Between Shifts (The City Between Book 2)

by W. R. Gingell

  A cool shadow fell across my sun-warmed legs, and someone said, “Good afternoon.”

  I blinked and looked up. That was weird. Grey suit hadn’t gone past me and through the alley to the front of the store; he was standing in front of me.

  “You talking to me?” I asked.

  “You’re the girl who found something distressing in the alley,” he said. It was hard to see exactly what his face looked like—it gave the impression of greyness, like his suit, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what it really looked like. “You’re the one.”

  I didn’t like the way he said it—that was kind of grey, too—so I said, “Yeah. A body with the hand torn off.”

  He crouched in front of me and asked very gently, “Are you sure?”

  I pulled my legs up out of his shadow and crossed them beneath me on the milk crate. Ah, there was the sun again! I slowly folded my arms across my chest as well, and leaned back into the wall so that I could see his face better.

  Grey, shadowy smudginess.

  I tilted my head and looked the other way; and maybe I tricked my mind by doing that, because suddenly I saw it—the uncertainty of Betweenness to that grey smudge of face. I tilted my head back the other way.

  Grey shadow.

  Tilted my head again.

  Thin, sallow face with gaunt cheeks and huge eyes and mouth. Was it just my imagination, or did he have—

  Nope, he definitely had wings. They were bigger than he was and triangular at the top, like moth wings, all furry and soft and creepy.

  I focused on his face again, hoping I hadn’t gone as white as I felt, and tried my hardest to pretend that I couldn’t see either face or wings.

  Ah heck. I should have eaten lunch with JinYeong.

  “You didn’t answer me,” prompted Moth Man, his voice just as gentle as it had been before.

  I got the feeling he was used to people being a bit spacy around him. Question was, should I be going along with the vague, threatening undercurrent that suggested I was better off saying I wasn’t sure, or should I be sticking to my guns?

  Another shadow, this one in bloody ink, spread across the sunny bitumen and darkened Moth Man’s lighter shadow.

  “Mwoh hanun kkoya?” asked JinYeong.

  I huffed out a breath of relief into my cheeks but didn’t let it right out. I didn’t want JinYeong to know I was glad to see him—how glad I was to hear him ask someone else what the heck they were doing.

  “How interesting,” said the Moth Man, backing away infinitesimally. “It’s quite the circus at this location.”

  He said it casually—even relaxedly—but there were fingernail-length hairs standing up and quivering on the back of his neck, and if I’d been able to clearly see the things I was pretty sure were antennae on top of his head, I reckon they would have been quivering, too. Moth Man did not feel comfortable around JinYeong.

  JinYeong stalked forward, smiling with eyes that glittered like rubies, and the Moth Man took another step back, then another, matching him step for step.

  I grinned properly for the first time that day. That’d teach old Moth Man to try and frighten a defenceless human.

  I heard JinYeong speaking in Korean; nothing I could understand, but just like the humans who do what he tells them to do regardless of what language he uses, the Moth Man responded to him as if he perfectly understood him. Maybe it’s a Behindkind thing.

  He didn’t just back away this time. He spun on slender feet, a swirling confusion of grey suit and grey wings, and walked away rapidly. JinYeong gave a small, smug tug to the hem of his jacket and turned back toward me, smoothing back the hair that had fallen over his forehead.

  “Things got a bit hectic escaping the mob?” I enquired, tilting my chin up at the office window. They must have, if JinYeong’s hair had fallen out of place.

  JinYeong paused in the act of fixing his hair to look at me quizzically. He considered for a moment, then said, with a tilt of his nose, “Ne.”

  “Good thing you did,” I said, willing to congratulate him on his usefulness, even if I didn’t want to let him know exactly how grateful I was. “That bloke was pretty creepy. Who was he?”

  He shrugged one shoulder.

  “You must know who he is!” I protested. “He knows who you are!”

  “Ne,” agreed JinYeong, looking very pleased with himself.

  “What, just ’cos he knows you, doesn’t mean you know him? Rubbish! He was asking me about finding the body. Hang on.”

  JinYeong sighed and reached out to pinch my collar between his fingers. “Durowa, Petteu.”

  “Hang on,” I said again, as he dragged me back into the store by my collar. “He’s one of the Upper Management blokes, isn’t he?”

  He didn’t answer, just pushed me ahead of him toward the storeroom.

  “This is bullying in the workplace,” I told him. JinYeong was very bad at being undercover. I suppose if I could just make people think they didn’t see what they saw, I might be a bit more lax as well. “You can’t go pushing your staff members around.”

  JinYeong ignored that as well, and marched me right out to the storeman’s desk.

  “What is it, JinYeong?” asked Zero, without looking up from his paperwork.

  There was a spate of Korean, in which I heard the words Pet and idiot. I said, “Oi!” indignantly.

  “JinYeong wants to know why you didn’t meet with him for your break,” Zero said, scribbling a fake set of initials on several pages of paperwork.

  “Why would I meet with him on my break?” I protested. “I’m supposed to be poking my nose around the place.”

  “I see,” said Zero. “Then why were you sitting outside alone?”

  I wasn’t going to tell him I’d been outside because it was bad enough turning into something alien and Behindkind, without having to spend my break with something alien and Behindkind.

  “Spying on people,” I told him.

  “Don’t. You’re here to stay in the building and talk to anyone foolish enough to talk to you.”

  “Who was that bloke? The mothy one?”

  “Someone who has been following you for the past two days.”

  Ohhhhh. So they’d been talking about Pet’s shadow, not the next shadow. “That thing’s been following me and you didn’t tell me?”

  “We wanted to see if he’d approach you. He possibly wouldn’t have if he knew you knew he was following you.”

  I thought about that. “Oh,” I said. “Then why are you slapping my wrist for sitting outside?”

  “Because I prefer to be obeyed, Pet,” said Zero, with a hint of ice in his voice, “and because I wanted to control the meeting.”

  “Sorry,” I said hastily. “You want to know what he said?”

  “Yes.”

  “He asked me if I was the girl who saw something nasty in the alley, and when I told him yes, he got a bit mothier and asked me if I was sure.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “Didn’t get a chance to say anything,” I told him. “JinYeong came out just then and scared him off.”

  JinYeong said something in an interested voice, tipping his head at me, and I thought I heard the word for eyes.

  “Yes,” said Zero, putting aside his paperwork at last and looking at us properly. “I’d like to know that, as well. You’re not feeling dizzy?”

  “Nope. His face made me a bit sick, but that was only because it was hard to see him with all the blurriness.”

  “It’s not wise to try and see the face of a sandman,” Zero said. “They don’t like it.”

  “I didn’t like it much, either! He was flamin’ creepy.”

  “Go back to work,” he said. “We’ll speak tonight. JinYeong, stay and talk with me for a while. You have to sign these as well.”

  I left while JinYeong was sulkily demanding to know why he had to sign the papers, and went back to work.

  Chapter Eight

  “Hang on,” I said, early the next day
. “I thought you didn’t want me going around by myself because of Moth Man?”

  I’d been having more dreams of death and blood, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be going around Hobart by myself anymore. What if I turned into a wolf while I was by myself?

  “That was before he attempted to make contact,” said Athelas. “Now that he knows you’re protected, he won’t bother you again. A pity we didn’t take the chance to question him properly, JinYeong.”

  JinYeong lazily bared his teeth at Athelas, but I got the impression he was moodily annoyed at something.

  I huffed a silent sigh into the top of my hoodie. I suppose it was too much to hope that they’d actually been concerned about me; as soon as they needed more food, off I went to the supermarket to get groceries and walk Erica home. She’d asked me yesterday when I left for the day if I would walk her home, and I hadn’t been able to give her a proper answer because I didn’t think the psychos would let me out by myself.

  A bit grumpy now, I asked, “Won’t that give us away, though? If they know I’m the one who found the body, and I’m working there now?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Athelas said. “Most likely, they’ll assume you were already a staff member. From what I’ve been able to ascertain at the police station, they don’t work directly with anyone at the supermarket—they merely receive orders when there is something that needs to be cleaned up. To find the connection, I believe we need to look higher in the force.”

  That was both frightening and relieving, though I wasn’t sure which emotion was stronger.

  “So even if he thinks it’s weird that there’s a vampire at the store, looking after a human, he won’t necessarily mention it to anyone?”

  “Kugae aniya,” muttered JinYeong. That’s not it.

  “What?” I snapped. “What’s not right? You weren’t looking after me? Tell me something I don’t know!”

  JinYeong sat up, offended. “Ya! No demae—nol wihae—!”

  “What did you do for me?” I demanded. “Turned me into a flamin’ wolf, that’s what!”

  JinYeong stared at me for a moment, then snapped, “Ah, taesso! Petteu—”

  “He’ll report back to his superiors, but there’s no reason for them to report it any further,” said Zero, interrupting us both without compunction. “They’ve done their job as far as possible; they probably don’t have any orders regarding Behindkind, just humans. They’ll think you’re already under control; they’ll concentrate on the detective, now.”

  “Okay,” I said, slightly less grumpily, turning away from the glaring JinYeong. I hadn’t actually expected them to let me out on my own; I’d just asked because we were starting to run out of stuff to eat. Well, we were running out of stuff that didn’t make my stomach turn. Looked like I was gunna be buying a lot of steak in that week’s shopping.

  “What about the detective, though?” I asked Zero.

  “The detective can look after himself,” he said. “Don’t be late going to the store, Pet. Erica finishes at noon; you can walk her home if she asks you.”

  “Got it,” I said, and went upstairs to grab my sneakers.

  It was nice to go out of the house again without an escort, mostly because I could sneak the dryad out. I couldn’t do anything today about turning into a wolf, but I could do something about the dryad. Maybe.

  So I took it with me for a walk. I had to do the grocery shopping anyway, so maybe it would take me somewhere useful when I did. I was planning on going straight to the supermarket as usual, but as I came to Elizabeth Street I caught sight of a familiar hoodie.

  Daniel? Wasn’t he supposed to be at work?

  My plans changed faster than the lights. I watched him for a bit before I fell in behind him; there was nobody obviously following him, and Zero and JinYeong were now both at work, so I felt safe to follow him without getting picked up by either side.

  Paranoid, maybe. But I’m not dead yet, either, am I?

  It was a bright, sunny day outside, which the dryad seemed to like. I could feel it settling in the pocket of my hoodie, though it didn’t actually move. It was a weird feeling; sort of ticklish and pleasant at the same time. And it didn’t seem to mind me following Daniel, either, even though it had nothing to do with what I’d come out to do.

  When he got to the turning at Maccas and the police station, I saw his footsteps falter. It wasn’t likely that he had a desperate need for a burger, so maybe he had something to do at the cop shop?

  He kept walking, though, and I wondered if I’d imagined it. It’s not like the police station would be a particularly comfortable place for someone who was stalking a woman—unless he actually was a shifter and was there to talk to the people in Upper Management as the pack leader, or something. There had to be a reason the cops weren’t following up on the murders, after all.

  By the time I’d followed Daniel all the way from the street and up through the Cat and Fiddle Arcade, I’d started to wonder if he wasn’t just out for a walk. Maybe he really was just skipping work for the fun of it.

  Maybe not, though; he took the outer staircase to the parking garage, which would only make sense if he had a car, and I knew he didn’t. I listened to him climb the first few levels from the bottom of the stairwell before I went after him. Maybe he was meeting with someone.

  Unfortunately for me, I lost him by the time I got to the fourth level.

  I leaned against the window and panted for a while. I was gunna have to ask Zero for more tips on following people. Not to mention do a bit more training so I wouldn’t be so puffed out after only climbing a few floors’ worth of stairs.

  I could have been imagining it, but the dryad seemed heavy with disappointment—maybe it thought I could have done a better job tailing Daniel, too.

  “Sorry,” I panted at it. “I haven’t had enough lessons yet! I wasn’t bobbing, at least!”

  I puffed out my cheeks and managed to catch my breath again at last. I put the dryad on the windowsill so I didn’t crush it while I was flopping against the wall like a wounded dugong, and caught sight of something interesting outside the window.

  I said to the dryad, “Oi. That a friend of yours?”

  The window was one of the ones that are threaded with chicken wire between layers of glass, and it was pretty dirty, but I could still see through it enough to see the building opposite us. On the side of it, all mossy and drippy, was the greenish shape of a bearded man. Just the face and the beard, but it was enough to make me grin. Maybe it really was a friend of the dryad, too, because I could have sworn things felt less weighty around me.

  “You playing games with me?” I asked the dryad. It said nothing, as usual, but one of its roots unfurled from the rock and settled against the dirty window. I nodded. “Got it. He’s a friend of yours. You can visit for a bit, but only if I can figure out how to get over there.”

  A section of the concrete stairwell in the corner bubbled with old, hard chewing gum, but I knew that if I looked at it the right way, it was also tiny round flowers that grew Between. That was all right, and the damp-streaked walls were all right, too; the damp swayed in a soft breeze like the fronds of fern that they were Between, and it wouldn’t be too hard to push through those, feeling the soft green tickle of them across my face and hands.

  The difficult bit was getting across to the green man. There was no way up from the ground without pulling the fire escape on the other side, and I wasn’t tall enough to do that. And from here, if you looked at it like a normal human, there was only a banner strung across from my side to the fire escape platform.

  If I looked at it like a normal human who could see Between, things were different.

  I picked up the dryad and slipped it into my pocket again. I wasn’t supposed to be going Between when Zero and the others weren’t with me, but there were a few things I wasn’t meant to do that I did.

  I blame Athelas. He’s always encouraging me to do stuff I shouldn’t do. I just haven’t been trained right.<
br />
  When the dryad was in my pocket and couldn’t see anything—could it see, anyway?—I had a quick look up and down the empty stairway and brushed aside the trailing ferns that would have been damp concrete if I didn’t know how to look at them. There was a cold step through concrete, or into Between, and I put my foot carefully down on the tough, twiny bough that was a banner in the human world.

  It bounced a bit beneath my foot, but only enough to let me know it was healthy, and I stepped down with my other foot, too, my fingers trailing up along the ferns for that little bit of extra balance until I could feel another branch there, too.

  I let out my breath in relief. Technically speaking, I could balance on a branch this broad, but it was four stories down, and I didn’t really want to trust myself that much. Across from me, the green man seemed to be shrouded in more greenery than I remembered, the whiteness of the wall around him standing out in pale relief.

  He moved, beard swaying in the breeze I could feel across my face, and light tendrils of fluffy moss floated across to tickle my arms and legs. I let go of the branch above me, hoping with a sudden gulp that I hadn’t made a very bad mistake, but the moss only curled delicately around my wrists, a comforting balance on either side that felt like it held me up, light as it was.

  I meant to clamber over the railing to safety when I got as far as the fire escape landing on the other side, bringing myself and the dryad back into the human world where we belonged, but somehow it felt more comfortable to sit down on the branch instead, curling my legs underneath its mossy belly.

  The fluffy, clinging moss came with me and crept up my arms a bit further when I looked up at the almost-face in green moss above me.

  “Hi,” I said to him, feeling the flutter of breeze across my face. I reached into my pocket slowly, careful not to hurt the clinging plant life around my arms, and the dryad emerged in a happy burst of greenery. “The dryad said you were a friend, so I bought him over to say hello.”

  “Ah,” said a deep, earthy voice, with the scratch of ancient paint to it. “I was curious to know who carried with them a dryad, and why.”