Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine

by Gingell, W. R.

  “How are the others?” I asked, pulling away. We could probably all do with a cuppa, but I didn’t know if I had it in me to make tea and coffee.

  “Chantelle’s doing fine; once I got her to change back she started healing up all right. They’ll probably need to rest for a day or so and they’ll be fighting each other the same as usual. Is that thing dead—the bunyip?”

  “As a doornail,” I said, yawning. “Any more fun here?”

  “No, but we haven’t been able to get the table back up against the window,” Morgana said, leading the way up the hall toward the living room. “I mean, we can get it there, but we can’t keep it there.”

  I’d forgotten the amount of damage to the house in the rush to get Kevin back; we had to pick our way through debris and powder just to get to the living room. Once there, I was able to see that I wasn’t the only one surveying the mess with raised brows—JinYeong was at the window, his mouth pursed and his brows up.

  “Oh yes,” said Morgana. “And someone’s been waiting to see you.”

  Chapter Seven

  I grinned and waved at him, picking my way across the worst of the mess in the living room and completely forgetting that I must look about as messy as the room did until I was standing in front of the window and found that JinYeong was surveying me with his brows pinched together and his right forefinger tapping against the windowsill as if he wanted to be doing something else with his hands but couldn’t.

  Mwoh haesseo? was what I thought he mouthed at me. What happened?

  I shrugged a bit and pointed to the mess behind me, and the darkness of the still-broken window behind that. “Had a bit of trouble with a bunyip,” I said. “It’s all fine now, but I can’t talk for long; I have to fix up that mess.”

  JinYeong nodded, and it seemed to me that his jaw became firmer, if that was possible. I don’t think he understood me, but he didn’t stay long, and despite the fact that I was the one who had said I couldn’t talk for long, I was left standing by the window with the dissatisfied feeling that time had somehow become very short lately and the conclusion that it would be nice if it would slow down every now and then. JinYeong must be on his way to go and see someone else—though goodness knew who else he could drag over here. Hopefully he’d go after North next—at least then Tuatu might be able to get a network badge to JinYeong so I could speak with him on the phone. I didn’t like how disconnected my family was feeling lately.

  I wandered over to the kitchen again, stumbling over plaster and splinters of wood as I did so and Morgana sent me a sympathetic sort of smile that I didn’t exactly understand. I was disgruntled, not in need of sympathy.

  There wasn’t much left of the kitchen table when I stepped up into the kitchen dining area, which was a pain in the neck. I’d been hoping to try something like Zero had done with it earlier to block off the window. Failing that, I was going to have to try and get tricky with Between, and I had no idea how I was going to do that.

  Morgana came into the kitchen while I was still gazing on the mess with a kind of bemused futility and said, “You have no idea what to do, do you?”

  “Not a clue!” I agreed. “That’s all right. That seems to be my default mode.”

  “You never look like it,” she said. “You always seem like you know what you’re doing. Did you know that your house looks like its knitting itself back together over there?”

  “Heck!” I said, impressed. “Where?”

  Morgana pointed to the section of wall that formed the dining room wall on one side and the back hall on the other; a huge chunk of it had been punched right out, forming a curved, almost bite mark section of wall instead of the straight edge it should have been. That bite mark was looking just a little bit flatter on the curve than it had been just an hour or so earlier when I leaped out of the window to go after the bunyip. Around the section that seemed to be knitting itself together, I saw the wriggling of a million little filaments of Between; in the rubble that was the back hallway, something else wriggled and seemed to move closer.

  “It’s been healing itself quicker since you got back, too,” said Morgana, moving over to get a closer look. “I think your house is alive, like mine—probably more, though. Is that an heirling thing, too?”

  “Being able to control Between is an heirling thing, or so I hear,” I said, with the tickling of an idea in the back of my mind. “Houses are mostly pretty alive, in my experience; my house seems to like me, though. I suppose yours likes you, too.”

  “Yours doesn’t just like you; it protects you,” she said.

  “Suppose it does,” I said, with a sudden rush of fondness for the old place. I had long ago forgotten to question exactly why it was that it was so hard for me to leave my house for the last few years; I was now convinced that it was a combination of the connection with Between that made me able to connect with the house and the wiles of Athelas, who hadn’t wanted a live heirling running around Hobart to set off rumours that would get back to Zero’s father. I had a lot of new memories that I hadn’t wanted to delve into too deeply, and that was one of them: Athelas and his magnetic grey eyes holding me captive as he said, “It would be very unwise to leave the house…”

  Something nudged against my shoulder, prodding me out of my memories, and I found that another piece of rubble was rolling its way up the broken wall and nudging itself into place like the piece that had just pushed past my shoulder to return to its place.

  “Good job,” I said to the wall, patting it gently. “Keep going.”

  It was going on more quickly now than it had been earlier, pieces visibly shifting through and up out of the rubble to crawl back into place in the wall or ceiling. A creepy little stream of disintegrated wall piecing itself back together.

  At least that was something I wouldn’t have to do—unlike the broken window that was still breathing dangerously cool air on us as we stood in the kitchen. I could, I supposed, wait until the kitchen table repaired itself enough and then try to stick it over the hole again like Zero had, but—

  Hang on, though.

  If the house could reknit itself, maybe it could reknit the window, too.

  “Got an idea,” I said to Morgana, grinning.

  “It worries me when you say stuff like that while you’re grinning,” she said, but she followed me over to the kitchen window anyway, though she hung back a little bit when the breath of breeze became more ozone-heavy.

  I leaned against the window frame much as I’d done last time JinYeong was on the other side of the window, avoiding the worst of the glass shards, and gave it a good pat, too.

  “C’mon,” I said encouragingly to it, ignoring the waiting, hungry dark outside. “You don’t like being in pieces, and I’m pretty sure that you don’t want anything from out there back in here, either.”

  It wasn’t that I did it, exactly. It wasn’t that I talked the house into doing it, exactly, either. It was a bit of both; a weird, sixth sense that seemed to extend my senses through the house and let me pull all the pieces together while they came together of their own accord as well.

  I had the feeling that the house approved, so far as a house could approve, because if the rubble in the hall was gathering together at a good, steady stroll, the glass and splinters of the window skittered and scuttled together at a rapid, insect-like speed that had Morgana taking to the remaining kitchen stool with some haste, lifting her feet up and out of the way.

  Glass formed and crystalized around the edges of the window just before the bumping, thumping noise began on the outside of the house, as if someone were thumping their fist against the wall in a steadily-increasing height.

  “What’s coming through the window?” asked Morgana, her eyes big. “Am I going to have to—what’s coming, Pet?”

  “Dunno,” I said, resisting the urge to step back. I could help the house finish more quickly if I stayed where I was.

  But that thumping kept coming, higher and higher, as the window glass scuttled back
together, until I was caught a breath between staying where I was and ducking out of the way.

  A shadow rose in the darkness, then Athelas’ chair, worn and rather more battered than it had been a day or two ago, tumbled through the window with a sickening thud, and the window sealed itself up in a crackling of liquid glass swiftly hardening.

  Morgana, over on her stool, gave way to an explosive few moments of giggling, and I said exasperatedly to the house, “I didn’t ask you to bring back that!”

  I left the chair where it was, though. Zero could deal with it when he got back—preferably without ruining another window.

  It was far too late the next afternoon before I heard the sound I had been listening vainly for since I woke up. JinYeong had returned early in the day for no other purpose, it seemed, than to make sure I was still okay; and having discovered that I was, to teach me how to do some kind of old-fashioned dance through the window. That had only been enough to distract me while he was there, and when he left, Morgana and I fed four very subdued lycanthropes and took turns to covertly wander down the back hall and listen at the door far too often.

  I don’t think either of us wanted to call out the other, so we just kept doing the same little dance until at last we heard the sound we’d been waiting for.

  “What on earth is that?” demanded Daniel’s voice, very close to the back door.

  I took off for the back of the house with a gleeful laugh, Morgana close behind me.

  Zero and Daniel were back safe!

  I got to the door first and flung it open without checking through the laundry window first, which was probably a bad idea. Luckily for me, it really was Zero and Daniel outside, because I didn’t get a chance to say or see anything beyond the huge, leather-clad chest: Zero strode through the back door and folded me in a hug that pressed knife hilts into my cheek uncomfortably. I didn’t like to wriggle; it was too nice to be the recipient of a hug instead of the giver, for once.

  “You brought in a stray again,” was the first thing Zero said to me when he let me go.

  I followed his eyes, which had flickered toward the laundry door, and saw that Les was back and wearing a pair of very fine socks that were, I was pretty sure, JinYeong’s socks.

  “So did you,” I said, jerking my chin toward the human teenager behind him. Sarah looked shaken but very determined, a sheen of Between to her that clung like a second skin and warned me not to touch her or get too close.

  “Mine smells better,” he said, and laughed a full-throated, glad laugh that made me realise he was almost dizzy with relief.

  “S’pose you saw the scummy stuff on the side of the house,” I said, as Daniel and Morgana took Sarah down to the living room. Maybe they wanted to give us some privacy—more likely, they wanted a bit of their own. “Had some trouble while you were gone.”

  “All over the back and side of the house,” he said. “And as soon as I got back I could feel the window-seal was broken.”

  “I’m not dead,” I pointed out. I didn’t want to ruin his joyful relief by saying it, but I couldn’t not add, “In fact, I’m very not dead despite meeting your dad earlier.”

  Zero went very still, but his eyes didn’t freeze over and he didn’t stride away, either. “So my father made it into the arena,” he said.

  “You don’t sound surprised,” I observed.

  “I’m not. If I’d thought it was possible, I would have expected it.”

  “Athelas was with him,” I added.

  Zero said rather mechanically, “He’s still with my father, then.”

  “You thought he would have gone off on his own when he’s expecting payment from your dad? I don’t reckon Athelas is going anywhere without whatever he was promised for doing this.”

  “I thought—” he stopped, a deep cleft between his brows, then said through his teeth, “I had hoped that he might have left, or have been run off. It would have been a sign that perhaps—”

  “That perhaps he hadn’t done it all? Or that he’d done it for a reason? You figured if he was in trouble with your dad, it would mean that he was still with us and just working the inside?”

  “I thought—no, I hoped it was possible that he was there to get closer to my father in order to help us.”

  “Your face didn’t look like it,” I said. “Not then, not now.”

  “I would have believed it if I could,” he said, with a faint rictus of contempt digging into one cheek. I wasn’t sure if the contempt was for himself or Athelas. “It’s good to know where we stand, at least. I would very much like to know how they got in here.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “Oh, by the way, there are bunyips out there.”

  “There are what?”

  “Aussie thing,” I said. “Maybe you don’t know it—big, scaley, furry thing with three-foot claws and a tail that stabs people.”

  “It will be in my book,” he said, but there was a faint curve to his lips again. “Don’t try to condescend to me just because you met a behindkind animal before I did. I haven’t forgotten that you’re still bringing strays home, either.”

  “Technically, mine was already here,” I pointed out. “And he also helped me to get away from your dad, so we should probably say thank you.”

  I’d already said thank you to Les, of course; I’d made him a whole pot of coffee, too—which was probably a mistake, in retrospect—and ignored him dancing on the kitchen island for a good couple of hours before I had to make him come down so that I could start getting lunch ready.

  I gave him a couple of strawberries to play with later, after Zero and Sarah had sat down on the couch to debrief, hoping to distract him while I made dinner and listened in on the debriefing. His sudden descent from the kitchen bench gave Morgana enough space to edge around him safely and sit on one of the seats by the kitchen island without being hit by a flying arm or leg, so at least that was a success.

  She was inclined to be curious about Sarah, so I filled her in while I chopped veggies and started up the rice cooker; and when the mince was simmering away, I resolutely grabbed the nearest, packaged brain from the fridge and brought it out in the hope that Morgana would be too invested in the conversation to go away despite what I was doing.

  She saw what I was doing pretty quickly and wrinkled her nose. “Pet, do we have to do this tonight?” she said plaintively, giving up on her questions about Sarah more quickly than I’d feared.

  “You said you were going to protect Daniel and the others,” I reminded her.

  “I am,” she said. “Don’t worry, if you’re going to cook it, I’ll try to eat it. Will it be the same if it’s cooked sheep brain instead of raw behindkind brain, do you think?”

  “Dunno,” I said. “But I don’t know where to find a morgue while we’re trapped in here, and sheep’s brain is about all there is for now unless you want to go hunting or try some leftovers.”

  She opened her mouth, and I added, “Don’t worry, this is all yours: the others are getting mince. No brain for them.”

  Morgana giggled. “I don’t think they’d mind, so long as it was meat,” she said. “They don’t even care if it’s cooked or not: they can change into their wolf selves if the meat is raw—some of them even like that better.”

  “So what happened the other morning, anyway?” I asked. Keep chopping, I told myself. Nice and casual, and don’t tell her it’s okay not to answer, just give her the space to not answer if she wants.

  “What happened out there?” she countered, indicating the newly-fixed window. “You vanished through the window and were gone for four hours, then turned back up with Kevin and all over blood.”

  “Yeah, it could have gone better,” I said. I hadn’t done more than give her a bare-bones version of the night until I could tell Zero about it. Now that I had, I might as well tell Morgana. “Met up with Zero’s dad and Athelas while I was out there.”

  She stiffened. “He’s in here, too?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So if you see h
im, run.”

  “I won’t be running anywhere if I don’t eat again soon,” she said glumly.

  “Well—”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to eat.”

  “All right; tell me about the morning,” I said. “Before we came to get you.”

  “I heard the kids calling for help, first,” she said, her eyes slightly unfocused. “They never call for help and they’re dead, anyway. I didn’t know what could be so bad that ghosts would be calling for help. Daniel ran up the stairs outside my room but he didn’t hear me calling, and then Chelsea screamed.”

  “She was the one getting you coffee?”

  “Yeah,” said Morgana quietly. “She doesn’t usually scream, either. I fell out of bed trying to get to her, and by then four of them were already in the kitchen and Chelsea was still screaming. I think they were pulling the blood out of her body or something, because one of them tried to pull me over in the same way, then reached out and grabbed me because I don’t…I don’t really have that.”

  “Good grief,” I said. No wonder Chelsea had still looked so red around the face and eyes when I got there.

  “I remember feeling so hot and angry, and I remember biting, too—I think I bit right through his ear and then—and then—”

  “How’d it feel to walk again?” I asked her, because she was getting red and distressed around the cheeks again.

  “I must have learned to walk once,” she said vaguely, still caught up in her memories. “I don’t think I have memories of actually doing it, though: it made me feel seasick and weird, and I had a bit of trouble staying upright, but there were enough…people to grab onto. Everything was a bit of a haze then because I was so angry. I made a bit of a mess of the kitchen, so I don’t know how we’re ever going to clean that up when this is all over.”

  “Yeah, I saw the mess you made,” I said, slicing brain into delicate layers. “It was a good thing, too; reckon Chelsea and the others would have had a bit of trouble if you hadn’t done it.”