Between Frames (The City Between Book 4)

by W. R. Gingell

  “The king-right-now will be a bit cranky,” I agreed. “Yeah, Zero wasn’t very keen to do the job.”

  “They must have offered him a lot to do it.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. Now that I knew exactly what it was he had been saying no to, I was certain there would have had to have been something beyond information on the murderer he had been chasing for years. Something personally important, not just catching-a-Behindkind-murderer important.

  And speaking of important, I’d better get back to the point before JinYeong started knocking on the door. I asked again, “But what can tear out hearts?”

  “Lots of stuff,” he said. “Some Behindkind kill like that naturally, and some of them do it for enjoyment.”

  “They what?”

  “Humans do it, too!” he said indignantly. “Behindkind aren’t the only killers, you know!”

  “Yeah, fair enough. But it doesn’t feel like there’s as many human psychos running around free out there as there are Behindkind.”

  “That’s because the Behind courts weigh the value of any Behindkind up on charges relating to hurting humans, against the damage that’s been done,” said Daniel. “If the Behindkind perpetrator is valuable enough to Behind, the charges can be dropped.”

  There was a slight, bitter twist to his mouth, and it occurred to me to wonder exactly how Daniel had become a lycanthrope. I’d known the person who turned him into one, but that was about it.

  “I got that impression,” I said. “What about something that looks like a human on security footage and grabs the heart right out of someone’s chest?”

  “Out of a fae’s chest? No way.”

  “I saw it. Well, saw it on security footage, anyway.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t just something you couldn’t see?”

  “Yeah. Athelas saw it, too.”

  Daniel had gone back to frowning. “You should probably stay away from it,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s what Zero reckons. They still got me to look at the footage, though, so that’s where I’m working from.”

  “Okay, there’s some things that could do that, but not many. Off-hand, I can think of succubi, tricksters, and perytons. Oh, and gryphons, if someone gave them a good enough cover spell.”

  “What about normal Behindkind with a cover spell?”

  “They’d need more than a cover spell,” Daniel said. “High level fae are high level because they’re powerful in their own right. They’ve got value to the Family—or the king, if that’s the way of it—because of their own power.”

  “So it’s gotta be one of those four groups.”

  He nodded. “You’re going to need to learn a lot more if you’re hanging around those three.”

  “Yeah,” I said gloomily. “Athelas already gave me some books to study, but I haven’t had time to look at them.”

  “Succubi are the ones that eat hearts, but they um, get something else out of it too. And I haven’t heard of them punching people in the chest, either, but I don’t really know any succubi, so they might do it that way.”

  “What about tricksters?”

  “They’re awful,” Daniel said gloomily. “They can do anything and get away with anything, because they talk themselves out of it. They’re all sociopathic mongrels and they love playing tricks that hurt people in messy ways. They usually work alone.”

  “Can they—can they change their appearance?”

  “Yep. And there’s no way of telling they’re not human, or fae, or whatever the heck it is they look like, because they get into your head to change the way you think about them.”

  “Would one of them do something like changing to look like the last person they murdered to murder the next person?”

  “If they thought it was funny or ironic, yeah. Perytons go for hearts, too, though; and they do a really good human impersonation, too. The only thing they can’t change is their shadow—they always have their own shadow until they kill something, then they have its shadow for a while.”

  “What are perytons?”

  “No one really knows. They’re either birds or stags, or a kind of hybrid, but they love looking like other things. And they’re really strong magic users.”

  “So they change their appearance with magic?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. I was told it’s like a natural defence system or something; keyed into their biology. Some Behindkind can see through it.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Dunno,” he said, shrugging. “It’s got something to do with how well the Behindkind can see, or something.”

  “How do you know if you’ve found one, then?”

  “If you catch one long enough after it’s killed someone, it has its own shadow back. If you catch it right after it’s killed, your guess is as good as mine. The shadow changes to human or fae or whatever it killed last.”

  “Right,” I said. “That’s useful.”

  “You think it’s a peryton? Why?”

  I said, “Shadows. Gotta go.”

  And, ignoring his protestations, I dashed for the front door.

  “Shadows,” I said to JinYeong, when I got outside again.

  “Mwoh?”

  “Shadows,” I said, and marched off toward the grocery store. If they were gunna be mysterious, I was gunna be mysterious.

  Chapter Nine

  “It’s a peryton.”

  “I beg your pardon, Pet?”

  “You blokes were really late getting home,” I added. I felt a bit peeved about that, despite the fact that it had given me the time I needed to do my research and set up the computer. To JinYeong’s slightly mocking amusement, I had studied one of the books Athelas gave me to look at. The best I could work out from the title, it was a bestiary, and I wanted to make sure that what I’d suspected was possible. Then I’d gone upstairs to re-watch the footage in which I’d seen the shadows most clearly, and pause it ready for them both to see.

  I’d boiled the jug, too, but that had long since gone cold again after I made coffee for me and JinYeong.

  “I fear that you’re under some misapprehension, Pet,” said Athelas. “It is, after all, the masters who choose their time of return, and not the pet.”

  “Tell that to the jug,” I said. “It doesn’t care about time. It goes cold anyway.”

  “What about a peryton?” asked Zero, slipping the yellow umbrella into the hallstand.

  Huh. I’d definitely been right. They’d been out protecting someone. The question was, who was protecting that someone while Zero and Athelas weren’t?

  “Your murderer. It’s a peryton.”

  “A peryton is one of the possibilities we came up with,” said Zero. “What makes you think it’s more likely to be a peryton than a trickster or any other of our more likely shape shifters?”

  “Shadows,” I said, and behind me, JinYeong tsked with his tongue as it occurred to him what I’d meant earlier.

  Zero said slowly, “Shadows,” and I could tell he was annoyed with himself. “Athelas, did you see the shadows?”

  “Perhaps we could see the footage to which Pet is referring before we attempt to discern what is and isn’t there.”

  “Rude,” I said. “You’re saying you don’t believe I saw anything.”

  “Let us say rather that I consider you to be an inexpert investigator,” said Athelas.

  “Got it set up upstairs,” I said. “Come and have a look.”

  They followed me upstairs; Zero grimly silent, Athelas with a frown marring his usually serene brow, and JinYeong chuckling beneath his breath. They watched the footage in the same way, though Zero’s silence grew heavier and Athelas once said something beneath his breath that I didn’t quite catch.

  Once it was done, I clicked out of the footage with sense of deep satisfaction. “It is, right? It’s a peryton.”

  “How extremely vexing,” said Athelas, and there was a burr to his usually creamy voice that made me think he really was vexed. “Our pet is entirely
correct.”

  “I dunno why you lot don’t just hire me as a partner. I’ve flaming solved your mystery for you.”

  “The mystery is far from solved,” Zero said dampeningly. “We were aware that it must be one of two kinds of Behindkind. Now that we know it’s a peryton, we can make an attempt at finding it, but we’re far from finished.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got his name, as well,” I said. “And I bet—I bet Detective Tuatu called while you were out, and told you where to find him.”

  “Yokshi, Petteu!” said JinYeong, laughing. “Such an annoying little thing.”

  “We went to his house earlier,” Zero said. He said it on a sigh, like he’d given up on trying not to tell me stuff. “He had already gone.”

  “Someone tip him off?”

  “We believe so,” said Athelas. “Which leaves me wondering, my lord, if the Enforcers have within their ranks someone who is friendly to Upper Management, or if Upper Management are merely less inactive than our detective thought.”

  “Upper Management are the ones who have been killing the fae?”

  Athelas, with gentle sarcasm, said, “Oh, I am surprised, Pet! I thought you would be sure to know as much!”

  “I guessed,” I said dignifiedly. “But I didn’t have enough information to be sure.”

  “You have enough information, however, to make me wonder exactly where it came from.” Zero’s gaze rested on me; thoughtfully, suspiciously, consideringly.

  “Athelas gave me some books,” I said innocently.

  “I would like to be very clear, my lord,” said Athelas hastily, “that I was in no way aiding and abetting the pet! I was trying to give her something to distract her.”

  “Rude!” I said. “Didn’t your mum teach you it’s not on to shift the blame?”

  I regretted it as soon as I said it, but I was too late to take it back.

  “Alas!” said Athelas lightly. “My mother taught me a great many things, but that was not one of them.”

  “Sorry,” I told him remorsefully. “Didn’t think before I said it. Oi. I’ve still got that really nice lavender earl grey leaf tea; I’ll make you a tea cake to go with it.”

  “I believe we’ve already discussed the concept that not every ill can be fixed by the application of tea.”

  “Don’t be prickly,” I said, and hugged him.

  “I stand in no need of affection, thank you very much, Pet. I believe my history is not an unusual one Behind.”

  “Don’t irritate Athelas,” Zero said.

  “I’m not irritating him, I’m hugging him,” I protested, but I let him go.

  “I will of course accept cake and tea,” Athelas mentioned. “Under the strict understanding that they were freely given and incur no burden.”

  “What am I, fae? I don’t go tricking people into bargains.”

  “A shortcoming of which you should be very careful.”

  There was a mutter from JinYeong that said something about cake, and Zero said briefly, “If you’ve quite finished? Athelas, you didn’t see the shadows?”

  “I apologise, my lord. I passed the footage straight on to the pet after a cursory examination of the moment of death.”

  “You were acting on my orders. I should have been more specific.”

  “If it’s a peryton, we’ll need to go back to the Whiteleaf house,” Athelas said. “All the peryton will need to do is murder one of the guards before they arrive, then use his face to get past. It could already have done so.”

  JinYeong made an annoyed mutter that said the house smelt like a human house and was annoying his nose, but I missed my chance to tell him it was more than his nose that was annoying because I needed to ask, “So we gotta look for a body as well as a peryton?”

  “I believe we’ve also discussed the fact that there is no we in this case.” Athelas’ grey eyes rested on me steadily. “Your part is to stay at home. You’ve done enough.”

  “I don’t know,” said Zero, making my heart jump. If Athelas was looking at me curiously, Zero was looking at Athelas in much the same way. “I think that this time, at least, the pet should come with us.”

  “Heck yes!” I said. If only I could work this into a promise to help out Mr. Preston, too. Maybe Zero would listen to me now that I’d done a good job helping with this case.

  “Do you really think that’s wise, my lord?” asked Athelas. There was a note to his voice that I thought was probably surprise. “Surely the Pet doesn’t need to accompany us!”

  “The pet,” said Zero, “seems to do nothing but get up to mischief when it doesn’t accompany us. I’ll make sure it stays behind me.”

  “I don’t believe those reasons we discussed for excluding the pet have changed at all.”

  “The pet has earned a place with us today,” Zero said. “And I’m more than slightly afraid of what it will find if we leave it to investigate by itself again.”

  “That’s pets for ya,” I said. “Always digging up stuff in the garden.”

  “You should be quiet now, Petteu,” said JinYeong lazily.

  I did my zip the lip motion at him, which seemed to confuse him, and shut my mouth. I didn’t want Zero to change his mind. At least now I had boots, so I could go Between with them again.

  “Athelas, you’re with JinYeong; check the security feeds around the perimeter. The peryton might have been under enough of a time constraint to do something hasty. I’ll take the pet and go straight to the client.”

  “We’ll contact you when we know more,” nodded Athelas. “Have a care going through, my lord. There has been more than usual goblin activity.”

  I saw the faint frown that came over Zero’s face, and expected him to remind Athelas that he had been through Between many times before, and could deal with any amount of goblin threats, but instead, he nodded.

  “Come, Pet,” he said. “Bring the sword.”

  Well, I was a sword-bearer now. I mean, it looked more like an umbrella at the moment, all yellow silky fabric and pointed metal tip, but the handle felt like a proper sword grip instead of umbrella handle. Maybe when I got my house back I could take up a new job as someone’s squire. A squire who can pull weapons out of their surroundings would be a pretty useful squire. Pity there aren’t more knights around the place.

  We didn’t start out by going Between, this time. I mean, we kinda melted through the door, but I think that’s more because my three psychos have a problem with the authority of walls and doors than because we actually needed to.

  So we took to the street instead, heading down toward the heart of the city until we got to the traffic lights at the hospital, and stopped in front of the manor house opposite it.

  “Huh,” I said. “So this place is a Behindkind place. Should have guessed.”

  It was a stately house, all massive grey brick in an old-fashioned manor style, with flourishing green gardens all around it and a high wall that stopped you being able to see in from the ground. I’d seen it from up in the multilevel parking lot diagonal to it, and it had always had a closed off sort of feel to it that didn’t let you look at it for too long—or wonder how such a house could have been planted there like that. And it could have been planted, with the huge rectangle of green it made from higher up.

  “It’s some sort of government property in the human world,” said Zero, frowning at the gate. “Behind, it’s a fae senator’s residence.”

  “We gotta go Behind to get in?”

  “Between. Then Behind—Behind is in.”

  He was still frowning at the gate, his eyes flicking up and down, seeing stuff I was pretty sure I wasn’t seeing.

  “You trying to pick the lock, or what?”

  “Something like that,” agreed Zero, to my surprise. “Anyone entering from the human side needs to find the portal and show their card.”

  “What card?”

  “It’s a sort of identification card.”

  “Like a passport?”

  He didn’t answer th
at, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to, or because he didn’t know what a passport was. He did say, “The portal changes, and it’s not always evident. If you’re entering this way, you need to look for something round and convex—it could be a pebble or a decoration of the fence. Ah—there it is!”

  I blinked a bit, then grinned at him. He was teaching me stuff. Not just how-not-to-die stuff, but useful Between stuff. I might not have been investigating with the thought of a trade, but in another way that wasn’t quite the fae way, I was being recompensed. I would have liked very much to know whether Zero had done it consciously or not.

  “We’re going Behind soon,” he added, as the gate opened, wafting out the scents of a garden and the chilly feeling of deep Between. “Don’t let go of my pocket, and when we’re there, be careful who you speak to. Janna Whiteleaf isn’t a person you should talk to more than necessary.”

  “That’s the person you’re trying to keep alive?” I asked in a hushed voice, as we stepped across the shadowed threshold.

  “Yes. Mind the step.”

  It wasn’t quite a step; it was more like a missed step. I felt the human world diminishing behind me—or maybe that was just my imagination because the world got so suddenly dark—and the smooth, changing darkness of Between around us, then we were back in a garden, almost as if we’d never left.

  I shivered a bit and inched closer to Zero. It might have looked like the same garden, but there was a coldness to it that was frightening and when I looked up, there were stars in the suddenly sable sky.

  “Wait, it’s night here?”

  “Yes. It’s always night here, in this part of Behind. That’s why we came here immediately.”

  “Yeah,” I said soberly. In a place that was always night, it was going to be pretty hard to keep an eye on shadows. “We’re here to make sure the house stays well-lit so we can still see shadows?”

  “That’s a part of it,” agreed Zero. “If the peryton has murdered someone in the last day or two, he’ll have a human shadow, but he won’t be one of the staff. If he hasn’t killed anyone in the last few days, his shadow will give him away.”