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“We’re Between. Everything here wants to kill or maim humans. It’s like a cultural thing.”
Oh yeah. That’s right. I’d booby trapped the house before I left yesterday. They weren’t proper booby traps—they were vampire booby traps. Stuff that obsessive-compulsive, numbers-loving, finicky vampires would be bothered by on a very fundamental level. Stuff like a single curtain ring missing from a set, the pictures around the house being a few millimetres higher on one side than the other—maybe a very tiny drop of someone else’s perfume in a certain irritating vampire’s wardrobe.
If it was a dream, it was still too flaming real for comfort. I had a tendency to die in dreams that felt too real, and dying was just a bit too real as well.
“Life is so boring when everyone says what they mean.” “Yeah? How’re you finding life at the moment, then?”
“You—she—” he stopped, and seemed surprised. “Dear me. I seem to be having some difficulty. I believe I know how Zero feels at last.”
“You lot really need to learn how to say things in a nicer way,” I complained. “You’re not supposed to ask people why they didn’t die.” “Should I have congratulated you?” asked Zero.
“Congratulations on not dying,”
Zero thought about that for longer than it should have taken, and I was very careful not to grin. I was pretty sure Zero loved pancakes about as much as I loved coffee, even if he would never say so, and I was also pretty sure that he was caught between upholding his ban on me going to see the detective, and his desire for pancakes.
“Yeah? Is that why he’s so flamin’ sulky all the time?” Zero cleared his throat and turned down the aisle. “It’s no good,” I told him. “I already saw you smile.”
“I’ve regretted not killing the pet as soon as I met her for some time now,”
“Yeah,” I argued, “but if it depends on the way I see things, doesn’t that mean the way I see things changes them?”
“I’m not crying,” I said. “I’m snivelling. There’s a difference.”
the entire affair smacks of mismanagement.”
I would have to sleep next to either of them; if it involved any more spit, vampire or fae, I was gunna punch someone. Not Zero or JinYeong, but someone.
“Nobody rules Between,”
Zero pretty much as normal—cold and very slightly disapproving. That was nice;
“Hit me, or something.” “Ne!” said JinYeong cheerfully. “Don’t hit the Pet,” Zero said, in a low, warning rumble.
“I was quite busy. There were some familiar faces that needed to be attended to, and I was…inspired.”
“And before you think that’s a subtle bit of payback, you can blame the vampire for it. He found where I was hiding them and ate them. I don’t think he even likes them; he just ate them because they’re yours and because I hid them.”
“I would like to point out that not all problems can be solved by tea,” said Athelas. “And yet, at the risk of undermining that, yes, I would.”
room, I felt rather than saw Zero’s put-upon sigh:
There was a glitter to his eyes that wasn’t the dark, dangerous one I was used to. “Nope,” I said, peering at him from my leathery hiding place. If I didn’t trust the dark glitter because I knew what it meant, I didn’t trust the one I didn’t know the meaning to.
“You breathed disparagingly,” Athelas said. “It seems that JinYeong has taken offence.”
“He said,” murmured Athelas, “that although you dislike the scent now, in time you will come to associate it with him. He says that one day you will find yourself smiling, although you don’t know why, because you smelled this scent and involuntarily thought of him.” “Ew,” I said, making another face.
