Marazul murmured, “I see. And when he does?”
“There will probably be another fight,” I said, just as honestly as before. “He’s getting better, but he still doesn’t think much of humans.”
“I find that hard to believe, when he’s had you to look at,” said Marazul, glancing at me briefly beneath his lashes before looking back at the computer. “Here’s what I texted you about: I made a copy to work from, just in case, and you’ve got the original on the USB, but I’ve taken the password off it. I thought you might like to have a quick look at the copy to see it’s what you expected before I delete it. You can delete it yourself if you’re worried.”
“I don’t know exactly what to expect,” I said, but I didn’t stop him from turning the laptop toward me, and I reached out for it readily enough.
I was still a little bit pink from his compliment, but I still scanned the desktop quickly, more by habit more than any inbuilt suspicion. There was the file he was talking about: a yellow one named Pet’s USB: but I could see a second file with the same name, which didn’t make sense no matter which way I thought about it.
No, I realised a moment later, not exactly a second file with the same name. It was a second file with the same name, but in the fae script that Zero’s books were written in. Reckon Marazul didn’t know that I could read fae script, because he would have made sure I couldn’t see it if he’d known.
I could have told him I could read it—could have asked him what the heck he was doing making a copy of the files I’d asked him to unlock, and leaving them around on his desktop in fae script while reassuring me he was going to let me delete the one in English—but there was a simpler way to check if my sudden suspicions were correct.
I reached for the touchpad and rolled the pointer over the second, fae-scripted folder.
“Not that one,” Marazul said swiftly, laying his hand over mine to sweep the pointer away from the folder. He caught himself almost immediately, but it was far too late. “Ah,” he said. “You read fae script. How do you read fae script? Humans aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”
I let my hand lie beneath his, feeling the warmth and excitement of it for a moment longer, before I pulled it away. “You told Zero, didn’t you?” I asked, very quietly.
His eyes met mine and he smiled at me: apologetically, charmingly, warmly.
“Pet,” he said, and there was regret in his voice, too, but it didn’t matter. “How could I not? You’re beautiful and shiny, but he could kill me if I step wrong.”
“He wouldn’t kill you for me,” I said. “Not if you weren’t harming me. Not even if I’d gotten you to do something he disapproved of.”
“And then there’s the vampire,” he added. “I can’t afford to make enemies, and if I have Lord Sero behind me, he won’t let the vampire touch me.”
I don’t know if it was the sheer disappointment of the moment that made me frown: there was no reason to be annoyed at anyone for calling JinYeong exactly what he was. “What do you mean? What about JinYeong?”
The rueful smile he wore grew a touch warmer with real amusement. He looked as though he were debating within himself whether or not to answer, and as he hesitated, a heavy knock sounded on the door.
“That’ll be Zero, then, won’t it?”
It was funny how light and clear my voice sounded when I felt so heavy and grey with disappointment—as though a brief warmth of sunshine had vanished away into the cold morning. Had he been planning on walking in the sunshine with me before or after he gave Zero the contents of the USB and I remained in ignorance?
’Zul gave me another smile, and it came just as easily as it had always come: bright and warm, but with nothing to bear it up underneath. I knew then that although I might come back to ask for help with something here and there, I would never again make up an excuse to do so.
“See you next time, then,” I said.
I reckon he knew it, too. There was real sadness in his face: I saw it reflected in the glass of the tank as I walked back up the watery hall and toward the door.
I opened the door, and Zero stared at me, taken aback. I didn’t make him fumble for words—I’m not even sure he would have fumbled for words. I said, “He’s got it ready for you. Catch you at home later. Got a contract for you to sign.”
“Pet,” he said. “The USB.”
He left unsaid that if I didn’t give it to him, he would simply take it, but I knew it. I fished it out of my pocket, the glassy squareness of it familiar but mysterious between my fingers.
Maybe I had been living with Behindkind for too long: it was physically painful to hold out my hand and allow him to take the USB from me. That little bit of leverage I’d had, it was gone. I had spent it. Used it. And now I had nothing else to bargain with. I was going to have to trust again, and I already had a pretty good primer to judge by when it came to how wise it was to trust Behindkind.
Zero didn’t snatch it away. Maybe he sympathised with me; maybe it was a moment of real kindness. He waited until I released it of my own accord before he took it away and put it somewhere in his leather jacket.
“Pet,” he said again. I stopped and waited, but he seemed to be having more trouble than usual coming up with something to say. At last, he said, “Bring the contract to me when I get home. I’ll sign it.”
“Beauty,” I said. “Got it ready for you.”
I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going when I left, so when I found myself walking toward Morgana’s house, I sat on someone’s wall to pull myself together for a few minutes.
I know it wasn’t the end of the world, but it had been nice to have someone smile at me for a little while. Someone to make me feel bright and light and different, even if I knew they were Behindkind and I was human. Someone to take my mind off the turmoil and uncertainty of the past several days.
Now that spark was gone, and I felt as though I hadn’t had enough time to enjoy it. More, I realised as I sat there, I’d told Zero I had a contract for him to sign. That wasn’t entirely true: I had it drafted and mostly ready to go, but I had wanted to get North to look it over for me. Having the North Wind look over your contracts for you doesn’t sound like it makes much sense, but she’d recently started up her own business in Sandy Bay, helping humans deal with contractual issues when it came to Behindkind, and she’d already offered to help me out if I needed it.
It was time to call in that favour.
Chapter Twelve
By the time I got home it was late afternoon. From the slightly conscious look that JinYeong shot at me before looking away and the very casual manner in which Athelas enquired, “You had a pleasant day, Pet, I trust?” it was fairly obvious that Zero had both been home before me and that all of my psychos had a pretty good idea of what had happened.
“Zero headed out again?” I asked, dropping down on the couch beside JinYeong with my hands in my hoodie pocket, fiddling with the wad of paper I’d stuffed in there.
“I fancy he thought you were likely to run into trouble,” suggested Athelas. “He came back briefly and went out again.”
“Didn’t see him following me,” I said, but it wasn’t like I would have seen him if he didn’t want to be seen, after all. “S’pose he’ll be home soon, too, then.”
“I should imagine so.” There was a brief moment of silence before Athelas added, “Might I venture to suggest that making contracts between…friends…leaves those friends unable to act on their worser impulses?”
“What, you mean you wanna say I told you so?” I asked him. For some reason, that struck me as funny even though it wasn’t really. “Fair enough: you might as well.”
“Contracts with friends are a matter of protecting both parties, my dear.”
I shrugged. “If I have to have a contract with my friends, they’re not really friends, are they?”
“A very poor reflection upon our situation, wouldn’t you say?” gently suggested Athelas.
I took a moment
longer to think about that, because although my first instinct had been a rather soul-crushing agreement, my second felt a bit more just. “If you’re going to try and tell me that’s not about ninety-five percent show for Behindkind who don’t like you lot getting too close to humans, don’t bother. I wouldn’t believe you.”
“He cannot fight,” said JinYeong, speaking up for the first time since I’d gotten home that afternoon. “The merman cannot fight, and some enemies are too dangerous to make.”
“I know,” I said, but I remembered a nearly dead JinYeong who had dragged himself to find me after fighting for my right to keep the very same information. He had had enough experience to know that Zero was far more than a match for him, and he had still fought, tooth and nail, right to the death.
I poked him in the ribs and said, “Thanks,” a bit absently, then sank back into my own thoughts. From there, I became aware that Athelas was still watching me. I met his grey eyes and it seemed to me that there was a faint question in them.
“I don’t do that,” I said to him. “That talking without talking thing that you and Zero do. You’re gunna have to speak up.”
“Might I suggest a cup of coffee, my dear? While refreshing to see that you’re not hurling invective at the merman, I feel that something of a mood-lifter can only improve the situation.”
“Not much use calling him names,” I said, but I got up. A cup of coffee would hit just right.
“A delightful reflection of your character, I’m sure,” said Athelas blandly, and met JinYeong’s cold, dark eyes just as blandly. “I must say, from past experience I was not expecting such a mild response.”
“No need to be sarcastic,” I said, but it made me smile anyway. “Maybe I won’t make you a cup of tea while I’m making my coffee.”
“I will have blood,” said JinYeong, slipping around me and into the kitchen.
I stared at his back in surprise. “I can bring it back with me,” I called after him, but by then he was already in the refrigerator.
Oh well. More coffee for me.
It wasn’t much later that Zero came back. He stood in the hallway like a shadow until I said, “There’s still coffee in the percolator if you want it.”
He still hesitated for a moment there in the hall; said, “Pet—”
“Got something for you,” I said, flourishing the thin sheaf of papers that had been in my hoodie pocket at him. “I just had to run it by a friend before I brought it to you.”
“Yes, I heard that North had established her own legal firm,” Athelas murmured, taking the sheaf from me. He flicked a look between me and Zero, then turned his attention on the papers. “One can’t help feeling it’s a step down in life for the North Wind, but no doubt she knows best what suits her.”
“You mean you think she’s wasting her time with human affairs when she’s Behindkind?”
“I mean, Pet,” said Athelas, his gaze rising to dwell on me coldly, “that she is a specific kind of Behindkind. And whether or not she will, that calling will hold her, no matter what else she chooses to do with her life.”
“Fair enough,” I said, as Zero sat down in his usual chair opposite me. “Reckon there’s a pretty needy niche for a Behindkind lawyer helping humans, though.”
“Apparently so,” Athelas said, passing the printed contract to Zero. “I see that you no longer consider JinYeong as an owner, my dear.”
“I decided,” JinYeong mumbled into his blood bag. I dug an elbow into his ribs, but that only made him grin.
“What about you?” I asked Athelas. “I put you in there, but if you want me to change it—”
“Oh no!” said Athelas easily. “No special treatment for me, I think! I prefer not to be in so much debt.”
“It’s not special treatment,” I said, startled. I had originally refused to be considered as JinYeong’s pet, on paper at least, because I had thought he was a lying vampire who pretended to be my friend. I’d kept it as it was because now that we actually were friends again, it was a weird thing to put to paper.
Athelas smiled a little. “Is it not? Pet—”
“All right, all right, don’t have a stroke,” I said. “I’ve already drawn you in as co-owner with Zero, so you don’t have to worry about getting too attached on paper. It’s only until my twentieth birthday, though, or until we figure out who this killer of yours is. And all the other terms are the same: you keeping me in the loop, the house being mine at the end of all this. You have a year and three quarters to think about how you’re gunna deal with having to think of a human in a non-pet context.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Athelas, his eyes glowing with laughter. “I shall endeavour not to disappoint you.”
I don’t even think Zero read through it properly—or maybe he can read at super-speed, who knows? He signed the contract in a fizz of yellow something that was probably the magic North had told me about, then passed it back to Athelas, who took his time to read and sign.
Zero said briefly, “Practise, JinYeong.”
“I have already practised,” JinYeong said, one of his incisors showing.
“Then we will practise again,” said Zero, his icy eyes fairly pinioning JinYeong.
I saw the struggle on JinYeong’s face—the bloody desire to slap his blood bag onto the coffee table and spring for Zero’s throat to start the fight on his own terms, wrestling against the part of him that realised he had too many feelings and would like to do something about that.
“Oi,” I said to him, pinching a bit of his suitcoat sleeve between my fingers, “don’t forget to take off your tie.”
JinYeong looked down enquiringly at me, one eyebrow flying up, and I saw the amusement spring to his eyes. “I was not going to break a wall,” he said, but he got up anyway and stripped off both coat and tie, leaving his blood bag on the table. As he sauntered out of the room, he said mockingly over his shoulder, “Come along, hyeong. If you wish to talk, we will talk.”
“I used to fancy that there was nothing more irritating than a reactive and destructive JinYeong,” said Athelas mildly as he left the room. “I perceive I was entirely mistaken.”
“Almost as bad as a pet that won’t do as it’s told?” I suggested, grinning.
“Very nearly,” said Zero, but there was amusement in his eyes despite the crease between his brows. “Pet—”
“I’m all right,” I said, before he could keep going. Like JinYeong, I felt as though I needed to be given a minute to reconsider the things I might do or say, so that I didn’t regret them. “There’s a vampire waiting for you out there, and if you don’t go out he’ll probably come back in and make a mess here.”
“We’ll talk later,” Zero said, and rested his hand briefly on my head.
It felt like approval, but what do I know anymore?
It was just on five that evening when I got to the yellow skeleton mural in the alley beside Centrepoint, and Abigail and Ezri were already there waiting for me. They had one of the blokes with them this time as well, but I couldn’t remember his name.
I’d received the text inviting me to join them just half an hour earlier. Like all of Abigail’s other texts, it had been brief and to-the-point. Majority yes. Got something for you. Yellow skeleton 5pm. I’d told my psychos that they would have to sort out their own dinner and made a dash out of the house, hoping to get there in time.
“Sorted out your pet fae?” asked Ezri, as soon as she saw me.
I stared at her until she looked away, huffing out a disparaging breath, then said to Abigail, “You said you have something for me?”
“You might find these useful,” she said, shoving a fat, rubber-banded manila folder at me. “Look after this lot: they aren’t something you can access at the local police station, and I’ll want them back.”
“Got it,” I said. “I’ll make sure the boys know to watch out. No blood on the papers, that sorta thing.”
The bloke behind them grinned, but Abigail just rolled her eyes.
“Don’t make me regret this, Pet.”
“I’ll try,” I said. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me again. I know this isn’t ideal for you.”
She shrugged. “Well, we’ll get something out of it, too, if it makes you more inclined to take care of those things we mentioned last time. Thanks for helping out my girls yesterday, by the way.”
“Helping us?” Ezri snorted. “We helped her fae!”
“They were pretty useful,” I said, grinning. “Oi, Abigail—were there any of the earlier groups you talked about that shared info with fae?”
Abigail stiffened. “Why do you ask about that?”
“Well,” I said, scenting blood, “informational sharing goes both ways, right? For instance, there was a group of fae in the twenties who knew a lot about a few humans they shouldn’t know about. They were trying to protect them, but—”
She raised a brow at me. “Protect them? Why?”
“They were important humans. Protecting them would give the fae a leg up.”
“There have been mentions in the records,” Abigail said. “A stupid way to do things, if you ask me. It always ended up badly, as far as I could tell—especially for the humans.”
“Not really a surprise,” said the bloke. He paused, and said rather diffidently, “I heard you had something happen to you like Cadence.”
“It started out like that,” I said. “It’s not really like that anymore, though.”
Not exactly. I was a pet again in contract as well as in word, but at least I had been able to gain a little while losing a little. I might still feel slightly bitter about how it had happened, but I’d been able to have a say, at least.
“You didn’t get taken back there? To their land?”
“I’ve been in and out, but that was by myself, mostly. Why?”
“We found something in our records about you, that’s all,” Abigail said abruptly. “We wanted to double check that you weren’t—you know. One of the ones who wears a human face. That’s why he’s here.”
Between Cases (The City Between Book 7) Page 24
