Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine

by Gingell, W. R.

“Put the chip somewhere else, then,” Zero said harshly.

  “It’s the last call we should need to make,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep the phone on silent.”

  There wasn’t another peep from the phone, but it seemed to have gotten to everyone a bit; the lycanthropes went back upstairs to look out the window, taking Morgana and Sarah—and by extension, Ralph—to see how much of the arena was left. That left Zero and me with Les, and I was pretty sure Les was just there to sneak out as many forks as he could from the drawers.

  “Will it matter where the others are?” Zero asked.

  “Nah,” I told him. “Let ’em look out the window. It might be better than being in here to watch everything get a bit weird.”

  “You’re expecting it to be weird?”

  “Don’t see how it couldn’t be,” I said, feeling a bit more cheerful. It was always fun to watch Zero being pushed out of his comfort zone.

  “The dipstick is back!” yelled someone from upstairs, just as I settled myself at the kitchen island with a fresh cup of coffee to see what I could do.

  Zero’s brows rose. The lycanthropes’ delight with finding new and worse names for his father was something that he didn’t seem to be able to get used to. I suppose that’s what happens if you’re brought up by a bloke that horrible.

  “Bet you wish it was JinYeong instead,” I said, unable to help myself.

  His eyes went slightly bluer, which was nice to see. Despite that, he said, “It’s to no good purpose if it really is my father.”

  “Never thought it would be,” I said, and got up to see what was going on, leaving my coffee behind. “The fun your dad brings with him every time we meet him—oi! Should I be calling him great-great granddad or something? He’d flamin’ hate that. Maybe I’ll do it.”

  I was unceremoniously seized by the back of the neck and hauled back to meet Zero’s warning gaze.

  “Pet,” he said. “If you even try to—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, grinning. “If I call him great-great grandad, you’ll chuck me out the window and let me say it to his face.”

  “Close enough,” said Zero, and let me go.

  He followed close behind me on the stairs, too, but let me go ahead at the window—probably because he could see right over me. The first thing I noticed wasn’t that there was a group of behindkind in what was left of my backyard; it was the fact that there was now so little left of the arena as a whole that I could literally see the front of what must be Lord Sero’s mansion—he’d brought a whole mansion in with him?—through the gap in the hedges. There was no more labyrinth, just a gap between the last remaining hedge and our two houses.

  And it had to be Lord Sero’s mansion, because he was right outside my house with a group of behindkind—though for what purpose, I didn’t know. I didn’t like that I didn’t know, either. But as I scanned the behindkind on the lawn below, something else interesting caught my eye.

  “That’s weird,” I said, frowning.

  Zero, his eyes running over the group in an attempt to make out exactly what the threat was, didn’t look at me. He did ask, “What is?”

  “That suit,” I told him, pointing with my chin at a bloke fairly far back in the part of the group that seemed to be inspecting the base of the hedges that now led into what was left of our backyard. “It’s flamin’ weird.”

  I had noticed his suit because it was the suit JinYeong had drawn for me the other day—nothing like as well-fitting on this behindkind as it would have been on JinYeong—and now my heart quickened. Had JinYeong known this fae would be getting in, and planted something on him? Or did this fae have a message for me—was he an ally, someone who would fight for us quietly when we needed him?

  That did make Zero look at me: a long, wondering look of confusion. “Why is it weird?”

  “’Cos I already knew that someone was gunna be wearing it,” I said. “Reckon JinYeong is giving us a sign.”

  Beside me, Daniel asked sceptically, “What sign?”

  “Dunno,” I said. “But he drew that suit pattern for me a couple days ago, before he vanished. He was planning something and this bloke has something to do with it. We should try to have a word with him if we can.”

  “Pet,” said Zero, in a tone that was the verbal equivalent of someone pinching the bridge of their nose. “Are you suggesting that we should go out into the open to meet with my father?”

  “Not exactly,” I hedged. “Just that if we gotta, I reckon the bloke in that yellow-and-grey chequered suit will be able to help us out. And that maybe it’d be a good idea to try and talk with him if we can.”

  “What if he was warning you about a bloke in a yellow-and-grey chequered suit?”

  “Shut up, Daniel,” I said, grinning. I went to push open the window, prepared to be as cheeky as possible to Lord Sero since Zero had vetoed calling him great-great granddad, but Zero’s huge hand covered mine.

  “He’s not here to talk,” he said.

  My eyes flicked back to the world beyond the window, and I saw with surprise that Lord Sero, having come and seen, was prepared to leave the conquering for another time. As I watched, he turned on his heel and marched back toward the hedges, his minions trailing behind him.

  “Heck, that’s not good!” I said. If my heart had lifted briefly a moment before, it was now beating a bit too quickly from consternation. “What’d he come here for if he’s just going to turn around and leave? Is he going for psychology, or what?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s nothing good,” Zero said quietly. “Make sure the house is as secure as you know how to make it, Pet. We should try to enact your plan as quickly as possible.”

  We went downstairs first, leaving the others standing at the window to watch the last of Lord Sero’s men turn back into the hedges, and I couldn’t help saying the other thing that had been on my mind for the last few days as we walked back down the stairs.

  “Athelas isn’t with your dad anymore.”

  “I noticed,” said Zero, his brows cleft with a faint, sorrowful line. “That will have no good reason behind it, too.”

  Shaken, I said, “You reckon your dad killed him? Why?”

  “No reason I can think of that makes sense,” he said. “My father has everything he could possibly want, barring me, and all of that is due to Athelas.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought.”

  Not that it should matter if Athelas was alive or dead; not that there should be a preference toward alive rather than dead. But it didn’t make sense for Athelas to be dead—not when he’d done everything Zero’s dad wanted him to do and more.

  “We’re not gunna let them win,” I said. “Not Athelas—not your dad.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Zero, cautious to the last. “My father seems to be planning something, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have realised some of what’s happening with the arena. We’ll have to make sure we’re ready to fight when you begin your work with the house—and you will have to harden your mind to complete your work even if your friends are dying around you.”

  “Yeah,” I said again. “But there’s also a really good chance that everything will go right for once—and we’ve got our secret weapon if something does go wrong.”

  Zero threw me a fond, exasperated sort of a look. “Is that your yellow-and-grey chequered suit?”

  “Yep,” I said, grinning. “Hey, I don’t tell you how to guess what strokes someone’s gunna make in a fight—don’t try to tell me that JinYeong wasn’t giving us a sign.”

  “What JinYeong hopes to do and what JinYeong accomplishes are often two different things,” said Zero, but he said that a bit fondly, too.

  The others came down a few minutes later. Apparently they’d come to the same conclusion as Zero: that it might come down to a fight if things didn’t go according to plan, and that obviously I was going to be too busy to fight.

  “I’m not having you fight in my kitchen again,” I
told them. “You can take up the living room; move a couple chairs or something. I’ll sit up here in the kitchen with Zero.”

  “Do we have to do that now, though?” asked Morgana.

  “What, take over Lord Sero’s house?”

  “You said you were going to take over the arena, but there’s only one house left. Wouldn’t it be better to try and fight Lord Sero and then get out when he’s dead?”

  “Only if you want to be king,” I told her. “We don’t know how he got into the arena, either; he must still have an heirling with him. We’d have to find out who they are and kill them, too. I don’t much like that idea; anyone he’s got is probably a prisoner.”

  Morgana winced. “Right. I don’t want to be king or kill someone.”

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “Right. I don’t know about you lot, but I’m about ready to go. You might as well get out your weapons if you reckon you’re gunna have to fight.”

  Only Sarah and Zero started checking automatically for weapons; I suppose that’s how it goes when you’re in a house full of lycanthropes, zombies, and revenants. Everyone has built-in weapons.

  It left me feeling a confused mix of security and guilt as I settled myself on the kitchen floor, cross-legged. I didn’t want people to fight and die for me, but if the last couple of times working with the house were any indicator, I probably wouldn’t be aware enough to defend myself if things went wrong and somehow or other Lord Sero managed to get into the house despite me.

  The house must have been ready, because as soon as I sat down, my connection strengthened. Just as I’d done once when very high on vampire spit, I saw the running threads and particles that made up the house—and maybe reality itself—and felt myself sinking down into that reality.

  “Just make sure you lot don’t die,” I said to the group in the living room, before it was too late to say anything.

  “Good grief, you two are exactly alike,” Morgana said, flicking her eyes from me to Zero. “Anyone would know you’re related!”

  “Oi!” I said hazily, sinking deeper until I wasn’t sure if I was floorboard or flesh. “You were telling me that—”

  “I just don’t know why you’re always complaining about being taken care of when you’re always trying to take care of other people,” she said hastily. “All right, all right, let’s get started.”

  At least, I think that’s what she said. By then, words didn’t mean a lot and all I could process were strands of Between and reality. In a bright, line-drawn transparency, I saw every edge and piece of the house, then right through the house and to the hedges, which were very nearly the same. My eyes followed right on to the mansion we faced, all brilliantly sharp and hard like diamond—or ice.

  I think my body mumbled, “Here we go,” but there was no space for words where I was. I was a house that creaked and grew and breathed, and I was feeling cramped. It was time to stretch out a bit.

  I ate the lawn and hedges without a second thought—expanded into them and consumed them as though they were nothing. They became a part of me and disseminated into the woodwork, the life signs that had remained in them vanishing in a moment. Human me would have worried that I had killed them. House me knew that those signs of life hadn’t been snuffed out, they had merely been pushed out because there was no longer room for them.

  I was a house that lived and grew, and there was a stone house in my way. Cold and white and hard, it let me settle all around it, soaking up all of the space that there was to soak up, then rebuffed me as I tried to swallow it, too.

  It thought it was stone and not house, but I knew it was a house.

  I lunged—we lunged—and hit rock with such suddenness and force that I was thrown back into my body in a shower of dust, my connection with the house shattered and nearly broken.

  My whole, human body ached as if I really had hit rock face first, and someone supported me from behind while sharply questioning me. The questions didn’t make any sense, but that was more because there was too much dust and hurt and confusion around me than because I was still a house that didn’t understand singular words.

  The dust cleared a bit as I struggled to breathe, looking around wildly, and I caught a glimpse of the living room again.

  Only instead of it being my living room, it was a room somewhere else. A room of marble and cold and dust, with grass for floor and stony flowers growing up its pillars and a lot of wide, vast windows. I’d seen those windows from the outside—from my own windows, in fact.

  More worrying still, the room was full of behindkind of varying sizes and types, each of them staring at us with expressions that ranged from startled to snarling, and right down to plain hungry. Then, through a sudden parting in the crowd, I saw Lord Sero himself.

  “Pet!” Zero said sharply, and this time I understood the meaning of it. “What happened?”

  I tried to suck in a second breath and seemed to choke on stone dust. I coughed like an asthmatic smoker for a full minute before I managed to drag in enough breath to wheeze, “You know how my house has been eating all the others?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, your dad’s house bit back.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Can they hear us?” I panted, gazing at that expanse of marble and grass that was far too full of behindkind and separated from us only by thin air, dust, and the edges of the kitchen-dining room walls. I had my answer before Zero’s negative sounded, because I could see their mouths moving without being able to hear a sound. “Ah heck, reckon I’ve merged the houses instead of taking over. What did they thread through this marble to make it so flamin’ hardy!”

  Zero growled, “Keep trying to take over the house. I don’t want to be here longer than I have to be.”

  I was already trying, my eyes on Lord Sero and all of his men. It was the equivalent of trying to force myself through a straw instead of a tunnel, and just when I thought I had found a weak spot, it closed in on itself, pulling tight. In fact, everything seemed to pull tight to one spot—a spot that drew my eyes as well as all of the connecting points of the room.

  Lord Sero, in fact.

  “I’m trying,” I said, trying not to worry him by saying exactly what I could see. “I can’t feel where the others are, though, and I don’t like that. They should have been with us.”

  “We don’t even have the living room,” he said. “They’re here somewhere: try again.”

  “I am,” I said shortly, after another brief, vain effort. “It’s like it’s tethered here—like your dad is the tent peg holding it in place.”

  “Will it help if you’re in the same room as the tent peg?”

  “Don’t know,” I said, sending a worried look up at him. “Reckon we’ll have to find out?”

  “It won’t hurt to see,” he said. “We can always retreat if need be.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said, grabbing for his trouser leg as he started for the couple of steps down into the other house. “Oi! We don’t know that! Stop! I’m not having my uncle die to test out a theory!”

  “You might need a weapon at some stage,” he said, gently removing my hand from his trouser leg and pulling me up to stand beside him. “My father doesn’t know you can pull weapons from Between, so make the most of that surprise when you do it: show them what a niece of mine is capable of. Get the heirling sword if you can—that will throw them off and give us a few seconds more.”

  “What are you gunna grab, then?” I asked. He had his sword on him, but he hadn’t drawn it, and that worried me.

  “My father, if necessary,” said Zero, and stepped down into where our living room ought to have been.

  “Flamin’ heck!” I grumbled, and followed him. I didn’t want to see if being in the same room as his father would make things easier, but if we were gunna die, we might as well die together.

  Lord Sero watched us with an almost hungry expression, right until we stepped down onto marble instead of carpet.

  I don’t think they exp
ected the involuntary smile that curved my mouth—or the laugh that escaped my lips a moment later. But I couldn’t help it. The minute we stepped down from the kitchen and into Lord Sero’s vast room, delight coiled through my stomach and fairly sparkled to the tips of my fingers.

  Because curling through the air, fragrant and insidious as always, was the italicised scent of JinYeong’s cologne—the one thing that had been missing from the first mimic’s almost perfect version JinYeong; the most important thing Lord Sero’s second mimic had also forgotten. Heck, for all I knew, mimics didn’t know about scent. Maybe they only concentrated on the visible.

  I couldn’t see him, but JinYeong was here. Somewhere in this vast marble hall, JinYeong was waiting for his moment to show himself.

  “You think this is a joke?” asked Lord Sero incredulously. “For a human you are ludicrously unaware of the perennial precariousness of your situation.”

  “For a bloke who sheds flowers everywhere he goes no matter the season, you’re the last person who should be sneering at perennial faults,” I pointed out. “You shouldn’t have been so flamin’ precious with your house if you didn’t want people in your hall; I would have booted you out of the arena without bothering you if you hadn’t made it so flamin’ hard.”

  A few of the fae around Lord Sero tried very hard not to look at each other, while the behindkind in the yellow-and-grey suit clicked his teeth together in what could have been annoyance but seemed to be amusement. More importantly, he did it as if he were used to having teeth a fair bit longer and sharper than he actually had—and as if the action had been disillusioning in the extreme. Then he caught my eyes and very deliberately winked at me.

  Flaming heck. JinYeong hadn’t sent us the man in the yellow-and-grey chequered suit; he was the man in the yellow-and-grey chequered suit. How the heck had he managed to get into the arena wearing someone else’s face and body?

  I didn’t dare to let my eyes linger, but I looked him over quickly, desperate for something that would confirm the madness of the idea. He was taller than JinYeong, with a five o’clock shadow and skin that was far too white for the blue-black of his hair, and his eyes were startlingly green. Pretty much a carbon copy of every far-too-pretty fae I’d seen, with all of the beauty of JinYeong and exactly zero of his warmth.