Between Decisions (The City Between Book 8) Read online

  Between Decisions

  The City Between: Book Eight

  W.R. Gingell

  Copyright © 2021 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.

  Cover by Seedlings Design Studio

  For everyone else still trying to figure out this love thing (and how it works)

  Contents

  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

  Chapter One

  Housemates can be a handful. Mine more than most, but that’s probably to be expected when two are fae and one’s a vampire. It doesn’t help when you live in a house that’s halfway between the human world and what they call the world Behind, leaving you in a twilight sort of place that isn’t one or the other. Between: that’s what it’s called. The sort of place where shadows move even when their owners don’t, and visitors from Behind come through the linen closet door to look suspiciously at you as you tell them no, you have absolutely no idea who killed their commanding officer and there’s no need to thank us. The sorta place where your fork could turn into a small, sharp-edged beetle more interested in slashing open your mouth than scuttling for cover.

  What I’m saying is that it’s an exciting life. Safe, no. Exhilarating, yes. There’s always one more thing that can kill you, and there’s always something unexpected around the corner to knock you on your rear. Not to mention that you get into this whole situation of being a pet to two fae and a vampire—then of being a sort of compatriot instead—thinking that fae don’t have emotions and that vampires are just mildly obsessive-compulsive little gits, only to find out that the fae have grown inconvenient and potentially terrifying emotions in the dark like demented little mushrooms, and that the vampire can be an actually decent friend.

  G’day. I’m Pet. Only on paper these days, and the vampire doesn’t own me, so I suppose there’s that. Things have gotten weirder, though, so it’s not much of a comfort. It’s not even that the Behind stuff is what’s hard—it’s the whole dealing-with-otherworldly-emotions-or-lack-thereof that’s hard. It would have been nice if someone had made a primer for me to go by, but there isn’t one.

  No one teaches you this stuff—you know, what to do with a big white fae who has gotten far too cuddly lately, or how to deal with the gentle melancholy that seems to have settled over the fae butler, even when you brew him his favourite lavender earl grey and buy the really expensive shortbreads.

  And there’s no one you can call to find out what the heck is going on when the vampire declares love and outright challenges you to try not to fall in love with him in return.

  I mean, he didn’t even start with I like you. The flamin’ little mosquito went right to love. Last night, right here in my room, the vampire had kissed me in a way that was definitely not all business, and then sauntered away smirking, daring me not to fall in love with him.

  I still didn’t know what the heck I was supposed to do about it. I’d already waited far too long to go downstairs this morning because I knew the entire place would be filled with JinYeong’s presence as well as his cologne. Problem was, I couldn’t even relax in my bean bag up here, because that was where—

  I groaned and rolled back into bed, digging my face under the pillow. I’d managed to go downstairs right after JinYeong last night and complete my usual fighting practise as expected—and to do the little mosquito credit, he’d been completely business through our sparring sessions. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t that. I mean, I’d been relieved, but I still didn’t feel too comfortable this morning. Maybe that was because I’d dreamed about JinYeong’s dark eyes glowing with laughter at me while he said, “You can’t do anything about me being in love with you.”

  Or maybe it was because every now and then I’d catch a whiff of his scent in the room and have a distinct, if short-lived, memory of last night.

  “I’m gunna kill him,” I mumbled into the bedsheets, but I pushed the pillow away again. I had to do something about this. If I needed help finding something from a jumble of old papers and records, I could ask my leprechaun friend. If I needed help with something mixing magic and technology, I could ask my merman friend. When it came to anything from the world Behind, I had someone I could ask, even if they wouldn’t always answer me.

  Who on earth was I supposed to call about the vampire kissing me and declaring love, though?

  I sat up straight, feeling bright all of a sudden. Morgana. I could call Morgana, right? She was a zombie, but at least she knew about crushes and makeup and could be depended on to tell me what the heck was going on and what I could do about it.

  I grabbed my phone from beneath the pillow and pulled up her number.

  Actually, now that I came to think of it, Morgana had been making weird suggestions for a while now—but she’d only said that it looked like Zero had a thing for me, hadn’t she? And yeah, okay, Zero was acting suspiciously, but at least he hadn’t actually kissed me.

  My finger hovered over the call button, but before I could press it, someone knocked at the front door downstairs. I didn’t have to look out the window to know who it was; the house told me it was my only human friend, Detective Tuatu. There’s probably a lot to unpack there, but all you really need to know is that, yeah, most of my friends are behindkind, and no, the house doesn’t actually talk. It’s more that I can just kinda feel stuff. I’d thought at first that I could only tell if my three psychos were in the house or not, but either my senses or the house’s ability to communicate had been growing stronger for the last year—and the last six months in particular. That was worrisome for a few different reasons, and I personally knew two of those Reasons.

  Both of those Reasons had a house pretty similar to mine, and I wasn’t too keen on what that might mean for me, even though my three psychos were all pretty sure I was human. They’d also been pretty sure I wasn’t an Heirling, either, and—

  Nah, let’s go with one explanation at a time.

  I shoved my phone into my pocket as I stood, then went downstairs to see what Detective Tuatu wanted. Hopefully it was something that would see me out of the house and helping him chase down something weird instead of making breakfast for my psychos and trying to figure out what to do about JinYeong.

  They’d let Tuatu in by the time I got downstairs, which was a nice surprise; mostly they seemed pretty happy to let me answer the door and leave other humans on the doorstep if I wasn’t there to answer it. That was fair, though: I usually preferred to let them answer the linen closet door to whatever came through there, so I couldn’t complain too much about having to answer the front door most of the time.

  I went right into the kitchen to boil the jug, grinning at Tuatu on my way through and skimming past Zero, who was just coming in from the backyard. He’d probably been exercising out there—stretches, or the particular form of practise that involves messing with Between and pulling stuff through the bit between Behind and the human world. He patted me on the head as I passed by, but I was so rattled by the waft of perfume that heralded JinYeong’s imminent presence that I didn’t even flinch away. That was good because I was pretty sure Athelas was watching and smiling from his
usual chair. It’s really annoying to have someone watching and smiling at you when you know they see a lot more than you’re comfortable with.

  Luckily, making morning tea and coffee was the usual, peaceful business it was when nothing unexpected had segued into the house through Between. That meant that by the time I came back out with the tray to find everyone except Athelas standing around kind of awkwardly in the living room, I was feeling pretty bright and not too worried. Tuatu’s presence was a nice reprieve.

  Still, I didn’t look over at the bit of living room that was filled with JinYeong as I put the tray down on the coffee table. Of Zero, I asked pointedly, “You lot gunna stand around all day?”

  I sat down in my own couch by way of an example, because apparently fae don’t invite visitors to sit if they want to make them feel at home—they lay out poisoned food instead. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to that.

  JinYeong sauntered across the room and pinched the front of his trousers to sit down elegantly beside me in his usual spot. Oh no. I wasn’t having that.

  I snapped, “Don’t sit next to me!” reaching past him to grab Tuatu by the sleeve and drag him down into the seat instead.

  JinYeong stumbled forward a step, his eyebrows flying up, and I saw the very tip of one canine through his lips. I thought he was snarling, but when he removed himself from the vicinity of Tuatu’s legs and strolled around the coffee table, adjusting his cuffs, I saw that he was actually smiling, his eyes dark and dancing.

  I should have known better, but it didn’t occur to me that he’d just cross over to the other side of the coffee table, sit down next to Zero in the very slender space remaining, and lean back as he crossed one leg over the other. That seemed pretty harmless, and it wasn’t until Detective Tuatu said, “There’s something odd happening down by the waterfront these days,” and started to explain what odd happenings were going on, that I noticed JinYeong was looking at me.

  Not just looking at me: gazing at me, his head tilted very slightly to the side. He blinked once, precisely, every now and then, as if doing the required amount to keep up an appearance of normality, and when I scowled at him, he smiled innocently and tilted his head the other way.

  “Flamin’ heck, I’m gunna go mad,” I muttered.

  Detective Tuatu said, “What?” and Zero and Athelas both looked enquiringly at me.

  “Nothing,” I said grumpily. “Keep going.”

  The detective looked up and caught sight of JinYeong’s bright gaze and unsettlingly regular-but-not-quite-regular-enough blinks.

  “Good grief!” he said. “Has he been doing that long?”

  “Nope,” I said shortly. “You’re just lucky.”

  “It’s not me he’s staring at.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I retorted. “Forget about him. You said you’re here about something weird happening down by the waterfront.”

  “Thank you so much for keeping us on track, Pet,” said Athelas, swinging one leg gently. “It’s delightfully unexpected of you. Correct me if I’m wrong, detective, but the strange happenings aren’t confined to the waterfront, are they?”

  Tuatu looked a bit fed up. “You know something about this, don’t you?”

  “You’ll have to explain, first,” Zero said, his cool blue eyes meeting Athelas’ grey ones. “It’s too early to know whether or not it’s something we know.”

  “You’re right,” Tuatu said to Athelas. “It isn’t just the waterfront: there are odd little things happening all over the place, and ever since you lot got rid of Upper Management from the station—”

  “You’re welcome,” I interrupted.

  “All right, I’m thankful, but it does mean that stuff like this isn’t swept under the rug anymore—there’s no need to tell me I’m welcome again, I’m willing to agree that it’s a good thing, Pet! It’s just that it gets talked about more, and there are…I don’t know, factions forming in the station.”

  “I knew it!” I said, grinning a bit. “Some of your cops are behindkind or humans in the know.”

  He stared at me. “How could you possibly know that!”

  “Well, maybe know is a bit strong. I guessed.”

  “The lower-ranking behindkind left behind by Upper Management must be feeling somewhat rudderless at the moment,” Athelas said thoughtfully. “No doubt things will be very interesting for you, detective! Once you’ve discovered exactly who they are, it should be scintillating to observe their trajectory.”

  Zero flicked a cool look at him. “You think they’ll be inclined to assimilate?”

  “I think it very likely that they’ll adapt to their surroundings if they’ve been abandoned,” said Athelas. “We’ve seen it before, after all. Not all behindkind find humans as…troublesome as others—and living among them does seem to make a difference.”

  Was I mistaken, or did his eyes glance off JinYeong and straight to Zero? Zero’s blue eyes chilled with a touch more ice, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Very scintillating,” said Tuatu, his agreement disgruntled to the point that it sounded like disagreement. “At the moment, at least they seem to be trying to take care of the little things around town, but none of them seem to want to know what’s going on down by the waterfront.”

  “They probably don’t want to step on anyone’s toes,” Zero said. “Where specifically along the waterfront are you having trouble?”

  “There’s a nice little section between the Evans Street and Princes Wharf, where the Aurora Australis is docked.”

  “What, that big red ship that goes out to Antarctica?”

  “I don’t know where it goes, Pet; I just know that it’s big and red, and people have been launching themselves over the side and into the water in what looks like some kind of bizarre suicide attempt each time. It’s the latest internet sensation in Hobart: it even started trending worldwide last night.”

  Startled, I asked, “You got bodies already?” I hadn’t heard anything about bodies down on the waterfront.

  “No; we’ve got a couple of attempts, and one near miss—that one landed on the deck instead of in the water—but there are enough people around that area to make it a pretty safe place if you don’t really want to commit suicide.”

  Zero sat back in his chair, frowning. “You don’t think they’re really serious about it?”

  “I think it’s a trend on the internet,” the detective said dryly. “Or at least, that’s what I thought at first. This morning I visited one of the kids still in hospital after nearly braining himself on the anchor chain on his way down, and—”

  “Now you reckon it has something to do with us,” I said, with some relish. It wasn’t that I wanted kids to be trying to kill themselves—or being influenced or attacked by behindkind, if it came to that. It would just be nice to be able to get out of the house.

  Or maybe just out of the perfume.

  And speaking of perfume…

  I risked a look across the coffee table at JinYeong and regretted it straight away. His eyes were still on me, and when he caught my gaze he smiled at me, slow and intimate.

  “What makes you think it’s got something to do with Behind, after all?” I asked Tuatu, looking away trying not to clear my throat.

  “None of the kids were suicidal before they got to the waterfront, and only four of them had their phones on them. Out of those four, only two of them were actively streaming anything to a social media platform. People have been sharing video taken by bystanders, and I’ve seen kids talking about making it an online challenge. It’s only a matter of time before they start showing up, selfie sticks and cameras in hand, streaming it for a dare.”

  “What about the kid you went to see?”

  “That’s the biggest thing,” Tuatu said, chewing on his lower lip. “He’s either a much better liar than some criminals I’ve met, or he doesn’t remember a thing after getting on the boat until he hit the water.”

  “You said there are recordings?”

  I glanced acros
s at Zero in surprise. He wasn’t usually the sort to ask about recordings—or anything that might be useful but came from the human side of things. He was usually more likely to send Athelas to try and do something sneaky with essence-seeking magic, or JinYeong to try and sniff something out of the scene. Or go there himself and try.

  The detective looked surprised too, but he said, “Yeah, a few. I’ve got copies of all the ones that are trending, but there are a few more available. You want all of them?”

  “Not copies, I believe,” said Athelas. “We had a…mishap with our computer. Perhaps you would be good enough to show us what you have?”

  Tuatu opened his mouth, shook his head, and closed it again. He took out his phone instead and said, “I won’t even ask. Here. Have a look for yourself: the first one is just an example for the boss’ sake, but you’ll probably need it, too.”

  He put his phone down on the coffee table, then tapped the play button on the shiny screen with one dark, pink-padded finger and sat back beside me. Across from us, both Zero and JinYeong leaned forward. It was a relief to have JinYeong’s attention on something other than me, but he still let his eyes flow over my face like a warm ray of sunshine, slow and thoughtful, as he sat forward.

  Detective Tuatu shot me a sideways glance that I tried to ignore and JinYeong must have seen, judging by the brief sight of his right canine. From his side, Athelas inclined just slightly, enough to see over the top of his teacup, and allowed his eyes to dwell meditatively on the phone as the first fifteen-second video played in a bright burst of colour and sound.

  Zero stared at it until it finished, leaving me hard put not to burst out laughing. From the look on Tuatu’s face, he was having a pretty similar dilemma, though I was guessing the state of the kid he’d been to see this morning was what was keeping him from giving in to the urge.