Between Shifts

by W. R. Gingell

  “Sure I’ll manage that without help?” I asked him.

  Athelas laughed softly into his tea, but Zero didn’t answer me. I saw why when I took out those four books: there were another four books directly beneath the first layer, and when I took that four out and put them on the carpet, there were still four more there.

  How many fours were in this satchel?

  Lots. There were lots of fours in the satchel.

  By the time I could move the satchel at all, there were nearly twenty me-sized stacks of books beside the bookcase. It was still pretty heavy, though, so there were probably a good few more piles of books to come out.

  “You related to Mary Poppins?” I asked Zero, but he didn’t answer that, either. “Where are they all gunna fit?”

  “They’ll all fit in the bookcase,” he said. He stepped from the alcove once more, picked up two of the bigger books, and went over to the kitchen table with them.

  Beats him sitting over there sharpening knives, I suppose; I don’t know how, but he’s somehow more approachable when he’s sharpening knives than when he’s studying his magic books. He just looks a bit thoughtful while he’s sharpening knives, and you feel like you might be able to talk to him. When he’s studying, there’s a deep frown between his brows and what feels like a thin layer of ice all around him. Dunno what’s he’s studying, but when he studies, he studies hard.

  I went back to the impossible satchel of books and started propping up books in the shelves. I didn’t notice until I’d laid a few half shelves and came back to add more to them, that the books I’d just put there now looked like old classics—Dickens, Austen, and a lot of Walter Scott—instead of the leather spines and curling, illegible titles.

  “Yeah, real clever,” I said to no one in particular, “but some poor beggar’s gunna be flamin’ disappointed if he feels like reading Dickens for a change.”

  I looked at the shelves again, then down at the books in my hand. “Oh,” I said.

  It was going to be a bit hard to arrange things in alphabetical order if I couldn’t see the real book spines to know. I looked down at the book in my hand and said again, “Oh.”

  They weren’t even in English. What was it, old Welsh or something?

  I didn’t know; but I did know that I’d never seen this language before. The letters almost looked like English letters if you looked at them with your head on the side, but when you tried to figure out which letter was which, you couldn’t.

  “How the heck did I get these ones right, then?” I muttered, looking back at the book spines. I hadn’t even thought about it before; I’d just put the books up on the shelf because that was the order they were supposed to be in. Just like I would have done if I’d been looking at books with English titles.

  “Don’t try so hard, Pet,” advised Athelas. “You’ll do yourself an injury.”

  “Are you telling me to work smarter, not harder, or are you giving me direct advice?”

  Athelas’ grey eyes dwelled on me for long, amused moment. “What do you think?”

  “I think if I’m not allowed to answer questions with questions, you shouldn’t be able to, either,” I complained.

  Athelas only said, “That is one of the joys of owning a pet. One is not required to answer for oneself to that pet.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” I muttered. “Where did all these come from, anyway?”

  There was a pause long enough to make me think Athelas wasn’t going to answer that question either, but he said after a little longer, “Behind. We got them on our way back—with some difficulty, I might add.”

  “Had to break ’em out, did you?” I asked, but the last part of Athelas’ answer hadn’t been directed at me—it had definitely been directed at Zero.

  “Something like that,” Athelas said. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to make another pot of tea, Pet.”

  “All right,” I said. I was happy enough to leave the books for a minute or two, and it was always good to make sure the balance was kept when it came to Athelas and payment for answers.

  It took me five hours to sort through the bookcase. Five hours. It might not have taken me so long if I hadn’t had to recalibrate my brain every time I looked away from the bookshelf and then looked back to see more Dickens and Austen, but there were still enough books to have taken a good few hours anyway.

  And they all did fit in the single bookcase, too. At first, I thought it was a spell doing it, but as I worked I started to see the kind of depth to the bookcase that I usually only see when I’m Between; like the place where the human world and the Between bit meets is making extra space.

  It sorta glitters. Or maybe it’s more of a shimmer; like heat haze. And the more I see of it, the easier it is to see; those bits of Reality Plus, where there might be a bit more to life than you can see.

  I poked my head between the shelves to see if I could see anything more there, but I heard something howl in the distance, carried on a chilly wisp of wind, and hastily pulled it out again. No use getting my head bitten off by poking it outside the house—I could have that done without leaving the comfort of my home. JinYeong was always pretty happy to talk about slaughtering me.

  Athelas had long since padded away silently to do something else by then, with a passing reminder to go and buy food when I was done, and Zero had sunk even deeper into his studying.

  That left JinYeong to stalk around the living room in increasingly predatory circles while I finished off the books. He was probably hungry; it was his turn to pick what we were having for dinner, which meant we would be having something I didn’t know how to cook. Good thing I can search stuff online at the library, or he’d always be stalking around the house in a bad temper.

  Well, he’s always stalking around the house or sulking around it, anyway, but today he was worse than ever. He kept saying kimchi at me in increasingly irritated tones when I started making my shopping list, and when I howled “Speak English!” at him, he snarled to show off his pointed teeth.

  I stomped away upstairs to find Athelas for a translation, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight, and Zero was still studying his books with his most forbidding don’t interrupt look, so I didn’t dare stop him to ask what the heck kimchi was.

  When I got back downstairs, JinYeong was leaning against the wall on the bottom landing with his arms folded, and as I passed he pushed himself away from the wall and followed me, his socks light and silent against the carpet.

  He was still following me when I walked out of the house, a step behind because he’d had to put on shoes. I turned on him in annoyance. “What?”

  “Kimchi,” he said again, and marched past me into the street.

  Flamin’ fantastic. I was going shopping with the vampire again.

  It’s really irritating walking with JinYeong—if you try to walk with him. He saunters along with one hand in his pocket, his perfectly creased trousers cutting a suave path through pedestrians and his pretty little face looking out smugly at the world. There’s no one who looks as pleased as JinYeong does when he’s out for a walk.

  Might as well just say, “Here I am, ladies; look your fill!” because that’s what his face says.

  I like to stride it out—you do when you can’t afford a bus fare around the place—because I’m used to walking; and he just won’t keep up. Plus he likes me to walk behind him like I’m a serf or something, and that’s just annoying.

  I mean, I might just be a pet, but I’ve got my pride. We pets trot in front.

  That morning I left him behind and stepped out at my usual pace, because if he couldn’t be bothered to keep up, that was his problem. Hopefully it annoyed him as much as his smug face usually annoyed me. I went to the supermarket along Campbell Street; though I was tempted to keep going to the city one, if only to see if JinYeong would get lost.

  Oh yeah. He’s a vampire. He can smell me.

  JinYeong’s such a pain in the neck.

  Literally.

  JinYeong was
still a couple of blocks behind me when I got to the supermarket, so I figured I’d better wait outside for him. I’d gotten a bit too hot with striding it out, anyway, so it was nice to cool down in the shade.

  After a bit, some smokers came out and stood near me, so I moved further down, but the smoke followed me and I ducked into the garbage alley to escape it. Better garbage smell sweeping up through the alley than the smell of smoke.

  It smelled pretty ripe, too; what were they keeping in there? A piggery? I wrinkled my nose and threw the closest skip bin a dark look.

  It was funny, though. Something about the alley wasn’t quite right.

  No, something about the skip bin itself wasn’t right. What was it?

  I took a step toward it, eyes narrowed, but caught a flutter of movement from the parking lot.

  JinYeong approached, one hand in his pocket. He didn’t seem to see me—didn’t even seem to look at me—but he sauntered toward the garbage alley without hesitation.

  When he got close enough, he sniffed cautiously; gagged and said, “Ah, nemsae!”

  “Yeah, it stinks a bit,” I agreed. Today was garbage disposal day, and the trucks would be coming around soon to get the big roller bins. Most of the garbage had been sitting out here and festering for the better part of a week.

  Ask me how I know that and I’ll ask you if you’ve ever had to find food when there’s no money to buy it.

  And don’t tell me I could’ve stolen it, because I couldn’t.

  “Iruwa, Petteu,” JinYeong said, from the mouth of the alley. He still had one hand coolly in his pocket, the other dabbing in the air to call me over as if I really was a dog.

  I saw his eyes flick around the parking lot, even if his face was coolly unconcerned, and my jaw set stubbornly. I wasn’t going to come-here-Pet. JinYeong thought there was something wrong here, too.

  “There’s something weird here,” I said, taking another couple of steps toward the bin.

  JinYeong said something exasperated in Korean, and started down the alley toward me, giving up his cool pose.

  I scuttled further down the alley before he could catch me; there was something there, and I wanted to know what it was. It was a bit of rubbish bin that didn’t look like it was rubbish bin, but I didn’t know what it really looked like, either. Maybe a bit of a really big tree trunk, with giant scratches running down it that weren’t from any waste removal service I’d ever seen.

  They were more like…

  I squinted at them. Turned my head.

  I took another step forward and nearly stepped in a bit of dog poo that was cunningly concealed beneath a plastic bag.

  “Yuck,” I said beneath my breath, sidling sideways. Maybe I’d be lucky and JinYeong would step in it.

  I stepped a bit closer, this time more carefully, and peered at the side of the bin.

  Yeah, they were definitely claw marks; and the side of the metal bin was definitely not as metal as it should have been.

  I crouched to look more closely at the scratches, but JinYeong’s fingers wrapped around my wrist as I reached out to touch them.

  “Hajima,” he said.

  “I was just gunna touch ’em!” I protested, flapping my arm to try and free it from his skinny fingers.

  That was useless, of course; but I couldn’t help grinning because JinYeong was standing really carefully, like he was trying not to stand in something bad, or had stood in something bad.

  “What’s the matter, step in something?” I asked him, but when I looked down again properly, I already knew the answer.

  A pool of dark, thick liquid seeped out from beneath the skip bin, darkening more at the edges but still sticky in the middle where flies and bread flakes had caught in it.

  Oh yuck.

  Someone had left raw, bloody meat out.

  I frowned. Looked up at JinYeong questioningly.

  “That’s a lotta blood for raw meat, isn’t it?”

  JinYeong twitched the wrist he was holding. “Ireona, Petteu.”

  “Wait,” I said, pulling back. I didn’t want to get up just yet, because if it was raw meat beneath the skip bin, why was there so much blood?

  And why did the bit of meat closest to the front edge of the skip bin look like it had fingers on it?

  “Ah man,” I said.

  It was a body.

  Chapter Two

  I mean, I say it was a body, but it was actually just a hand. The rest of the body was further beneath the bin with what might have been a lot of old meat cuts, but…weren’t. It wasn’t exactly in pieces, but it was pretty torn up. I’d seen worse, but only just.

  JinYeong crouched and peered beneath the bin. “Ashipda,” he sighed. The hand around my wrist tightened; he pulled me away from the bin as he stood and said firmly at me, “Nappun Petteu.”

  “Thought you could smell blood,” I grumbled, looking away from the skip bin and trying not to smell it as I swallowed. If I kept smelling it, I was gunna be sick. “Why’d you make—oh. You didn’t want to find it, did you?”

  JinYeong shrugged and looked away.

  “What, you don’t want to know about it ’cos it’s just a human?”

  He shrugged again and said, “Baegopa.”

  Living with a Korean vampire, that’s a word I’d come to know really quickly: JinYeong was hungry.

  “Don’t eat the body!” I yelped, jerked out of my queasiness by a more normal disgusting. “You’ve got blood at home!”

  JinYeong said something indignant at me that could have been to the effect that he didn’t eat bodies, he drank from them, but was more likely a cross remark that he’d been talking about solid dinner and not his liquid diet. He must have had his fill of blood over the last couple of weeks fighting changelings, after all.

  “How am I supposed to know when you’re hungry for blood and when you’re hungry for food?” I demanded.

  He snarled at me, but by then I was too busy phoning the police to pay any attention. JinYeong seemed to be resigned to staying where he was, though; he picked a place against the blockwork wall that was cleaner than the rest and propped himself against it to watch me in a resigned kind of way.

  The radio room answered, but they knew Detective Tuatu’s name straight away when I said it and put me right through to his desk. I could’ve just reported it to the radio room, but the detective was going to be suspicious enough about me being around another body, so it was best to get that out of the way as soon as possible. It wasn’t as if the supermarket didn’t have security cameras, either; he would definitely find out one way or another.

  He didn’t sound wary when he answered the phone with a professional, “Tuatu speaking,” but that changed as soon as he heard my voice.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, “Hey, you want a body?”

  “What do you want?” Yeah, his voice was definitely wary now.

  “Told you,” I said, trying not to look at the bloody pool across the alley. “Got a body for you.”

  “Are you joking? If you’re joking—”

  “Nah, there’s a body down here. Campbell Street; beside the supermarket. I found it when I came to do the shopping. You want it?”

  “Do I want it?”

  “Well, if you’re bored or something. I thought you investigated murders.”

  “There’s really a body down there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be right there. Don’t go anywhere.”

  He hung up on me. Rude beggar.

  I told JinYeong, “Says he’s coming. You want to scoot, or are you staying?”

  JinYeong shrugged and pushed away from the wall. I thought he was going to stalk away down the alley and go home, but he strolled toward the sticky pool of blood and meat bits again, his nose elevated slightly.

  If it had been quiet, I probably could have heard him sniffing. Why was he sniffing the blood?

  “What’s wrong with the smell?” I asked.

  “Da,” he said, his mouth pursed in dissati
sfaction. “Dadeul.”

  Everything was wrong about it? I thought that’s what he was saying, but I’d only been trying to learn Korean for a couple weeks now. They hadn’t told me to do it; I’m just a good pet who goes above and beyond.

  Plus JinYeong always looks so offended when I understand something he says.

  Oh, and the fact that I hate not knowing what’s going on around the place.

  “Well, it’s not my fault any more if your sniffer isn’t working properly. Oi! You’re not supposed to tamper with murder scenes!”

  JinYeong, who had crouched to dip one finger in the blood, gave me a look of disdain and delicately licked the blood off his finger.

  “Man, that’s disgusting!” I muttered, keeping a wary eye on him. Still, I suppose it was better than being left by myself with the remains.

  Maybe.

  JinYeong’s pupils suddenly dilated, startling a hiss of air from me. They widened until they took over the iris, black and shiny and disturbingly reflective. More disturbing, however, was the fact that I could see…stuff moving in the blackness of his eyes. Stuff that definitely shouldn’t have been moving there.

  “What the flaming heck is wrong with your eyes?” I demanded.

  JinYeong held up one finger, his lips compressing, and I made a small pft of air at him that made him freeze and then scowl.

  Oh, now that was interesting! He couldn’t see while he was doing—actually, what was he doing? I crouched in front of him, peering into those sightless, moving pupils, and waved my hand in front of them.

  Nothing.

  “Oi,” I said, and poked his cheek with my forefinger. “Oi. You in there?”

  Nothing.

  I poked his cheek a couple more times, but that didn’t rouse him, either. I sat back on my heels, wondering if I should let him stay like that—I mean, he wasn’t frothing at the mouth or anything, and he didn’t look sick—then popped back up to poke his cheek once more for good measure.

  JinYeong’s eyelids flicked shut and then opened again, dark brown and liquid once more.

  Whoops.

  “Ha. Ji. Ma,” he said, pushing me a bit further away between every syllable with the forefinger he’d used to dip in the blood.