I looked at the picture of April Post again. She looked like a nice person; genuine smile that curved her eyes like half-moons and a cheerful sprinkling of freckles across her nose.
“Maybe she was a friend? Maybe she warned Erica about whatever weirdo was hanging around her at the time?”
Athelas sipped his tea and returned gently to his point. “Whatever the case, Erica does seem to be our strongest point of reference, does she not? I do feel that we should keep an eye on her as well.”
“I think so,” Zero agreed. “Pet, does Erica work tomorrow?”
“Half day,” I said. I’d checked on the roster on my way out of work. “Just the morning, putting up special tickets. We can follow Daniel in the morning and then see what Erica does after work.”
“Perhaps we should give some thought to convincing Erica to open up to Pet,” suggested Athelas.
Zero shook his head. “No. We’re not going to Influence anyone, if we can help it.”
“You should tell JinYeong to stop vamping women into buying him coffee, then,” I suggested.
JinYeong snarled at me, but I saw the faintest smile come and go on Zero’s lips, and that made me happy.
“Pet, get up,” he said. “It’s time to practise.”
I groaned. “I’m still dead from yesterday. And I wanna know why we can’t just vamp her, too.”
JinYeong said something cross, but he shut his mouth on whatever else he was going to say when I refilled his coffee cup and gave him another biscuit from the second biscuit plate.
“I was using it as a general term,” I said to him. “Don’t get your knickers in a knot.”
Athelas’ eyes got that particular glow they always get when he’s laughing at something inside, and JinYeong glared at him.
“Shifters are less inclined to stay under the influence of fae and vampires than humans are,” said Zero, rising to his feet. “Some of them can’t be influenced at all, and if we were to attempt it on someone who turned out to be the pack leader, asking very particular questions, they would certainly know we’re Enforcers. Vampires, on the other hand, are free with their skills, and it’s not unusual to see one exerting those skills in everyday life. I’m not willing to risk giving away our investigation just yet. I might reconsider when we’re more sure of our target. Pet, practise.”
Chapter Seven
It might have been nice to sleep in on a day when I didn’t have to work. Might have been, except that I dreamed of fur and fangs, and hot sticky blood, and something howling or screaming that turned out to be me.
Might have been, except that I woke up to see JinYeong perched at the end of my bed like a particularly well-dressed vulture.
I yelled and threw something at him from under my pillow, which made him duck, eyes wide, then turn to stare at the knife that was sticking out of the wall.
“What the flamin’ heck?” I yelled at him. “Why are you in my bedroom!”
“Ya!” he snapped back at me. “Wae gurolka? Jjincha musowo!”
“Scary? I’m scary?”
JinYeong reached back to pluck out the knife, and waved it at me. “Igae mwohya?”
I puffed out a breath and ran my fingers through my hair to get it out of my eyes. “Okay, that’s fair enough. I dunno where it came from. I didn’t put it under my pillow.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, flicking the knife down into the bed, blade first, and said something I was pretty sure was the Korean equivalent of liar. I would have protested against that, but I was also pretty sure he was just trying to distract me from my initial insistence on knowing why he was in my bedroom.
“Why are you sitting on my bed?” I demanded.
JinYeong shrugged one shoulder, pointing down through the floor, and said something that had Zero’s name in it.
“Zero wanted me to wake up?” I scrambled my legs out from under the covers. “All right, I’m ready.”
Both of JinYeong’s brows went up as he took in my jeans and t-shirt.
“What? If I go to bed dressed, I’m ready straight away in the morning,” I told him, scraping back enough of my hair for a ponytail but leaving a bit to cover the obviously wolfy part of me that was dismayingly larger this morning.
It was the morning for nasty surprises, obviously.
JinYeong made a sound of disapproval and tossed my hairbrush at me.
“What? You’re not the one going around town with me,” I told him, but I took the band out and brushed my hair anyway. That seemed to satisfy him, because he sauntered out of my room while I was still pulling my hair back again.
He and Zero were waiting for their breakfast when I got downstairs, JinYeong with the air of a pacing cat, and Zero with his usual emotionless fortitude. Athelas had already gone, but he must have eaten the breakfast I prepared for him last night, because the dishes were in the sink, and the tea percolator was turned off at the wall.
I made them bacon and eggs, but food smelled a bit off to me again today. Not off as if it was rotten, just…not good to eat. Beggar me. I thought food was starting to smell bad, but I hadn’t expected bacon to go so quickly.
While the other two ate their breakfast, I picked and poked at mine, and at last scooped it up in a huge, messy hurry when Zero said, “Eat, Pet. We’re leaving in five minutes.” I didn’t want to be hungry while we were hunting around Daniel’s house.
That turned out to be a bad idea, because I lost the whole lot of it behind someone’s rose bush about fifteen minutes after we left the house. It would have been in front of the rose bush, but Zero heard me gagging and shoved me behind the bush before I had a chance to do anything except double over.
Maybe I should have tried to crouch, because what with gravity and everything, half of it came out of my mouth, and the other half came up through my nose. Let me tell you, fried egg is not something you wanna have up your nose. I groaned for a bit while Zero looked doubtfully at me over the bush and offered me a handkerchief.
I wanted to remark on the fact that he was carrying a handkerchief—I mean, who still carries a handkerchief these days?—but all that came out when I opened my mouth was a wet gurgle and another explosion of undigested breakfast. I was crouched lower to the ground this time, so it only came through my mouth.
When it stopped, I blew the chunks of egg out of my nose and spat the rest of the foul-tasting stuff out of my mouth. Great. Athelas had said I’d start to throw food up as my body started to change, but I’d expected it to take a bit longer.
“Happening pretty quickly, isn’t it?” I said thickly, feeling the patch of fur on my forehead.
Zero smacked my hand away and said, “Don’t play with it. Are you ready?”
“Feeling great!” I croaked, trying not to shiver. I still felt sick, but I didn’t think it was my symptoms—not directly, anyway. “Here’s your hanky.”
He avoided that hand. “Wash it first. I don’t want it.”
I tucked it into my pocket instead. I hadn’t really thought he’d take it, but sometimes if you do something quickly enough, it takes him by surprise. I think humans surprise him sometimes—or maybe they just remind him of things. Things like throwing up, and messes, and stuff that isn’t fae-perfect. Normal things.
I suppose JinYeong found the address for us at work, because Zero led us straight to the right place. It was a run-down old house that was closer to Moonah than North Hobart, and Daniel was just coming out of the door when we approached, his hands shoved into his hoodie and the silver spikes on the shoulders of it catching the sun.
I suddenly remembered Erica saying something about a hoodie—a very distinctive hoodie, she’d called it. It was the same one I’d seen him wear to work every day, if it came to that.
“Gotcha!” I muttered.
Zero, quietly, said, “Hush, Pet. Keep walking.”
That surprised me, because if we kept walking we would be face to face with Daniel. I kept walking anyway because I’m an obedient pet, and I supposed Zero did something to t
he way we appeared, because Daniel didn’t really look at us as we crossed his path.
He did draw in a breath and look faintly puzzled when my shoulder brushed his in passing, but maybe that was just because his breakfast was disagreeing with him, too.
We kept walking for a bit, then Zero turned us around at the top of the street and we crossed to the other side.
“Slowly, Pet,” he murmured. “Don’t make sudden moves and stop bouncing so much when you walk.”
“Can’t help it,” I said. “That’s how I walk.”
“Then you’ll need to learn how to walk again,” said Zero, without pity. “Otherwise you’ll ruin every covert operation you’re involved in.”
I didn’t mention the fact that pets didn’t usually go along on covert operations, because I thought he might have forgotten about that, and I didn’t want to remind him. I was happy being a pet who went along on covert operations.
“I’ll practise when I’m not practising my sword-work,” I said, a bit gloomily. “Oi, where’s he going? That’s not a road!”
Ahead, Daniel jumped the fence into someone’s yard, his sneakers flying. His hoodie bobbed up and down and then ducked under another section of fence that imperfectly spanned a gully, disappearing into the murky depths of a storm water drain.
“He can’t do that!” I said indignantly. “Flamin’ rude!”
Zero’s eyes flicked down to me. “Keep your voice down.”
“You working a spell or something?”
“I’m dispersing notice, and it doesn’t work as well if someone is making themselves noticeable.”
“Yeah, but it’s a spell, right?”
Zero breathed out the faintest of sighs, and pulled me Between, where the fence didn’t exist. “It’s not…it’s similar. Spells require items and setup; I’m using my birthright. Pure magic.”
“You get that sort of thing as a birthright when you’re born Behind?”
“No,” said Zero. “I was born in the human world. The birthright is because of who my parents are, not where I was born.”
“So can I do spells?”
“No. You need a certain amount of inborn magic to do spells.”
“Inborn magic is the stuff you get for being born Behind?”
“Yes.” Zero stopped by the storm drain, and I heard the faint sound of Daniel at the end of the tunnel, then silence. When it was silent, Zero stepped into the storm drain.
“How come I can pull stuff from Between, then?” I asked in a hushed voice, following him.
There was a brief moment of silence, and I got the feeling that it was very grudgingly that Zero said, “We don’t know. It’s not supposed to be possible for a human to affect Between.”
“Maybe that’s my birthright,” I said, very much pleased with myself. We emerged from the storm drain onto a familiar street; New Town Road, that would later turn into Elizabeth Street, or onto Argyle, depending on which way we went. Either way, it led in one direction: Daniel was going toward Hobart city centre. “Oi. I reckon this little rat is going to Erica’s place.”
“Perhaps.”
He was going to Erica’s place, though. I felt a bit smug about that; when we got to Murray Street and I was certain of it, I said to Zero, “Oi. Let’s stop here for a while. Buy us some coffee at one of the cafés.”
To my surprise, Zero did. He said, “Sit here. Don’t leave,” at the café across from Erica’s shared house, and went in to order. That left me to watch Daniel, who was loitering as suspiciously as most boys his age wearing hoodies did loiter.
He didn’t try to get through the locked door at the bottom where Erica had gone in last night; he mizzled along the front of the place instead, and ducked into the alleyway beside it, threading between the wheelie bins. From what I’d seen yesterday, it was a residential carpark for Erica’s house and the apartments behind. Daniel kept walking through, his hands shoved in his pockets and his head swinging from side to side at a steady rate.
Daniel was sniffing around—literally, if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. I remembered Rhonda telling me that someone had been urinating around the storeroom, and tried not to grin. Was he marking his territory, or checking on other potential visitors?
A cardboard cup settled in front of me on the table and I smelled the creamy scent of cappuccino. Nice. Hadn’t had one of those in a while.
“Where’s the boy?” asked Zero.
“Circling the house,” I told him. “Dunno what he’s looking for, but he’s looking for something.”
“Mm,” said Zero. From him, that was almost an exclamation. Zero was very interested.
He settled himself carefully into the spindly outdoor chair, watching the house steadily. It couldn’t have been too comfortable, but once he’d stretched out his legs across half the footpath he didn’t look quite so cramped.
My interest waned pretty quickly, though; all Daniel did was go around the place a couple more times. When the display on my phone told me it was quarter to eleven, he turned back onto Murray Street and started to walk toward the mall again.
“What’s he doing?” I muttered to myself, picking up the half-empty cappuccino. “Hang on—Erica finishes at eleven. Is he going up to meet her?”
“Not to meet her,” said Zero. “I doubt he’ll be in sight when she comes out.”
“Yeah, he’s got the creeper vibe all right,” I said. Stupid kid. He was good looking enough to be able to attract girls—why was he going for one so much older than himself, who was not just uninterested in him, but possibly scared of him? “Is that a werewolf thing, too?”
“Shifter,” Zero said. “Yes, quite often. The wolf side of their brain is often melded tightly with the human side, and it leads to unbalanced thinking.”
“Great. So I’m gunna turn into a stalker?”
“No. You’re not going to turn into anything.”
“Hey, I’d be a real pet, then,” I said. I saw my smile in the reflection of a store window as we passed it, and it was a heck of a lot gaunter than I meant it to be. I stopped.
We followed Daniel all the way back to the supermarket before we went home, leaving him to follow Erica back to her place. There were enough people on the streets that Zero didn’t seem worried to leave Erica to Daniel’s stalking, and I didn’t think he’d listen if I objected, anyway.
I was starving by then, and even more so by dinner time, but the only thing that really looked good to eat was the steak I’d bought on the day I found the murdered bloke. The sickening thing about that was that I was salivating just at the sight of it in the fridge, raw and bloody. I shut the fridge with a shudder and slapped a pan on the stovetop. I was gunna cook the steak, and I was gunna cook it well.
No way I was going to eat bloody steak.
I cooked the steaks until the juices ran out and until I couldn’t stand it anymore. It wasn’t cooked as much as I told myself it was going to be cooked, but it smelled so good. The smell must have been too much for my psychos, too; they were all at the table before I took the steaks off the stove top.
“I can see you two looking at each other,” I said to Zero and Athelas accusatorily, but I ate my steak anyway. I already knew things were progressing too flamin’ quickly. I didn’t really need them to tell me.
By the next morning, I was ravenous again, but the steaks were gone and nothing in the house smelled good to eat, so I went to work with JinYeong hungry, angry, and scared. He seemed amused by my moodiness; maybe he thought he was the cause of it, or maybe he just liked me being scared. At any rate, he said something in Korean that I was pretty sure interpreted as a demand to meet him for lunch.
“Whatever,” I said, and stomped off through the store. I didn’t know what the idea was with JinYeong wanting to make sure I ate around him lately, but I wasn’t going to do it if I could get away with it.
I worked with Daniel again, which was just as fun as it had been the first time, though I wasn’t sure which one of us was the most annoyed abou
t it. I probably should have been trying to winkle information out of him, but I was cranky and hungry, and too busy trying to make sure I got out for lunch before JinYeong without making it look like I was trying if Zero asked me about it.
In the end, I didn’t really have to try. Daniel vanished somewhere just a bit before lunch, and when I trailed outside with Rhonda and the other smokers to get a bit of sunshine, I could see into JinYeong’s office. He was still surrounded by women, and I was pretty sure at least two of the girls currently in his office weren’t even from the store.
He looked a bit more impatient than I was used to seeing him when he was surrounded by women, but when he looked down and saw me sitting there with the smokers, he looked amused again.
I smirked at him and his bevy and saw the brief sideways flick of his eyes that was as close as JinYeong got to rolling his eyes, his mouth pursed. Oh well, at least I’d have my lunch to myself; unless JinYeong used his manipulative powers on the whole room of women at once, he was going to be where he was for a while.
The smokers went back in before JinYeong’s crowd of women dispersed, but I stayed where I was. I was feeling a bit raw about JinYeong’s general, as well as particular evils, and I didn’t want to spend more time with him than I had to. It wasn’t like I had anything to report, anyway. Erica was still in the store, and so was Daniel—wait, no he wasn’t.
He passed me at a bit of a lope, out through the lunch room and into the sunshine I’d stretched out my legs into. He gave me a bit of grunt in passing, which I suppose you could say was progress, and legged it past the grey-suited man who was just approaching across the back parking lot.
Should I text Zero about Daniel? I wondered, watching his black sneakers trot across the parking lot. But Erica hadn’t left the store, and that was all we were worried about at the moment.
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.
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