Between Cases (The City Between Book 7)

by W. R. Gingell

  I opened my mouth to say, “Actually, there is something—” but before I could say it, Morgana added, “I’d better go. Daniel will be getting home from work soon. Just…thanks for everything.”

  She hung up before I could answer her, and I sat there in silence again until I heard the clash as Zero and JinYeong began fighting in the backyard—steel to steel, by the sound of it, which was a relief, because that meant it was just practise and not a real fight. Athelas must have been out there, too, because the house was empty when I went downstairs to put together some afternoon tea for them, and that was just fine by me. I had a lot to think about again, but the most pressing of those things pushed itself to notice as I boiled the jug and prepared a coffee plunger and teapot. Namely, that Athelas had never been higher than the first floor in Morgana’s house while I’d been there. Exactly how had he known where to go to find the kids? Daniel had been with me at the time, and I’d never told my psychos where we found them. I’d mostly avoided talking about the kids with them because I was half afraid they’d say something had to be done about them, and I didn’t think the kids deserved to have something done about them.

  Athelas, it would seem, had either been in the house when I wasn’t aware, or had already been to the house before I was there. Whichever one it was, I wanted to know about it—and I wanted to know why he hadn’t told me about it. Why he hadn’t told any of us about it, if it came to that.

  Things were still swirling around in my head when I brought the tray out to my psychos, because as suspicious as it was that Athelas knew where the kids were, I was still more concerned about knowing why he’d gone to see them. I wanted to know if it was on Zero’s orders, too.

  “You seem perturbed, my dear,” said Athelas, as I set the tray down on the small, sun-faded table beside the seat in which he was elegantly sitting.

  “Heirling stuff to think about,” I told him, and it was technically true even if it was the sort of twisted thinking that I would have had to use against the brain worm that burrowed for truth. I shivered a bit, but it was true that Morgana could be considered as heirling stuff, since she was almost certainly one herself, little though she knew it. “Funny how I’ve got less of a life expectancy these days than I did when my parents were killed.”

  “Don’t say that word,” said JinYeong, suddenly close and reaching for a biscuit. “I already told you about that.”

  Zero reached for the closest mug of coffee—JinYeong’s spice blend—but JinYeong snarled and unerringly snatched it away before he could touch it, so I shut my mouth.

  Zero coolly took the other one and said, “You should save some of that energy for fighting. You haven’t been paying attention.”

  “I did not bite you,” JinYeong said curtly, and strode back across the yard with his coffee.

  Athelas smiled and reached for his empty teacup, and after a moment or two Zero’s brows went up and he followed JinYeong into the fight zone again.

  I didn’t say anything straight away. I just put Athelas’ teapot in front of him, then sat down beside him with my feet up on the last bit of the patio railing that wasn’t rotted all the way through.

  “JinYeong’s getting pretty touchy these days,” I said, after a while.

  I saw the faint smile in my peripheral once again: I’d been expecting that. It meant that Athelas was very well aware of exactly why JinYeong was behaving the way he was, and that he didn’t want to ruin his amusement by telling me why.

  That was all right.

  That wasn’t what I really wanted to ask him about.

  “He’s certainly less considered in his attacks,” Athelas agreed. “But then, he restrained himself from biting Zero just now, so I’m cautiously optimistic for his chances. You both seem to be expanding in…unexpected ways these days. I rather fancy that you’re getting much better at fighting these days yourself, Pet.”

  I couldn’t help beaming. I’d thought I was getting better, but it was nice to hear that from someone who knew what they were talking about. Of course, I still very much remembered those occasions that I’d fought Athelas—the last one notwithstanding—and I was very well aware that I would have to fight significantly better if I was to train properly with Athelas.

  Looking at it one way, I was lucky that JinYeong mostly chose to fight with swords when it came to me; he wasn’t lying when he said his body was a weapon.

  “Been practising,” I said, blowing multicoloured steam from my coffee out into the back yard. “But the weird thing is, the better I get, the harder it is to beat you blokes. Comes from fighting against you when you’ve got a handicap, I s’pose.”

  “Yes, JinYeong is significantly better without a weapon,” said Athelas. “But he is also significantly good when it comes to double blades, so holding your own against him is nothing to sniff at.”

  I nudged myself down in my seat, and a bit closer to him. It was starting to get cold out here. I said, “You didn’t tell me you’d met Morgana before.”

  There was a breathless moment where even the air stood still—or maybe it was just because I was hoping I had managed the trick.

  Then Athelas sipped his tea and said, “Did I not? It didn’t seem important at the time, but no doubt you know better.”

  I drew in a breath, my lungs warming with motion again, but it didn’t seem to provide me with any oxygen. Had he been taken by surprise and answered with the truth? Had he told me exactly what he wanted me to hear because he thought I knew something and needed to tell me something as little useful as possible? Impossible to tell, because it was Athelas.

  But now I knew that he had known Morgana. Had met her, if he’d answered truthfully. I just didn’t know what that meant.

  “Your friend is entrenched far more deeply in our world than she would like to think,” Athelas said, surprising me again. “She should do her best to adjust to it: it will serve her well in the future.”

  “Reckon she’ll be all right after a while,” I said, though there was a hurting part of my heart that suggested she might do so without my help, and might very well want to do so. “She was already—she already knew a lot. She just didn’t want to admit it to herself. Some of it she didn’t know wasn’t normal.”

  “Odd, the things a person can accept as normal that are easily perceived as unusual from the outside,” said Athelas. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Morgana, or something else. “Now that she knows they’re not normal, her new normal should expand and become quite comfortable. She should at least be able to walk.”

  “If she eats brains,” I said, aware that the conversation had gone in a direction I had not planned. It was probably a direction that was more comfortable for Athelas, the sneaky old fae.

  “A small price to pay if one has a good cook,” he said gently. His eyes flicked away from me and back to the backyard, where Zero was tipping back his head to finish the last of his coffee and JinYeong was looking very sharp and toothy. “Do you suppose JinYeong is going to remember that he has a weapon, or will he revert to teeth?”

  “Dunno,” I said. “Told you. He’s been weird lately.”

  “Perhaps I should interfere, then,” he said, leaning forward in order to rise.

  “Athelas?”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you come to meet Morgana?” I wanted to ask why he’d gone back there and bothered the kids, too, but I wasn’t quite sure I dared. Maybe I was too worried about what his answer might be.

  He could have sighed faintly. “I had some business with her parents.”

  “Before or after they were dead?”

  The words tumbled out of my mouth, but I wasn’t sorry they came out. I wasn’t sure exactly why I asked, or even why it was important—but I knew I wanted an answer.

  “After,” he said. “Quite some time ago. They were newly dead at that stage, and I had a question that needed an answer.”

  “You just—you went to talk to a couple of ghosts? Did Zero know?”

  “Zero wa
s, and remains, unaware. It was not something done at his behest.”

  “You know she was a zombie?”

  “They didn’t see fit to tell me what she was, and I certainly wasn’t rude enough to ask,” he said. “I was aware that she wasn’t human when we spoke. I will not,” he added, with a faint, understanding smile, “tell you what we spoke of. It was personal business and I doubt she remembers me.”

  “S’pose you mean you want me to keep quiet about it,” I said, somewhat disgruntled. Whenever I got some answers, more questions seemed to pop up.

  “That would be appreciated,” he said, gazing at the wary circling of Zero and JinYeong. “But should you not do so, I won’t stop you.”

  “You just don’t wanna owe me anything,” I said, and I couldn’t help grinning up at him, despite the awfulness of the day.

  “You know me too well, Pet,” he said, smiling down into his teacup.

  “Suspicious!” I said. “Now I don’t know if I was right or not!”

  Athelas rested his hand on my head briefly, a warm patch of houndstooth and corduroy beside me. “You pick up things very quickly, Pet,” he said. “Do be careful, won’t you? Try not to forget the old lessons with all the new ones you’re learning. It would be dangerous for a pet to become too cheeky.”

  Then he put his teacup down and rose to stroll leisurely out into the backyard before I could remind him that we needed to do more work on further memories of mine that were missing—particularly the ones from the night my parents died. I could have chased him down, but I still felt a bit raw to do anything but accept the delay.

  Instead, I sat where I was as Athelas said, “JinYeong, perhaps you would add to your goodness for the day by allowing me to spar with my lord. I feel as though I need to shake out the cobwebs.”

  “Fetch your boots, Pet,” called Zero, as JinYeong, surprisingly amenable, left the field of battle to the other two men. “You’re next.”

  “Great,” I said sarcastically. “Looking forward to it.”

  I sat down next to JinYeong on the patio step to watch them fight for a while despite that, sipping my fourth or fifth coffee for the day. I probably need to work on drinking less, but who can deal with the stress of drinking less coffee? I wasn’t buzzing yet, and even if my leg was bouncing a bit it was still easy to focus on watching Zero and Athelas fight. It’s always an impressive sight: Zero has all the advantage of height and weight, and he should be an easy win, but when I see them at it, it’s clear to see why Athelas was chosen to train him when he was a kid. There’s a kind of deadly, barely-in-control savagery about Athelas as he fights, too quick to block, too sharp to avoid being cut, too slippery to be caught.

  If every one of Zero’s cuts had landed, it would probably have made very short work of the smaller fae; but not every cut did land, and that made all the difference. Athelas was good at taking the hits he needed to take in order to get in his own hits.

  That left me thinking of Athelas again when I went in to grab my boots for training, and my thoughts were hard to categorise. Obviously, he was suspicious. But exactly what those suspicions led to—or even exactly what they were—eluded me. Whatever it was, it probably had something to do with Zero, and whatever it was, he had only been getting more and more suspicious lately. If I learnt that he had been out and about grifting to make sure that Zero didn’t have to take the throne he so desperately didn’t want to take, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  But then, that would leave the loose end of Heirlings not generally making it through the cycle if they didn’t become king, even if they resigned their right to take up the challenge—and Athelas was not the sort of person to leave loose ends lying around where they could cause damage.

  And I wondered how much Zero knew of Athelas’ machinations, too.

  What I meant to do was grab my boots and go back outside to take my turn training. Instead, I found myself sitting down in my beanbag and staring up at the ceiling when I got to the room, my boots on but not zipped up and my thoughts pretty much in the same state of half-readiness. Where was I supposed to go from here? I was an heirling, and my parents had been—whatever the heck humans became when they fought back against Behindkind who terrorised humans. Someone had thought I was worth championing when I was a kid, and had kidnapped me to make sure they had me—an attempt that hadn’t survived a visit from our murderer. I nearly hadn’t survived it, either, but somehow I had.

  The cycle for the throne had begun again in earnest, and one day soon Zero’s dad would find us and force his son to be king. Or the king would show up for both of us. My champions—my kidnappers—were already dead, years ago: I’d never known them, though I suppose my parents must have.

  There was still the problem of not knowing whether or not Zero was—in love with me? fond of me?

  And now, I realised, sitting up to flip through the pile of papers that should have included the copy of my great grandmother’s license, that paper had definitely disappeared.

  Heck, I thought in annoyance. It wasn’t like the psychos went poking through my room at random, but if it was gone, it was likely that one of them had taken it. Why? And which one?

  I heaved a sigh and tossed the whole lot back onto the carpet, flopping into my beanbag again. There was too much going on in my life and I didn’t know what to focus on first, let alone what was the most important. And there were still new and terrible memories waiting in the back of my mind—just waiting for me to close my eyes so that they could come out again.

  I probably would have sat there for the rest of the evening if JinYeong hadn’t come up to fetch me. Ignoring Zero’s explicit orders, he kicked off his shoes and sauntered into my room without stopping, crouching beside the beanbag to say, “Hyeong wants us to fight.”

  “What a surprise,” I said. “We’ve gotta have a word to him about mixed signals, because when we’re inside it’s all don’t fight on the furniture and when we’re outside it’s all have fun kids.”

  JinYeong gave a small thch of a laugh, looking away, and said, “Hyeong is working us hard today…”

  He let that trail away, and it wasn’t until he glanced back at me, eyes liquid, that I realised what he meant.

  “What, vampire spit? Reckon I’m still pretty hopped up from the other day,” I said doubtfully. “Do I need it?”

  JinYeong half-shrugged, but stayed where he was, watching me with his head on the side. What was he, playing Zero?

  “Oh,” I said, understanding suddenly. “You want to have a bit of fun with Zero.”

  “Fun?” He shrugged, eyes liquid and amused. “It could be fun.”

  “Okay,” I said, butting my head back into the beanbag and taking one last look at the peaceful ceiling. I’d probably be on my back coughing up grass and looking at the sky by the time training was over. “Bite me or whatever, and we’ll do some matched doubles with Athelas and Zero.”

  As if we’d ever come out the winners in that. As if there was ever a different outcome for either JinYeong or me when it came to fighting things that were too big and too bad, other than being sent flying through a wall and having to get up and do it again.

  I gave a small sniff of laughter and turned my head to say to JinYeong, “Maybe we can chuck Zero through a wall if we team up,” but I didn’t get the chance to do more than form the m because he leaned forward and kissed me, nudging me back into the beanbag. It was just a quick one, not even long enough to feel the fizz of vampire saliva-induced energy, but instead of pulling away afterwards he pressed forward again to give me another soft, little kiss that was nowhere near long enough or deep enough to kick-start that otherworldly energy either.

  “That’s not—that didn’t give me vampire spit,” I said stupidly after that kiss.

  “No,” said JinYeong, moving forward once more. “That is the point.”

  This time, he came forward with the whole of him, arms slipping between me and the beanbag, his chest lightly touching me, and through the sudden quickening beat
of my heart, I went into a flurry of memories.

  JinYeong carrying me home on his back. JinYeong’s arms around me as he murmured nonsense numbers in my ears to drive away the remembrance of dying in my dreams. JinYeong bloody and beaten and leaning against me because he wasn’t strong enough to sit alone.

  And out I came again, because he had certainly never kissed me like this before, and it was hard to concentrate on anything else. I had the stray, wild thought that JinYeong shoeless wasn’t the non-threatening thing I had thought; shoeless JinYeong was a dangerously comfortable JinYeong.

  An abundance of soft warmth was what it was, if you didn’t count the sleek firmness of his chest; warmth and softness beneath me, curling around me, warmth and movement of lips against mine. Did I kiss him back? I think I must have, and that made another warmth in my stomach.

  He left me enough space to move my arms—to embrace or to push away—and I think that’s what woke me up. I pushed, experimentally, and he moved away from me and even the beanbag at once, settling his back against the wooden beam, his eyes on me. I don’t know how, but he managed to look exactly as if he had just been pressing kisses into unsuspecting lips: eyes half-lidded, tie askew and slightly loose, hair rumpled out of its usual tidiness.

  He had already said as much, but even if he hadn’t, I would have known that what I had just—no, what JinYeong had just—oh heck—I would have known that the kiss that had just happened was not a kiss for the purposes of providing me with vampire spit.

  “What the flaming heck was that?” I said at last, trying not to gasp. Between the beanbag and the rush of dizziness, I managed to sit up with some difficulty, but it was ridiculously hard to breathe, and a so very obviously just-kissed JinYeong was startlingly hard to face up to.

  “Ah,” he said, leaning his head against the beam behind him. “I have wanted to do that for a long time.”

  “Hang on!” I protested. “You can’t—you can’t go kissing me like that! You’re sweet on a human! You said you’re going to ask a human out on a date!”

  “Kurae,” he said. Smugly, he added, “That human is you.”