising from her chair, “ask you again.”

  Ah heck.

  Clutching my phone, I scrambled to my feet, and retreated behind the couch I’d been sitting on. Janna meant business; she came out from behind her desk, and her shadow came with her, fluttering wide with too much edge and space and feather for a human shadow.

  Ah heck.

  We were too late. We would always have been too late. Janna Whiteleaf wasn’t antsy because she had somewhere to be, or because she had a natural aversion to being filmed, she was antsy because her shadow was starting to change back to look like her actual form instead of the human façade.

  Janna Whiteleaf wasn’t Janna Whiteleaf.

  “You really shouldn’t have tried to film me,” the peryton said with Janna’s mouth, but now the speech pattern and expressions were completely different. “Now I’ve got to kill you. I would have been happy just to get away.”

  I saw the darkness of the peryton’s shadow ripple across the wall in the softness of Zero’s backup lights: wings with a spread wider than a delivery van, antlers stretching high and spindly across the roof, and the rounded, inky suggestion of stag haunches behind that. But in front of all that was the beak that was curved, sharp, and bigger than my head.

  I bet if I saw it on security footage it would have looked normal enough; an old, white, thin nosed woman backing a younger woman across the room with the sheer force of her personality. But I saw it in the screen of the slow-motion camera as I backed away; an earlier, slower capture of Janna Whiteleaf’s body flickering in and out of sight. And every time it flickered out of sight, I saw the peryton instead of a human, joining seamlessly with its shadow on the floor as it moved inevitably across the floor toward me.

  I looked away from it and around for weapons instead. I didn’t know how it worked here. I could grab stuff in the human world and Between because it was something else here Behind. What was I supposed to do when I was actually Behind?

  What could I do?

  Talk. Yeah, I could talk.

  “You’re crazy,” I said, backing away. “They’re gunna know what’s happened as soon as they come in and see my body on the floor.”

  “I’ve already got one body hidden here, and they didn’t find it.”

  So that’s why JinYeong had been complaining about human chemicals for the last couple of days! There was blood around here somewhere, and even though she’d managed to clean it up, there was still a bit of it somewhere, mixed with whatever she’d cleaned it up with.

  “You put it in the freezer, didn’t you?”

  The peryton smiled. “It gets rid of the smell completely and has the added advantage of taking care of the corruption that a vampire might smell, too. It’s a good thing this stupid fae keeps a lot of human things around her house. Bleach is such a human thing, but it’s so useful. Fae don’t know what they’re missing out on by clinging to their old ways.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I reckon you might have forgotten about the freezer when you made the power go off. How long d’you think it’ll take the smell to start being noticeable for a vampire?”

  I mean, I hadn’t seen her turn off the power, but she was the only one who could have done it—who would have wanted it to be done.

  She stopped—it stopped—comprehension flitted across the living dead face of Janna Whiteleaf. “Then I’d better kill you quickly,” it said. “If I throw your body out of the window it’ll give me enough time to slip away while they try to discover what happened to you.”

  “Yeah? That’s gunna be hard if you can’t put a glamour on my body,” I said. “Zero already put a spell on me that stops you from being able to use magic on me.”

  “I’ll throw you beyond the wall,” the peryton said. “I’m not usually vindictive, but you’re a real pain in the neck.”

  “You could pass as a human,” I said. There was nothing of the stilted speech of Zero, nor the flourishing vocabulary of Athelas. “Not like that lot.”

  The peryton smiled again. “That’s because I’m not bound by tradition like the fae. Not all Behindkind are.”

  “Like U
pper Management,” I said, throwing it out on a chance.

  It stopped, then grinned; a very odd expression to see on Janna’s pinched white face. “They were right about you,” it said. “You’re not just a pet, are you?”

  “I’m a pet; I’m not stupid. You lot always think you’re so flamin’ clever, so you don’t watch what you say around humans.”

  “This fae might have believed that,” the peryton said, gesturing toward its body, “but I’m not that gullible. I’ve heard about you. I’ve heard about the Troika—their business, their links, and their rule-bending for their little human pet.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “But that’s more than I know.”

  Janna Whiteleaf’s head tilted, displaying interest and amusement. “You really don’t know!” the peryton said in wonder. “It’s almost a shame to kill you, but I need to get going before that lot finds out who I am. I’ve got the feeling that it’ll be much easier to leave the house as you. I would have been tempted to keep you alive if they hadn’t shut up the house. Upper Management is really interested in you.”

  “Yeah? Well, they can mind their own flaming business,” I said, edging back again.

  “Stop looking around for weapons,” said the peryton. “I’m a killer by trade—did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “Telling me you’re a killer isn’t likely to make me stop looking for weapons,” I pointed out. I dodged to my right to get out of the corner the peryton had been slowly nudging me into, sprinting along between the couch back and the windows while shadows and huge feathers I couldn’t see flipped and slapped as the peryton made a hasty turn to face Janna Whiteleaf’s desk.

  C’mmon, JinYeong, I thought desperately. Hurry up and smell the body. Don’t be a pain in the neck all your life.

  But there was no sound of footsteps outside the door, and the peryton was already stalking toward the desk. “If you’d just drunk the tea, it would have been a lot easier for you,” it said.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said, and ducked behind the desk. Why was I Behind? I couldn’t even fight properly here! It didn’t help that the stapler was old and huge and looked a bit like a cosh, or that Janna Whiteleaf’s paperweight looked like a gun if you looked at it from a level point of view.