Between Friends, page 6
North, unfortunately, did not budge an inch. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said to the barrel-chested leader. “I assume you know very well who I am.”
“I do,” said the leader, and pulled the trigger.
North gave a very small, surprised gasp, and staggered back a pace, dropping Tuatu’s hand. A dart, protruding from her shoulder, wobbled as she dropped to one knee, and the detective wasn’t sure whether he or North appeared more surprised in the reflective glass walls around the pool.
“North?” he said sharply. He hadn’t expected something so small as a tranquiliser dart to put down the North Wind. “Do you need a hand?”
“No,” she said, too quickly. “It would be better if you don’t touch me, I think.”
“That’s the problem with you incarnations,” said the leader, to Tuatu’s further bemusement. “You’re always getting too close to the human world.”
“What’s he talking about?”
“Nothing to worry about,” North said, her voice cheerful but faint. “Just don’t touch me and I’ll be fine. Probably don’t talk to me for a few minutes, either; I’d rather you didn’t concern yourself with me at the moment.”
That cut at Detective Tuatu’s heart, because he didn’t see why North should be allowed to sweep into his house, blow in his ear, dance with sunbeams in his kitchen, and then tell him not to be concerned with her.
He drew his gun.
“Don’t point that stupid human thing at us,” the merman leader said. “It won’t stop us; it’ll only annoy us.”
“I enjoy being annoying,” said Tuatu, sparing a quick glance behind him at North. She had pulled out the dart and was again standing, but she didn’t look quite steady. If his only weapon was a mere annoyance to these people, he would need to find a different weapon: he couldn’t count on North to look after them both when she was still swaying on her feet.
He looked around them as far as he could without being obvious about it, but all he could see was the button that unfurled the plastic pool covers, and that was no use unless—unless he could unfurl it very quickly in a particular direction…
“You won’t enjoy it by the time we’re finished with you,” said the merman. “We’ll see how you like a bit of fun with the boys. You can’t threaten us.”
Detective Tuatu met North’s eyes in the glassy reflection of the wall, and flicked his eyes back to the switch. He saw her look at the furled pool cover and grin.
“I haven’t threatened you,” he said to the men. “Not yet, anyway. I’m about to begin.”
“Do what you want,” jeered one of the mermen behind the leader. “You can’t take our pool from us.”
All he needed, thought Tuatu, was for them to move forward a little bit more. In line with that pool cover roll across the water, for example, so that it could easily envelop them were there to be a strong enough breeze.
“It’s time for you to get in the water,” said the merman leader. “If you do us a favour and jump in without us having to put you in, we’ll even let you up to breathe now and then.”
“Come and get us,” said Tuatu, banking on the merman’s overweening machismo. He added, for good measure, “Fish breath.”
It was a safe bet: the merman surged forward with a snarl of annoyance, forgetting his dart gun, and the other four followed him. Tuatu let them get uncomfortably close before he pressed the button, and for a very horrible moment, he thought he’d left it too long.
Then there was a roar of wind, and the scream of plastic whipping through the air at high speed. A brief tornado of wind and plastic tore around the group of five mermen while the teenager yelled threats and insults from the pool and struggled to climb out again, then there was only a very vocal bundle of plastic struggling on the cold pool tiles and one rapidly calming teenager who had just realised the precarity of his situation.
“Nice work,” said Tuatu, to North.
She smiled brightly at him. “See how well we work together! Aren’t you glad you came with me? It was much more interesting than I thought it would be: such fun!”
“Oi,” said a familiar voice from across the pool, while Tuatu was trying to find a way to express how very much he disagreed with her point of view. “Couldn’t you lot wait five seconds for us? We were coming.”
The teenaged merman disappeared in the flip of a tail, and Tuatu saw him beneath the water, trying to cower behind the pool cleaner. That wasn’t surprising: across the pool was a trio of Behindkind and one scrawny human. The scrawny human was Pet, Detective Tuatu’s friend and current thorn-in-the-side: she wasn’t exactly deadly, though he had the feeling that if she stayed with the people she was staying with for much longer, she might very well be.
What had frightened the merman, however, was the massive, pale fae lord at the front of the group—Lord Sero, apparently, though Detective Tuatu knew him as Zero. If Zero’s imposing presence and hard, cold blue eyes weren’t enough to frighten anyone, the fae lord was flanked by Athelas on his left; a brown-eyed, gently smiling, quietly terrifying fae steward who knew far too much about everything in general and death in particular to leave Detective Tuatu comfortable. On Zero’s right was a gorgeously suited, perfectly pressed, almost glowingly handsome Korean man—vampire, as Tuatu was quite well aware. The vampire’s pout and liquid dark eyes seemed to suggest that he had come for blood and had not as yet been satisfied. Tuatu, who had seen exactly what it took to satisfy the vampire, understood perfectly why the teenaged merman didn’t break the surface.
All four of them skirted the pool and approached: Pet grinning, Zero slightly frowning.
Of North, who was bubbling over with laughter, Tuatu asked resignedly, “Was this all a joke? A Between surprise party or something?”
“No,” said North, still giggling. “But my friend did say that there were a lot of suspicious looking people around yesterday and now I understand why!”
“Rude!” said Pet, but she was still grinning. “Suspicious, me? I’ve got a very trustworthy face!”
“They were probably talking about the fae lord with a knife belt and the vampire with blood all down his face,” Tuatu said.
“I should like to point out that he does not at present have blood on his face,” Athelas gently mentioned. Despite the gentleness of his voice, the mere sound of it caused the bundle of mermen to become deathly silent and cease their struggles. “Moreover, what sinister appearance do I present?”
“I don’t know,” Tuatu said. “But I know you’re not harmless.”
“I should think not!” said Athelas, even more gently, and turned to assist Zero, who had silently begun to unpackage the sardined mermen.
“I am trying to be very good,” said the vampire, leaning an elbow on Pet’s shoulder. “But I would like to bite someone.”
The cold smile that accompanied the information, along with the fact that JinYeong had said something understandable at all, instead of in Korean, suggested to Tuatu that he was the person JinYeong would like to bite.
Tuatu cleared his throat and looked away. He asked Pet, “Did he just speak English?”
“Nah,” said Pet. “He must’ve decided to let you understand him for once.”
“To let—Is he getting in my head to do that?”
“Nah, he’s just using a—um, translator.”
Tuatu narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t believe you. Why does he still want to bite someone, by the way? He’s usually been pretty busy biting people by the time he gets to me.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the problem: he hasn’t been. This lot only go troppo on Behindkind when they’re causing harm to humans. Merfolk having a bar mitzvah every few days and stealing disabled carparks isn’t causing harm to humans, just being a pain in the neck.”
“I would like,” said JinYeong, more quietly this time but no less stubbornly, “to be a pain in the neck.”
“I think I preferred it when I couldn’t understand the vampire,” Tuatu said. “Is that—is that what was happening? The merfolk were taking over the centre to host parties? They pulled a gun on North!”
“It was only a tranquiliser gun,” North said dismissively. “They probably thought it wasn’t going to work on me: they were just playing.”
“Yes,” said the vampire, tilting his head to look at North, and then at Tuatu. “It is verrrry interesting. But if they had played with you, it would have been unpleasant.”
“Yeah, we saved a bloke from one of ’em the other night,” Pet explained. “They nearly drowned him, but he got out onto the road. Figured he’d come from in here and thought we’d see what was going on next time someone arrived.”
“What’s Zero saying to them?” asked Detective Tuatu, looking curiously across at the five cowering mermen and the one teenager who had been as unceremoniously dragged from the water by Zero as he had been thrown in by North. Zero towered over them, even the barrel-chested one, and he wasn’t surprised at their change of attitude. “Why can’t I understand it?”
“He’s telling ’em that if they don’t watch their p’s and q’s, he’s gunna let you arrest the lot of ’em and they can see how dry their precious scales get when they’re rotting in jail,” said Pet, grinning. “And you can’t understand ’em because he’s doing the reverse of what JinYeong’s doing.”
Tuatu very nearly grinned. No wonder the merfolk had been gazing over at him with expressions of horrified disbelief for the last few minutes.
“Is he going to stop them coming here?”
“Nope,” said Pet. “They’re allowed to use the pool; they’re citizens as well. But they have to hire it out the same as everyone else, and they’ve got to clear away all the stuff that makes it look like the centre’s under renovation. And they have to pay the fee to have the pool cleaned every time they use it for one of their parties, to get rid of the gunk.”
“Tell them they have to stop using the disabled park next door, as well,” the detective said, stepping forward to address Zero. “If they do that again, I’ll lock ’em up and throw away the key.”
Zero’s pale brows rose: Tuatu couldn’t tell if the fae was irritated or impressed, but since it didn’t seem likely that he would be impressed by Tuatu, the detective came to the conclusion that Zero was irritated.
Still, Zero asked the mermen, “Did you hear that?”
The mermen nodded quickly and silently, without looking up, and Zero raised his brows once again in Detective Tuatu’s direction.
“Are you satisfied, Detective?”
“Yes,” said Detective Tuatu, retreating to the relative safety of North, Pet, and the vampire. North gave him an approving pat on the shoulder, which made Tuatu feel far more exhilarated than he would have expected, and Pet grinned at him once again.
“If we’re done here, we might as well go back home for a barbie,” she said.
Detective Tuatu hadn’t quite been holding his breath, but he must have been tensing, because he discovered that his jaw was tight only when he relaxed. He knew something of the methods of these three non-humans, and their methods usually involved a more…permanent solution to misbehaviour.
“Told ya,” said Pet, who had been watching him narrowly. “A telling off is all they’re getting.”
“No one need die today,” Zero said, but he said it toward the mermen, and Tuatu was left with the feeling that it was a warning, not a comfort. “You can go.”
The mermen shuffled out, dragging the soggy teenager with them and murmuring various iterations of, “Thank you m’lord”, “Yes, m’lord”, and “As you say, m’lord”.
Zero watched them until they were gone, his broad back turned to the rest of the group, relentless in his watchfulness.
“You came close to minor disaster today, my lady,” murmured Athelas to North. “It can be such a…humanising sensation, interacting with the denizens of this world.”
“Nonsense,” North said, putting her nose up a little. “As if a few mermen would be a problem!”
“That,” said Zero, turning to pierce her with a cool blue look, “was not what Athelas was referring to. I’ve already warned you about this sort of thing: if you want to be safe, you shouldn’t get attached to humans.”
“That’s only good if you want to stay alive,” said North, with barely-concealed exuberance. “I want to live.”
Detective Tuatu opened his mouth to ask exactly what they were talking about, but Pet got in first.
“C’mon, you lot,” she said. “I’ve got steak out on the bench and if it goes bad, I’m not going to the supermarket to get more.”
“I love steak,” said North, grabbing Detective Tuatu’s hand. “And I love not cooking even more! If you ask me very nicely, I’ll carry you there so quickly—”
“I’m not telling you my name,” the detective said.
“But—”
“No.”
“Later, then,” she said irrepressibly. “I’ll come and visit you tomorrow morning to see if you’ve changed your mind.”
“I don’t—” began Tuatu, but it was too late; he was talking to the wind. North now sat demurely in his car, as if she’d been there all along.
“Catch ya at the house,” said Pet, winking; then she, and the vampire, and the two fae were gone.
Tuatu found himself content to take the human way around. After all, even if the incarnation of the North Wind was waiting in his car, for a little while she had been human enough to take a dart to the shoulder.
And that was something Tuatu felt should be encouraged.
ALL THE DIFFERENT SHADES OF BLUE
(After six but before seven, this is my closed-room scenario in homage to one of my favourite tv shows: Leverage)
* * *
There’s a sharpness to the human world. An edge to the wind that bites, a piercing sensation to the jagged pieces of sound that litter the perilously light air, a poniard point to the sound of human voices duelling inside the confinement of a café or a restaurant.
It’s not like that beneath the waves. Beneath the waves there’s softness and peace and all the different shades of blue you ever saw or heard or smelled. A comfortable feeling of weight pressing against every part of you that keeps you exactly where you’re meant to be. Beneath the waves—ah, if I could, that’s where I’d live out all my days.
If I could—and there’s the rub.
There’s not much of a life Beneath for a half-breed merman; particularly not for one born without gills, or the lung strength necessary to stay below the waves for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I can thank my human mother for that—just like I can thank my merman father for the disjointed and utterly useless bones in my lower half. Neither human nor mer, those bones don’t join enough to be used for walking, though in my mer-form they make a serviceable tail. Enough to get by, if I could but breathe beneath the waves. Above the waves, I can breathe, and perhaps that would be enough to get by, too—if only I could walk.
To the rest of the Other Kind, there’s Behind, Between, and the human world. To us merfolk, there’s Above and Beneath—the airy side, and the real world. The only laws that really matter to us are the laws Beneath, even when we’re above. Perhaps that’s why I became a hacker when my parents abandoned me in the Above world; it was a combination of orphan angst and an ingrained disregard for human laws.
Besides all that, my job means I don’t have to go out if I don’t wish to do so. It’s not a simple matter to navigate my wheelchair around the bends in the outdated and rusty ramp that runs around the outside of my building. Perhaps I could move to another flat, but there aren’t many places around North Hobart where you can have a beautiful view and space for a water tank the size I need—not within my budget, at any rate.
So I put up with the difficulty and go out every day for my coffee. Coffee and a smile, that’s the way I think of it.
It was a Thursday that day. Busy, as usual, and I had to be careful crossing the road because there are no zebra crossings there. The traffic is inclined to be savage and suicidal in North Hobart, and although there are small ramps for wheelchair access to the road, there’s a good chance the drivers won’t see you above the guard rails. If they do, there’s more than a chance they’ll attempt to drive over you regardless.
In spite of that, I made it safely to the other side, the momentum from my dash carrying me up the small ramp and halfway across the footpath. I was earlier than usual, as I had been for the past week at least. I usually take my coffee-and-a-smile at eleven o’clock, but when I accept a job, I like to start as early in the day as possible. I should have known better than to take a job across the road from my house, but the money was more than usually good, and it wasn’t a difficult job.
Potentially illegal and most definitely Other, but not difficult. Perhaps you could call it delicate.
The café sat above a Behind club that didn’t quite exist in the human world—normal, warm, and reasonably popular. It had human owners, naturally, but whether or not they knew it, they paid a tax to the Behindkind beneath them. Lately they hadn’t been drawing as many customers as the Behindkind thought convenient for a cover, and I had been hired to alter the ancient protective spells around the cafe to allow something a little…extra…in the magics.
If it was only a matter of hacking the magic it would still have been illegal, at least by Behind laws—in law, if not in practise, Behindkind doesn’t approve of meddling with humans. But by human laws it was illegal, too; to run the program I would be hacking directly into the café’s internal network and accessing their music tracks. The club below and the café above might be linked Behind, but they certainly weren’t linked on paper or legally.
It could also, technically, be called fraud. Even if it wasn’t music, the track I would be threading through the café’s music was specially designed to make its patrons more open-fisted, not to mention more inclined to return. The club below would benefit not only from a larger revenue, but from the innocent front created by a bustling coffee house.
