Between Decisions (The City Between Book 8)

by W. R. Gingell

  I don’t know why I bothered saying it aloud; I couldn’t even hear myself properly, just heavy, stifling silence with the almost wordy vibration of my voice. JinYeong wasn’t paying attention either. He’d wandered to the further end of the room while I was looking at the screens, and now he vanished into the next area. I followed him a bit more slowly. If there was nothing here that suggested siren to him, who was I to argue? I’d never met one.

  We continued up and through the ship, and I had the distinctly grumpy feeling that we would have been better off waiting for a tour day or vamping someone into giving us a tour, because there were so many decks and so many rooms on each of those decks that our time vanished away before we were ready to come down to the dock again.

  In the end, we were moving through the space so quickly that it didn’t seem possible that it was doing much good; we also ended up with a couple of silent hangers-on, though they didn’t approach closely enough for it to be worthwhile trying to talk them out of following us.

  “They’ll probably just put us in their report,” I said to JinYeong, who, shoulders stiff, very obviously didn’t care to be followed and had taken out his earplugs in his annoyance. At least we didn’t have to worry about being sung to now that Athelas and Ezri had taken care of the siren. “C’mmon, let’s get through this last lot and shoot through. We’re gunna be late, and you know how Zero gets when we’re late.”

  “This is a useless job,” he said, a sliver of teeth showing. “I do not like doing useless jobs.”

  “Me either,” I said, removing my own earplugs. “It’s about as good as we’re gunna get and still get back to the park in time. You want to explain to Zero why we’re half an hour late?”

  JinYeong sniffed. “Ani. I do not fight when there is no use.”

  “The heck you don’t. You’ve been trying to pick fights with Zero since I’ve known you.”

  “That,” he said, stopping in the gangway to face me, “is different. There is a reason.”

  “Yeah, your sister,” I said, nodding. “I know.”

  He considered that, then nodded. “JiAh is one reason. You are another.”

  “Oi!” I protested, as he started down the gangway again. “What do you mean, I’m another? What did I do?”

  “You did nothing. Hyeong is overprotective.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know—hang on. Do you mean—”

  “I mean,” said JinYeong, sending a bright look at me over his shoulder, “that Hyeong does not approve of me and you.”

  “Zero can mind his own business!” I said indignantly. “I already had a dad, and—hang on. There is no me and you!”

  “And if Hyeong has his way, there will be no me and you,” he said. “He threw me through a wall to remind me. You remember.”

  I stared at his back. “You said it was because he was reminding you to call me Pet.”

  One shoulder shrugged. “It is the same. Hyeong knows why I do not call you Pet. What else would we argue about?”

  “What else? Pretty much anything, as far as I can tell,” I said crankily. “You fight over everything. And you’d better stop discussing me with Zero; I’m not going to have the two of you deciding who I can and can’t date. I don’t need his permission!”

  “That is what I told him,” JinYeong said blithely. “Ah. We have run out of ship. This is the outside.”

  I followed him out onto the deck, blowing out my cheeks and feeling in need of the slight, cool breeze that tickled around my ears and cooled the neckline of my hoodie.

  “Right,” I said. “We’d better get back down there pretty flamin’ quick, then, otherwise we’re gunna be late.”

  More importantly than that, I had the feeling that I was going to end up talking about things with JinYeong that were definitely dangerous to be talking about—things I hadn’t even let myself think about.

  I was very good at not thinking about things that I didn’t want to think about, and it was no time to break the habit of a lifetime.

  Chapter Six

  We were only fifteen minutes late to the meeting spot, but Abigail was pacing by the time we got there. All of the humans except for Ezri were back, along with Tuatu, who stood with his back against a tree as though he didn’t trust anyone not to hit him on the back of the head. Maybe he didn’t; I’d expected him and Abigail to be getting on better after working together, but maybe it would take a bit more time.

  Zero was still gone, too, which might have worried me if I’d had time to think about it. I didn’t, because as soon as JinYeong and I got into the park, Abigail was striding toward us.

  She hadn’t quite reached us when she demanded, “What took you so long? We had an agreed-upon time.”

  “The only way to get down in time would have been to take a dive,” I told her. “We were at the top of the ship by then; I’ve heard how that turns out, and I didn’t fancy it much. Anyway, JinYeong’s wearing his good suit.”

  JinYeong nodded once, faintly approving, and appeared not to notice Abigail’s withering look.

  “What’s up?” I asked her. “Zero’s not back, either; you gunna have a go at him?”

  “I’m not used to working with fae,” she said, frowning. “And I’m used to people answering to me, not the other way around. Where’s the old man? He’s got Ezri with him.”

  “She’s with Athelas—she’s safe. I figured they’d be back first, actually, if they sorted the siren out.”

  “I’ll go look for them,” she said abruptly.

  “Hang on!” I protested. The siren might be taken care of, but who knew what else was out there these days, with everything stirred up. “Wait for me! We gotta go in lots of two, remember?”

  The look she threw over her shoulder at me was slightly amused, but she called out to the others: “Stay here. Pet and I are going to have a look to see what Ezri’s up to.”

  “We’ll be back,” I said to Tuatu, with a cheeky grin. “Don’t kill each other while we’re gone, all right?”

  I didn’t notice until we’d cleared the park again that JinYeong was still beside me, a shadow in scent and blue silk.

  “You don’t need to come along,” I told him. “And it’s no use pretending not to hear me; I can see the bump where you’ve got the earplugs in your breast pocket.”

  He grinned but refused to answer.

  “Fine,” I said. “But it’s still not a date.”

  Abigail threw me a bit of a weird look, but didn’t stop moving, and it took me a few minutes to remember that she still probably thought JinYeong and I were dating. I could tell her differently, but that would open a whole different can of worms that I didn’t particularly want to open right now.

  I said, “We’re on a break right now.”

  She gave me another sideways look, but all she said was, “Which way do you think they’ll have gone?”

  I threw a look around and pointed toward a café that was inside one of the older buildings. “There. Reckon Athelas would hunker down there if he needed time to heal after a fight. Plus I’m pretty sure that’s the building one of the girls took a dive from the other day, so they could have found the siren there.”

  She raised a brow at me. “We didn’t hear about that one.”

  “Yeah, Zero saved her before she hit the ground. Reckon that’s not as much fun for the siren; Tuatu says that the live broadcast was stopped as soon as it was obvious that the kid was going to be okay.”

  “Typical,” she muttered.

  I couldn’t help grinning, because it was something I might have said myself.

  We nipped across the road before the city tour bus could pull in, avoiding the line-up of cars behind it, and I thought I saw the frosted white of Zero’s spiky hair somewhere out near the Pier Restaurant, alongside dark, oiled braids that belonged to Palomena.

  That reminded me of a few questions I had for Abigail before anyone more dangerous than JinYeong was there to hear them.

  “Oi,” I said to her as we threade
d through tables outside one of the waterfront restaurants. “You said you had records of me in all of your…records. Was it just the police records, or did you have other stuff?”

  “Just the police records,” she said. She must have heard the worry in my voice, even if she didn’t see the frown on my face, because she added, without looking at me, “Don’t worry: your name isn’t there. It took us a while to figure out that it was you, actually. We were only sure when you turned up. You don’t have to worry about names and stuff like that, you know. The fae can’t do anything to us with names.”

  “It’s harder,” I said gloomily, “but I reckon it’s not impossible. And my parents went to a lot of trouble to make sure that my name wasn’t out and about, so I think there must be something to it for…people like me. Plus Zero said—”

  “People like us have more things to worry about than our names getting out there,” she said.

  “Hotsori,” said JinYeong, and added for my ears alone, “Do not listen to this woman. She is wrong.”

  “You’re the one always trying to get me to tell you my name,” I pointed out.

  “I am different.”

  I opened my mouth to say, Flamin’ different, but I found that he was looking at me already, just waiting for me to say it—almost daring me to say it, with the glitter of play-hunting in his eyes—and shut my mouth again. That must have pleased him, because he did the smallest little click of his teeth in delight, eyes dancing. I looked away, feeling a bit too hot around the cheeks again.

  “It’s redacted in the police files, too,” Abigail said, dodging a couple of tourists in puffer jackets and leading the way up the stairs. “There’s almost nothing in the regular ones, actually. The ones we’ve got are the um…extra ones. One of the groups before us had someone in the police station for about ten years, and we’ve got a fair bit of extra info that the regular cops don’t have: they made their own files.”

  “Hopefully Upper Management don’t have it, either,’ I muttered. “What do they call me in the extra files?”

  “No name: just female juvenile,” she said. “Even that’s missing from the official files, though. Like I said, we were only sure it was you when we got to know you a bit better: we just knew you were The Pet—heard about you on the grapevine. We’d been looking for you for a while; figured you might like to join up with us if you were still alive.”

  “Cheerful,” I said, blinking my eyes in the darker interior of the café after bright sunshine. “Oi, reckon you could have a look a bit later for the name of someone I know?”

  “Got a full name? You’ll need at least first and last names for me to be able to say I’ve found the person you’re after for sure. Even then, we’ve had misidentifications. You trying to track a bloodline?”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” I said. “I’ve got a photo, too—if I can find it again. Haven’t been able to find it for the last week or so, but if I can lay my hand on it again, I’ll come see you.”

  “All right,” she said, only half listening. Her eyes scanned the room, and I saw her frown clear away. “They’ve been here, but they’re gone.”

  It took me a moment longer to see what she must be talking about, and when I did, it made me frown. There was a skirl of Between pulling the fronds of two small potted palms toward each other and slightly inward—though exactly where that inward was, was difficult to see.

  “Someone’s been here, anyway,” I said. For all I knew, it might not have been Ezri and Athelas. Frowning, I asked, “How did you see that?”

  I knew that behindkind weren’t the only ones who could see Between, because I could see it too—as could Sarah and the old mad bloke—but it wasn’t something that humans could typically do, in my experience.

  “Told you,” she said, grinning. “We’ve got a few useful things.”

  “Tuatu agree to anything?” I asked, shooting another quick look around the room before heading out again.

  “Not much,” said Abigail, faintly disgruntled but reluctantly admiring. “Someone seems to have taught him not to be too hasty about saying yes to things.”

  JinYeong gave a small sniff of laughter.

  I said, “Yeah, experience’ll do that to you.”

  “It was not the old man that came through here,” said JinYeong to me in untranslated Korean. “We should keep looking. This human is too energetic.”

  “Nah, you’re just old,” I told him, grinning.

  That didn’t seem to worry him, because he only grinned back, and it occurred to me that it had been a while since I had just joked with him, without a sting and without it being anything other than friendly. It was nice to know that things weren’t going to become quite as awkward with JinYeong as they’d become with Zero when Morgana first told me he liked me.

  Maybe it was just because I’d heard about the liking from the actual source, and that made it less of an unknown danger than the possibility of Zero liking me. Heck. There was a thought. What was Zero going to say when he found out that JinYeong had actually spoken to me? I didn’t think it was going to be good. For that matter, what would Athelas say? He had once or twice warned me about loving any of my three psychos, and at the time I’d thought he was warning me against loving them as family, but now I wondered if that was what he’d meant.

  I was still wondering about that when I saw Athelas himself, just ahead of us and across the road.

  “There,” I said, pointing.

  He strolled in a leisurely way along the boardwalk beneath the trees, the glimmer of an insubstantial sword sweeping from his left hand and another just vanishing from his right hand as he walked. Ezri almost skipped beside him, her boots untied and in constant danger of tripping herself up; she swung a cricket bat from one hand with a satisfied sort of glee that suggested she had heartily enjoyed the violence that had preceded her text.

  I saw a blue, trailing mark tracing from beneath Athelas’ ear to his collar and leaving a trail of white slime all the way down to his waist, glimmering on the houndstooth of his jacket.

  “Flamin’ heck,” I said, impressed, as they crossed the street to meet us. “Looks like the siren managed to get a pretty good hit in!”

  Abigail said sharply, “Ezri! Report!”

  “Not hurt, boss,” she said, her brows arching. I wasn’t sure if she was amused or maybe just reminding Abigail that she wasn’t supposed to be too worried about her subordinates—kinda the vibe that might have happened if you swapped me and Zero. “Met up with the siren, that’s all. Turns out they’re pretty persuasive if you’ve got your camera app open, even if you can’t hear. Didn’t you get the text?”

  Athelas said placidly, “We weren’t in too great of danger; the child is quite proficient with her cricket bat.”

  “Listen, grandpa: I’m not a kid, and I—”

  “I really do advise against finishing that sentence, child,” said Athelas silkily.

  Ezri stopped, swallowed a bit, then jerked a thumb toward him and said, “He’s the one that killed it; I was too busy trying to stop myself taking out my earplugs to do much until I dropped my phone and the app crashed.”

  “What do you mean, they’re more persuasive through the camera app?” I asked. I could ask Athelas later about Ezri. It wasn’t that I was jealous—or maybe I was, who knew? All I knew was that seeing them together, I had had a sudden insight into what it must have looked like to others when they saw me and Athelas.

  It’s not that I think of him as a dad or anything: you’d have to overlook a heck of a lot to think of him as a dad. But he was my weird uncle, and I wasn’t used to seeing that he could possibly be anyone else’s weird uncle—which was probably a bit hypocritical of me, because I’d been trying to push the psychos into realising that I wasn’t a special human. That any human was worth loving and protecting.

  It was just a bit jarring to realise that they actually were capable of seeing like that, and to realise that maybe a time would come when I wasn’t as important—special? Un
ique?—to them because there were other humans to fill that gap. Not just Athelas but Zero—and JinYeong.

  “Ah, this is interesting,” purred a voice in my ear, and I caught a whiff of JinYeong’s cologne.

  “Get off,” I said irritably, hunching my shoulders and inching away from him.

  “I am not touching you.”

  “You’re standing too close!”

  JinYeong’s brows winged up, and I saw a touch of amusement darken his eyes. “What is wrong?” he asked. “You became spikey again.”

  “Let’s wait until your big boy and the others get back,” said Ezri to me, striding ahead with her shoelaces flapping. “I don’t want to tell this fifty times, you know.”

  It was really hard not to stick my tongue out at her retreating back. Technically, I’m too old to be doing that anymore, and I try not to do it at anyone but JinYeong these days, but it was a struggle at that moment. Reckon Ezri knew it, too. I don’t think she could have swaggered more if she’d been JinYeong.

  Luckily for my patience, Zero and Palomena were already with the rest of the group when we got back. The group itself was none too easy to see, making me aware that someone had fiddled with a tricky bit of Between to separate them all from the human world by a whisker. That was probably a good idea: siren aside, it wasn’t the best idea to let the world at large get a good look at all of us together. There were still a few too many people out and about who shouldn’t know that we were colluding with humans.

  Heck, what was I saying? I was a human.

  Ezri was still bright and sauntery as she joined the group in the park. She grinned around generally and asked, “You lot have as much fun as we did?”

  “Fun, she calls it,” said one of the blokes on Abigail’s team.

  “Just tell us about it instead of skitein’ about how much fun you had,” another said. “You met the siren?”

  “My lord,” said Athelas easily, cutting them out to make his report directly to Zero. “The siren is rather more problematic than I’d anticipated. We may perhaps need to find another way to hunt—and the humans will certainly need more protection if we’re to continue together.”