Between Floors

by W. R. Gingell

Maybe it took him by surprise. He just blinked up at me while I unbuttoned his suit jacket, and let me tug the sleeves off his arms without either struggling or helping. He didn’t cough up any more blood either, which was nice.

  “That,” said Athelas, retrieving a biscuit that had been flung on the coffee table, “is far more trouble than it’s worth, Pet.”

  “It’s only a small stain,” I said. “I can fix it.”

  “I’ve no doubt you can,” he said mildly. “But that’s not what I meant.”

  “Well, maybe you should talk properly instead of riddling people,” I told him, pulling the last of the jacket out from under JinYeong, who was still gazing up at me with the biscuit in his mouth. “Maybe then people would understand what you’re talking about.”

  “Now where would be the fun in that?” asked Athelas, and he went back to smiling at the ceiling.

  Still, JinYeong seemed to be recovered by the time I came back with his bloodless suit jacket. He was sitting on our couch with a cup of coffee and three of Athelas’ biscuits tidily on the knee that was crossed over the other leg, his top two buttons undone as though he meant them to be that way instead of the plain fact that the second from the top had popped off. I could have told him again that the biscuits weren’t for him, but I didn’t have the heart.

  Besides, he seemed to be expecting me to say something about it; he kept watching me through his hair, which was now somehow artfully ruffled instead of just plain messy, and it was no use having a go at him if he was expecting it. His gaze was off-putting enough that I went into the kitchen to avoid it and spent the rest of the morning making pancakes for Zero and tea cake to go with our evening coffee.

  I couldn’t help smiling a bit, though. As much as JinYeong didn’t seem to doubt it, I didn’t doubt that Zero had put a spell of some sort on me when he went away. Now that I was sure JinYeong wasn’t more than passingly injured, I could enjoy the warm little feeling of being looked after. I might just be a pet, but I was still being looked after.

  To my surprise, JinYeong didn’t have a go at Zero when Zero came down for dinner. He seemed almost mellow, in fact, though he didn’t eat any of the dinner. Instead, he wafted off toward the shower with his going-out clothes on a hanger.

  Zero saw, and raised his brows in Athelas’ direction, but as much as JinYeong had seemed intent on making his presence felt earlier, Zero appeared to want to be out of sight. He went away upstairs again as soon as he finished eating, leaving Athelas and me to eat tea cake with tea and coffee by ourselves.

  Athelas was content to sit upright by now, to my secret relief, reading a book and drinking his tea almost as if he had never been tortured or injured. I picked up an omnibus of Footrot Flats that was somehow still around the house after all these years and let myself relax, too.

  Maybe JinYeong felt like he wasn’t getting enough attention, I dunno. He sauntered out of the bathroom in just his trousers—and, more irritatingly, in a cloud of cologne that made me gag behind my book—and held up two ties for Athelas’ approval.

  “Neither,” said Athelas, after a brief look. “Top two buttons undone, as before. Unless, of course, you are trying for an uptight look.”

  JinYeong made a pft noise, but he went back to the bathroom looking thoughtful.

  I raised my brows and flopped backwards on the couch. “What’s up with him now?” I asked Athelas, over the top of my book. “He’s going out?”

  “One assumes that the blood in the fridge wasn’t fresh enough,” suggested Athelas. “Or perhaps that it lacks a bouquet JinYeong finds appealing. Or perhaps he simply regrets being forced to give up this morning’s sport. I believe he’s going to hunt tonight.”

  “Is he allowed to do that?” I demanded, sitting up again. “Didn’t Zero—”

  “Zero objects to humans being brought home to be fed upon,” Athelas said. “JinYeong is free to hunt where he chooses.”

  “What if he kills someone?”

  “Oh, I think it very unlikely,” said Athelas. “Zero, after all, also objects to bodies in the streets. Things like that draw unwanted attention.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think JinYeong thinks like that, and he likes annoying Zero. Wouldn’t be surprised if he really wanted to annoy him, after this morning.”

  “JinYeong is very good at drawing the line exactly where it should be drawn,” Athelas said gently, lifting his teacup. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you, Pet.”

  I went back to my book, but I wasn’t completely convinced; and when JinYeong emerged from the shower in a cloud of scent and steam, his lips red and his eyes glittering, I made a face behind my book, hissing a small, disgusted puff of air into the pages.

  Seriously, what a pong. Even JinYeong didn’t usually stink to that extent.

  I was still wrinkling my nose when my book was summarily swept away. JinYeong’s face replaced it, narrow and tilted too close for comfort.

  “Mwohya?”

  I looked back at him unblinkingly. “Didn’t say anything.”

  “You breathed disparagingly,” Athelas said. “It seems that JinYeong has taken offence.”

  JinYeong tilted his head just a little more, his eyes roaming my face. “Chal duro, Petteu,” he said, and gave vent to a swiftly flowing stream of words that meant nothing to me. When he was done, he smiled a small, smug smile at me that held more than a little mockery, and, tossing my book back into my lap, sauntered away toward the front door.

  “Mwohya?” I complained, imitating him. He was deliberately speaking too fast for me to understand him.

  “He said,” murmured Athelas, “that although you dislike the scent now, in time you will come to associate it with him. He says that one day you will find yourself smiling, although you don’t know why, because you smelled this scent and involuntarily thought of him.”

  “Ew,” I said, making another face. I called out to the widening section of Between that had opened to allow JinYeong to pass through, “That stinks just as much as your perfume!”

  Maybe we were all a bit tired after everything. Zero came back downstairs with a book after JinYeong left, but he didn’t look up from it for the next four or five hours—didn’t even go to the loo, which was normal for him but still weird—and Athelas sat back on his couch, dreamily looking at the ceiling in a way that made me think he saw more there than just the ceiling. Maybe it was his kind of dreaming.

  I drifted in and out of sleep, hazy and content. The twin threats of Zero and Athelas would keep any bad dreams at bay; they were a warmth and a warning that couldn’t be ignored, and I slept in the security of them.

  I woke only because I felt the contented drifting of JinYeong approaching the house. Maybe he was a bit drunk, because there was a happy, satisfied feeling to his approach that seeped through Between ahead of him. I hoped there wasn’t an equal and opposite reaction out there in the form of a body drained of blood, but I got up to make coffee and cut cake, anyway.

  Athelas smiled at the ceiling as I passed; because he was looking forward to tea, or from some reason of his own, I wasn’t sure. Zero put down his book and glanced at Athelas, who smiled dreamily at Zero instead of the ceiling for a change.

  “Stop talking to each other in code,” I said over my shoulder. “It’s rude.”

  I started the jug boiling and dug out some of JinYeong’s snacks from the fridge. Even if he was pumped up on someone’s blood, he’d probably still like them. Athelas had his special biscuits, after all, and Zero had more pancakes to look forward to tomorrow morning. Or tonight, if it came to that. When you don’t sleep for more than a couple hours every night, morning and breakfast don’t mean much to you.

  I’d just put everything onto the usual tray when something tickled the edges of my mind that wasn’t JinYeong. Frowning, I trotted out into the hallway, and there in the hallstand, leaning harmlessly against the wall, was a bright yellow umbrella.

  “Heck!” I said softly. It looked like an umbrella, but I knew better. That was no umbre
lla—it was a sword; and for the most part, it was a sword that preferred not to be seen.

  “Zero!” I yelled. “Reckon there’s something coming! The sword let me see it again!”

  At the same time, the whole house went sideways or maybe turned inside out, and JinYeong said something from just inside the front door that was definitely swearing.

  “Such an intrusion,” sighed Athelas, and the sound of it was somewhere beneath my feet until there was a Zero-shaped twitch and the house went right again.

  Slender fingers pinched my right ear, tugging me away from the sword, but my fingers were already wrapped around the umbrella handle that felt like a sword grip, and I staggered sideways, pulling it out of the stand.

  “Manjiji ma,” said JinYeong, tugging lightly on my ear again.

  “Look, the sword told me to pick it up, so who am I supposed to listen to?”

  “Na,” he said, threateningly.

  “Yeah, but if I listen to you, what about the sword?”

  JinYeong sighed, then reached over me and grabbed the umbrella sword. To my disappointment, it let him take it. I mean, I dunno what it would have done to stop him, but it would have been nice to see him get the magical equivalent of an electric shock again.

  “Darrawa, Petteu,” he said, and pulled me back toward the living room by one wrist.

  “I can walk by myself,” I said, but then I saw who was in the living room with Zero and shut my mouth. I might also have scooted just a smidge back behind JinYeong, whose fingers tightened around my wrist.

  It was the golden fae, and this time he’d brought a couple of friends. Around JinYeong’s arm, I saw the tightening of the fae’s mouth as he saw JinYeong holding the umbrella.

  “Why does that thing have the Heirling Sword?”

  I opened my mouth to say something rude, but I thought better of it a split second before JinYeong’s fingers crushed my wrist.

  I kicked the back of his shiny shoes, then poked him in the ribs for good measure. I heard him mutter a complaint beneath his breath, but when I looked up at him, his cheeks were sharp in a dangerous smile directed at the golden fae.

  “Oi. Ask him if he wants anything to eat,” I muttered, tugging at a pinch of his suitcoat.

  JinYeong’s cheeks sharpened just a touch more, and his lips parted.

  “Hello,” he said in Korean that was layered through Between and very carefully understandable to the golden fae. “Would you care for something to eat?”

  Sneak Peek at Book Four: BETWEEN FRAMES

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  It’s always during dinner that stuff happens. More specifically, it’s always during JinYeong’s dinners. The ones I have to make for him, that is. Ever since I’ve been here in this house, a pet to two fae and a vampire, there’s hardly been a single dinner I’ve started to make for JinYeong that hasn’t been interrupted. It doesn’t happen when I cook for Zero. It doesn’t happen when Athelas picks the menu. Just when it’s JinYeong’s turn.

  Maybe it’s a vampire thing.

  Anyway, it was dinner time, and it was JinYeong’s choice of dinner. That meant I was scrounging the fridge for the last of the kimchi I’d made last month and chopping stuff like chilli and garlic to marinate the meat. There were a lot of spare side dishes, so it would be bibimbap tonight; it’s a convenient meal when you don’t know exactly when your owners are coming home.

  Most pets know when their owners get home by the sound of the front door opening and closing. My owners don’t really use the front door a lot unless they’re trying to look normal. Me, I know my owners are home when I feel that pull and snap of reality shifting aside to let them into the house.

  I was chopping red baby chilli when I felt that particular pull and snap, but when I looked up, it wasn’t my owners I saw across the kitchen from me. I saw a Behind creature, all darkness and possibilities.

  Oh great. Now they knew how to get into the house?

  It could have been male. It could almost have been human, but not quite. I saw myself reflected in the hard silver of its eyes; a skinny human girl, all arms and legs.

  It smirked.

  Yeah. Just a human. No need to worry. Even the fact that I had a chopping knife in my left hand didn’t worry it. Just a human. It obviously didn’t see that I was chopping chilli.

  Its mistake.

  It leapt for me, and I went over with a yelp, brandishing my knife. Lucky for me, it knocked the knife out of my hand, otherwise I probably would have fallen on it. Teeth snapped in my face, fetid breath clinging to them, and I kicked as hard as I could at the thing’s torso. The Behind creature didn’t shift, but the world around us did, pulling and stretching and somehow merging with that second layer of reality that Behindkind call Between.

  The mongrel was trying to drag me Between and Behind.

  “Zero!” I yelled. “Zero!”

  The creature snicked its teeth together in what might have been a satisfied smirk and wrapped its long fingers around my neck, throttling the sound out of me.

  Oh. Right. Zero was out of the house, anyway.

  I snatched at the merging of realities around me, trying to pull myself back into the first layer, the human world; but the Behind creature was stronger, and I hadn’t had enough lessons yet. The world around us—either Between or Behind, I wasn’t sure any more—grew dark at the edges and closed in on the creature’s face, the one spot of vision remaining.

  I couldn’t pull myself back into the human world. I couldn’t kick the creature again, because it had pinned both my legs. And that vicious face grew dimmer as the creature throttled me without bothering to contain my flailing arms.

  Chilli, said my brain.

  I know, I told it. JinYeong’s gonna be flamin’ annoyed.

  No, said my brain. Chilli.

  I choked on my own saliva, my face hot and red, and stopped flailing. Then I gouged my thumbs into the creature’s eye sockets.

  See how you like chilli, you mucky black tar beast.

  For a moment everything stopped, and even the creature’s hands stopped tightening around my throat. It blinked once or twice, the greasy click of its eyelids tapping against my thumbs like cockroach wings, and began to smile. The fingers around my neck tightened again.

  That’s when the screaming started.

  At first, I thought it was me. Then the creature threw me away from itself, wailing, and tore at its eyes, stumbling in a circle that bled between Between and the human world.

  That’ll teach it to attack someone who’s chopping chilli.

  “Ahshipda!” sighed someone, from behind the distressed creature.

  I hauled in a rattling sort of breath. Great. He must have just got home. My vision was starting to clear up; I could see the slender, besuited figure that was JinYeong. Shoes perfectly polished, suit perfectly creased, hair perfectly done.

  So. Flamin’. Annoying.

  “Petteu,” JinYeong said, straightening his tie, “Mwoh hae?”

  “Oh, I dunno,” I said hoarsely, scrambling to my feet. “Just thought it’d be nice to be attacked by a Behind creature. You know. For a change.”

  “Mogo shipeo.”

  “Yeah, well I want to eat as well. I was interrupted.”

  The Behindkind creature, still howling, straightened itself. I don’t know what it saw this time, but it wasn’t smirking when it leapt for me, its tarry arms outstretched and its claws deadly sharp.

  I yelped again and ducked, and something swift and grey collided with the Behind creature above my head, knocking it out of Between and into the human world. I got up and hastily trotted myself right back into the human world after them. I’m capable of getting myself from the Between world and into the human world when I’m not being stopped, but I can’t say I enjoy being Between by myself.

  By the time I got back, the Behind creature was in a mangled pile on the kitchen floor, and the entire kitchen was spattered with black tar, or
blood, or whatever it was that constituted its insides. JinYeong, puffing a breath up at the single piece of hair that had fallen from his perfectly coiffed style, narrowed his eyes at me, then looked down pointedly at the length of his body. His grey suit was now a black-spotted grey suit, and none of the spots were exactly tidy, either. Even JinYeong’s pouty little mouth wasn’t red anymore; black tarry mess coated it, and spilled down his chin and throat, making a complete wreck of the white shirt below that.

  I started grinning. “Oh, what a shame! Your suit’s all mucky!”

  JinYeong’s teeth showed just slightly, stained with black. “Yah.”

  “Hey, if you can’t stop biting everything, don’t blame me! You could have chopped off its head, but no, you had to go all psycho vampire on it. I mean, is that even blood?”

  JinYeong shrugged. “Bisutae.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but it was obvious that whatever had been inside the Behind creature, it was similar enough to blood to appeal to JinYeong. I looked around at the mess on the kitchen walls—and worse, on the food I had just been preparing—and made a face.

  “You wrecked dinner,” I said.

  “Nega? Nega otteokae? Niga!”

  “Hey, I didn’t kill the thing,” I pointed out. “That was all you. Look, you’ve spread bits of him all over the bench. It’s gonna take me ages to clean it off, and I’ll have to bin every bit of food I’d got ready. That was the last of the kimchi, too.”

  “Aish,” muttered JinYeong, glaring at me. He turned on his heel and stalked into the bathroom. I heard the shower start up a minute or two later; JinYeong hadn’t closed the door, which probably meant he was standing beneath the shower fully clothed. I’d seen him do that once or twice. If there’s anything I’ve learned about vampires in the last couple of months, it’s that they are neat and finicky to the point of OCD when it comes to clothes and house. Well, JinYeong is, anyway.

  Around the bathroom door, I called, “How come you’re back before the others, anyway?”

  I don’t know why I bother to ask him stuff. It’s not like I understand more than a couple of the things he says on any given day, and it’s not like he’s going to talk to me in English, either.