Between Shifts Read online

  “Yeah, but your eyes were weird,” I protested, shuffling hastily backward to avoid falling on my backside. I swiped at the place his finger had touched and it felt wet, but that could have been because I was still bleeding from this morning. “Is it because you were licking blood? Your eyes didn’t do that last time you fed.”

  “Isanghae.”

  “Is it a different kind of blood than you usually get?”

  JinYeong sighed deeply. “Nan mariya!”

  “No need to get your knickers in a knot! You’re the one who won’t speak English.”

  He huffed a small, exasperated laugh and said something beneath his breath.

  “Anyway, you still shouldn’t disturb things at a crime scene, and you shouldn’t be licking weird blood, either.”

  “Kugae aniya.”

  Isn’t something. Something isn’t something. “Oh!” I said, as he stood up. “Do you mean this isn’t the crime scene? This isn’t the place he—she—heck, I dunno. But this isn’t the place where that person was killed?”

  JinYeong gave me the particularly offended look he gives me whenever I guess or get something he says right. “Ne.”

  “Someone just dumped the body here to try and get it found without too much trouble?”

  “Ne.”

  I shrugged and stood up. “Makes sense. How’d you know, anyway?”

  “Pi isanghae. Nemsaedu isanghae.”

  Wait, that was the same word he’d used before, and the other word was smell. I hazarded a guess. “The blood smells weird? Is that how does you know the person wasn’t killed here?”

  JinYeong only folded his arms and pursed his lips, shrugging up one shoulder.

  Looked like I was only half right.

  I swallowed a bit and looked at the mess again. I even leaned around the skip bin to look at the wall behind it, holding my breath. There wasn’t much blood spatter, there; if a body was being torn to a pulp, alive or dead, wouldn’t there be a bit more mess around the place? Most of it was in pools beneath the skip bin—there was only a sloppy sort of splash that went part way up the wall behind the bin, and that looked more like the kind of splash you get when you dump something into a pool of liquid.

  “All right,” I said. “Looks like the person was killed somewhere else. Wonder if their cameras got the person who dumped it?”

  “Sangkwani obseo. Petteu—”

  “Yeah, but I care! I’ll tell the detective about it. He’ll probably know anyway, but we might as well be useful.”

  “Uri?”

  “Yeah, us. There’s no point in finding a body if we aren’t going to be helpful.”

  JinYeong said something in a particularly annoyed tone of voice that I took to mean he hadn’t wanted to find a body and didn’t want to be useful.

  “You can go home if you want,” I suggested. “Just buy the groceries first.”

  He snarled at me and settled back against the opposite wall of the alley, watching me balefully. He was still doing that, arms folded, when Detective Tuatu arrived.

  Detective Tuatu approached us warily, his eyes flickering between myself and JinYeong a few times before they finally stayed more or less on me with occasional side-eye at JinYeong.

  “He doesn’t bite,” I said, and then giggled. “Well, actually, he does; but Zero says he’s not allowed to bite most humans.”

  “Chero malsum aniya! Kugol nae kkoya!”

  “The heck it’s not your thing! I’ve seen you bite more things than—”

  The detective cleared his throat. “He really bites humans—people?”

  JinYeong said something else, coldly; I assumed he was saying he did what he wanted to do, and that Zero wasn’t the boss of him, but that was just a guess.

  “Sometimes. Zero says he’s not allowed to bite you.”

  “Thanks,” said the detective, but he didn’t look any more comfortable. For a bloke as dark-skinned as he was, he looked pretty pale right now. He rolled his shoulders and asked resignedly, “Who have they killed now?”

  I heard a small, hissed laugh from JinYeong that made the detective start. I said, “They didn’t kill anyone. Well, they didn’t kill this one, anyway; and they didn’t kill the last one, either.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” the detective asked, his face still stiff. “Who did they kill, then?”

  “For a bloke who’s sweating as much as you are, you’re asking a lot of questions,” I remarked. It was nice not to be the most off-balance one at the crime scene anymore. “Don’t you wanna see the body?”

  “I can see the blood from here,” he said, but he took the hint and crouched to see the body. He recoiled once, then peered closer. He muttered, “Fantastic. Another mess to clean up.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “This is the only body I’ve found today. I’ll call you again if I find a nicer one.”

  “Don’t!” he said, and added exasperatedly, “I mean, don’t go around looking for bodies.”

  “Never looked for a body in my life,” I told him. “No one does. They just seem to find me. What’s wrong with this one, anyway? You don’t like blood? You should be like JinYeong. JinYeong likes blood.”

  Detective Tuatu threw an uneasy look over his shoulder at JinYeong, who grinned a sharp grin at him. “It’s not that. There have been a few of these deaths over the last two years, and they’ve all been closed as animal deaths.”

  JinYeong made a soft, explosive sound of disgust. “Maldo andwae!”

  “It’s rubbish, but I can’t do anything about it,” the detective said bitterly. “Every time someone gets a case like this, it’s brushed under the carpet, and a wild animal gets the blame.”

  I found my voice again. “A wild animal that size in Tasmania?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “JinYeong says the person probably wasn’t murdered here, if that helps?”

  Detective Tuatu looked a bit sharper. “If there’s a secondary scene to prove it wasn’t an animal, they might not be able to sweep in under the carpet. Why does he say that? I’d reckon that’s most of the body’s blood beneath it, so—”

  “For a start, what animal pushed the skip bin back against the wall after the body was dumped?” I demanded. “I dunno why JinYeong says it didn’t happen here—he just reckons it smells wrong, but—”

  “He says it smells wrong?”

  “Ne,” said JinYeong, looking particularly self-satisfied.

  “But there isn’t any mess on the skip bin—or the wall, either.”

  “All right,” said the detective. His eyes were definitely brighter. “I can work with that. At least I can keep the investigation open for a while.”

  “Where are the rest of the cops, anyway?”

  Detective Tuatu hesitated, and I got the feeling he didn’t like what he was going to say. “They’re coming,” he said. “They’re just going to take a while. I told you; we aren’t encouraged to investigate these cases.”

  “They’re hoping some evidence will be lost?”

  He nodded shortly.

  “Petteu, caja.”

  “What’s he want?” Detective Tuatu asked.

  “He wants me to come along like a good pet,” I said.

  “You can’t,” he said. “I haven’t finished asking questions. Actually, I haven’t even started! When did you get here? And did you see anyone else hanging around when you did?”

  “What, like a bloke with blood all over him? Nope; just smokers around the corner, and they’re only killing themselves. Got here about half an hour ago.”

  “Petteu!”

  “All right, all right, I’m coming!” I said in disgust.

  “You can’t go!” protested Detective Tuatu. “I still have questions!”

  I grinned at him. “Gunna arrest me, are you?”

  His lips compressed; he pinched them in on themselves and rolled them back out. I expected him to say something about me being a smart aleck and leave it be, but he surprised me by saying outright, “Af
ter last time? I’d call that a poor use of police time.”

  “Yeah, me too; but you never can tell with the cops, can ya?”

  One of his eyebrows went up, but he grinned. “Exactly,” he said.

  “Not trustworthy, the cops,” I said piously. “Always hiding stuff.”

  “This station is, anyway,” he said shortly, surprising me again. “I’d guess this thing goes pretty high, though.”

  “Then it’s lucky I’m the one who found it, isn’t it?” I told him, smiling in a friendly sort of way at him.

  He looked suspiciously at me. “How so?”

  “Well, we’re a part of the police force now, remember?”

  “We?”

  “Well, they are, anyway,” I said, jerking my chin at JinYeong, who was walking away. “Lucky, isn’t it? If someone higher up is trying to hide something, maybe they can help.”

  “I’ll remember that,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure if he sounded relieved or annoyed. Maybe it was both, but I didn’t have time to figure it out, because JinYeong’s straight back had just disappeared into the supermarket, and I didn’t want to lose him. Not when there might be a murderer hanging around. I hadn’t started on my training with Zero yet, and I didn’t know what I’d do if I actually met a murderer.

  Well, a murderer who wasn’t any one of my three psychos, anyway.

  “I gotta go,” I said. “Catch you later.”

  “Wait!”

  “Can’t wait—JinYeong’ll buy up all the cologne and about six tonnes of moisturiser, and Zero only gave me a fifty.”

  “Give me your number,” he said.

  “Rude,” I said. “Why should I?”

  Detective Tuatu looked exasperated again. “So I can ask you questions if any more occur to me, of course!”

  “Dunno,” I said, pretending to think it over. “There’s some weirdos around. Don’t want to be giving my number to every Tom, Dick and Harry out there.”

  “You know I can just get it from the radio room, right?”

  “Rude!” I said again. “All right, all right; gimme your phone. Don’t go calling me at weird times, though.”

  “Why would I call you at weird times?”

  “Dunno,” I said again, and gave him the phone back. “Just don’t.”

  “It’s not like it’s the highlight of my week, talking to you!” he said indignantly, but I was already dashing after JinYeong.

  I bumped into him just inside the glass sliding doors, and he looked suspiciously at me. “Handpone wae?”

  “What?”

  JinYeong made little punching motions with his thumbs, as though he were texting.

  “Oh, that. The detective wanted my number for later.”

  “Wae?”

  “In case he has more questions.”

  JinYeong didn’t look much less suspicious, but he said, “Keurae. Johah,” and grabbed a small trolley.

  I heard sirens when we got to the checkout later and glanced down at my phone.

  Strike a light. Detective Tuatu wasn’t joking; it had taken them half an hour to respond to a dead body call.

  I showed JinYeong my phone, but he only shrugged.

  “All right, all right,” I said. “But it’s still weird and I’m gunna tell Zero about it.”

  “Keurae, keurae; haebwa,” he said, pushing me toward the checkout. It sounded like he was daring me; like he didn’t think Zero would be interested.

  “I will,” I told him, putting my nose in the air.

  JinYeong sniffed, and made a small shoving motion at me, his eyes flicking pointedly from the groceries to the conveyor belt.

  “What?” I asked. “Just did your nails?” But I put the stuff up there anyway; he would only have kept staring haughtily at me until I did it, anyway.

  Oh well, I suppose it’s my job, after all; being the pet and everything.

  That didn’t stop me loading all the bags onto JinYeong when we got outside the store, though. He was too surprised at the sudden attack to do anything but take them; and once he had them he simply raised one brow at me and asked, “Wae?”

  “Cos I gotta go to the library before I come home,” I said. “You want your flamin’ kimchi or whatever it is? Well, I gotta research. And if I take the bags with me, the stuff’ll go off.”

  “Keurae, johah,” agreed JinYeong, and sauntered away without waiting to see where I went.

  He must have told Zero when he got home, though; because after I’d walked past the crime scene to tilt a grin in the detective’s direction, a text came through.

  Athelas will bring you home in one hour exactly.

  I had to stop myself from making a face at the phone. Flamin’ heck! After what we’d already been through together, they still didn’t trust me not to wander off and blurt out all I knew to the nearest human?

  Hang on, they’d just left me alone for a couple weeks to go chasing changelings, so it wasn’t that they didn’t trust me not to go off and tell someone. What was going on? Or was it just that Zero was worried about me being out and about while a murderer was around?

  I scowled so I wouldn’t smile. It wasn’t much good getting sentimental; Zero didn’t like his pets dying, but that’s all there was to it. I knew I could trust him that much, and that was enough. Stay behind Zero, don’t die, inherit my house. That’s all I had to do.

  The stairs at the library felt like an effort when I got to them. I trudged up them to the second floor for the computers, wondering if I’d caught a cold or the flu since yesterday, and settled myself down in front of the least grimy one. I wanted to find out what Athelas meant by recharging.

  The search engines weren’t much use. I tried a few different iterations of recharging fae, but all I got was stuff about spell bags and fae that could turn into animals to recharge—though one of the results was about needing nature to recharge. That one turned out to be an urban fantasy book, and I clicked away from it in disappointment.

  Still, it gave me an idea that Zero and Athelas were as out of place here in the human world as JinYeong was, and that maybe they needed their own form of blood to stay strong. Only instead of blood it was…water?

  I still didn’t really understand, but there was a glimmer of sense to it.

  I followed the link about fae turning into animals to recharge and spent a good forty-five minutes trawling through blog post after blog post that got weirder and wilder as I followed the trail, but in the end my glimmer of sense was still only a glimmer, and the only thing I was certain about was that I would have to wait until they went out tonight to find out for sure.

  I gave up on it and did a quick check for kimchi instead. Lucky for me, the computer actually recognised the word, and the first link under the description of kimchi was a blog post on how to make it.

  I skimmed the description and snorted.

  Kimchi was spicy, pickled cabbage? Old spicy, pickled cabbage?

  JinYeong wanted to eat cabbage?

  I saw a faint reflection of my grin in the computer monitor. Perfectly coiffed and snooty JinYeong, eating cabbage?

  Yeah, I could do that.

  I printed off the instructions while fumbling with one hand for my phone, which had started to ring, and one of the librarians shot me a dirty look.

  I hurried out with my kimchi-making instructions and said a bit breathlessly into the phone, “Yeah, what?”

  “It’s me,” said Detective Tuatu, surprising me.

  I mean, I know I’d given him my number, but I hadn’t actually expected him to call me. Even Zero and Athelas usually only text me, which was why I hadn’t changed the ringtone from the bog standard one—or turned off the sound in the library.

  “What?” I asked. “It’s only been an hour since I saw you.”

  “Are you trying to play games with me?”

  “What?”

  “They wouldn’t take the case.”

  “They what?”

  “They,” said the detective, very precisely, “wou
ld not. Take the case. I called them directly to arrange it because I knew I wouldn’t be able to push it through upstairs, and the one you call Zero said no.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. They’re attached to the police force now!”

  “Apparently,” the detective said, and there was bitterness in his voice, “they’re only interested in cases with a similarity to the one with the hanging body.”

  I turned onto the ramp out of the library, and the electric doors in front of me hissed open as Athelas stepped lightly through.

  “I’ll get back to ya,” I said, and hung up.

  “Admirable timing, Pet,” said Athelas, doing a leisurely about-face to stroll beside me. “But it’s perhaps not wise to be distracted when you step out into the street at the moment. I hear there’s been a murder nearby.”

  That was his way of asking who was on the phone, I was pretty sure. Athelas likes to keep things balanced, and if he asks too many questions, he feels as though he has to let me ask a few, too.

  “It’s not like the bloke’s still gunna be hanging around,” I argued, ignoring the pointedness of the remark. I didn’t want to answer a direct question right now, and if I was obtuse enough about it, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have to do so. “Anyone’d think you blokes were worried about me.”

  I didn’t say it jokingly, but only because it didn’t occur to me that anyone, least of all Athelas, would take it as anything other than sarcasm.

  So it was a bit of a surprise when he looked briefly down at me and said with gentle pointedness, “Certainly not. Zero can’t love; JinYeong shouldn’t, and as for myself—”

  “You definitely shouldn’t love anyone,” I muttered. I felt a bit cut, which was stupid; there was no way I should be getting fond of any of my three psychos, and to imagine that they were getting fond of me was just as stupid. “You’d spend all your time tallying up who owed who. That’s not love.”

  Athelas inclined his head. “Even so. The fae are not, in general, capable of what a human would call love.”

  “What about concern? Not capable of that, either?”

  “That,” said Athelas, “depends entirely upon context. Who were you on the phone with, Pet?”

  The direct question was so unexpected that I stopped and stared at him.