Between Homes (The City Between Book 5)

by W. R. Gingell

  I jogged most of the way there with the churning feeling in my stomach that I had done a Very Bad Thing. I hadn’t meant Daniel to set himself up as bait when I asked him to find out what he could about what Upper Management were up to these days.

  But then, I thought as I jigged up and down behind cover of one of the flaps of hessian that were printed with Do not enter in bright yellow, wasn’t it because I had known he could do something like that, that I had asked him to do it? I already knew it was a dangerous job, and I’d encouraged him to do it in that knowledge.

  While I was still uneasily thinking about that, I felt a flurry of breeze, or maybe a flurry of Between, and Daniel said from behind me, “That was close!”

  I turned, cold with relief, and said, “What the heck were you doing?”

  He grinned at me. “Don’t get all indignant with me, Pet! I know the kind of stunts you got up to with the Troika! I saw a chance, so I took it. Keep an eye out to Davy Street side: they’re still scanning it to see if they can catch me again.”

  “Reckon they’ll go back to base when they can’t find you?”

  “It’s a good chance,” he said. “And if they don’t go to home base, I’ll bet they go somewhere useful, anyway. There! There they are!”

  “Get back!” I hissed. It wouldn’t be much good Daniel escaping once just to be seen again.

  “Do that thing where you’re harder to notice,” he said.

  “What thing?” I demanded, bewildered. I’d had a bit of success with softening my footsteps with whatever scraps of Between were lying around to quiet the noise, but it was a far cry from making myself hard to be seen.

  “You know, when you put up your hood and just kinda fade into the background.”

  “Dunno what you’re talking about,” I said, but I put my hoodie up anyway. Through the patchy cover of the Do not enter fabric, the Sandman and someone a bit too lumpy to be human scanned the street up and down, then spoke together as if trying to decide what to do next.

  “Yep, that’s it,” said Daniel, giving me the thumbs up. “That’s the thing.”

  I would have asked him what he meant by that, but the Sandman and his lumpy friend started back along Davy Street in the direction of the main shopping district at that exact moment, and I knew my cue. I hung back by about a block but no more, to account for the swell in the ground that came with Hobart’s hilly streets, my hood up and my hands in my pockets. It was noon, and the streets were just busy enough to be a decent camouflage, but I stayed at my one-block distance anyway.

  Daniel wasn’t the only one who had reason to be worried about the Sandman: it knew my face, though I wasn’t sure about whether or not it knew who I really was. There was no way I wanted it catching sight of me.

  I followed the Sandman all the way up the hill and back down into the shopping district. Just before we got to the opposing shop fronts delineating the Cat and Fiddle Arcade from Centrepoint, the lumpy bloke took a hike toward the cinema and left the Sandman to wend his silent, creepy way into one of the stores that had only recently opened after the fire that destroyed the whole block they were on.

  It was one of those expensive clothing stores with a French or Italian name, a lot more high-class than I was used to shopping at, and with more shelf space than clothing, which made me nervous.

  I didn’t dare to hang around outside because there was nowhere to hide in the arcade that was on one side of the shop, and out the front there was only a hipster coffee place where I would have been boxed in with nowhere to run if the Sandman saw me hiding behind one of the plants.

  Lucky for me, there was a huge clothing rack in the middle of the store, which meant I could nip in through the arcade while the Sandman was at the counter with one of the girls and keep well out of sight but in hearing.

  I don’t know what was said before I got in there, but when I prowled along my side of the rack, I heard the Sandman say in its muffled voice, “You’re lacking the size I require.”

  Well, it sure as heck wasn’t talking about the clothing: the Sandman was dressed, as I’d always seen it, in a grey, slimline suit of the sort that JinYeong would have worn if he wasn’t usually inclined to go for something more dramatic in the way of colour. This shop was far more flamboyant about its suits: they were flowered, polka-dotted, and striped. If I’d had a spare six hundred hanging around, I probably would have bought one of them just to see if JinYeong would wear it.

  I didn’t, and the Sandman mustn’t have either. The girl passed it a card that looked suspiciously like one of those cards you take into the changing rooms with you, and it walked out the front of the store with the card and not so much as a hundred dollar tie to take with it.

  I sauntered along toward the front of the store, pretending to check out a gorgeous blue-lined, suede jacket as I watched the Sandman continue down the street toward the shoe-store and vanish inside. I left my position and headed down just in time to see it through the shoe-decorated window, descending the walled staircase into the employees-only area. I sauntered onward and crossed the road at the corner, heading for the pizza place on the other corner. From there, I could keep an eye on both entrances to the shoe shop, which also opened out into a sister store for kids’ shoes around the corner from the main entrance. I wanted to be able to see if the sandman came out that way.

  I would have liked to have sat in the pizza place at their counter that looked out on the street, but no matter what Daniel said about me being unnoticeable, I figured that would be stretching it a bit. Instead, I sat on the green-painted wrought-iron bench, one arm hanging over the back of the seat to rest my chin on as I watched through the palings of the likewise green-painted wrought-iron safety fence.

  By my phone, I waited for at least an hour. Someone must have sat down next to me at some stage, because I smelled the distinct scent of someone who definitely hadn’t had a bath in far too long. I huddled down into my hoodie a bit more, feeling tendrils of Between from the bench curling around me. Maybe it made me harder to see against the bench, or maybe it just made people uneasy enough not to sit down there, because the scent wandered away after a bit, and no one tried to sit down there again.

  Still, it spooked me, and after another half hour passed I left my spot and wandered back toward the clothing store. Maybe I could ask a few sneaky questions without tipping off anyone—pretend to be interested in buying some of their frighteningly overpriced clothing. Maybe I could afford a sock or something.

  I mean, probably not, but it was worth a try.

  There was no one behind the counter when I went back in, and I sauntered around the place for a few minutes, trying to look like I was an interested potential customer, but although I heard the sound of voices, I didn’t see a single sales girl.

  “What the heck?” I complained, beneath my breath. It was going to be a lot harder to look disinterested and casual if I had to seek out a salesgirl instead of having one come to me. I could have sworn I’d seen about four girls wandering around when I was here earlier. I followed the vague babble of conversation that bubbled up from somewhere over the top of one of the racks that was sequestered away in a private little corner. At the same time, I sensed just a pinch of Between from the same direction.

  Not enough for something to be coming through from Behind. Not enough for it to be a regular patch of it. Just enough so that it could have been a bit lingering from having walked out of Between and into the human world recently.

  That wasn’t all that was lingering, either. The scent of a familiar cologne tickled my nostrils.

  Ah heck. That’s where the sales girls had gone.

  I headed around the racks of clothing, dodging through a flurry of two-hundred-dollar shirts and fifty dollar socks, and sure enough, there the sales girls were: grouped around a smug, suited figure.

  “Did you need to take all of them?” I protested.

  “I took nothing,” said JinYeong, even more irritatingly smug. “They came to me of their own volitio
n. I am irresistible.”

  “Says you,” I muttered.

  JinYeong said something soft and caressing in Korean to the shop girls, who scattered, then sauntered over to me.

  I glared at him. “Oi—were you following me?”

  “Of course,” he said, shrugging. “Why else would I be here?”

  “Dunno, looks like your style in here. Figured you could be shopping.”

  JinYeong sent a faintly approving look around the shop and said graciously, “The style is good.”

  “If you say so,” I said.

  “Not for you,” he said. Again, his eyes roamed the store, and stopped on the blue-lined suede jacket I’d used for cover earlier. “Except that. We will buy that.”

  He started across the shopfloor before I was prepared, and I had to break into a trot to catch up with him.

  “Hang on, we’ll what? I’m not buying anything!”

  “The Sandman said something to that woman at the counter,” JinYeong said, swiftly flicking through the hanging jackets. “This one is your size. This one, too. You should not be sniffing at a Sandman.”

  “Wasn’t sniffing at it, I was following it,” I told him. I took a quick look at the price tag on the brown, tooled leather pants he’d grabbed as well as the jacket, and felt myself go pale. “Put them back!” I whispered. “They’re two hundred and fifty bucks each! If you scratch ’em, we’re dead!”

  “You wished for my help,” said JinYeong, turning decisively. “I shall help.”

  “This is not helping!” I hissed after him as he carried away the clothes back into the store.

  JinYeong stopped briefly at a rack of soft t-shirts. “If you are going to sniff at a Sandman—”

  “I’m not sniffing at anything!”

  “—you need more teeth,” he finished. He moved on to a display of deep yellow, cowl-necked shirts that were silky soft in texture and came with a price tag that was bigger than the amount of material that had gone into their making. “Ah. This, too. Caja!”

  “Please stop picking up clothes I can’t afford to breathe on!” I wailed softly, but it was too late.

  JinYeong was already sauntering toward the checkout desk. I caught up with him just in time to hear him address the counter girl in Korean that was untouched by Between and mostly beyond my understanding.

  He caught my eyes and tilted his head toward the sales girl.

  “Oh, right,” I said, suddenly understanding. What a relief! He was just using the stuff to give us a reason to go to the desk. “You don’t have the size I need,” I told the girl.

  “Oh!” she said, surprise in her voice. “But they look the right size! Are you an odd number size? We only go by the standard sizing here.”

  Again, I met JinYeong’s eyes. What had the Sandman’s exact words been? “You’re lacking the size I require,” I said, this time sure that I’d gotten it right.

  “I can—I can look out the back for you if you know what size you want,” said the girl. She looked more confused than surprised, now.

  “Ah, dwaesseo!” JinYeong said impatiently, and directed a rapid spate of Korean at her that I couldn’t follow.

  The girl smiled dreamily and said, “Thank you, sir!” and began to fold and pack the clothes into delicate paper, then a bag.

  “Hang on!” I protested. “You can’t just take the stuff!”

  “Mothae?”

  “No! It’s stealing!”

  JinYeong sighed, then reached into his inner pocket and held up a plastic card. Painstakingly understandable, he said, “Then I will pay. As if I were a peasant.”

  “You are a flamin’ peasant,” I said. “As far as Behindkind go, you’re pretty much lowest of the low.”

  “Not as low as you, Petteu,” he said, smiling maliciously at me. He passed the counter girl his card, and she took it with a starry sort of look.

  “I’ll pay you back,” I told him, ignoring the insult. I didn’t like owing him stuff. It might not be as dangerous as owing stuff to Athelas, but I was pretty sure it was still dangerous. “Make sure you keep a record of what I owe you. When I get paid, I’ll give you the money back.”

  His eyes narrowed on me suddenly. “You, get paid? For what?”

  “Got a client,” I said.

  “Who is your client?”

  It wasn’t until I realised how dark and liquid his eyes had become that I realised what he was trying to do.

  “How many times do I have to tell you that your mojo doesn’t work on me?”

  JinYeong made an impatient hissing sound and muttered something that might have been, “Ah, I forgot!”

  “Can I get you anything else today?” asked the counter girl, passing the bag to him. Her eyes were just a little bit clouded due to his proximity (or maybe just the strength of his cologne), so I said, “Thanks. That’s all we needed,” and towed JinYeong away by one of the front flaps of his suitcoat.

  “Stop vamping people!” I hissed at him on the way out. “What if they’re watching out for interference? They’ll catch us before we know they’re onto us!”

  “Shilloh,” he said, tapping his teeth together very lightly. “That one is a human. Caja. We will drink coffee here.”

  “What?” I said blankly, surprised enough that I didn’t let go of his jacket and was towed along into the hipster coffee shop. “Why are we having coffee?”

  “What, will you stop your investigation here?” He sat down at the table opposite me, and called out an order in swiftly flowing Korean that I couldn’t understand.

  Maybe he’d been here before—but more likely the bloke behind the counter was just as susceptible as the girls in the store to JinYeong’s vampiric charm—because I saw the bloke start on our order straight away.

  “No,” I said, hoping JinYeong hadn’t ordered me something weird with soy. “But it didn’t work, so I need to think about what to do next. Maybe go up to the other place to see what they say.”

  “They will not say anything there,” said JinYeong. “Because we have failed here. Here, are humans. There, I think are fae.”

  “Flamin’ fantastic,” I said gloomily. “So we gotta make sure we get it right here.”

  The barista brought over a tray, momentarily cutting into the conversation, and left us with coffee and a few sugar-dusted friands that looked too pretty to eat.

  I picked up one anyway, and said after the barista had gone, “If it’s not about the exact words the sandman used, what is it about?”

  JinYeong’s eyes flicked back toward the store. “Akka, mwoh haesseo?”

  “The sandman wasn’t doing anything. It just stood there and said they didn’t have its size. I don’t think it even had something to take to the counter. Oi.”

  “Mm,” he said, as if he knew what I was going to say. Then, surprising me by being quite right about that, he added, “We will check the CCTV next.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Remember how I told you to stop vamping people?”

  JinYeong smiled dreamily. “I will charm the human.”

  Chapter Five

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “Just get us into their security room and try not to talk the assistant into going out for a bite.”

  “I think you snickered at me,” he said, with a touch of sulkiness.

  “If you’ve only just noticed that, you’re gunna have to work harder on your investigative instincts,” I told him.

  “You should appreciate me, Petteu,” said JinYeong, fastidiously splitting a friand to avoid powdered sugar on his suit.

  “How come you can’t just vamp the information out of her, anyway?” I asked him idly. “Without us having to go for the cameras, I mean? Usually you ask ’em stuff and they tell you. You losing your touch or something?”

  JinYeong leaned across the table, his eyes slit and glittering. “I have lost nothing, Petteu. Shall I demonstrate?”

  “Your mojo doesn’t work on—”

  “I do not need to use my talents to m
ake people do what I wish them to do,” he told me. “Shall I charm you?”

  “Only if you want me to puke on your shoes,” I said. “Can you stop dipping your cuffs in the cake? I’m trying to eat here.”

  He sat back with a snarl, muttering in Korean. He didn’t limn it with Between to make it possible for me to understand, and if I’d had the energy, I would have tried to understand it just to annoy him. Since I didn’t, I just sat back and ate cake.

  At length, he stopped sulking and said with painstaking plainness, “If they are clever, they know they can be found. So they will program—”

  “They’ll do what?”

  “Input directions in their minds,” said JinYeong. “If a Behindkind attempts to withdraw information—”

  Withdraw? What the heck?

  “Do not scowl at me,” he said, folding his arms. “I am helping. If there is an unauthorised withdrawal—”

  Okay, maybe it was something in the translation.

  JinYeong stopped again.

  “What? I wasn’t glaring this time!”

  “You made a face at me.”

  “Aren’t you a bit touchy today?”

  “My feelings are hurt.”

  “Oh. Why? And if you say it’s because I glared at you, I’m gunna feed your tie through the coffee machine.”

  “I am helping without payment,” he said. “I am not supposed to do that. And you will only make faces at me.”

  “Oh,” I said again. “Okay, sorry then, I s’pose.”

  JinYeong turned his head to the side and said slowly, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether or not to be waiting for the other shoe to drop, “Cheongmal?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Here, you can have the last cake.”

  “I paid for the cakes,” he said, but he took the last one anyway. “Drink coffee, Petteu. We will go back.”

  “Okay,” I said, grabbing my coffee in one hand and the bag of clothes in the other. “But we’re bringing this stuff along with us so we can return it.”