Between Frames (The City Between Book 4)

by W. R. Gingell

  “Never mind,” I said. It might really be that I’d seen someone who looked enough like a security footage version of a murdered man to be confused. It might be a good idea just to look at the footage by myself again. I was probably wrong, but I wanted to know for sure.

  JinYeong was about as talkative on the way home as he usually was, but his eyes flickered back and forth along the street, and I was pretty sure I saw him keeping an eye on the windows and shadows as we passed, too. I began to wonder if I hadn’t been wrong, and if he had seen the man, and just wasn’t telling me.

  Annoying, but very possible.

  Fine. I would talk to Detective Tuatu instead.

  Chapter Six

  There wasn’t much of a chance to call the detective when we got home, because Zero first demanded lunch, and then sent me out into the back yard to warm up before practice. They probably just wanted to talk together without me hearing them, I thought grumpily, and refused to feel bad about not telling Zero about Mr. Michaels. If he was one of the murdered blokes, JinYeong would be telling him about the man right now, anyway, and they sure as heck wouldn’t be planning on telling me.

  “Find a weapon, Pet,” called Zero, striding from the house.

  I scrambled to find something useful, knowing from experience that there was no stopping that massive stride, and that he would seize anything—a sapling from the ground, a board from the fence—and come for me regardless of whether or not I managed to get a weapon.

  The first thing I snatched up, a stick I’d already had my eye on, didn’t seem to have a Behind form. It stayed a stick in my hand, and I abandoned it, diving as Zero’s swords scythed toward me, swift and deadly. I collided painfully with the shed, old, rusted tools scattering around me, and grabbed the first one to hand without thinking about it.

  A rusted, wonky-handled pair of shears faced toward Zero as I rolled to my feet, and I reefed them apart. Rust scattered from them in a brown cloud, and then there were twin knives in my hands.

  “Ah, beauty!” I said, and crouched lower in the stance Zero had taught me.

  I mean, it didn’t make my defeat any less ignominious or swift, but it was the quickest I’d brought something through Between, and I hadn’t had to think about what it could be or should be somewhere else. I’d just known I needed it, I’d grabbed it, and it was exactly what I needed.

  Afterward, bruised and sweaty, sitting beneath one of the trees in the backyard, I asked Zero, “How come the stick didn’t change to anything?”

  “Some things have a form Between and Behind different from their form here. Others don’t. Still others are very determined about what they are. Those without another form can’t be changed by humans into another form.”

  “What about if the stick’s just, um…determined about being a stick?”

  “Then you have to convince it otherwise. You need to be more certain that it’s not a stick, than it is that it is a stick.”

  “Makes perfect sense,” I said, and I was only half-sarcastic, because it kinda did make sense. Not human sense, but a weird Between-sense. A kind of logic midway between Human logic and Behind logic. “How can you tell the difference between something that doesn’t have another form, and something that doesn’t want another form?”

  “I have had,” said Zero, very deliberately, “a great deal of experience in discerning stubbornness from lack of aptitude. Lately in particular.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “I mean, JinYeong’s pretty annoying, but I would have thought he’s been annoying you for longer than that.”

  “My lord,” said Athelas’ voice from the back door, subtly amused. “If you’re finished er, exercising the pet, there is something that requires your attention.”

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve had another…visitor.”

  I scrambled to my feet. “Not Mr. Preston again? Did you get him to stay?”

  “Not a human visitor,” Athelas said. “In fact, it’s more of an interloper than a visitor. We would appear to have an infestation of sorts.”

  “Something else came through?”

  “Indeed. A small cohort of banshees has begun to wail in the rafters, and you know how irritating JinYeong finds them. For my part, I confess that I find JinYeong’s irritation more inconducive to a comfortable afternoon’s rest than the banshees, but no doubt that’s a personal failing of my own. Perhaps you would be good enough to ward the house once again, now that the constant in and out of the Enforcers is making weak spots in our defences?”

  Zero’s eyes went slightly bluer, a sure sign of amusement. “Where is JinYeong?”

  “The last I saw of him, he was searching for matches with a cannister of some pressurised, perfumed spray.”

  “He’ll burn the house down!” I said in protest, darting for the back door. There was no way I was going to let JinYeong burn down my house because he couldn’t put up with a few—what did Athelas say they were? Banshees? Well, they couldn’t be worse than JinYeong, anyway.

  When I skidded into the living room, JinYeong was already stalking the further recesses of it, a glittery look to his narrow eyes and the gas lighter in his left hand. In his right, was a can of body spray.

  “Oi!” I said indignantly. “Put that down! If you burn a hole in my ceiling, I’m gunna put holy water in your coffee!”

  “Go away, Petteu,” said JinYeong, in Korean.

  I wasn’t sure if he said it with some edge of Between, or if I just understood it anyway.

  “Not while you’re threatening to burn down my house!”

  “The house is not yours!”

  “It flaming well—What the heck?”

  Spine-tingling, hair-raising, and right on the dissonant edge of harmony, something was wailing in the ceiling. Not just one something, but several somethings, their voices high and wild and carrying.

  JinYeong’s eyes shut for a fraught, exasperated moment, then opened in a glittering slit. There was murder in those eyes. He strode toward the source of the wailing, the gas lighter clicking into life, and leaped onto the old phone table-and-chair along the back wall.

  I saw them, maybe. A shifting, hairy mass of movement with eyes and feral teeth, snarling at JinYeong as he brought the body spray cannister up to the lighter.

  I yelled and leapt for the arm with the cannister, pulling down with all my weight, my feet slipping on the slick leather of the seat.

  “Stop pointing that at them!”

  “Shilloh!” snapped JinYeong, turning sideways to leave me with less space.

  Mongrel! He was trying to edge me off the seat and knock me to the ground. I wrapped my right hand around his wrist instead, then leaned across him to grab for the lighter with my left. The chair rocked beneath us and JinYeong steadied himself against the rafters with the hand that held the lighter, glaring down at me.

  “Petteu,” he said, through his teeth, “mwoh hae?”

  “I’m stopping you burning down the house!” I panted. “Stop clicking the lighter! It’ll explode!”

  “Anin ko kata.”

  I made another grab for the lighter, but JinYeong hissed a laugh and moved the hand with the can further away, unbalancing me. I grabbed for that wrist with both hands again, teetering at the edge of the seat, and saw Athelas sit down in his chair with the air of a man who’s given up on worrying about the oddities of his household.

  “Oi!” I said indignantly. “A bit of help?”

  “Oh, I think not,” he said, crossing one leg over the other. “Do make tea whenever you’ve a minute, Pet.”

  “Petteu,” said JinYeong, looking down at me with a worrying gleam to his dark eyes. “I think you will regret it if you don’t release my wrist.”

  “Yeah? What are you gunna do? Bite me? I’ll just get faster again, and then what?”

  JinYeong jerked his arm inward, which sent me tumbling against his chest and his back against the wall with a thump. He mustn’t have been expecting it, because he exhaled pretty suddenly.

&n
bsp; “Serves you right,” I said sourly, to a background of Athelas’ gentle laughter. “Zero, JinYeong’s trying to burn the house down!”

  “JinYeong, stop playing with the Pet,” said Zero, a growl deep in his voice.

  JinYeong tilted his head at me, eyes liquid and dangerous. “I do as I wish,” he said very clearly. Silkily, he added, “Petteu, you should let go now.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him my own version of I do as I wish, but sudden movement behind his head caught my eye. A single something had separated itself from the horde of other somethings. It was very small, very hairy, and wearing a rag of tartan below the hair. I wasn’t sure if the hair was a hat or a beard, it was so matted, and it didn’t seem polite to ask.

  “Oi,” I said to it. “What do you want?”

  JinYeong, startled, said something in Korean that I couldn’t pay attention to because I was trying to apply my Behind hearing to the sing-song voice of the hairy tartan thing.

  They wanted, said the meaning that came through Between, to sing.

  “You can’t sing in here,” I said. “If you wanna live here, you can’t sing. The vampire doesn’t like it.”

  “I hate them very much,” said JinYeong clearly. “They cannot live here. No singing. No living. Hyeong! They cannot live here!”

  “You better put that down,” I told him, threateningly, tipping my chin at the lighter.

  He cocked a brow at me, but the flame flickered out on the lighter. I saw it drop from his hand; heard it hit the leather of the seat and then the ground. A moment later the spray can made a metallic ting as it hit the carpet, circular edge first.

  Steadying himself with his right hand, JinYeong let the other hand drop from the rafters. Attached to that wrist and too short to steady myself on the rafters, I teetered backward and grabbed him around the waist to stop myself falling.

  “Oi!”

  JinYeong grinned down at me and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could say it, one huge arm wrapped around me from behind, plucking me away from him. Zero dropped me on my couch after the swift passage of a few steps, making me squeak, and crossed back to the other side of the room.

  I turned and stuck out my tongue at JinYeong, who dropped down from the chair silently, with a resentful look at Zero.

  “I will deal with the banshees,” Zero said to him. To me, he said, “Pet, make tea and coffee. I have something for you to do.”

  I brightened. “Really? What?”

  “Tea and coffee first,” he said.

  I leapt to my feet and went for the kitchen with a lightness to my steps, darting around to fetch all the things on a tray as the kettle boiled. I bounced while I waited for the kettle to finish boiling, then bounced back out to see what there was to do.

  Zero, turning over JinYeong’s can of body spray in one hand, accepted his tea with the other. The can moved through a few frames of reality Between, changing colour and shape as it came, and I frowned at it.

  “Is it determined to be a can of perfume, or what?”

  “I’m not telling it to be something, I’m building a spell around it,” said Zero.

  “Oh. What’s this job you’ve got for me?”

  “I need you to pick up something for me.”

  “Where?”

  “Salamanca—this is the address. All you have to say to the man at the front desk is “pile-driver”. He’ll give you an envelope. Bring it home.”

  “I’m supposed to just say “pile-driver” at the bloke?”

  “Zero did a little…preprograming,” said Athelas. “You’ll find him perfectly amenable, Pet.”

  “Who says pile-driver in everyday conversation?” I asked indignantly. “I’m gunna look a right galah, walking up to the bloke and saying pile-driver at him!”

  “The unusual character of the word is in a great measure why we chose that word,” Athelas said mildly. “An ignition word is very little use if someone else activates it, after all.”

  “You’re not to talk to anybody else there,” Zero said, flipping the can again. “No witnesses, no normal people, no staff.”

  Heck yes! I was going to one of the crime scenes? They were letting me help? “Yeah, but what’s in the envelope?”

  “And no poking your nose where it’s got no business being.”

  “I never poke my nose where it’s got no business being,” I said piously.

  Zero’s chilly blue eyes rested on me for more than ten seconds, but I held my pious face. At last, his eyes lightening, he said, “Be back within the hour.”

  I went before it could occur to him that he hadn’t told me I couldn’t talk to the bloke who had the envelope. I mean, he couldn’t have told me that, because I needed to talk to the bloke to do what I was supposed to do. But Zero didn’t qualify the instructions, either, which meant I could ask the bloke other stuff as well. My guess was that he wasn’t important enough to know anything crucial, and that’s why Zero hadn’t taken the trouble, but that wasn’t going to stop me finding out for sure.

  The bloke at the desk looked pretty bright and awake for someone I was supposed to be getting pre-programmed service from, so it took a bit of brass face to saunter up to the desk, lean on it, and say, “Oi. Pile-driver.”

  It didn’t make him look any less wide-awake, but it did make him say, “I’ve got your mail here.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I folded the envelope in half and slid it into my back pocket. “You see anything the other day, when the bloke was murdered?”

  “I wasn’t here,” he said. “And I’m not supposed to tell you anything about the murder, or let you upstairs.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “What about the other concierge, then? You allowed to tell me anything about him?”

  “I don’t have instructions about that, just the murder.”

  “Right. So how come everyone thinks he was drunk?”

  “He’s either drunk or going crazy,” said the concierge bluntly. “He keeps seeing dead people.”

  “Yeah? I’ve seen a few dead people myself,” I told him, with a sparkle of excitement to my stomach. “What dead people did he see? I thought it was just the one.”

  “It was just the one until yesterday,” the concierge said. “He swore black and blue that he saw the murdered bloke come downstairs after he was murdered, so the boss put me on the front desk and the cops took Sammy with them.”

  “What was the next dead person he saw?”

  “It wasn’t next exactly. The cops came back because they found another one of our members dead. They reckoned he’d been dead for at least two days, but Sammy reckons that was the member he saw going upstairs.”

  “Only members allowed upstairs?”

  He thought about that for a while, which was weird until I realised why.

  “I’m asking about club rules, not about the murder,” I told him.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he agreed, his face clearing. “You’re right: we know all the members by face, and no one who isn’t a member is allowed past the desk.”

  “Was that all the dead people he saw?”

  “As far as I know,” he said.

  I don’t know how much of JinYeong’s or Zero’s persuasion had gone into the bloke, but it had certainly made him willing to talk if I asked the right questions. It left me regretful that I would have to go away without asking all I could, because I didn’t think he’d be as easy to question if I came back without an errand from Zero. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any other questions to ask, and I was on a time limit, so I gave him a nod, took my envelope, and said, “Catch ya later.”

  When I got back out on the street, feeling pleasantly guilty, it didn’t take long to realise that I was being followed again. This time, it was easy to spot the person; he didn’t trouble to make himself invisible. I saw the birds-nest beard and the wild gleam to the old bloke’s eyes, even in the glass reflection of the café I was passing.

  I grinned to myself. It’d been a while since I’d seen hi
m properly, which probably meant he wanted me to see him. Maybe he wanted a coffee. He’d be pretty hungry these days, too; I’d been meaning to leave something out for him, and I still hadn’t done it. On impulse, I turned right down Salamanca Lane instead of left, and went down the street to Wooby’s Lane. I could have stopped at the café down the corner, but there was a churro shop just beyond the brass cat and dog in the square, and I was pretty sure the old mad bloke would enjoy a churro or two. I knew he liked doughnuts, anyway.

  It wasn’t like I was going to be gone long, so Zero couldn’t complain—so long as I got back within the hour.

  I ordered and sat in the outdoor section at the corner. There was a little alleyway between cafes behind and slightly to the side of me—just close enough for someone to sneak around and grab a cup of coffee and a few churros from someone’s table, if they felt like it.

  He must have felt like it, because I’d only been sitting there for a little while when a strong whiff of unwashed person drifted around me, and the coffee cup was gone, along with two of my churros. I gave it a few seconds before I turned my head again—long enough for him to sneak away, giggling, like he always used to—and then looked around. Where the coffee had been, there was a flower, pink and perky, its petals fluttering in the slight breeze.

  I grinned a bit at the flower as I finished my churros. It was nice to know that the old bloke was safe. I hadn’t seen him properly since we’d been separated on an unexpected jaunt Between, and although I’d known he would be safe, it was nice to know it.

  I took the last churro with me as I started to head homeward, wending my way slowly up the hill toward Macquarie street. The shadows rippled softly over me, sunlight speckling through the leaves, and as I passed one of the blue ticket boxes, a tall, suited figure stepped out in front of me.

  “What the—” I said, startled, and looked up.

  Huge eyes looked down at me unblinkingly below two feathery, twitching antennae, and a crawling panic tried to come up my throat.

  Ah heck. It was a Sandman, its face chillingly here and there, human world and Between, at the same time.