Between Shifts

by W. R. Gingell

  Uh oh. Had he seen the dryad? I hastily tweaked the waistline of the hoodie to even out the bump that definitely wasn’t my stomach, but Zero was already towering over me.

  He grabbed me by the ears, lifting me right out of my seat before I could do more than squeak, “Ow, ow, ow!” and said, with eyes that glinted ice, “Pet. What is this?”

  Chapter Four

  I gulped, one hand instinctively sliding into my front hoodie pocket as if I could actually protect the dryad against Zero if he saw it and chose to take it.

  I croaked, “What? What’d I do?”

  Zero tilted my head. “There’s a cut on your forehead.”

  “Yeah,” I said, confused. “That’s from the other morning, when I had the nightmare. Think I hit myself on the corner of the bedhead when I was coming after you.”

  “That was just a scratch.”

  An agreement came from JinYeong’s side of the lounge. Of course he’d know—it had barely drawn blood, and had sealed quickly, but he would have known about it anyway.

  “What’s the go?” I demanded, trying to pull away. Zero didn’t let go of me, so that just meant I scrabbled for a bit before giving up. “What about it?”

  Zero turned my head this way and that, looking closely at the cut. “It’s black.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Black. Did you put anything on it?”

  “Nah, it’s just a scratch. There wasn’t any point. Maybe I got some dirt on it.”

  “I’ve a feeling it’s not dirt,” Athelas said, from behind his teacup. “Perhaps you should allow the pet to look in the mirror, Zero. I, too, suspect that is not the usual healing process of humans, but the pet herself will know.”

  Zero dropped me lightly back to the carpet, and I trotted over to the mirror.

  I saw it before I was right in front of the mirror; a bit of a dark smudge on my forehead where I’d hit it on the bedpost. Nothing bad, just a bruise around the cut.

  Only then I got closer and I could see that the bruise wasn’t exactly a bruise. It was more of a mole—if a mole was flat, and surrounding a cut, and had…was that hair in it?

  “That’s flamin’ disgusting!” I complained, looking closer. “Where did that come from?”

  In the mirror, I saw Athelas put down his teacup. “Did you touch the blood at the murder scene, Pet?”

  “What?” I swivelled away from the mirror. “No! Why would I touch the blood?”

  “I’ve not noticed that you’re particularly discriminating about the things you touch when you’re Between,” he said. “I’m not sure why you expect me to think of this matter any differently.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t.”

  “You must have,” Zero said. “Yesterday there was nothing there but a small cut; today it’s black and hairy.”

  “JinYeong touched the blood,” I told him. I felt a bit sniffy about his certainty. “Not me. Oh!”

  “Ah,” said JinYeong, at the same time.

  Our eyes met; his liquid and faintly annoyed, mine accusatory.

  “You did it!” I exploded.

  JinYeong pursed his lips, and Zero looked between the two of us with a frown between his straight brows.

  “What did JinYeong do?”

  “Touched me with his manky, bloody finger!”

  “JinYeong, why did you let the pet bring home an infectious disease?”

  “It’s a what?”

  “A kind of virus,” Athelas said, thoughtfully picking up his teacup again. “Lycanthropy, I suspect, judging by the hair.”

  “I’m gunna turn into a werewolf?”

  “Certainly not,” he said. “You’re far more likely to die before that happens—or be killed by a rival pack.”

  “Good to know,” I said, giving him the thumbs up. I felt sick to my stomach. “How long before I die?”

  “You’re not going to die,” Zero said.

  “Athelas said—”

  Athelas said, “Really, Zero, the odds of survival even in humans is remarkably low; and unless we formulate an antivirus…”

  I glared at JinYeong. “You did this on purpose!”

  Ignoring Athelas, Zero asked JinYeong, “Did you know it was virus-carrying?”

  “Kugae aniyaeyo,” said JinYeong, and sighed. “Hyeong, kunyang—”

  I listened to his incomprehensible explanation in annoyance, but Zero only nodded once or twice. When JinYeong had finished, he said, “It’s been known to happen before. Your saliva probably reactivated it.”

  Athelas set down his teacup once again, this time empty, and there was a glint to his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “Very well, Zero; what are we going to do about the pet now that she’s infected? JinYeong may not have deliberately infected her, but he’s certainly culpable if that’s the way we’re weighing our actions here.”

  “Yes,” agreed Zero. “Fully culpable.”

  JinYeong’s voice sounded sulky as he said something that contained the words just and die. It didn’t take much imagination to guess that he’d asked if they couldn’t just let me die instead. Or maybe he was asking if he couldn’t just kill me before I turned or whatever, instead.

  “No,” Zero said. “You infected the pet. You fix it.”

  JinYeong suggested something else that ended with the word die.

  “While that would undoubtedly fix the problem,” said Athelas, “it would leave us without a pet—without, JinYeong, someone to cook your meals. And Zero seems to be of the opinion that as the pet is in our house—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with the house,” said Zero briefly. “We have a contracted agreement and the agreement can’t be fulfilled if the pet dies.”

  Athelas smiled dreamily. “Yes. A useful way out of many a bargain.”

  “Oi!”

  “I was not likening Zero’s morals to mine, Pet.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Ah, taesso, taesso!” JinYeong said impatiently. “Petteu, pab haera!”

  “Dunno what you’re talking about,” I said. Technically, it was true. I mean, I knew the haera meant he was telling me to do something, and I was pretty sure pab was rice, so he was probably telling me to cook their dinner, but beggar me if I was going to understand him while he was still talking about killing me in one breath and ordering me to cook with the next.

  Besides, I was infected with lycanthropy or something, and that was his fault.

  Athelas wasn’t helping much, either. I sent him a sour look but he only smiled at me faintly and poured himself another cup of tea.

  With any luck, he’d burn his tongue.

  “Petteu,” said JinYeong, through his teeth, “Pab haera!”

  “The pet can’t cook tonight,” Zero said abruptly. “Not until we know if it’s still in the infectious stage. It shouldn’t have been able to be infected from a dead body at all, so we’ll have to be careful until tomorrow.”

  I plopped back down on my side of the couch and grinned at JinYeong. “Your night to pick what we’re eating, isn’t it? What a shame!”

  “Ah, hyeong!” protested JinYeong again, sitting forward in his consternation. He launched into one of his flowing, long-winded complaints that had absolutely no effect on the emotionless Zero. It was surprising how much better that made me feel. It was probably mean-spirited of me, but there you are. I’m a mean-spirited pet.

  JinYeong stopped arguing eventually, but he didn’t stop whinging beneath his breath. As soon as he’d finished drinking his coffee, he flipped on his coat and stalked toward the front door.

  “Kalbi,” he said.

  “Is that another food thing?” I asked Athelas. It sounded familiar.

  “Yes and no,” Athelas told me, slipping his own blazer over his shirt. “Put up your hood again, Pet. We’re going out. Kalbi is a type of food; it’s also a restaurant that just opened in North Hobart.”

  “You better be buying,” I told JinYeong.

  He didn’t answer; just disappeared through the door witho
ut really opening it. There was a weakness of Between fluttering around the door, through which I could see cool stonework and green shadows, so I followed him through just to see if I could do it.

  Halfway through, someone’s hand seized around the nape of my neck and hauled me back.

  “Bad pet,” said Zero, and dropped me beside him in the hall again. Strike a light! When had he moved?

  Athelas, with what I was certain was a smile, opened the door physically and slipped through, leaving it open for us.

  “But JinYeong—”

  “JinYeong knows how to walk Between,” Zero said, herding me ahead of him. “You shouldn’t be trying that without one of us there.”

  “Thought I was getting trained in stuff like that,” I muttered. If JinYeong was going to be leaving openings Between when he walked through, what was to stop me accidentally walking into them?

  “Soon,” said Zero.

  Kalbi turned out to be a Korean restaurant toward the North Hobart end of Elizabeth Street; it was trendy and would have felt spacious despite the small size of the shop if it wasn’t already busy at just past five.

  I looked around at the pale wooden tables and the pale wooden floor, then at the swathe of Korean newspapers that someone had pasted all over the inner wall as a design statement, and said, “Yeah, all right; but is the food any good?”

  None of my three psychos answered me; they sat down at the last empty table pretty quickly, though, so I suppose that was telling. They’d probably been eating out here without me before.

  Flamin’ rude, that.

  One of the three waitstaff gave us a menu each; which, to my relief, had more English letters than Korean characters. I poked JinYeong in the ribs and asked, “What’s good?”

  He jumped, and then glared at me. “Hajima.”

  “What? I just wanna know what to eat.”

  “Don’t poke the vampire, Pet,” Athelas said.

  “He started it,” I remarked. “And I’m gunna turn into a werewolf, so who’s the real victim here?”

  “Be quiet,” said Zero, and I became belatedly aware that there was already someone beside our table, waiting to take our order.

  “So…what?” I asked, when he went away again. This time I was a bit quieter. “I’m really gunna turn into a wolf?”

  “A wolf-human hybrid,” said Athelas. Nice of him to be so informative when it was something unpleasant. It was much harder to get information I really wanted out of him. “If we can’t formulate an antivirus, and if you don’t perish in the attempt. Lycanthropy very rarely produces a full wolf change the first time, even at full moon.”

  I grinned suddenly, despite the sick feeling in my stomach. It hadn’t occurred to me before that the dead bloke just be a werewolf. To myself, I said, “Werewolf, huh? Detective Tuatu’s gunna love that!”

  “He wasn’t a wolf shifter,” Athelas said. “Just carrying the virus—or so JinYeong says. But it certainly makes clear who—or at the very least what—the killer is.”

  JinYeong spoke, and Athelas nodded.

  “JinYeong says it was an infant version of the virus, not yet fully complete—which means that whoever infected him was almost certainly the one who killed him. Wolf shifters very rarely leave their victim alive when once they have their jaws about them and the virus doesn’t take more than a week or two to run its course.”

  I shivered, which made JinYeong look across at me with one eyebrow up. A week or two was not a lot of time. “And we need the same version of the virus to cure me?” I asked.

  “Correct,” said Athelas, crossing one leg over the other and leaning elegantly into the newspapered wall.

  “Is that what JinYeong was doing when his eyes went weird? Checking out the blood like a walking lab?”

  JinYeong shot me another look, this one slightly amused as well as arrogant. “Nae.”

  “So what, we need to find this bloke—”

  “Animal,” Zero said.

  “Yeah, and get some blood from him to make a vaccine—”

  Athelas said, “Not vaccine. Antivirus.”

  “Right, to make an antivirus. Hang on, why can’t we just take blood from the dead bloke?”

  “Because the virus mutates as soon as it enters the bloodstream. We need the original source to counteract your version.”

  “So we’re gunna find the werewolf that killed the dead bloke?”

  “Yes,” said Zero.

  “Thanks!” I told him, beaming. I’d been pretty sure Zero wouldn’t let me turn into a wolf or die, but sometimes it was hard to be completely certain.

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “JinYeong made the mistake; he has to fix it. It’s part of the laws between your world and ours. There has to be a balance—we can’t just leave things.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I’d already begun to learn that—especially when it came to Athelas. He was very traditional in that way. “So we might as well work with Detective Tuatu, right?”

  Athelas choked on his water. He gently patted his blazer with his napkin and said, “Human problems aren’t our affair, Pet.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “We’re only interested in our own cases,” Zero said. “Don’t offer our services to the police again.”

  “All right,” I said peaceably, because Zero had already agreed to help, and I still felt that was a small step forward. “Only since we’re both looking for the same person, wouldn’t it be a good idea to work together? Sort of official? Can’t hurt.”

  Zero’s eyes dwelled on me for one deliberate moment. “Is there any reason we would need the help of the police?”

  “Detective Tuatu said there had been other cases,” I told him. “Reckon they’re all related; they might help us find the bloke. His lot don’t want it investigated, so we’d prob’ly have a hard time getting the files any other way.”

  “Not necessarily,” murmured Athelas. “However, it will save the bother of using magic every time we want something from the station. And I believe the previous files could prove useful.”

  Zero nodded shortly. “Call the detective after dinner. Tell him we’re taking on the investigation.”

  The detective sounded suspicious when I told him, which was pretty rude considering how much I’d just helped him.

  “What did you do?” he asked, and I wasn’t sure if the suspicion in his tone was for me or my three psychos.

  Since I was still pretty annoyed at being lumped with an Otherworldly disease, my voice might have been a bit snappy when I said, “You want me to tell ’em you don’t want their help?”

  “No,” he said. “Just—never mind. Where can we meet to discuss it? Upper Management are already watching me, so I can’t keep anything at the office.”

  I looked around at my three psychos. We were at Snug Falls—or at least, that’s what Zero told me; we’d gone through Between to get here and I’d never been to Snug Falls before—and even JinYeong, who apparently didn’t have to recharge, was reclining beneath a tree like a highborn nobleman waiting for someone to feed him grapes.

  Athelas had gone even more quiet and pale than usual, his eyes closed as he sat by the water with a couple of fingers trailing in the moving stream, and Zero looked as though he’d turned to stone, all but invisible against the cool white rock he leaned against.

  “When do you lot want to meet Detective Tuatu?” I asked, looking around at them doubtfully. I wasn’t even sure they were properly alive, let alone awake enough to answer questions.

  There was silence and stillness; then, at last, one of JinYeong’s slender hands stirred. It rose, slowly, lazily, until one finger touched his lips.

  “Yeah, all right,” I said to him, “but the detective needs to know.”

  Zero and Athelas didn’t even stir—maybe they had turned to stone—but JinYeong’s eyes cracked open.

  He sighed and said, “Oneul bam. Uri jibae.”

  “Okay,” I said to Detective Tuatu. “I think it’s tonight at our place, but if t
hat’s wrong it’s the vampire’s fault. He won’t speak English.”

  “What?” said the detective.

  JinYeong showed me the smallest edge of tooth in warning and closed his eyes again.

  “See you later on,” I said to the detective, and hung up.

  For all that Zero and Athelas didn’t look like being aware, or even alive, when they started moving again an hour later, the first thing Zero said was, “Let’s not keep the detective waiting.”

  “Perhaps we should rather say the pet,” Athelas said, his grey eyes luminous and somehow reflective. “After all, we mustn’t forget—”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” said Zero, his voice as hard as stone.

  In the face of that voice, I was surprised to hear Athelas continue, “Her symptoms will begin to show in a few days.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” said Zero; and if his voice had been stone before, now it was ice.

  “Yes, my lord,” murmured Athelas, and his smile was luminous, too. “Come along, Pet,” he said; and pinching the shoulder of my hoodie, he drew me through Between.

  As we stepped lightly through green shadows that weren’t quite forest but weren’t quite structured, either, I asked Athelas, “What happens in a few days?”

  “Just the beginning of the symptoms, not necessarily their end,” he said. “Nothing to bother us unduly.”

  “Nothing to bother you!” I retorted. I was pretty bothered by it.

  “Indeed,” Athelas said. He was smiling again, and for all that it was a smile that could have lit the darkness around me, it left me very cold. “Why should fae worry themselves about the well-being of one pet? That is what I ask myself.”

  “Yeah? And do you answer yourself?”

  “Not at all,” sighed Athelas. “Hence my difficulty.”

  “What difficulty?” I demanded. “You aren’t the ones turning into werewolves!”

  “Indeed,” he said again. “It’s most perplexing.”

  I resisted the urge to reach out and touch the ancient stone walls through which we passed, with their moss-deepened carvings, and got the impression that, like the carvings, Athelas’ words were a lot deeper than they seemed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about anymore,” I said.