Between Jobs

by W. R. Gingell

  “Not as yet, I think, Pet,” said Athelas. “We may have further questions.”

  “It’s not likely,” Zero said dampeningly. “If it doesn’t have enough knowledge to tell us why it can see something Between, it certainly doesn’t have enough knowledge to answer any other questions we might have.”

  “She might perhaps know more than we think,” Athelas replied, as I pushed JinYeong’s feet onto his own cushion and curled up on mine.

  JinYeong lifted his head to look quizzically at me, but put his head back down without troubling me and said something that burbled against my half-asleep ears.

  I didn’t bother trying to interrupt again. They were still talking when I fell asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  I woke late, gasping, from a dream that had teeth and claws and a lust for blood.

  Funny, that. I woke up to the same thing; JinYeong opposite me on the sofa, his eyes dark and liquid again.

  “Can’t someone get the vampire something to eat?” I muttered, but I don’t think any of them heard me.

  Maybe they did. Maybe they were ignoring me; they went on talking as if I hadn’t spoken.

  I wondered how long they’d been talking like this; they weren’t taking trouble to lower their voices although I’d been sleeping. It looked as though they were in the last stages of planning something; they were all perfectly relaxed, but still fully dressed. Had they been to bed at all? Probably not; it looked like Zero was still in the same clothes from last night, and even Athelas had only changed his cardigan for a houndstooth jacket.

  I sat up and yawned, then pedalled my legs until I could hoist myself up, and trotted up to the kitchen to make tea. A quick look at the kitchen clock said it was already six thirty, so I wouldn’t have time to make or eat breakfast. My psychos would have to do without.

  I threw a look at them as I passed the cased doorway between rooms, wondering what they had planned for the day. They probably wouldn’t tell me, so I didn’t ask. I dashed around the kitchen making tea and coffee instead, feeling regretful about life in general and today in particular. It would be interesting to see exactly how bad the boss was going to be when I got to work, after his bath of devilled sausages.

  Yeah. Interesting.

  I put a pot of tea out, and one of coffee, then trudged down the hall to get my backpack.

  Zero’s voice stopped me, suddenly and impossibly close behind me. “Where are you going?”

  “To work,” I said, when I’d recovered from my miniature heart attack. I puffed out a breath and turned around properly. “I start at seven every morning.”

  “No,” he said.

  “What? But if I don’t go, he’ll—”

  “You can’t go to work,” he said. “Not anymore; not while we’re here. For now you’re our pet.”

  JinYeong said something from far too close behind me, making me jump, and smirked as he fetched the milk from the fridge.

  “It appears,” said Athelas, from the other room, with a faint undercurrent of amusement to his voice, “that they don’t want you to slip up and mention anything while you’re at work. I feel that it should be said I advocated for trusting you.”

  I looked up at Zero. “You mean you don’t want me talking to anyone or calling the police.”

  “Yes,” said Zero.

  “What about money?”

  “What about it?”

  “I have to earn money if I want to eat.”

  Was Zero’s face as emotionless as usual, or was that the blankness of confusion? Whichever one it was, he didn’t answer.

  “I don’t think you’ve quite understood your function as pet,” said Athelas’ voice, carryingly. They had pretty good hearing, these fae. That settled it; they had been ignoring me before. “You’re fed, watered, and looked after. There’s no need for you to earn money. All you need to do is make this place liveable for us and you’ll be looked after.”

  “What about my house?”

  “It’s not your house,” Zero said. “It’s mine.”

  “It’s not!” I retorted. “It’s my house! It’s always been my house! And if I can’t earn money, I can’t save up to buy it when I’m old enough!”

  “I’ve already bought it.”

  “You—you—” I stared at him, my eyes prickling with tears of rage. “You can’t! You weren’t supposed to—I was supposed to be able to buy it!”

  Those blue eyes gazed at me curiously. “We only need it until we finish our investigation here. You can have it after that.”

  I caught my breath on a small, angry sob, and saw Athelas smiling into his hand. “Are you blokes having a joke at me?”

  Zero blinked. “No. I’ll sign it over to you when we finish our investigation. I don’t need another house. It was simply convenient.”

  “You’ll—you’ll just sign it over to me?” I was having trouble breathing now.

  “When we finish our investigation. But only if you don’t work anywhere else.”

  “Sorta like payment for being your pet?”

  “No,” Zero said. “I don’t pay pets. Think of it as food and a roof over your head.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes. I’ll do it. No more work. Caput. You promise?”

  Zero gave the slightest of nods. “I swear it. On that day I finish my investigation, I’ll sign over the house to you in perpetuity. Safe from Behindkind and humans, both.”

  He looked at me expectantly, and I said, hesitantly, “I won’t…work, yeah? I won’t open my mouth too much around people, either, and I’ll make you the best flamin’ food you’ve had”

  That must have been what he wanted, because he nodded once more, and took his coffee back into the living room with a full packet of biscuits. Around his leather shoulder I saw Athelas, still smiling, but this time I didn’t care.

  I hugged my backpack to my chest, dizzy with hope and delight. I was going to have my house.

  I was gunna have my house!

  Athelas called out, “How would you like to take an outing again today, Pet?”

  “So long as I’m on the leash,” I called back. I probably shouldn’t be cheeky with them, but sometimes it’s really hard to resist, and I was feeling fine and prancy all of a sudden. My house. If I helped them with this thing, I’d own my house at the end of it. “Wouldn’t wanna get lost.”

  “Stay behind me,” Zero said, sipping coffee very loudly. “You’ll be safe.”

  I put my backpack back on the hallstand and skipped down into the living room with the rest of the tea and coffee on a tray. “’S’it matter if I wear the same clothes?” I asked them.

  “I don’t see why not,” Athelas said. “If you’ve no concern about personal cleanliness, I’m sure there’s nothing else to consider.”

  I wanted to point out that he’d only changed his socks and cardigan since last night, but I’d already been sarcastic once this morning, and I didn’t want to chance it.

  Instead, I said, “Don’t want the rest of my stuff to get mucky if it doesn’t have to. These are my work clothes, so they might as well get grubby.”

  “Do you not have enough clothes, Pet?” asked Athelas.

  “What?” Surprised, I stared at him. “I mean, I don’t have that many, but I’ve got enough if I don’t go ruining ’em.”

  “Very well,” said Athelas, and that seemed to be that.

  “Get breakfast in half an hour, Pet,” Zero said. “Something light. We might have to run.”

  “Run, or fight?” I asked them, but neither Zero nor Athelas answered me, and JinYeong only gave a derisive half-smile in the direction of the ceiling.

  Probably both, then, I decided, and went away to make breakfast.

  “I’m not entirely certain it was the best idea to dismantle that glamour,” said Athelas, some time later.

  He hadn’t said so earlier, but his lips had pressed together when Zero said he was going to do it. I didn’t really know what they were talking about, because I couldn’t see what they were d
oing, but the whole place across the road had felt a bit friendlier when Zero was done with what he was doing.

  I wasn’t sure if Athelas was afraid that more people would wander into the house now that it wasn’t so off-putting, or if he was worried it would warn off the people we were going to see, like some sort of long-distance burglar alarm.

  Now, I asked, “Can they tell if you undo their spell?”

  “Glamour,” Zero corrected me. “It’s not exactly a spell; it’s a clever use of Between. It changes the way people see things.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Can they tell if you undo their glamour?”

  “Exactly my point,” Athelas said. “I really don’t see that we should give them more warning than necessary.”

  “They already know we’re aware of the glamour,” said Zero, without pausing his stride. I was already panting. “I’d like it best if they think we’re here about a dead human—or fae—not the sword.”

  “I see,” said Athelas. He didn’t look satisfied, but it looked as though he understood. “Pet, do try not to flick moss on my shoes.”

  “Sorry,” I Mumbled, neglecting to pay attention to where I was going and stumbling over a rock. I looked up and said in surprise, “Oi!”

  The courtyard was already in front of us, only a few metres away. The day JinYeong led us there, following a trace of human blood, it had taken at least twenty minutes. “How’d we get here so quickly?”

  “There are longer ways into Between, and there are shorter ways,” Athelas said. “Those unused to Between tend to make heavier work of it. We are very well used to it.”

  “Don’t let go of that strap, Pet,” Zero said to me. “Long or short, if you get caught Behind, we won’t be back for you.”

  “Got it,” I said, renewing my hold on the single piece of leather that stood between me and certain—actually, certain what? “What happens if I get stuck here, anyway?”

  “I suppose that depends upon who finds you, or what you wander into,” Athelas said. He didn’t sound particularly concerned; his voice was as lightly amused as usual.

  I wondered if it really did amuse him to think of me wandering Between until I was attacked by a group of goblins or stumbled Behind to be snatched up by the first Behindkind that found me. Yeah, it probably did. It was easy to forget that the outwardly gentle and soft Athelas was just as icily unknowable as Zero on the inside.

  “Stop being nice to me,” I told him, as my foot found the relative safety of the courtyard flagstones. “It’s confusing.”

  His eyes glowed with laughter, but I had no way of knowing how kindly it was toward me. “Shall I? Will you continue to give me tea if I do?”

  “S’pose so,” I said. “It doesn’t take much longer than just making coffee, anyway.”

  He gave me information, at least. It wasn’t like I was going to get anything sensible out of JinYeong if I asked questions, and Zero only answered the questions he wanted to answer.

  “There appears to be no one home,” Athelas said, looking around the courtyard. He was still smiling, but his eyes were sharp and incisive now.

  Zero shook me free and said, “Go find the sword, Pet. JinYeong, with me. Athelas—”

  “I’ll watch the tunnel,” Athelas said, his voice amused. “It’s not been so long since we worked together, after all! I’ll keep an eye on the pet.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and wandered over toward the bit of the step where I’d seen that yellow umbrella last night.

  Zero and JinYeong strode past me and onto the wooden platform, their steps long and fluid. They looked like…I dunno; like they were ready to fight? I wasn’t sure what they were going to fight—the courtyard was empty, and there wasn’t a sound from the beautiful structure in front of me—but at least they were ready?

  I trailed along the step, peering into the dark green shadows around the glassy doors. The glass was really mirror-like today. I thought I remembered being able to see right into the room, but today, all it showed was a faint reflection of me and Athelas wandering languidly along the edge of the flagstones in the background.

  “Weird,” I said, scowling at it.

  I kept walking, and saw a warmth of tattered yellow to my left.

  “Gotcha!” I said happily to the umbrella. “Thought you could hide from me? Well, you can’t!”

  I turned around to tell Athelas I’d found the umbrella, or sword, or whatever it was, but he passed me at a quick, smooth lope, clearing the step to the platform without touching it.

  “A moment, Pet,” he said mildly. He moved soundlessly, gently, out of sight of the long glass windows, and glanced carefully through the closest of them.

  I looked back at the umbrella. Should I grab it? Was Athelas telling me he would be back soon, or telling me to wait before I picked it up?

  “Dear me,” he said. “An ambush!”

  “What?” I asked blankly, turning back to an empty wooden platform.

  Hang on, where was Athelas? He’d just spoken to me!

  “Ah heck!” I said. What was there in this place that could ambush people like Zero and JinYeong so silently, or make someone like Athelas disappear?

  I should go home.

  If I could go home.

  Only there was a sword here, even if it looked like an umbrella, and Zero didn’t have his sword today, just his knives. Maybe if I could get the sword to him—

  “I’m mad,” I said. “Flamin’ mad.”

  I reached for the umbrella, bright and yellow in the green shadows, and said to it, “It’d be really helpful if you were a sword, ’cos I don’t have much use for an umbrella in here.”

  Maybe it was plastic I touched first, but when my fingers slid all the way around the handle I could feel the hardness of folded leather again.

  “Thanks,” I said, and pulled the sword right out of the shadows until it gleamed, all silvery moonlight, in the beautiful courtyard around me.

  Flaming heck, it was heavy!

  I gave a bit of a grunt and let the point down more carelessly than I’d meant to. It made a little metallic sound that shouldn’t have sounded as loud as it did in the soft shadows of the courtyard, and left a mark in the flagstone.

  I said, “Whoops!” and covered it up with a piece of moss. No one needed to know I’d been the one who did it.

  There was no way I was going to be able to carry this thing with its point foremost, let alone carry it into a fight.

  I looked down at the point of the sword, and up again at the silent, empty windows that should have showed the inside of the room but only mirrored my own face and the courtyard back at me.

  Oh well. I’d have to settle for looking menacing.

  And if that didn’t work, there was always my old fall-back of stark raving troppo.

  I hefted the point of the sword again, my arms shaking a bit, and let the flat of it settle against my shoulder with considerably more attention to where the point was than I had shown earlier. It didn’t take a chunk out of my shoulder, and I was satisfied with that.

  If my menacing look didn’t work, and the stark raving troppo went wrong, at least I could get the sword to Zero. He’d been pretty keen to have it, and I knew he could use it. He had to stay alive to sign over the house to me.

  I put my foot on the long step, wary and light. Athelas had said ambush, I was certain. In this place where things weren’t what they pretended to be, probably words could be things they didn’t sound like, too, but I was still pretty sure that’s what he’d said.

  Funny, though.

  I lifted the other foot and set it on the wooden platform, all my weight resting on the lower foot that was planted firmly on the marble step.

  I should have been able to hear it if it was an actual ambush. Even if I couldn’t see it.

  I pushed up on my back foot, the balance of weight switching to my front foot; and like a switch, the sound came on.

  Screaming. Howling.

  An unearthly wail that started as a scream
and carved the air with its serrated edge until it died in a sickening bubbling.

  “Your side, Athelas!” roared Zero’s voice, as my eyes tried to make sense of what I was seeing. “JinYeong, the ghouls!”

  Ah heck. I wished I hadn’t stepped up.

  If the windowed doors had been mirror-like one footstep earlier, here they were horribly clear.

  A melee of blood and faces and arms—so many arms—cut through the pale silk and wood interior. Something screamed again, in a continuous, rage-filled screech that cut through all the other sounds, but it was a sound of hunger and not of pain. A low snarl threaded around and under it, and I recognised JinYeong’s voice with a feeling of something that could have been relief.

  He was alive. If he was alive, Zero must be alive; and if Zero was alive, maybe we would all get out of this alive.

  Why the flaming heck had I stepped up into this madness? Why was I still rising from the lower step to the wooden platform, with crimson in my sight and the sound of savage hunger in my ears?

  I almost dropped back down without finishing the step, but the sword weighed heavily on my shoulder, pitching me forward, and there was a lack of substance beneath my back foot where there should have been a marble step. I regained my balance with the hollow thud of foot against wooden platform sounding in my ears.

  In my peripheral I could see that there was no courtyard behind me, so I didn’t even try to look back. If I had been, by stages, in the house and then between the house and some other place, here I was certainly in the Other Place. Was this Behind?

  Wherever it was, there was no way back Between for me.

  “Ah heck,” I said, and went for the glass doors.

  I opened those doors to a cacophony of battle that reeled and shrieked pandemonium all the way to the walls and ceiling. Four-armed men fought in a whirlwind of arms and knives, dividing a bloody JinYeong from Zero, and I could only see the tattered edges of Athelas’ hound’s-tooth jacket.

  Why was there always a battle going on when they left the house together?