Between Floors (The City Between Book 3) Read online

  Between Floors

  The City Between: Book Three

  W.R. Gingell

  Cover By Seedlings Design Studio

  Copyright © 2019 by W.R. Gingell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For everyone struggling with JinYeong’s Korean, and the romanised expression of the same—

  You tell him to talk in English. See if he’ll listen to you.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Afterword

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  Chapter One

  You think I’d know better by now. You’d think I’d know not to poke my nose into stuff that isn’t my business. Not to go following strange blokes, if it comes to that.

  I mean, he wasn’t really a strange bloke; his name was Detective Tuatu. I’d worked on a case with him before, and he knew I was following him. I was a bit bored, and I knew he was up to something, so of course I stuck to him and wouldn’t let him go alone.

  It doesn’t sound so bad. It’s just curiosity, right? It’s not like it’s got me nearly killed or anything.

  Hang on.

  Actually, it kinda has.

  Nearly killed, nearly turned into a werewolf—sorry, lycanthrope; they’re really fussy about that—and nearly vanished away in a way that I still don’t fully understand.

  Not to mention that right now I was trapped Between with a panicking cop attached to my hand and no way of knowing if I was going in the right direction or not.

  Hang on. You don’t know what Between is, do you?

  There are layers to reality. Like trifle, and—

  Nah. I’ll explain later.

  Right now, we were somewhere not quite in the fae world but not quite in the human world, either; a kind of betweenish area that still had a bit of floral to it from the wall paper of the room we’d been in a couple of minutes ago, and a whole lot of menace in it that definitely came from the fae side of things.

  “Follow me,” I said to the detective. The world was all greenery and dangerous silence around us, and I didn’t like the way my words were swallowed up in the stuffiness of that greenery. “Don’t let go of my hand. Watch out for goblins and don’t touch stuff.”

  “Goblins?” Detective Tuatu still looked a bit dazed, the whites of his eyes a bit bigger than usual. I wouldn’t have been able to notice it so much if it wasn’t so gloomy in here and his skin wasn’t so dark.

  “They’re the little mongrels with needles: One of ’em got you that night you came after us into the house across the road.”

  “That reminds me,” said the detective, sounding a bit strained. “The house disappeared that night.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t you reckon you’ve got enough problems right here and now without trying to bring up ones from the past as well?” I asked him. I mean, if that was his way of coping with the panic, fair enough. It didn’t make much sense to me, though.

  “What’s this stuff?” he asked, reaching up to touch a floating bit of moss that drifted by too close for comfort.

  “Don’t touch stuff,” I reminded him. “And don’t let go of my hand. What did I just tell you?”

  “Why? Isn’t it moss?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” I threw a look around. “Just don’t let go, all right?”

  “All right,” he said.

  He didn’t sound very grateful, but I s’pose there’s a difference between a hulking great wall of muscled safety like Zero telling you not to let go, and someone as skinny as me doing it.

  You don’t know Zero. I’ll explain that later, too.

  I set my shoulders. “First things first,” I said impressively, and peeked down at my phone again. There hadn’t been a signal before, but there was now.

  Well, that wasn’t suspicious at all.

  Detective Tuatu didn’t look impressed. “What?”

  “Reckon I’m gunna try to call Zero.”

  “Thank goodness!”

  “Oi!”

  “Pet,” he said. “We’re trapped in some sort of hell dimension, and—”

  “It’s creepy, but it’s not like anything’s trying to kill you,” I protested. “Not yet, anyway. Calling it a hell dimension’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

  “That makes me feel much better,” said Tuatu, but he managed not to roll his eyes, which was pretty impressive. “But that was a dead body, back there; and if I’m right about just a very small thing today, it came from in here. I’d rather let the professionals deal with it—and I’m pretty sure that whatever else your three friends are, they’re professionals. I don’t want to be in here either.”

  “It’s not exactly in here,” I told him. “And it’s not exactly from this bit of here that the body came.”

  I tapped worriedly at the slick surface of my phone, which had blacked out again. It stayed black for just a bit too long, then lit.

  “Got reception, anyway,” I said. “That’s nice.”

  “That’s weird,” Tuatu said, but he looked relieved.

  “That too,” I agreed. He had no idea how weird it was. I slowly unlocked my phone, the touchscreen cool beneath my fingertips, reluctant to try and call Zero. I was half afraid that instead of his voice, I would hear something else. Something weird and scary.

  “What did you mean, we’re not exactly in here?”

  “There are layers to reality,” I said to him, my finger hovering over Zero’s number. “The human world—that’s the real world, so don’t let those three tell you different—the fae world, and the bit between where it can be anything it wants to be.”

  “Where are we, then?” asked the detective. He didn’t sound less scared, but at least he was listening. “This bit; is it the Between bit, or a fae bit? And I don’t say that I believe in fae, but there’s definitely something weird about those three, and we’re not in my friend’s house anymore.”

  “We kinda are,” I said. “This bit is Between, but it’s also your friend’s house. Once we start moving we won’t be inside the house any more, but we’ll still be Between.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” I hesitated for an instant longer, then let the pad of my thumb touch the phone. It lit up, just a bit too late again. “Reckon there’s a lag in here?”

  “You’re the expert,” Tuatu pointed out. “Is it ringing?”

  “Yeah.” The ringing was just a bit too slow, too. “But if I’m honest, I reckon there’s about a fifty percent chance that whoever answers won’t be Zero.”

  There was a click on the other end of the phone, then silence.

  “Zero?” I said. “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” said Zero’s voice. It was too slow, just like everything else to do with the phone Between, but I was starting to wonder if that wasn’t just because we were Between. “What’s wrong with your phone?”

  “I might have got caught Between with the detective,” I said. “But it’s not really my fault because someone threw a body at us
and there were cops coming out of the woodwork everywhere, too. Anyway, we need some help because I don’t know which way to go.”

  There was a big silence, and I thought I heard a very carefully let out sigh. If it really was Zero, he was probably pinching his brow about now.

  “Listen very carefully,” he said. “Can you see anywhere nearby that glimmers?”

  “Can we see any glimmers?” I asked the detective.

  Detective Tuatu looked sideways at me. “Any what?”

  “Glimmers—you know, something that has a bit of a wet glitter to it—hang on, never mind.” There was a patch of dark green shadow through the trees across from us; a place that might have been rock but wasn’t quite rock, with a definite glimmer of moonlight to it. “Yeah, there’s something like that here.”

  “There will be a door there.”

  “A door?”

  “Not exactly a door, but a way through.”

  “It’ll take us out?”

  “No. It will take you to another area of Between. But that will get you out of the house.”

  “What do we do once we’re out of the house? We can’t come out too early or the cops will catch Detective Tuatu.”

  “Once you’re out of the house, I can find you,” said Zero’s voice. “But you have to get out first, and you won’t have reception for much longer.”

  “Flamin’ fantastic,” I said. “So we’re gunna lose contact again?”

  I should have saved my breath; the next thing I heard was the beep beep beep of the call dropping out.

  “Flamin’ fantastic,” I said again. “Lost reception again.”

  Anxiously, the detective asked, “Do you know what to do?”

  “Kinda. Maybe.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He gave me directions to get out,” I said, slipping my phone back into my pocket. “Out of the house, anyway.”

  “And that’s…bad?” Tuatu hazarded dubiously. “How?”

  It wasn’t that it was bad, exactly. It was more that I’d expected Zero to say something terse and bossy, like, “Stay where you are. I’m coming.”

  “Just…dunno if that was really him,” I said. “Don’t know if we should follow the directions or not.”

  Detective Tuatu looked toward the rustling trees worriedly. “What are our options?”

  “Well, either it was him and we should do as we’re told, or it wasn’t him and we’re on our own anyway. Depends on whether you think it’s worth the risk or not.”

  “Should we see if there’s a door there?” he suggested. “That’ll give us an idea of whether what he said is true or not, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. There was something else bothering me, and I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t like that, but the trees were starting to sound like they were about to uproot and walk toward us, and I liked that idea a heck of a lot less. “C’mmon, let’s get it over with.”

  It’s not as reassuring holding onto someone when you’re the one leading into danger, but Detective Tuatu’s hand was still a bit of comfort. Not so much because I thought he’d be much good in a fight, but because I had to be brave and couldn’t run away if he was depending on me. I’d still much rather have been holding onto Zero’s hand, but if I couldn’t be, at least I still knew what I needed to do.

  Tuatu followed me gingerly between the trees, and it might have been the breeze that suddenly stirred around, but it almost looked like the weeping willows actually reached out for us as we passed, trailing fronds languidly through the air.

  “Better get a wriggle on,” I muttered, pulling him along a bit quicker. I’d just come to the unpleasant realisation that the wind wasn’t causing the stirring of the willow fronds—the fronds were stirring up a sticky, slow breeze with their movement.

  Detective Tuatu obeyed without hesitation, crowding on my heels as the glimmering, rocky surface came within touching distance.

  I put my hand out to it, expecting to feel mossy, slick rock, and felt something soft and cobwebby that gave a bit beneath my palm instead. I prodded at it and my hand went through softly, silkily.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it a door, but I s’pose Zero knows what he’s talking about,” I said. “Wait here. Gunna try it.”

  “What’s the point of me waiting?” Tuatu asked, his voice dry. “If it’s a trap, I might as well get trapped with you than left by myself in here. I’ll likely die either way.”

  “Aren’t you cheerful?” I muttered, but there wasn’t much use talking about it, because he was right. I pushed right into the glimmery whiteness, and felt it press against my face for an instant before it allowed me through—body, hand, Tuatu and all.

  I smelled rain and stone as soon as my nose broke the cobwebby surface, and maybe my training had been good for something after all; I was already looking around for needle-wielding goblins when Detective Tuatu began to exit.

  There weren’t any; we were in a cave sort of area that was very different from the place we’d come from.

  “Hey!” I said in surprise. “It is the way out!”

  Detective Tuatu threw an unimpressed look around. “The way out of what? It doesn’t look much better out here. It doesn’t look like an out here, either, if it comes to that.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, looking around at the glistening, rocky shadows around us. There was even less light here than there had been in the house behind us, but the darkness was of a different quality here. Instead of the stuffiness that felt like it could swallow us up, there was a cool, pleasant feel to the air. Like there was a cave opening up further, letting in fresh air to feed the greenery that crawled all over the rocks and made every crevasse and crack deep green.

  I felt the breeze touch my face, fresh and cool, and smelled the distant scent of wet concrete. This wasn’t a cave; this was an underpass! I said without hesitation, “This way.”

  I still wasn’t entirely sure that it had been Zero on the phone, and I wanted to make sure that we got out of Between as soon as we could, whether or not he was waiting for us.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Tuatu, as I pulled him along.

  “Nothing,” I said, but I didn’t stop looking around me. It was too hard to explain that I was looking for things that weren’t exactly the things they were pretending to be—or that they were, here. Somewhere nearby, in the human version of this area, I was certain there was an exit from the underpass. Maybe we could get out there, if I could see things clearly as they were in the human world instead of how they were here Between.

  For instance, not too far behind us, there was an outcropping of rock that suggested the idea of a car bumper if you looked at it in the right way. I stopped, squinted, and opened my mouth to ask the detective if he thought it looked a bit like a car bumper, too, when something moved out in the murky distance of the craggy cave floor.

  “I think there are people out there,” said the detective, and I didn’t blame him for the nervous sound to his voice.

  I was flamin’ scared myself, because I knew they weren’t human.

  First it was one head popping up over the rocks, a spot of light on its forehead that made a soft glow around it; then the rocks around us were filled with gleams of light; scruffy heads and hoods popping up from the crags.

  “G’day,” I said to the biped who had arrived first.

  It tilted its head at me; it was only a small thing, about thigh-high on me, and it was vaguely human-esque if you had a preference for little tackers with big mouths and bulbous eyes. They were mucky little things, too. I couldn’t tell if they were male or female, with the amount of mud they had slathered all over them. No wonder we hadn’t seen them until they turned on their lights—they blended right into the cave surroundings.

  I threw a quick look behind us to see if we could get back to the door if we needed to, but there were more of the little beggars behind us. A lot more.

  “Pet,” said Detective Tuatu at the same time, “There’s more of them.”
>
  “Yep, saw that,” I said, trying not to sound worried. Little lights were blinking into being all around us, and I didn’t like the way we were being edged forward, even if the little tackers in front of us were smiling encouragingly.

  It was like being towed along by a wave further into the ocean—somewhere you didn’t know if you’d meet a beautiful reef or a shark.

  “What are they?”

  “Dunno,” I said. It felt like I was saying that a lot today.

  “They don’t look dangerous, do they?”

  I looked around at the mucky little tackers suspiciously. In my experience, stuff not looking dangerous and not actually being dangerous were two very different, potentially deadly things. “Goblins don’t look real dangerous, either,” I told him.

  One of the little cave people poked me in the hip and made me jump.

  “What?” I demanded.

  It made an encouraging hand flap at me, urging me forward. It wasn’t like we could go back, anyway, so I said reluctantly, “We might as well go with them for a bit. Keep ’em happy for the time being. We’ll try to slip away when we get closer to the exit.”

  I tried to make a mental note of where I’d seen the bit of rock that could have been a car bumper, but I’d already lost it in the movement of muddy cave people, so I kept my eye out for anything that could be used as a weapon instead.

  That was another bit of my training that was starting to come in handy, because I could already see a couple of stalagmites that looked like cricket bats if I looked at them in the right way, and I was pretty sure we’d be passing close by them very soon.

  They were still looking enough like cricket bats when we passed, that I could reach out and grab them. I passed one to Tuatu, who looked first grateful then confused, and kept the other for myself.