“Maja,” said JinYeong precisely, as Athelas rose and padded away upstairs, no doubt on whatever mysterious business he and Zero had been talking about.
I had more important things to concentrate on. “You can’t just read romance if you want to get insight into the female mind!” I told JinYeong. “We care about other stuff too, you know! Anyway, you’re always biting women—why don’t you ask them?”
Sulkily, he said, “They cannot answer properly when I am biting them. I am a distraction too great.”
“You’re a mosquito, you mean,” I said, though he had a point. “How’s your stomach, anyway?”
He patted it in some satisfaction. “I am perfect again.”
“Right,” I said, trying not to snort. A muffled bump from the upstairs landing made me yell, “Oi! Are you all right up there, Athelas?”
“Certainly,” came his voice, as calm and matter-of-fact as usual. “Do pour out, Pet; I’ll only be a moment. I trust there are shortbreads?”
“Got you some special ones,” I called back, pushing a small plate of shortbreads toward his side of the coffee table. I poured a cup of tea, shooting a look down the hallway, where I could see Zero’s hulking shadow lurking around the umbrella stand near the front door.
That immediately sent my stomach plummeting as I remembered all that had happened yesterday—the Heirling Sword, the golden fae… I should tell Zero about the sword, but I knew I wasn’t going to do it if I had another choice. There was a more immediate problem to deal with, anyway, I told myself: JinYeong’s piles of romance books.
Goodness knew why he was reading what he was reading, but I refused to deal with a romantically confused JinYeong when he was already more monster than human. It didn’t seem safe. So I went through those piles of books, stashing away the seedier options and keeping the more healthy ones for him to look over once he’d finished with the one he was reading. He watched me with a jealous eye from behind the book he was pretending to read, then eventually gave up the pretence and hung over the edge of the couch to make sure he knew which books I was taking away from him.
Athelas came back while I was still going through the piles. He picked up his teacup and the file he had been looking at when I first came down from my room—a familiar file that I remembered from a few weeks ago.
I leaned my arms on the nearest pile of books to gaze up at him, and asked, “Still looking in odd corners for our murderer?”
“Always,” murmured Athelas, crossing one leg over the other and opening the file to sort through its contents. Whatever he’d been doing upstairs, it had put him in what was his version of a mischievous mood: he sipped his tea and asked JinYeong gently, “And what has your reading hitherto taught you of the effects of biting stray women—or perhaps pets?”
That made me chuckle, a small, deep sound that drew JinYeong’s immediate attention. I said, partly to him and partly to Athelas, “That’s just business, though, isn’t it? You need blood and you have to bite to take it. There shouldn’t be any effects that aren’t covered under side effects of vampire spit.”
JinYeong stared at me. “My bites,” he said frostily, “are soft and warm and—”
“If you start talking about how warm you are again, I’m gunna—”
“Athelas,” said Zero from the hall, in a voice that rumbled and couldn’t be ignored. “I’d appreciate it if you took a look at this.”
Athelas closed his file and put it tidily beneath his teacup on the coffee table, which was an interesting thing to do. It made me think that, in the quietest and most natural way possible, he was trying to protect what he didn’t want to be seen. What was the suspicious old tea-drinker up to now?
“A bite is not a transaction!” snarled JinYeong, shuffling himself and his book until they were directly in front of me and unignorable. “Would you say a kiss is a transaction?”
“With you, it is,” I said, distracted from Athelas. “Sometimes I need extra speed and strength, and you need to not feel like I’m gunna die every five minutes. Of course it’s a transaction! What else would it be?”
JinYeong’s eyes widened in outrage as Athelas padded softly down the hallway. “With me? With me? Yah! Noh! Who else are you kissing, then?”
“There’s something wrong with you,” I told him. I plucked the book from his hands and made a bit of a grimace at the front cover. Trust JinYeong to go for one of the most lurid covers to start with. “What the heck is this?”
“That woman,” he said, pointing at the vaguely regency-esque woman and then the shirtless man who had his arms around her, “does not trust this man. There is a misunderstanding. So now he is kissing her.”
Some people might have said that the way I laughed was rude. I didn’t mean it like that, exactly, but the snort that came out didn’t seem uncalled for, either. “Well, what’s the use of that?” I demanded. “If she doesn’t trust him, how is kissing her going to change anything?”
JinYeong narrowed his eyes at me. “The book says she falls in love with him. He kisses her; she falls in love.”
“Then it’s a stupid book.”
“Kissing is stupid?” He looked personally affronted, which was probably more because he was the one I usually kissed than because he disagreed.
That needs some explanation. When I say that he’s the one I usually kiss, I mean he’s pretty much the only one I kiss—and the only reason I do kiss him is because vampire spit makes me somehow faster and stronger and much harder to kill, without giving me much of a desire to bite anyone else. Temporarily, at least. It’s either a kiss or a bite, and sometimes a kiss is the quicker option. It’s also a lot less painful.
“Heck,” I said, worried by a sudden thought. Was JinYeong doing research because he was keen on a human woman? That would be…weird. What was she going to think about me kissing him every so often for vampire spit, if so? Or him biting me for the same effect, if it came to that? I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be happy if I was the one dating him and some other woman was kissing him.
What a pain in the neck.
“Mwoh?” demanded JinYeong. “What now?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking about how weird it would be to date you.”
If I’d thought about it before I said it, I would have expected him to be even more offended than he had been by having his kisses described as transactional. Instead, he sat very still, as though he was trying to figure out exactly what I had said, and why; or maybe just how to respond to it.
Before he could, I said, “Anyway, if you’re thinking about dating, you better think really good. Zero won’t like it, and you know how icy he goes when you do stuff he doesn’t like.”
“You can’t tell me not to date,” said JinYeong, putting up his nose.
“I’m not telling you that you can’t,” I argued. “I’m just saying that—heck. What’s that?”
Something stirred at the back of the house, toward the bathroom. Something prodding at the house, or picking at it; and that made the second or third time this morning. What was going on?
I ignored JinYeong, who had leaned forward and was saying something about Zero and dating and teeth, and tried to let myself feel what was going on in the house. Almost immediately, I sensed something like a twinge from the toilet room.
“Oi!” I said. “There’s something fishy going on in the toilet!”
“It is a toilet, not a fish-bowl,” muttered JinYeong in exasperation. I’ve already mentioned that he doesn’t like being ignored, haven’t I?
I jumped up, heading for the bathroom and toilet, following that odd little pull and aware of a flurry of movement in the hall from Athelas, who came along behind me. I pushed through the door and tipped up the edge of the toilet seat with the tip of my forefinger, slightly worried about a banshee sortie from the depths. Instead, I saw a tie—no, a frog that had once been a tie and now wasn’t quite one or the other—hunched up and clinging to the bowl below the rim of the toilet.
“There y
ou are!” I said to it, spluttering a laugh as Athelas caught up with me. “I’ve been looking for you!”
Last I had seen it, it had been hopping around in the security room of Blackpoint’s house. I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face. So that’s what had been wrong about the house this morning! Zero and Athelas had some pretty good spells up around the house, and the tie frog must have been trying to get past them to come home. The question was, was it looking for me, or JinYeong? If you went by the fact that the tie had once been JinYeong’s, it made sense that it was looking for him; if you went by the fact that I was the one who had turned it into a strange mix of frog and tie, it was just as likely that it had come looking for me.
“Really, Pet!” expostulated Athelas.
“Don’t worry,” I told him, removing the tie from the toilet bowl. “I’ll wash my hands—and the frog, too. Can’t let it go hopping around in the outside world for people to see, can we?”
“I fail to see why it should hop around the inside of the house, either,” Athelas said. His voice sounded vaguely pleading, which gave me an odd little tickle of fun deep in my throat. “It would be far better off outside and more frog than tie, or turned back into a tie.”
The tie frog must have been able to understand what he said, because it made a hasty leap away from me and for the doorway.
“Heck!” I said, grabbing wildly for it and catching it by the pointy tail. I curled my fingers around it and murmured soothingly, “No, don’t worry, I won’t let them turn you back into a tie!”
Athelas sighed faintly. “Very well, Pet,” he said, his voice pained. “But if you must keep it in the house, you’ll need to take care of it.”
“What, you mean you’re not gunna feed it and take it for walks?” I said. That was the fault of that little tickle of fun: I couldn’t help it.
Coldly, Athelas said, “I shall certainly not bother myself to take care of it.”
“Yes, dad,” I said, grinning up at him.
“Becoming attached is a very bad habit of yours,” he said, and I heard approximately three layers of meaning. “You should fix that.”
He meant that I was too attached to him—to Zero, even to JinYeong. That I got too attached in general. That being attached was dangerous because people took advantage and that even a tie frog could take advantage of such an attachment, in the most innocent of ways.
It wasn’t that I thought of it as love, exactly. It was about as close as I thought Athelas could get to it, though, so I kept grinning unrepentantly at him and said again, “Yes, dad.”
He looked away first, which was a delightful victory. He also left me there with the tie frog, so I took it with me into the kitchen to start on breakfast. It was a bit late to be doing anything fancy, so I just went with the toast and beans I’d planned on, but my psychos must have been pretty hungry because Athelas and JinYeong presented themselves at the dining table while I was still buttering toast despite the simplicity of the food.
I put the toast on the table along with some jams for Athelas, and as I went back for the beans, the tie frog sidled across my shoulder and down my arm a little. Maybe it was trying to get a look at its former owner, because I’d just walked behind JinYeong. For a moment, I was very tempted to slide it down the back of his collar, just to see how he would react. Maybe he felt my gaze on his bare neck, because he looked around suspiciously.
“Hajima,” he said.
“I’m starting to think you know me too well,” I told him, very slightly grumpy.
JinYeong grinned, sharp and fierce. “Kurae. I will not have beans down my neck, either.”
“Suspicious little mosquito,” I said. “Oi. How’s the book going? How’d it go, him kissing her?”
“She ran away,” said JinYeong, after a very slight pause. “But the book says she enjoyed it, so—”
“That’s because she’s in a paradigm where what the author wants, goes,” I said, grabbing the electric frypan full of beans. “It’s not like that in real life. In real life, women punch you in the face if you try to force kisses on them.”
“They do not punch me in the face,” JinYeong said, insufferably smug.
“Only because they’re buzzed out of their minds on vampire fumes,” I said. “You can’t call that a real connection, can you? What’s the use of kissing someone like that?”
Scowling at me, he said, “I know that. Who else would know it like I do?”
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “Sorry.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that he might feel lonely in his vampiric ability to make pretty much everyone fall in love with him on sight. I’d spoken thoughtlessly, but it was true that any connection he might have formed with a woman would be completely undermined by the fact that she was attracted to him in the same way that a moth was attracted to the light that could kill it.
No wonder JinYeong didn’t understand how a relationship ought to work.
I wondered suddenly how long it had been since he had been a human, and if he’d been in love before that. I’d have to check the internet to see when the Korean war was, but I was pretty sure it was a while ago. He’d have had to have been a vampire at least sixty years by now. Heaven help any woman he was keen on in the future.
“Oi,” I said. “Don’t force kisses on women, either. It’s wrong. It doesn’t matter if they’re doing it without a fuss because they’re hopped up on vampire fumes; it’s still wrong.”
“I was speaking of the book,” JinYeong said coldly. “I am only curious.”
“’Course you were,” I said, sitting down. “’Course you are. For your information, you can’t build trust by kissing people, no matter what your book says.”
“Then how can he make her trust him?” demanded JinYeong.
“Not make her trust him—build the trust. You can’t force someone to trust you.”
“Nonsense,” said Athelas, cutting into his toast. “That’s the basis for every cult and confidence trick in the worlds Behind and Human.”
JinYeong, disregarding this interruption, said as if wronged, “That takes longer. Why should it take so long?”
“Longer books are better,” I told him. “Anyway, what’s time to a vampire? It’s not like you haven’t got lots of it.”
JinYeong muttered something in Korean beneath his breath, evidently not for the understanding of anyone but himself, but that might have been because despite his bravado, he wasn’t eager to talk about such things in front of Zero, who had at last entered the dining room again.
“Made you boston beans,” I said to Zero, pointing with a knife that dripped sauce on the table. “What are you doing in the hall, anyway? The house is getting twisted around whatever it is.”
“Checking on something,” he said shortly, sitting down.
Oh. Well then. That made things much clearer.
“What’s with the sword these days?” I asked him, instead. I was pretty sure that’s what he was tinkering with.
His blue eyes pinioned me. “Did you take it out yesterday?” he asked.
Ah heck. I hadn’t expected to be asked outright. Zero doesn’t usually ask stuff outright: he usually tries to hide stuff from me as he tries to figure out what’s happening. He must be really confused about the sword if he was prepared to ask outright.
“Not exactly,” I said, reluctantly. “I just grabbed for the first thing I saw, and the Heirling Sword came out. Did it really disappear from here at the same time?”
“Yes,” said Athelas, delicately ladling boston beans onto a new piece of toast. “And yet, it is impossible! It should not be able to come to anyone who is not an heirling, through any random object. So very interesting, isn’t it, my lord?”
“I told you not to needle me,” Zero told him, looking very icy about the eyes. “Didn’t I?”
“I am merely suggesting that although we have hitherto decided that the pet wasn’t likely to be an heirling on the strength of drawing the sword from its actual, physical p
osition, it is much harder to argue against it when the sword is effectively coming to her.”
There was a brief silence that it seemed Zero would have liked to have filled. At last, he said shortly, “I know it.”
“I don’t believe I’ve heard of the sword making itself available to anyone but an heirling, as a matter of fact,” continued Athelas smoothly. “And if I might be so bold, my lord, it is, in fact, a part of the Heirling Trials.”
I made a very small protest, but Zero, tiredly, only asked, “What do you want from me?”
“It seems abundantly clear that it would be wise to take the pet further into our confidence regarding what is now her obvious status as an heirling.”
Zero briefly pressed his eyes shut and opened them again. “Give me reasons,” he said.
I saw the look he shot at Athelas: it wasn’t a look that said give me reasons but one that said your reasons had better be good, or I will ignore them.
“I very much fear, my lord, that should we not, the pet is very liable to die from an excess of ignorance,” said Athelas gently. “And perhaps it would be good to ask if the golden g—good heavens!—our past liaison had occasion to see Pet with the Heirling Sword?”
“He saw,” I said glumly. “Reckon that’s why he was so excited to tell your dad. He said your dad would be sure to want to kill me, so he was gunna do it first and get the thanks later.”
“You,” Zero said, fixing his eyes on me in a way that felt as scorching as the summer Tasmanian sun, “did not tell me about this yesterday. Why?”
“I was pretty sure you’d say I had to be an heirling,” I said, sighing. “And actually, I don’t want to rule Behind, so—”
“There is very little chance you would ever rule Behind,” Zero said, with crushing frankness. “If—since you’re an heirling, you would be inducted into the trials, and then you would die.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Very cheerful.”
Flamin’ rude. It wasn’t as though I wanted to be an heirling, either: there was no need for him to be so annoyed that he hadn’t been able to stop it being true by the sheer force of his denial.
Between Cases (The City Between Book 7) Page 5
