Between Floors (The City Between Book 3)

by W. R. Gingell

  “Mellowed flaming what?” I muttered. If Athelas thought JinYeong was mellow these days, what the heck had he been like when he was first turned? I glanced across at Zero, and found that he was looking at me, frowning, instead of observing the room.

  Hopefully he couldn’t lip read well enough to know what we were talking about. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t appreciate me asking questions about him. But if I stopped, what chance was there that Athelas would finally come to understand that I was the Pet? He had to realise at some point, right? If I just kept going? I wasn’t good enough at pretending to be someone I wasn’t—not when I didn’t even know who I was supposed to be pretending to be.

  “What is it you’re looking at, Pet?” Athelas’ voice was soft and thoughtful.

  Almost Athelas-as-normal. Almost like we were back at home in the living room, and he was trying to find out something I was hiding from him. It had me opening my mouth to answer before I thought about it.

  I thought better of it in the act, and since my mouth was already open, I used it to say, “Oi. Don’t do that.”

  This time it was Athelas who gazed at me with his lips just slightly parted. “I could return the sentiment,” he said. “But no doubt you’d claim complete ignorance.”

  “Don’t have to claim anything,” I said. “And you wouldn’t believe me, anyway.”

  “What are you hoping to achieve here, Pet?”

  “Get you free. Not die, I s’pose.”

  “My meaning was more direct,” he said, looking down as well as he could at the bands of moonlight that I had persuaded to curl around his chest instead of through him as we talked.

  “That? Why would I tell you? You’ll just use the information to try and kill me.”

  “A fair point.”

  It struck me that this conversation was as close to a normal conversation with Athelas as I’d had since he disappeared and I began to dream about him. I couldn’t help beaming at him, which made him blink and look away.

  “I assume you’re attempting to secure time for yourself in order to escape,” he said. “A useless endeavour.”

  “Yeah?” I said, shivering the last thread of moonlight into dust.

  Athelas settled into the embrace of the moonlight, and I took several steps backward, looking around me for any change in the room that I could use.

  There was no change. No gleam of Between, no hope of escape.

  And in the middle of the room, Athelas shrugged off the moonlight as if it was nothing, as if it was exactly what it was: Moonlight. Zero crossed the room with him, a step or two ahead, but Athelas wasn’t in any hurry. He knew I had nowhere else to go.

  Zero put a hand on my shoulder, where it made a faint warmth and sank a little bit into the skin, unable to quite touch. And in front of me, Athelas came to a halt, smiling faintly.

  “This has been an interesting meeting, but you should go now,” he said. “I have my own experiments to conduct.”

  There was nothing in his hand, until there was. Then it was something sharp and short and diamond shaped that twinkled past my ear and bit my neck where Athelas’ hand cupped the base of my skull.

  “Ah heck,” I said, and died into the real world.

  My eyes flickered open into darkness, sleep-gummed and unreliable, and I had a muffled moment to wonder how it had taken hours for me to dream what happened in such a short amount of time, before they shut again.

  I fell asleep.

  I fell asleep, and I was there again.

  “What the heck?” I said in shock, and across the room, through the strands of moonlight that held Athelas, I saw Zero, his eyes startled and his mouth open in a warning.

  Too late, I saw that there was nothing to the moonlight but moonlight itself, the idea of Athelas’ shape disintegrating into moon dust along with the moonlight as one of Athelas’ arms wrapped around me from behind.

  “How interesting,” said his voice. “This construct has a little more flexibility to it than I thought.”

  There was no time to be afraid, or sorry; just time to fall asleep, or die, or whatever it was that ended up with me waking with my head against Zero’s arm.

  The house was dark and cool with Betweenness, a feeling of peril around us that was familiar and almost comforting.

  “Not fair,” I said, and felt my chin wobble. “I already died once.”

  “Sit up,” Zero commanded, reinforcing the command by lifting me up with one hand behind my neck. “It’s not useful to fall asleep again yet.”

  “Yeah,” I said, yawning hugely, “but I’m flamin’ tired and I don’t think I can stay awake.”

  “Stand up. Make coffee—or cook something.”

  “Pancakes,” I said, because the clock said it was morning when I looked up at it. Two in the morning, but definitely the morning.

  I swayed into the kitchen and bumbled around for a bit, yawning and trying to find the right frypan, but by the time I’d managed it, I could feel the house getting all Betweeny as JinYeong came home. I trotted back toward the living room, and JinYeong’s cologne came curling into the room ahead of him, wafted along by a Between breeze that didn’t belong in the house or even probably in the human world.

  I didn’t need the Between-translated words to tell me what his face already told me, but I listened anyway, leaning up against the doorway so I’d stop swaying back and forth.

  I heard a meaning that said Sandman was there; had to go away before it saw me. Couldn’t risk staying, and said, “’S’okay. We’ll try again tomorrow,” instead of yelling at him like I wanted to do.

  Even pains-in-the-neck like JinYeong have their problems, if what Athelas said was true.

  JinYeong looked at me suspiciously, which was pretty rude, and when I asked wearily, “Want coffee?” he looked even more suspicious.

  “Coffee,” I said again, and went to make it. One thing was for sure—I wasn’t sitting down on that couch again until I was good and ready to fall asleep for the next dream.

  Chapter Ten

  I cooked pancakes for Zero while I drank enough coffee to drown a small kid, then buzzed around the kitchen making apple pie while Zero and JinYeong argued in the living room. Maybe it was because I was so sleepy, or maybe Zero was doing something to the sound, but either way, I didn’t seem to be able to understand what they were saying.

  I tried once or twice, my pride piqued, but I was definitely too tired for that, so I gave up and concentrated on cooking instead. Once the apple pie was in the oven, I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom and migrated to the bathroom to do the same.

  When six o’clock came around, I started on a kimchi fried rice that had JinYeong glancing often at the kitchen through the doorway as the smell of it rose in the air. It slowed down their argument, too; they’d been arguing incomprehensibly every time I wandered past, by the looks of JinYeong’s bared incisors and angry eyes.

  By the time I dumped the kimchi fried rice in front of JinYeong, he looked more suspicious than angry, and demanded of me, “Wae?”

  “Made it for you,” I said, yawning into my arm. “Better brush your teeth after, though; it’s loaded with garlic.”

  “Noh mwohya? Mwoh haesso?”

  “Didn’t do anything to it,” I said, shuffling back toward the kitchen. “Flamin’ suspicious little vampire, aren’t you?”

  Maybe they thought I was trying to listen to what they were talking about, because JinYeong still looked suspicious when I came out again with a full glass for him.

  “Got you some blood,” I said. I put it on the table and headed back for the kitchen so they’d know I wasn’t trying to hear what they were saying. Over my shoulder, I said, “Drink it and don’t pick fights with Zero, all right?”

  A hand on my collar dragged me around to face JinYeong who, his eyes very narrow, said,

  “Noh mwohya?”

  “Dunno what you’re saying; speak English,” I said. “Can you let go of my arm? I still need it for cooking, and if you don’t
let go, I’m gunna lose it from lack of blood flow.”

  Zero, his eyes light with amusement, asked, “Did you put something in JinYeong’s blood?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Just trying to stay awake.”

  “Nomu soosanghae,” muttered JinYeong, but he took a sip of his blood.

  “Take yourself for another walk,” said Zero, which was suspicious. “JinYeong and I have matters to discuss. Don’t fall asleep. Don’t forget to pay attention to your surroundings.”

  My first instinct was to complain, but I definitely didn’t want to fall asleep again, and I could always use the time to visit Morgana again. It would be nice to check on Detective Tuatu, too; and as much as I wanted to help Athelas, I didn’t want to die again just yet.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

  Let them plan their little plans. I would be busy with my own.

  I left the house just a bit after seven, texting Detective Tuatu on my way out to ask him how his bug-spraying was going, and about ten minutes later he texted back.

  Don’t talk to me. This is your fault. Before I met you, I didn’t have a dryad or an infestation of bugs.

  I grinned at my phone and replied, You’re welcome as I sauntered into Morgana’s building. I expected to run into some of the kids she’d mentioned last time, but maybe they were at school or something. I never could remember the school terms.

  There was no one in the halls, and no one on the stairs, either, and Morgana’s voice sounded glad when she called out, “Come in!” to my knock.

  She grinned at me from the bed, same as yesterday; all black pyjamas and black lipstick that looked not quite right with how brightly she smiled.

  “You’re just in time!” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, this is the time they usually bring him something to eat. If he doesn’t like it, things get really energetic for a while.”

  I snorted a bit. “Yep, sounds about right. You want coffee? I want coffee.”

  “Help yourself,” she said, tipping her head in the direction of the open kitchen. She leaned back into the piled-up pillows just like she had the first time I came into the room, and the suspicion that had been growing in my mind that she couldn’t move from there, prompted me to ask while the jug was boiling, “You sick or something?”

  “Yeah,” she said, but she sounded cheerful enough. “I’m mostly in bed. Some days I can walk a bit, but not often. I could walk more if I did the exercises I’m supposed to do. Apparently.”

  “That what the doctor says?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve never felt any different when I do them. Just more tired.”

  I wanted to ask her how she got to the toilet if she couldn’t leave the bed very often, but that felt like it was a bit too much to ask on such a short acquaintance. I couldn’t see signs of anyone else living here, but her parents must live over the hall or something. Maybe they cooked in their own rooms and brought it over.

  Weird, but that’s how some families are, I suppose.

  I gave Morgana her coffee, and she took a sip, but judging from the slight wince of black lipstick, she was just being polite by taking another.

  “You a tea drinker?” I asked. If I wasn’t so sleep-deprived, I would have thought to ask before I made the coffee.

  “I like both,” she said. “Just…with some sugar and milk, maybe.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. “I’ll get some.”

  “There isn’t any milk,” she said. “No sugar, either; I don’t have too many visitors, apart from the police, and they usually want their tea and coffee black. I’ll ask the kids to get some later on.”

  I propped myself against the brick wall, sipping my coffee, and sure enough, Daniel was throwing soup at someone. I saw the bowl fly across the room, and then a piece of pottery flying, but the bloke at the window didn’t even move.

  I grinned. Poor Daniel.

  “Who is he?” asked Morgana. “Did he do something really bad?”

  I looked across at her, but she wasn’t looking at me; she was looking at the dressing mirror opposite her. Beggar me. I’d thought it was weird that she had a dressing mirror right across from her bed when there was stuff in the way of standing; she wasn’t using it to see herself, it was slanted at just the right angle for her to be able to see out her window. What’s the bet it was angled to see all the bits she couldn’t see directly out the windows?

  I thought back to the face I’d seen in the mirror and wondered how many other setups she had like that. A heck of a lot, probably. How, though?

  I got up and sat on her bed instead of at the window, and there he was again. Daniel, scowling at the ceiling, scowling at his guards. Pretty normal, for Daniel. He scowled at me a lot, too. Mind you, I annoyed him a lot, but it was still a pretty clear indicator of his general personality.

  “Who did that?” I pointed with my chin at her mirror.

  “I bribed the kids,” she said, with a sparkle to her dark eyes. “They spent all morning up here with wire and string, making holes in the wall and climbing out the window.”

  “Why’d they need to climb out the window?”

  “I don’t think they did,” said Morgana. “But they know I can’t stop them, and none of the adults come in here, so they figured they were safe.”

  I grinned. “Serve ’em right if they fell. It’s a pretty soft landing down there, anyway. What you bribe ’em with?”

  “Lollies, mostly. Most of the parents here are into kale and green smoothies.”

  “The kids do the speaker as well?”

  “Yeah. I put it together, but they wired it in down there. They’re pretty clever kids. Hey. You want to play poker while you wait?”

  I threw another look around the room, for the first time seeing all the reflective surfaces that gave Morgana a panoramic view of the world outside—even of the street. I couldn’t even see as much from where I’d been sitting at the window.

  “Heck yeah!” I said. “I don’t know how to play, though.”

  “That’s what everyone says,” said Morgana suspiciously, but she explained it to me anyway.

  “Ha!” I said, watching Daniel snarling something at his guards. “It’s like Yahtzee.”

  “He’s a cranky sort of bloke, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t tell me if he did something bad.”

  I thought back. “Kinda,” I said. “But he was more stupid than bad. He was trying to do what he thought was right, he was just…I dunno. Dumb.”

  “Oh good,” said Morgana. “That’s what I thought he looks like. I’ve seen him a lot the last week—he keeps trying to get out of bed and they keep putting him back in. I don’t think he’s a very good patient.”

  “Yeah, sounds about right,” I said. “Hey, I thought you said there were kids around here.”

  “There are. Didn’t you see them on your way in? They were just up here visiting before you came in.”

  “Maybe they climbed out the windows when they heard me,” I said.

  Morgana shrugged, as if that was pretty likely. “They like to spy on people,” she said. “Maybe they’re teasing you.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  I kept an eye out for kids on my way out, just in case. I already had an old crazy bloke following me around, and a Sandman who occasionally liked to find out what I was up to; I could do without a couple of kids, too.

  The kids would probably be safer not following me around, too.

  I didn’t see anyone on the way out, though, and I even used the bit of Between that made the stairs a bit more like alive wood to try and pick up the vibrations of footsteps. I could feel my own footsteps echoing loudly despite how carefully I was stepping, but there was nothing else.

  If there were kids around, they were flamin’ good at hiding their footsteps, I decided, and went home to find that Zero wasn’t there anymore.

  Rats. That meant I would have to stay awake until he got back h
ome. I didn’t want to go to sleep and dream, but at least dying with Zero there was a bit easier. I huffed around the kitchen for a bit, annoying JinYeong, who was prowling around the place, then decided to cook something else. At this rate, we were going to have more food than we needed to eat in the next week.

  After a bit, JinYeong’s prowling started to annoy me in return, so I made him kimchi fried rice again and ate some myself in self-defence. That left us looking at each other across the table, which was weird, but at least I didn’t have to talk to him. I got up after I started falling asleep over the last few bites of fried rice and did the washing up, but that only meant I was falling asleep over the washing up instead.

  I went and brushed my teeth instead, hoping to see Zero when I came out again. What was he doing? Even if he was out looking for Athelas, wouldn’t he be back before I went to sleep again? Even if he couldn’t be there in the dream with me like he’d said he would be, wouldn’t he come back before he had to go out again?

  But he wasn’t back when I came back out with shiny clean teeth and the faint remembrance of kimchi fried rice burning at the back of my throat. I didn’t realise I’d been looking expectantly around the room until JinYeong raised a brow at me. I sighed, then yawned involuntarily and curled up on the couch, hopelessly sleepy. Best get it over with. Sleep, dream, die, wake.

  But through the murkiness of sleep, someone poked my cheek.

  “Mwoh hae, Petteu?”

  “I’m going to sleep,” I told him, without opening my eyes. I couldn’t hold it off to wait for Zero to get back home. “Leave me alone.”

  “Ani. Catchi ca.”

  That made me sit up. “What? You’re coming with me?”

  He shrugged and said something that came with the meaning, “Hyeong’s orders. Get up.”

  “Why should I get up? If you’re coming into the dream with me, we can sleep here.”

  “I do not,” said JinYeong, his Korean very slow and stately, “sleep on the couch.”

  “You don’t sleep at all. You’re flamin’ dead.”

  This time, he showed both incisors in his snarl, eyes stormy.