Between Floors (The City Between Book 3)

by W. R. Gingell

  S’pose that was just another thing to add to the things I wanted to ask Athelas when I found him. Whether it was actually possible to make a manual way into Between that didn’t involve, well, pushing into Between.

  I poked my head around the edge of the hallway, and sure enough; there at the end of it was another left-hand turn. No right hand turn to take instead, either, and exactly two doors in that corridor. I looked back over my shoulder, then down the hall again. Yep. Pretty much the same position, too. Maybe they were different levels of the same rooms.

  Well, I’d come this far; might as well see if it kept going on in left-hand turns like a weird, impossible corkscrew, or if I would manage to find the main room again at the end of one of the turns. I took the left-hand turn with a last look over my shoulder, trotting toward the newest iteration of the police station blueprint, and passed the two newly familiar doors, one on the right hand and the other on the left. When I got to the blueprint, there was another left-hand turn; another two doors in the new hallway.

  I narrowed my eyes at it, then turned around and jogged back the way I’d come. Yeah, so maybe it was a way into Between, and maybe the different hallways were different levels of the same room each time. Question was, which one did I want? Which one was Athelas most likely to be in? I didn’t know, but I did know that I wanted to make sure I could get back out before I went much further in.

  I counted six right hand turns before I stopped, dizzy and a bit breathless.

  Hang on.

  Hang on. Where had the other room gone?

  Oh yeah. I was definitely Between—or at least partway there.

  The question was, why? I had to assume that most—if not all—fae could slip Between and Behind without too many issues; so why was there a floor in the police station that had a widdershins hallway that should have ended up where it started but didn’t?

  And more importantly, how the heck was I supposed to get out again?

  “Widdershins,” I said aloud. “It’s got something to do with widdershins.”

  Pity no one had ever taught me anything about widdershins in school.

  I pinched my phone out of my pocket and opened the web browser. It wouldn’t load, and I stared at it for far too long before it occurred to me why that was. Ah heck. I’d used up all my data already. This is why I needed an Athelas. He might be tricky to deal with, but at least he didn’t run out of data or battery.

  I could phone a friend, though, couldn’t I? There was reception here, which was a hopeful sign, unlike last time when I was properly Between. At least the phone was behaving itself like normal.

  Obviously, I couldn’t call Zero. Well, not until there was no other way out, anyway. That was just asking for trouble. And I didn’t know JinYeong’s number—or if he even had a phone—but there was always Detective Tuatu. Even if he didn’t know what I needed to know, at least he could search for it on the internet.

  I grinned, and called the detective. “Oi,” I said, by way of greeting.

  “What?” he asked cautiously. “I’ve got enough house plants and I’m better now.”

  Rude! The dryad wasn’t a house plant, it was protection. I ignored his ingratitude and asked, “Know anything about widdershins?”

  “What?”

  “You know, widdershins?”

  “My grandmother said never to go that way.”

  I pursed my lips and looked around me. “Oh. Whoops.”

  “Whoops, what?” demanded the detective. “Where are you?”

  “Between a couple of floors, I reckon,” I said. His voice was tight and concerned, and since Detective Tuatu tended to run into danger when he was concerned, I added, “Relax. Sit back down. I’m fine. What else did your grandmother say about widdershins?”

  “Never go that way!”

  “You said that.”

  “Go back as soon as possible.”

  “What else?”

  “Pet, where are you?”

  “Told ya. Between floors somewhere. Not exactly Between, though, I reckon. Not yet. Did your grandma tell you something about how to get out of somewhere when you’ve gone widdershins?”

  “Deiseil!” he said, and I heard the surprise in his voice. Whatever else he’d learned from his grandmother, it was buried really deeply. I had some suspicions about his grandmother, and all of them were toward the Behind side of the world. He added, “She said you have to go deiseil to fix it. You have to look for the sun.”

  “Don’t reckon that’s gunna help. I’m inside.”

  There was another silence from the other end of the phone, and I couldn’t help grinning. He was trying really hard.

  Then Detective Tuatu said, “Does it have to be a real sun?”

  Sun? Hang on a bit. There was a sun on the right-hand door of every iteration of the hallway—part of the logo on each placard, I’d thought, but now I wasn’t so sure. I looked at the left-hand door and instead of a sun there was a moon.

  “Ohhhhh!” I said, deeply satisfied. “Ah man, that’s clever! Thanks! Catch ya next time!”

  I hung up, and he rang up again a second later, making me jump.

  “Pet—”

  “Don’t call me,” I said. “I’m supposed to be sneaking. I’ll bring ya something nice as a thank you later on.”

  I hung up again, hoping no one had heard it bingle, and put my hand on the door handle of the sun door. It wasn’t like things could get worse, after all. I could only get properly Between instead of halfway there, and I’d been Between before.

  It wasn’t like I could get Behind from here.

  Wait. Was it?

  I’d think about that later when I knew I could get out, I decided. I turned the door handle and stepped into the room without stopping to think about it again. The door shut behind me with a small, definite bump that pushed me another step forward into the room. Printers at my right; gridded cubicles dead ahead; doorway leading downstairs to my left.

  I was back in the main room.

  Grinning, I slid my phone back into my pocket. This was good. This was very good. Now that I knew I could get back out, I would be able to have a proper look down the widdershins hallway. I took one step toward the hallway again and heard a noise that turned my blood cold.

  The door to the little receptionists’ office was opening.

  I dropped into a crouch within the nearest cubicle without thinking about it, my heart beating fast.

  Ah heck. There was somebody coming.

  Chapter Five

  I smelt him before I saw him; that whiff of cologne sweeping forward with the breeze of the opening door. What the heck?

  Why was JinYeong here?

  And if JinYeong was here, did that mean Zero was, too?

  Oh boy.

  I heard JinYeong take a step forward into the room, then a second one that froze just as his foot hit the carpeted floor.

  Ah heck. If I could smell him without the use of my rapidly waning, vampire-saliva-induced abilities, JinYeong could definitely smell me in the room with his fully-fledged abilities. Well, the particularly non-smell that was apparently me, anyway.

  I stood up. “You following me or something?”

  JinYeong made an annoyed sound through his teeth, and slapped the door shut behind him.

  “What are you doing here?” Might as well try to brazen it out.

  “Mwoh hanun kkoya?” He glared at me, turning the question back on me.

  “Same thing as you, probably,” I said. “Trying to find out why we haven’t seen Athelas in the last couple of days. Oi. Don’t tell Zero you saw me, and I won’t tell him I saw you.”

  JinYeong gave me a flat look and said something in Korean that carried in it the meaning of “I’m meant to be here.”

  “Yeah?” I tipped up my chin at him, but he only raised an eyebrow. “I’ll make you some more of those blood snacks if you don’t tell. Without holy water.”

  His other brow went up. JinYeong considered, tilted his head, and said deliberat
ely, “Ne.”

  “Good,” I said. “What’d you find? There wasn’t even someone at the proper reception desk, which is pretty bad for—oh.”

  I looked JinYeong over and saw the faintest speck of blood on his cuff.

  “Did you vamp the receptionist?” I said accusingly.

  JinYeong’s lips pressed together in a smug, satisfied smile. “Ne.”

  “What did you do with her?”

  He made the faintest of head-tips toward the office.

  “She’s still in there?”

  “Ne.”

  “You didn’t kill her, did you?”

  That only earned me a small, upward flick of the eyes that as far as I was concerned, could either have meant of course he had, or of course he hadn’t.

  I sent a suspicious look in his direction, but said, “Right. What are we gunna do, then?”

  “Uri aniya. Nanun.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him.

  “Petteu—”

  “I’m here already,” I said, and grinned at him. “You don’t know what I might get up to if you let me run around by myself. I’m not going home yet.”

  JinYeong sighed, and said something that suggested, Search the office—then onwards.

  “Onwards, where?” I muttered, and caught a brief grin from him. He was looking too smug, so I added, “The widdershins part?”

  I was surprised to see a faintly impressed look to JinYeong’s face, despite his usual moue. That was weird and a bit off-putting, so I wrinkled my nose and looked away—and right at the slumped body of a human worker, sprawled over his desk.

  “What the heck!” I complained. “Did you do that?”

  One of JinYeong’s eyebrows twitched up, but he didn’t reply. He didn’t need to; I could see the twin spots of blood on the bloke’s collar.

  “Hang on, you got here first?” He must have been in the office, vamping the receptionist, when I went through widdershins. “Your nose isn’t working too well at the moment, is it?”

  That earned me a glare, which was more comforting than the approval. JinYeong said something in Korean that included the words, here, unexpected and Pet.

  “That’s the point,” I told him. “You’re s’posed to expect the unexpected. What are you looking for?”

  JinYeong went into a swift, elaborate spate of speech that held absolutely no meaning for me. I was pretty sure he was doing that on purpose, somehow, because I couldn’t even understand the little bit I’d begun to understand every now and then.

  “You’re doing that on purpose,” I said, and went to check on the receptionist without him. She was still breathing, and she didn’t look like she’d lost too much blood, either; there were two tiny points of red on her neck where JinYeong had been having a quick drink, but her breathing was regular.

  Just like she was sleeping.

  “You say Zero sent you here?” I called softly to JinYeong. Considering Zero had been steadily refusing to admit to me that anything had gone wrong with Athelas, that was a flamin’ cheek. He really was concerned.

  “Ne,” he said. He was flipping through the desk drawers closer to him, and he wasn’t trying to be very quiet about it, either. That worried me a bit.

  Not because he might get us caught, but because if someone came to find out about any suspicious noises, JinYeong might catch them, and I didn’t yet know if JinYeong was the sort to kill humans without thinking about it any more than the Behindkind he routinely killed.

  I had my doubts. I was also pretty sure that this floor especially catered to humans.

  “How come?”

  JinYeong shrugged, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t an I don’t know kind of shrug. It was more likely one of the How is it your business and why should I tell you? kind of shrugs.

  I stuck out my tongue at him and wiggled the receptionist’s computer mouse to see what she still had up on the monitor.

  The screen came to life in a glow of blue light, and I grinned. “Heck yeah!”

  She must have been in the middle of doing the employee clockings, because there were about three different windows open. By the looks of it, one was the sign-on clock record, one was the pay screen, and the other was some sort of reconciling software.

  Pretty useful for me, because now I would be able to see when Athelas had last signed in. I didn’t know what last name Athelas might be going by, but I was betting it would be Butler, or Steward, or something like that.

  Yep, there it was; top of the second screen I paged through: A. Butler. There were clockings in army time for the first couple days of the week, then nothing for the last three days. I gazed at it, frowning, for a bit too long, and JinYeong came to see what I was looking at, his face sharp and interested.

  “Nothing big,” I said, pointing at the line, “but I don’t reckon Athelas has been here for the last couple days.”

  “Ah,” said JinYeong. “Kurae. Johah.”

  “How’s that good?”

  I almost heard him say, “Now we have a timeline,” but the Korean he was speaking muddled the meaning of it.

  “Maybe someone got him on the way to work,” I suggested. “They haven’t been paying him since he stopped signing in. Maybe they don’t know, either.

  “Kaneunghae,” muttered JinYeong, but he didn’t look convinced, and I wasn’t convinced, either.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Or they’ve been fiddling the books to cover up when he really went missing, and they know where he is. Only I reckon it’s all humans around here. I can’t even see a bit of Between for someone to accidentally walk through. Not if you don’t count the widdershins hall.”

  Actually, nothing looked dangerous up here. Dangerous for your average criminal, maybe. For Behindkind, I couldn’t imagine so.

  “Can’t see why Athelas went undercover at all,” I said. “It’s all humans and paperwork. If someone from here was trying to set up the detective as a murderer, I don’t reckon they would have done it by throwing a body at us from Between.”

  JinYeong shrugged, the shape of his mouth not quite matching the meaning of his words as he said something like, “Behindkind have many friends.”

  “Yeah? I don’t think they’re as friendly as that, but I s’pose you know what you’re talking about. The question is, where’s Athelas? Did someone get him on his way to work, or after he got here?”

  JinYeong shrugged and wandered back into the main room, but it wasn’t long before I heard him prowling toward the printers. I nipped out of the office and trotted after him like a good little pet. I didn’t want to be left behind here with all the vamped humans; they were too pale and limp for comfort, even though I knew they were still breathing. I was also half-afraid someone official would come up here while they were still asleep and discover them in their vampy-chilled state. If someone discovered them, I preferred to be with JinYeong rather than by myself.

  And then there was someone—someone at the door, anyway. The soft slap of a hand hitting the push plate on the door outside and the faint squeak as it began to swing inwards. I heard it in one split-second; the next, a swift cloud of cologne with very sharp fingers whisked me into the closest cubicle and underneath the desk.

  Squashed into a space that was too small for me to comfortably sit if I were by myself, and definitely too small to be sharing with a glittery-eyed vampire, I hugged my legs to my chest and turned slightly away from JinYeong—only to be halted by his left leg, which was considerably longer than mine, and could only fit beneath the desk by stretching out around me and propping against the cubicle wall. He seemed to be sitting on the other leg, which I suppose was considerate of him. I glared at him anyway, and he snarled silently at me.

  We were both uncomfortable. Perfect. And if anyone heading down the hallway looked back, they’d still probably see us until they were more than halfway down it.

  Even better.

  “Where is everyone?” asked someone’s voice. There was a chill to it that curled around my ears like nails down a chalkb
oard. “There should be some workers here—humans.”

  “Lunch time,” said a voice that sounded like a normal voice. “They’ll be back later. Did you need to see one of them?”

  “Not one of these ones,” the first voice said dismissively. “I simply wished to be sure that nothing had gone wrong. Our other location had a small scare a couple of nights ago with a few missing staff.”

  An edge of grey came into sight around the wall of the cubicle that left us semi-exposed, and I gripped a fold of my jeans in my fist. It wasn’t until a flicker of movement drew my attention to the finger JinYeong had put over his lips, his eyes pinioning me, that I realised it was his trouser leg I was clinging to instead of mine. I would have let go if I could, but I couldn’t; that edge of grey separated from the cubicle wall and became the fuzzy, difficult to see shape that was distinctly that of the Sandman, the back of his head smudged into indecipherability.

  I couldn’t have said why—it wasn’t like I could see his face properly—but I was sure it was the same one who had tried to accost me outside the supermarket a couple of weeks ago. Beside him was a human in business trousers and shirt. He was probably trying to walk carefully but it just looked like he needed the toilet.

  Maybe he did. Was he afraid he was going to be killed? I would have been, if I was him. That cold, chalkboardy voice was terrifying enough, but I had seen the Sandman’s real face, and I knew exactly how terrifying that could be.

  To my relief, the two kept walking slowly up the hallway toward the blueprint; I willed the Sandman not to look around, and somehow, he didn’t.

  The human, all blue business shirt and dipping bald patch at the back of his head, surprised me by having the brass face to say, “Nothing goes wrong here.”

  There was a cool, grating silence, and I saw the Sandman’s head turn toward the human and away from us. He said, “I am here because there was a problem. I had to help fix that problem.”

  Beside me, JinYeong sat forward, crowding me. I poked him in the ribs and scowled at him. Shove over! I mouthed.