Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine

by Gingell, W. R.

  “It’s iron,” Zero said. “As soon as the door closed, it would have been separated from the arena. If it were outside the house I suppose it would be back in the human world by now: there’s no more hope of getting into that room than there is of us getting out of the arena before all the terms are met.”

  Sarah gave a very small sniff that I realised was her version of a sob; quiet, private and self-contained, and I put my arm around her shoulders without really thinking about it. She went stiff for a brief moment and then her head turned into my shoulder.

  And then, over that head of golden hair, on the wall beside that iron door that I couldn’t touch here in the arena, I saw two palm prints glowing like a beacon on the wall where the fern had covered just a minute before.

  I grinned, fierce and sharp. The Palmers must have stood there for a long time with their hands pressed against the wall to leave enough of a mark; they knew that much about magic, at least.

  “They weren’t fooled,” I said to Sarah. “They left you a note: look.”

  Sarah stared at the softly luminescent message for a few moments before her face crumpled again, whether in relief or disappointment, I wasn’t sure.

  “Reckon they knew it wasn’t you,” I said. “Reckon they were trying to get it away from you so you’d be safe: they would have thought that North would be there to keep you safe. That’s why they went into the saferoom with whatever it was that was wearing your face this time.”

  “If they did so, they should return to the human world when the arena realises that this house’s heirling has abandoned it for another house,” Zero said. He sounded relieved. “There’s nothing more we can do here. At the very least, they’ll return to the human world when the house does.”

  “What about whatever went in there with them?” I asked.

  “If it’s fae, it’s dead,” he said. “If another sort of behindkind, it will be at least severely weakened. None of our world care for the complete suffocation of iron.”

  “Looks like North will be able to take care of them after all,” I said. “Have they got food in there, Sarah?”

  “Canned and vacuum-sealed, and bottles of water,” she said.

  “I mean, it’s not like it’s a successful rescue attempt,” I said. “But only because they rescued themselves. I like this kind of rescue attempt.”

  “I wish I could tell them someone’s coming for them,” Sarah said, her brow furrowing. It was sometimes hard to remember that she was only twelve, but today wasn’t one of those times. “They must be so scared!”

  “Reckon they’ll be happy enough to know that you’re safe,” I said.

  And Zero, perhaps emptied of all of the comforting things he was able to say in one day, said only, “If there’s nothing to be done here, we should leave.”

  I would have preferred not to go back into the mimic’s house again, but it was still our only way home through the labyrinth. At least this time we knew how to get through it.

  It was still chilling to walk back into the curving whiteness despite that, and the fact that the entrance hall was still as big as it had been when we first entered it worried me.

  “The house should have shrunk, shouldn’t it?” I asked. “Since we killed the mimic, I mean?”

  “There was originally a lot of Between to it,” Zero said. “There still is: it may take some time.”

  “Okay, that’s understandable,” I said. “But then why is my kitchen island right there?”

  Zero stared in the direction of my pointing finger, and Sarah said in an awed voice, “It really is your kitchen island!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And I want to know why. My clock was in here before, too, but I thought they just had a similar one, so I didn’t pay too much attention.”

  “The stairs are yours, too,” Sarah pointed out. “They’re not in the right place, but—”

  “They are if you untwist the curl of the room,” said Zero. “Pet, are you doing this?”

  “Beggared if I know,” I said simply. Something like that had happened once before when I’d gone to another semi-sentient house; my house had followed me there and very nearly taken over the place. I hadn’t been sure whether it had been protecting me or just trying to follow me; I still wasn’t sure.

  “You’re a good house,” I said to the countertop, patting it fondly. “You fix yourself up when I ask you to, and whenever I run into trouble in another house, you try and come to get me out.”

  “Pet,” said Zero, his voice almost flat with shock. “Keep talking.”

  “Saw that, did you?” I asked, unable to stop the grin from spreading over my face, much like the floor beneath us was spreading with kitchen tiles that definitely didn’t match the marble of the mimic’s floors. “You’re a very good house that knows where to find me when I get stuck in another house, so we might as well see how far we can go and take over this joint!”

  There was a surge of kitchen tile that ran across the floor and flowed down into a couple of steps and carpet; chairs grew from the floor and walls sprouted upward around us, melding with the sweep of the room. The staircase unwound itself, grew a bannister, and became darker and straighter. I could feel the hum of it now: the strength and elasticity of my house glomming onto this one and gumming up the idea of space and volume in the trial arena to swallow space as well as the house.

  I reached out to that hum—reached out to it with the whole of myself and pulled.

  I’m not sure what moved: us, or the house. Maybe neither did move. Something definitely moved, though, and I was inclined to think it was the trial arena itself. It wasn’t too easy to think right then, though; whatever I’d done to help the house, it had left me in a fog of tiredness as strong as it was sudden.

  Morgana’s voice said, “Pet! You’re back!” and there were suddenly other people in the room again.

  “Yeah,” I said vaguely, and sat down wearily with my back against the dining room wall while Zero and Sarah stared around the room with as much astonishment as the lycanthropes were looking at us. “Found a shortcut. Reckon life’s gunna get a bit easier from here on in.”

  “I think the arena just got smaller,” said Sarah, her voice barely a whisper.

  I leaned my head against the wall, too light-headed to hold it up myself. “Yeah? Well, that’ll be a bonus if it has. Someone wanna go and check? ’Cos I don’t think I can get up right now.”

  Someone did go and check—someone even went and got me a coffee—but by that time I wasn’t awake enough to understand anything but coffee, so I drank it and went to sleep.

  I was awakened from that sleep abruptly once more when someone asked crankily, “Where’s that flamin’ vampire?”

  “He hasn’t been here for the last two mornings,” said Morgana’s voice. “Is that really the first thing you want to know after you’ve appeared out of thin air, made the trial arena halve in size, and skulled two cups of coffee before passing out?”

  “Any coffee?” I asked, and this time I recognised my own voice.

  “Give her coffee,” said Zero’s voice. “She deserves it.”

  “Too flamin’ right,” I muttered, struggling to open my gummy eyes.

  “I know she does,” Morgana’s voice said coldly and with dignity. “I already made some. If you’re not concerned by the fact that she’s asking for the vampire first when she wakes up, I—”

  “I tell you that Zero’s my uncle?” I asked her, finally blinking enough to be able to see more than a gritty slit of the room—just in time to grin maliciously at Morgana’s open-mouthed expression. “No? It was news to me, too. Found out just t’other day.”

  “We’ll have a discussion about the vampire when life becomes more assured,” said Zero, his voice glacial.

  Morgana gazed from Zero to me and back again, then did it once more, her mouth still open. “Wait, you’re her uncle and you’re not okay with her dating the vampire? Why? That’s confusing to people!”

  “Vampires are a high-ris
k love interest,” Zero said. “And there are no guarantees about life expectancy in other ways.”

  “I’m not discussing love interests or life expectancy,” I said. “I’m gunna discuss coffee and some breakfast, and that’s it. You said JinYeong didn’t come back this morning—what about last night?”

  “Not a sign of him, sorry,” she said. “But there was a skeleton sitting on our back patio last night instead—Zero let him in.”

  So that was the faint edge of blue I could sense about the room.

  “That you, Ralph?” I asked.

  “Your house squashed me,” said a thin, cross little voice that I knew well. “It squashed my house, too, and now I have nowhere to go.”

  “Want some coffee?” I asked him, sitting up a bit groggily. Sure enough, there was the faintly blue figure of a small boy in knee britches and suspenders, his slightly-too-long and curling hair primly concealed beneath a cap.

  “I’m not allowed to drink coffee,” he said querulously. “Mother says—”

  “Don’t start that again,” Sarah interrupted. “You can have milk if you don’t want coffee, but not too much; we’ve only got enough to last us the next couple days, with the way everyone drinks tea and coffee in this house.”

  “Looks like you’re settling in well,” I said, grinning, as someone pushed a hot cup of coffee into my hands. Now that I was a bit more awake, I could see a few more people around the room. I couldn’t help glancing briefly over at the window, too, even though I already knew it would be empty. “Just as mungery as ever. What are you doing over here?”

  “I told you,” he said coldly. “Your house squashed me and my house.”

  “Right. Well, that’s good news, anyway,” I told him, taking another sip of coffee. My brain was starting to buzz comfortably now, but I had the feeling it had been doing that while I was asleep, too.

  “You’re probably going to need more coffee,” Morgana said. “You’re not making any sense.”

  I bit back an argumentative rejoinder that she was the one who needed more coffee if she didn’t understand, and said, “Never mind. You sure the arena halved?”

  “That’s what Zero said, and it feels smaller to me, too. Why?”

  “Just got an idea about how we’re going to get outta here, that’s all.”

  Her face lit up. “What is it?”

  “Can’t tell you—I’d have to kill you.”

  “I’m already dead.”

  “See?”

  “Pet—”

  “All right, all right,” I said, grinning, before Ralph could speak the very emphatic words that were on his lips (probably a querulous “I am already dead too!”). “But—”

  “Oi, Pet!” yelled someone from upstairs, before I could finish. “The vampire’s back! And he’s in the backyard this time!”

  My eyes met Zero’s with a shock of relief; he looked pretty stunned for a bloke who rarely shows emotion. We rose at the same time, me slopping coffee over my jeans and Zero sending the couch shifting backward by a good foot and nearly tumbling Morgana off it.

  We headed for the back door at the same time, too, the others behind us.

  “Check out the window,” Zero said to me. “Make sure there’s no one else behind him.”

  I jogged into the laundry and jumped up on the bench there to get a good look out the window, cracking the louvres a bit. Lemon myrtle wafted through the panes of glass, and I saw JinYeong.

  His eyes met mine, dark and welcoming, and I saw his mouth open.

  “Petteu,” he said. “I have come home.”

  “Hang on!” I yelled. “Zero! Don’t open the door!”

  Zero wasn’t listening; I heard his hand close around the doorknob and the very slight rattle as it turned, and fairly hurled myself off the bench and around the doorjamb, tumbling into the hall.

  I kicked the door shut before it could open more than a fingers-width, nearly squashing Zero’s fingers in the process. Then I slapped a palm against the door and suggested to the house without words that it was a good idea to stay very closed before Zero had time to open his mouth.

  “Okay, so you remember the mimic?” I asked him, as the outrage slowly faded from his face. “The one that was making little JinYeongs back in the hedges? Reckon your dad found another one, cos that’s definitely not JinYeong.”

  Zero’s fingers twitched, as if he was forcibly restraining himself from reaching out again and opening the door. He asked, “Are you sure?”

  “A hundred percent,” I said. “JinYeong doesn’t call me Pet. He hasn’t for ages now.”

  “He knows better than to call your name while we’re in here,” Zero said warningly.

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t call me Pet, either. Not since—not since—”

  Not since he’d done it to make a point in front of Zero’s dad. Definitely not since he’d kissed me. Now that I came to think of it, there were a lot of milestones that I’d somehow missed—no wonder JinYeong had been so frustrated with me for not realising that he’d fallen in love with me.

  “You think my father is behind this? Why?”

  “’Cos the mimic yesterday said they were allies,” I said. “And he said our allies. I’m gunna guess that mimics come in matched pairs?”

  Zero huffed out a short sigh. “I suppose they must; I’ve not had much to do with them. My father certainly would have taken the other as collateral for the continued partnership with the mimics if so.”

  “Petteu,” murmured JinYeong’s voice from just outside the door. “Will you not let me in? It was so hard to get to you!”

  I kicked the door, and someone or something yelped. “Get lost, you face-swapping little creep!”

  “Ah, Petteu!”

  I went back to the laundry window and cracked the louvres open once again. “Oi!” I yelled. “Lord Sero! You might as well come out, because I’m not letting your little JinYeong mimic in!”

  It was probably a bit much to expect Lord Sero to come out at once, but it was pretty unpleasant to have a projection of JinYeong’s face and body standing there in the meantime, trying to pretend that it really was JinYeong.

  Mind you, the mimic didn’t know how to do JinYeong’s expressions at all: now that I could see him trying to be soulful it was obvious that this was just a soulless mimic construct. The real JinYeong fairly oozed soul without even trying.

  And that was the thing that wouldn’t stop worrying away at the back of my mind, because the mimic didn’t know how to do expressions very well. How did it know JinYeong’s face so well but not have a good grip on his expressions? Where was JinYeong, and exactly how lively—or worse, otherwise—was he?

  Slightly to my surprise, Lord Sero actually came out of the hedges. Maybe he was starting to know when I wasn’t bluffing—a mixed blessing.

  “Still shouting at people from your windows, I see,” he said caustically. “Humans are such uncivilised creatures!”

  “Uncivilised, yeah, but we’re the ones inside the house,” I pointed out. “We aren’t camping out and making ourselves unpleasant outside other peoples’ houses like a flamin’ crusader army.”

  “Stop talking to my father, Pet,” Zero called, his voice annoyed. “No good will come of it.”

  Lord Sero stiffened, and he called, “My son, come out and speak with me, fae to fae.”

  “Don’t reckon he wants to talk to you,” I told him. “He doesn’t even want me to talk to you.”

  “I never thought I would live to see the day when my son would hide behind humans to escape his responsibilities.”

  “Hate to sound like a broken record,” I told him, as Zero pushed through Morgana and the others at the door and came to stand behind me. “But you’re missing the point again. We’re in here and you’re out there. That means we make the rules about who we’re going to talk with and who we’re not going to talk with.”

  “You’re not going to talk to your own compatriots, either, it would seem,” he said, indicating the constructed Jin
Yeong that was still scratching at the door to be let in.

  “You must think I’m an idiot,” I said. “That thing isn’t JinYeong, and if you think I’m gunna hold back from blasting it so far Behind that it wakes up back-to-front just because it has JinYeong’s annoying little face, I’ve got some news for you.”

  A very slight frown came to his face. “How did you know it’s a constructed appearance?”

  “Because I’m not an idiot,” I told him. “And because I’m not an idiot, I’m also not going to tell you exactly how I know it’s not JinYeong. You’d just come back and try with a better version—we know you’ve got a mimic on your side.”

  I didn’t miss the deadly look that Lord Sero shot at the small, unimpressive woman beside him, or the way that she shivered in the cool air. I did very nearly miss the movement with which he stabbed her in the throat, swift and short; the smallest of protests tumbled over my lips when I saw the blue blood, and my eyes went to the JinYeong construct.

  It shouldn’t have hurt to see him crumble and disappear—I’d stabbed a version of JinYeong myself, after all—but it still somehow hurt to see that hope disappear, even though I’d only had a moment or two to believe it.

  “Good job showing us what a fantastic ally you are,” I said to Lord Sero, giving him the double thumbs up. “That’ll be sure to change our minds.”

  “Son,” said Lord Sero, ignoring me and fixing his attention on Zero. “You can’t be serious! You’ll ally yourself with another heirling and refuse to take part in the selection?”

  “No,” Zero said, his eyes flickering toward a doorway that was filled with heirlings. Morgana, Sarah, and Ralph gazed back at him, a mixture of emotions on their faces. “I’ve allied myself with four other heirlings and I’m refusing to take part in the selection.”

  “Look at you, learning how to be sarcastic,” I congratulated him, patting his shoulder. “Oi, you lot; go jump in the lake. We’re staying in the house and we’re not coming out.”