The WR(ite) Blog

training the pet

The house was a mess. There was, in general, some mess to it; this time, however, the mess had all the distinct hallmarks of the Pet’s influence. The Pet, in fact, had been baiting the vampire, with the predictable result that JinYeong had bitten its arm.

“Why can’t you train it?” complained JinYeong—or some facsimile thereof in Korean. JinYeong refused to speak English, and Zero understood him only because JinYeong tended to lace the things he wanted understood with copious hints of Between, making it inherently understandable to Zero.

“Thought you wanted blood snacks,” said the Pet. “Look, my arm’s gone all floppy again. I can’t cook with a floppy arm.”

“JinYeong, stop biting the Pet,” said Zero. He didn’t smile, and that was more than he’d hoped for.

JinYeong said in excuse, “Yes, but hyeong, she’s so biteable.”

“At least I’m not flamin’ annoying!” said the Pet.

Zero saw JinYeong bite back a swift answer. Pouting now, the vampire said, “Pet. Good Pet. Give me blood snacks.”

“Dunno,” said the Pet. “Told you; my arm’s gone floppy. How can I clear up in there with a floppy arm?”

JinYeong made an annoyed noise and stalked into the kitchen, rolling his cuffs twice as he went. Zero heard the sound of dishes being cleared, and the Pet grinned its delight at the room.

“I would also like to advocate for further training,” said Athelas, the fourth denizen of the house, though he looked more amused than disapproving.

He was not, Zero noticed, sitting in his usual, favourite chair. The Pet had put Athelas’ tea and biscuits in a different spot this morning; it was now sitting cross-legged in Athelas’ favourite chair itself.

“I don’t know,” said Zero very deliberately. “It seems to me that there has already been a more than successful level of training achieved.”

~oOo~

pet vs vampire

The vampire was hungry. Or was he irritated? He wasn’t sure.

No, he was feeling oppressed; a gentle, flowery sort of oppression that curled its way around him and weighed him down invisibly.

He had been feeling oppressed for the last week, in fact.

He looked over at the Pet suspiciously, because when something went wrong or mischievous around the house, it was usually the Pet. His look did no good; the Pet was asleep with its brow creased, murmuring “No, no, no!” in an increasingly frantic voice.

The vampire sauntered across the room and kicked the Pet’s couch as he passed by on the way to his bedroom. The Pet stopped whimpering with a small snort, falling asleep again, and the vampire padded softly upstairs.

The feeling of discomfort was strongest in his bedroom, and he wanted to figure it out before the Pet was awake to watch him in silent sarcasm.

The vampire paced into his room, and there it was again. That intangible sense of oppression.

What was it?

The vampire’s nose flared, and as it did, a sudden realisation struck him.

There was an alien scent lingering in the air of his bedroom—or at least, a scent that wasn’t itself alien, but shouldn’t be where it was. Perhaps the familiarity of it was why it had taken him so long to figure it out.

In his own language, he yelled: “Pet! Pet! Come here!” lacing it with magic to make sure the Pet woke.

The Pet was there a moment later, big eyes blinking at him with unconvincing innocence. “Gunna hurt yourself, yelling like that,” it said, in English. Then it grinned at him. “Found something weird, did ya?”

“Why is his scent in my room?” the vampire asked coldly.

He asked it in his own language—as he always did. He knew the Pet could understand him: its eyes were dancing. No doubt it had put a drop of the house steward’s aftershave somewhere around his room—the wardrobe, by the smell of it.

Despite that, the Pet said, “What? Can’t understand you. Speak English.”

“Clean it up.”

A little louder, as if to a deaf person, the Pet said, “What’s that? Can’t. Understand. You!”

The vampire pointed into the wardrobe, warning the Pet with the faintest of snarls.

“Oh, did someone spill Athelas’ aftershave in your wardrobe?” the Pet asked sympathetically. “What a shame. That musta been annoying you for so long.”

The vampire grinned. No matter how sarcastic the Pet became, it would clean its mess.

To his surprise, the Pet grinned back at him. “All right, fair cop,” it said. “But if I go overtime cleaning up here with soap and water, your dinner’s gunna be late.”

The vampire’s eyes narrowed. They flicked from the Pet and down to his watch; back to the Pet. There was barely half an hour before dinner time, and he was not the only denizen of the house.

He pursed his lips, but clicked his fingers at the perfumed stain. The lingering scent of aftershave rose from the carpet and dissipated slowly.

“Thanks!” said the Pet, its eyes bright. “See ya at dinner.”

It skipped away down the stairs, and the vampire remembered too late—much too late—that tonight was takeaway night.

He opened his mouth to call the Pet back, but it was already long gone, gurgles of laughter tripping down the stairs after it, and the vampire found that he was smiling.

With difficulty, he made his mouth prim again. There was still the faintest scent of aftershave in the air, but he no longer felt oppressed.

“Next time, Pet,” said the vampire.

~oOo~

widdershins to deiseil

“Oi.”

Detective Tuatu closed his eyes briefly, and opened them again. He knew that voice. A phone call from the girl called Pet was usually trouble.

“What?” he asked cautiously. He already had a plant that seemed to watch him no matter where he was in the room thanks to Pet, and he didn’t want anything else off-loaded onto him. “I’ve got enough house plants and I’m better now.”

“Know anything about widdershins?”

“What?”

“You know, widdershins?”

“My grandmother said never to go that way.”

“Oh. Whoops.”

“Whoops, what?” Detective Tuatu stood involuntarily. Pet was trouble, but she was also human, unlike a lot of his new acquaintanceship, and he had a certain brotherly sort of care where she was concerned. “Where are you?”

“Between a couple of floors, I reckon,” she said. “Relax. Sit back down. I’m fine. What else did your grandmother say about widdershins?”

“Never go that way!”

“You said that.”

“Go back as soon as possible.”

“What else?”

Detective Tuatu found that he was squeezing the phone too tightly, and loosened his white-fingered grip. “Pet, where are you?”

“Told ya. Between floors somewhere. Did your grandma tell you something about how to get out of somewhere when you’ve gone widdershins?”

He cast about wildly in his mind, trying to think of those long-gone, sunny island days when his grandmother had seemed more mad than sane, but he hadn’t cared because he was a kid and she loved him.

Nothing.

He stared at the pot plant, and the pot plant stared back at him; and dredged from the deepest mires of his memory, a word rose to the surface. “Deiseil!” he said. “She said you have to go deiseil to fix it. You have to look for the sun.”

“Don’t reckon that’s gunna help,” she said. “I’m inside.”

Detective Tuatu was about to ask again, and with considerably more force, exactly where she was, when it occurred to him to ask instead, “Does it have to be a real sun?”

“Ohhhhh!” said Pet, her deep little voice amused and satisfied. “Ah man, that’s clever! Thanks! Catch ya next time!”

She actually hung up on him.

Detective Tuatu called her back, stabbing at the circular numbers on the touch pad of his phone, and when she picked up, he said, “Pet—”

“Don’t call me,” said Pet’s voice. “I’m supposed to be sneaking. I’ll bring ya something nice as a thank you later on.”

“Don’t bring me something!” said the detective, but it was too late. She’d already hung up again. He said accusingly to the pot plant, “Now look what you’ve done.”

~oOo~

zero sum game

Athelas sipped his tea. 

“You owe me,” said the Pet. “You flamin’ killed me!” 

“And yet,” said Athelas, “here we are!” 

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t kill me.” 

Athelas smiled faintly. The Pet was terrier-like in many ways. 

“I broke no bargains by killing you,” he told her. 

“That’s rude,” the Pet said gloomily. She didn’t argue, but that was true to form; the Pet had forgiven him for killing her, and she wouldn’t push beyond that forgiveness, even for the answers she so desperately wanted. “Could at least answer a few questions.” 

She knew he wouldn’t do so—he had made it very clear to her that  

“Three questions,” he said, surprising himself. “Nothing owed, nothing given.” 

“Thought you said it didn’t work like that,” said the Pet, shooting him a surprisingly sharp look. “Thought you said it had to be an even exchange.” 

“Consider this an exception.” 

“Can I save ’em up?” 

“I beg your pardon?” 

“Can I save ’em up? Ask ’em another time.” 

“No.” 

“Oh. That’s a shame.” 

“You have no questions?” Athelas asked, amused. “How unusual.” 

“Nah. Got some questions about Zero.” 

Athelas stifled a sigh. He should have known. He would have to be careful how he answered questions about his lord. 

“How come Zero really keeps me here? And don’t tell me it’s ’cos of my cooking—I won’t believe you. I’m pretty sure you could get a fae butler who cooks better.” 

“I believe that Zero thinks you have hidden depths,” said Athelas thoughtfully, for he could only guess, himself. He had had his own reasons for instigating his lord to keep the Pet, but he was quite sure those reasons weren’t the same as Zero’s reasons for keeping her, though perhaps they overlapped. “You are certainly an oddity, for a human.” 

“How come you gave me three questions?” 

Athelas laughed softly. “Is that one of your questions?” 

“Nope,” said the Pet, and her little face was sharp and bright. “Just checking something.” 

“What were you checking?” 

“Oi, whose questions are these, mine or yours?” 

“Answering a question with a question, Pet?” 

“Getting good at this, aren’t I?” she said, with a small, deep chuckle. 

“A matter of perspective, I suspect. Well?” 

“You said not to get fond of Zero, because fae can’t be fond of people.” 

“Quite correct—but not a question.” 

“Yeah, but you’re fae, too.” 

“Also correct—also not a question.” 

“Well, what do you do when you find yourself getting fond of someone?” 

“I do not,” said Athelas, sipping his tea, “get fond of people.” 

“All right,” said the Pet. “You want another cuppa?” 

Athelas, for once startled into putting down his teacup, asked, “Are you not going to ask your last question?” 

“Nope,” said the Pet, perching on the arm of his chair. “Reckon I know the answer to it, anyway. Have a bikkie.” 

The Pet, thought Athelas, his mind running very swiftly now, acted as though she had gained the information she wanted. That was a dangerous thing, for despite what he had told the Pet, the game was always the same. 

In this game, anything the Pet gained was something which Athelas lost, in equal measure. And Athelas couldn’t afford to lose anything. 

~oOo~

north by tuatu

Detective Tuatu missed the days when a phone call would drag him from his sleep to attend a murder. The days when the only irritating sight he had to put up with at a crime scene was the stubbly, pre-coffee scowl of the forensics assistant.

These days, it seemed, the norm was for the personification of the North Wind to sweep in under his door, take her human form and crouch beside his bed to blow gently in his ear until he woke up.

It wasn’t as though Detective Tuatu wasn’t already busy enough. He had enough work to be going on with in his own department—not to mention the work he kept getting from a certain small human teenager who was living in one of the most dangerous situations that Tuatu had ever seen—and he wasn’t really interesting in forging any more relationships of the Odd and Dangerous variety. He had a feeling already that he hadn’t quite seen the last of the one he was still entangled with. 

He groaned and sat up, causing the bed to creak. “What do you want?”

“I need a policeman.”

“Call triple-zero.”

“It’s not an emergency,” she said. “I just need a policeman.”

“Then can you please stop breaking into my house?” 

“There was no breaking in,” North told him promptly, seating herself on his bed. “I swept in through the floorboards, just like the spiders. Now if you’d told me your name—” 

“I’m not telling you my name,” Detective Tuatu told her grumpily. His grandmother had known better than to give first names to peoples Odd and Dangerous, and she had seen that he knew better, too. That knowledge had never before seemed necessary or relevant until this latest epoch of his life. Now it had a chill to it. “Can’t you just use the phone like everyone else?” 

“No,” said North simply. “It’s far quicker to do it this way. Besides, you’ve been ignoring your calls.” 

“How do you know that?” demanded the detective, waking up a bit more quickly. He hadn’t been answering all of his calls, but that was because he knew how much of a headache they were going to be, and that didn’t even include answering the phone to North. 

“I tapped your phone,” she explained. “So I knew you wouldn’t answer if I did try to call you.” 

“That’s the point of not answering calls!” Tuatu said in exasperation. “So that I have the choice of whether or not I talk to you! And what do you mean, you tapped my phone?” 

“At any rate,” said North, “if you’d told me your name, it would be much easier. I could just whisper you here on a breeze.” 

“That sounds like exactly the type of thing my grandmother was trying to prevent when she told me not to tell odd and dangerous people my name.” 

North leaned forward and much too far into Tuatu’s personal space, causing a slight blip of his heart that annoyed him greatly. “I am very interested in your grandmother,” she said. “Can I meet her?” 

“Why are you tapping my phone, North!” 

“Because I want to know who’s calling you, of course! You have such an interesting spectrum of acquaintance!” 

“It’s getting more and more interesting by the day,” he said, rather sourly. He got up so that he wouldn’t have to find himself sitting quite so close to her, and added, “I need to get changed.” 

“All right.” 

“That means I want you to leave the room.” 

“Oh.” North sounded disappointed, but she did as she was told, and he found her dancing with sunbeams in the kitchen when he was dressed. 

“You humans take so long to get dressed!” she marvelled. 

“I suppose you get dressed in three seconds flat—” 

“Less,” she said. “But that’s because the rules of the physical world don’t apply to me all the time. Just when I’m being very human. I used to take a long time to get dressed, too. But that was some time ago.” 

She had stopped dancing, and Tuatu found that he regretted the sorrow clinging to every line of her; in her face, in the gentle droop of her shoulders; in her distant eyes. He knew something of North’s momentary life as a real human, and he hadn’t meant to bring up old wounds. 

“What is it you need a policeman for?” he asked. 

The bright smile was back on her face in a moment, and he saw her tiny feet move once, twice, lightly across the floor. She was dancing again: Tuatu had noticed that she seemed to be very fond of the first and last sunlights of the day. 

“Some friends of mine asked me to help them out,” she said. 

“Are you sure it’s something I’ll be able to help with?” he asked doubtfully. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be asking those three about it?” 

“The Troika? No, I wouldn’t like to bother them for something so small as this,” she said. “I could do it myself, but I tend to break humans if I’m not very careful, and—” 

“You have a problem with humans?” he said, filing away for later that rather disturbingly casual piece of information. 

“Yes. Well, as I said before, it’s not exactly my problem: it’s a problem for a friend of mine. She needs a wheelchair to get around, you see, but for the last few months there has been someone parking in the only wheelchair accessible park by the doctor’s office. The rest of the carpark is on a steep incline, so she can’t wheel herself up as far as the front door, and her mother can’t push her all the way there, either.” 

“I can’t stop people parking in a wheelchair park if they need the park and they have a permit,” Tuatu warned her. “The parks are for everyone, not just friends and family of law enforcement.” 

“These ones don’t need it, and they don’t have a permit,” North said, her usually pleasant black eyes narrowing. “They don’t display a permit and when I looked them up in the system—” 

“North, it’s illegal to—” 

“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “But this is important. When my friend asked the doctor’s office about them, they pretended not to know what she was talking about. The drivers of the van don’t go into the office, but my friend said you can’t miss seeing their van from the office, even though they go into the aquatic centre that’s under construction next door instead of the doctor’s office. I could fix it myself, but—” 

“I’d rather you didn’t break any humans,” Tuatu said hastily. “All right, all right, I’ll come. I’ll give them a bit of a warning and if they keep doing it, I’ll issue a few fines as well. Is she certain they don’t need the spot, permit or otherwise?”

“She tells me that they sometimes don’t bother to use the wheelchair if they’re only going to be in there a few minutes.”

“All right,” he said again. No permit was one thing; no permit and a demonstrated lack of need for the park was another. “I’m not going to arrest anyone, though.”

“This is enough,” said North, and she seemed pleased.

 They took Detective Tuatu’s car to the doctor because he steadfastly refused to be carried anywhere by the North Wind. North pouted a little but got in the car anyway, and she didn’t complain on the way, either. When they pulled up outside the doctor’s office just outside Glenorchy, she only pointed to one of the parks—the exact one Tuatu would have used if he had been left to himself. It gave them a good view not only of the doctor’s office and the carpark, but of the perennially closed aquatic centre next door. It made him wonder exactly how often North had been on stakeout, and for what purposes.

“There’s nothing there,” Tuatu said, indicating the empty parking spot.

“The surgery isn’t open yet,” North replied. “Just wait. There’s five minutes to go; they should arrive any minute.”

As she was still speaking, Tuatu saw a white van in the rear-view mirror, slowing and with its indicator blinking.

“Right on time,” he said. “It looks like one of the doctors has arrived, too.”

The doctor was a messy, plump, pleasant-looking woman who shot a very narrow-eyed, school-marmish look at the car they were in. That made Tuatu feel slightly better, because if she had noticed that it was odd for a car to be simply sitting in the carpark in this area, then it was likely that she knew all about the van, and that it was something the surgery had allowed.

That was what he thought, right up until the driver of the van got out, walked calmly to the back of the van, took out his wheelchair, and sat down in it. Tuatu would have gotten out then, but the wheelchair ramp came down after the man, and a teenaged boy in a bright red wheelchair rolled out onto the bitumen.

The doctor’s gaze didn’t even falter as she walked across the lot; it swept past the van, past the man who was now wheeling himself down the hill toward the aquatic centre, past the young boy who was now coasting down the hill after the older man.

“The heck!” Tuatu said in astonishment. “Did she not see them? What did I just see? Is it just the kid who needs a chair?”

If so, why was the adult male using one? 

“Oh,” said North. Her voice was thoughtful. “Well, this changes things a little.” 

“What does?” he asked, still watching the two males as they took the wheelchair ramp at the aquatic centre at a very fast clip.

“Follow me,” she said, and got out of the car.

“Wait!” Tuatu protested, fumbling at the door handle; too slow to do anything but dash after her. “There’s no need for you to get involved! I’ll have a word with them myself!”

North said decisively, “I don’t think so. They may not be dangerous on their own, but there’s sure to be more of them.”

“More of who? Park stealers?”

“And they’re always more dangerous when there’s more of them,” she called over her shoulder.

Her feet moved too quickly for him to be able to distinguish them: Tuatu was quite sure she wasn’t exactly human right now.

“If they’re more dangerous, we should make a plan before we go in!” he called ahead to her, but she didn’t slow down.

“I don’t plan things,” she said. “We sweep in, and we sweep out, and we sweep everything before us.”

“All right, but there’s no point in speaking in the royal we when it’s just you and me,” he retorted, catching up with her finally at the door. “Do you have to run so fast?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “You wouldn’t let me bring you here, so I needed to feel a little bit of speed.”

“You could have wound down the window,” said Tuatu, before he could stop himself. He had been half expecting her to do as much.

North grinned at him, but became serious almost the next minute, as changeable as her name. “You should stay behind me,” she said. “Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” he demanded, looking around the aquatic centre’s carpark that had been filled with construction supplies, and into the empty centre itself. “It was two men!”

“Where there’s two, there’s always more,” North said solemnly, and darted in through the door.

The centre smelled…odd when Detective Tuatu followed her, trying to stop himself protesting that she should be staying behind him when he knew how ridiculous that was. It wasn’t a musty smell or a chlorine smell; nor was it the smell of dust. It was something distinctly fishier than that. Fishy, and perhaps a little bit slimy—the detective felt that he could find himself stepping on something unpleasantly squishy any moment.

“Where do you think they went?” he asked North quietly, as they moved through the chilly entrance area. “I wouldn’t have thought they were likely to be doing anything related to drugs, but this place looks like it’s been closed for the last year, and if the door was already open for them—”

“It’s not drugs,” said North. “And they’ll be at the pool.”

Tuatu would have liked to have asked her how she knew as much, but as soon as they entered the main pool area, he could see that she was quite right: of the older male there was no sign, but the teenaged male still sat in his chair with his back to them, facing the deep end of the pool.

“Aha!” said North triumphantly. “Come here, you slimy little crustacean!”

She seized the teenager by the back of the collar and hefted him out of the chair without so much as a grunt of effort, then threw him directly into the pool.

“North!” Tuatu expostulated, appalled. “You can’t throw people into pools! Especially not when they can’t walk!”

He started forward as he spoke, ready to dive in and save the struggling teen, but North’s tiny hand closed on his elbow with stunning power.

“They’re not people,” she said. “Watch.”

Under Detective Tuatu’s disbelieving eyes, the pair of legs thrashing beneath the water rippled, joined, and became…a tail. The newly outed merman surfaced, cursing, and called North a few choice names that nearly sparked a new desire in Tuatu to jump into the water, though for very different reasons this time.

“They’re merpeople,” North added. “They don’t usually need the wheelchairs—they just don’t like having to walk when they’re in the world above.”

“You can’t out me to humans!” the teenager yelled at her.

“You can’t take over swimming pools and carparks!” North retorted. “Where’s your school leader?”

“None of your business, ground crawler!”

Tuatu opened his mouth to warn the teenager that he was already facing charges of trespass and breaking and entering, but as he did so, there was a crowding of shadows at the doors behind them. Five men, he noticed, with the clear, cool realisation that if North wasn’t as powerful as he suspected she was, they were in a great deal of trouble.

“I’m right here,” said the barrel-chested man at the front of the group. It was very easy to see that chest, not only because of its size but because it was bare and very, very white. “Who’s asking?”

“Police,” Tuatu said shortly, showing his identification. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“This is our place now, ground crawler,” said the leader, and pulled a gun from the back of his waistband. “If the owner has sent you to make trouble for us, well, you’re going to run into a bit of trouble yourself.”

Tuatu was fairly certain it was only a tranquiliser gun, but he reached back and grabbed North’s hand to tug her behind him anyway, his identification still presented rather more mulishly in front of him with the ridiculous thought that it could somehow help.

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 the 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? They 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 come and 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 see 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.

~oOo~

hockey sticks at midnight

The hockey stick wasn’t the first thing to disappear—it was just the first of Georgina’s own things to disappear. It was brand new, still with the stickers on. Georgina knew it’d been there behind her door the night before, but in the morning, it was gone. It came back several days later, in the wrong place and dirty instead of shiny new.

No, first it was cricket bats. Georgina saw who took them—almost. She wasn’t really there; just a shadow of a person who reached right through the car and pinched two cricket bats from beside Georgina.

“Hey!” said Georgina, but it was too late. The shadow person was gone, and so were the cricket bats. She heard later, at school, that someone found the cricket bats in an alley nearby, battered to pieces like they’d been used to destroy a car.

So when Georgina woke up in the early morning to see the shadowy figure of a woman passing through her room, she sat up straight away. As she did so, the shadow woman reached out and took her hairbrush from the dresser.

“No!” said Georgina. “It’s mine!”

The shadow turned hastily and caught sight of her.

Georgina said again, “It’s mine! You can’t have it!”

“Flamin’ heck!” said the shadow, sounding impressed. “Can you see me?”

“Yes,” she said, scowling. “Stop stealing my stuff!”

“Oh,” said the shadow. “Sorry. Only I really need this.”

“Why do you need a hairbrush?”

“It’s not a hairbrush,” said the shadow woman. “It’s just pretending. It’s actually a kind of net thrower. I think. I’ve never used one before, but this one wants to be used.”

Georgina wasn’t sure she believed that, but she asked anyway, “What was the hockey stick?”

“A really good scythe,” the shadow woman said. “Someone I know knows how to use one.”

“You took the cricket bats, too,” Georgina reminded her. “Were they pretending to be cricket bats, too?”

“Oh, the cricket bats! Yeah, I had to fight a rock troll. They were just cricket bats, though—very useful. Were they yours, too?”

“No, just the hockey stick.”

“Right. Did that come back all right?”

“It’s dirty.”

“Oh. Sorry about that. I’ll ask Ze—someone to get you another one.”

“That’s okay,” said Georgina said. “It’s still new, it’s just dirty now.” She looked up at the shadow woman, and came to a realisation. “You’re going to take my hairbrush anyway, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” The shadow woman sounded apologetic. “Sorry. But I need it. I’ll bring it back.”

“What are you fighting today?”

“Goblins, mostly. Oi. Don’t go into your spare room when the lights are out, okay?”

“How come?”

“You’ve got a goblin problem, and if you can see me you might be able to see them.”

Georgina tried not to shudder. She’d already heard the scratching at night, though she’d never seen anything. It was one of those things that mum wouldn’t believe—one of the things that mum thought was just an excuse for Georgina not to do her piano practise alone in that room.

“All right,” she said. “You can have the hairbrush.”

“Ta,” said the shadow woman, and she disappeared.

Georgina settled back in her bed, hugging her knees. It wasn’t until the faint sound of high-pitched wailing floated into her room, accompanied by some softer thuds, that she curled back under her covers, smiling, and went back to sleep.

~oOo~

ties that bind

When Athelas went to fetch the paper that morning, there was a tie croaking at him from the welcome mat. If Athelas had had anything to do with it, there would not have been a welcome mat by the front door—in which opinion he had been surprisingly backed up by the vampire, who remarked that it was making things too easy for any passing vampires. The other two occupants of the house had remained indifferent to the risk. Zero, fae lord and Athelas’ employer, no doubt had the right to a vote that counted for more than the other inhabitants; Pet, the little human he had adopted and kept around the house, should certainly not count for so much of the vote.

The business of the welcome mat aside, however, the fact that this tie was both familiar and croaking at him made Athelas shut the door rather hastily once he had seized his paper. He had been under the impression that this particular tie—now animate, mobile, and halfway between being a tie and being a frog—had been safely left behind in another place of residence. The pet had caused it to spring from one of the vampire’s neckties in a fit of whimsy and revenge, and Athelas found its making and existence similarly troubling.

Nor did he particularly want it in the house, if it must exist.

In principle, Athelas approved of a piece of clothing that was capable of strangling its wearer. In practise, he was not sure that allowing Pet to make a pet of something else was the best idea—and if she knew the tie frog was once more in the house, Pet undoubtedly would make a pet of it.

He took a quick look out the window before moving back down the hall, and was very slightly relieved not to see the tie-frog any longer. Yes, it was certainly best if the pet didn’t see that particular reminder of her own whimsy.

And speaking of the pet; she hadn’t come down from her bedroom yet this morning. He had been waiting for a cup of tea before he started on his paper, but if things continued like this, he would have to begin making his own tea again, and that would be a shame.

The pet had a peculiar talent for making tea in just the way he liked it.

The creak of floorboards sounded above his head, and Athelas couldn’t help sending a quick look up at the ceiling. He was rather sure that Pet was actually awake, but she had taken to staying above stairs much longer than usual over the last few weeks. It was sometimes difficult to gauge the Pet’s motives for doing things, as they ranged anywhere from mischief to self-sacrifice, but he was quite sure there was a reason, and he would very much like to know what it was. She had left the house early yesterday and returned quite late with the smell of bridge troll on her, only to return to her own room to work on her contract.

If Athelas wasn’t very much mistaken, she was also avoiding Zero very slightly. That was, he thought, as he returned to the living room with his prize, both interesting and troubling.

Having returned to the room, he stopped short and sighed. The vampire had emerged from the shower while Athelas fetched the paper, and was at present lounging shirtless on the couch he shared with the Pet, one leg dangling over the armrest and surrounded by piles of books.

Athelas was at once assailed by two very different urges: one, to call Pet down at this moment to confront what she had unwittingly wrought; two, to remind JinYeong very softly and quietly how very much Zero would object to his current state of undress and the reason attaching thereto.

Zero was, of course, perfectly well aware of the state of JinYeong’s heart, such as it was. Athelas had watched the inevitable crumbling of said heart with both cool interest and a certainty that it would not be allowed to go as far as it had gone—a certainty that had been proved wrong. Zero did nothing more than warn—perhaps he expected JinYeong to do as he was told—but he certainly knew.

Even the banshees, hiding behind the stairway bannisters to hurl pistachio shells at JinYeong whenever he was otherwise occupied, knew.

In fact, arguably the only person in the house who didn’t know it was Pet herself.

The pet, Athelas reminded himself, sitting down. Not Pet. He was very good at making sure some thoughts stayed soft while the others were loud and easily heard, but it was better to keep his mind in order altogether. There was never any knowing when someone would come along to dust out the corners of his mind and shake out the cushions for crumbs. Far better that there be no crumbs to find—or at least, only the ones he wanted found.

He engaged himself with the paper, ignoring the files he had been reading earlier and smiling faintly at the headline stories—explosion in a café in North Hobart, group amnesia outbreak at the Hobart Library coinciding with a major energy spike—but looked up when Zero emerged from the alcove he sometimes used as a study.

Athelas saw the quick upward glance his lord sent toward the staircase, and tapped one finger lightly against his lips. So Zero was wondering about the pet, too. Enough so that his first glance was toward where she could reasonably be expected to appear instead of the sight of JinYeong, shirtless on the couch and surrounded by books.

It couldn’t distract for long, however. JinYeong turned a page, and Zero’s cold eyes flicked over him. The vampire studiously engaged himself in his current book.

“Get dressed, JinYeong,” said Zero, and continued through the house to the hall stand, ignoring the small snarl that pulled at JinYeong’s lips.

JinYeong’s eyes, stormy and dark, did not waver from the printed page, and Athelas was assailed anew by those two urges that would each have an entirely different reaction. Perhaps fortunately, he became aware of a faint, clothy slapping from the direction of the kitchen, and rose, swift and silent. He crossed the living room at his hunting run and entered the kitchen just in time to see the tie frog make a leap from the open kitchen window to the island bench in the centre of the kitchen area.

“I think not,” he told it, dangling it in front of his face by two fingers. If it had had eyes, he would have locked gazes with it to show it he meant business, but it had no such appendages. No use wondering how it managed to map its surroundings, of course: items of whimsy very rarely worked by the usual rules of the worlds they inhabited.

Since he couldn’t stare it into submission, Athelas merely tossed the tie-frog back out the window through which it had entered and closed that window with a touch of repelling magic to discourage it from coming back again.

That done, he filled the electric kettle and started it boiling with the hope that the sound of it would draw the pet out of her bedroom to brew his tea. Zero was still in the hall when he stepped down into the living room again, running small touches of magic down the flat of the sword that was pretending to be an umbrella in the hall stand.

Athelas wasn’t surprised. The sword had vanished without warning some time in the preceding months while Pet was out, and again yesterday while she was out. One didn’t like to jump to conclusions, of course, but there was certainly something odd happening, and odd things around this house almost always did involve the pet.

JinYeong was still scowling and pretending to read by the time Athelas returned to his seat,  but his urge to needle the vampire had vanished with all the speed of the tie frog and possibly the longevity of that disappearance.

“May I suggest that lounging around the house half-dressed will not be conducive to your end goal?” he said as he sat down, instead of either of the more nuclear options that had occurred to him earlier.

JinYeong looked up from his book, stared at Athelas coldly and said, “I am beautiful.”

“The pet,” said Athelas gently, picking up his paper once again, “has seen many beautiful Behindkind.”

The vampire’s mouth grew a little sulky and almost opened—to insist, no doubt, that he was the most beautiful of them all—but pressed itself shut again. He said, instead, indicating the novels around him with a soupçon of irritation, “The book covers—”

“—are, one would suggest, designed to appeal to a different kind of female than our pet. Another woman would no doubt find your state of undress attractive—the Pet, I believe, is rather too well acquainted with your personality at this point.”

One of JinYeong’s brows went up, and his chin tilted. He was thinking, however, and when the thoughtful look had completely replaced the challenging one, JinYeong rose and padded away to his own room, emerging again in a soft silk shirt of muted green to throw himself back on the couch. In deference, one presumed, to the supposed better knowledge of romance book covers, that shirt was not buttoned up as much as it might be, but it seemed unlikely that an actual fight would break out with JinYeong now technically clothed.

The vampire had barely settled himself in again when the pet trotted down the stairs, braiding the last of her hair as she came, a hairband between her teeth.

“Heard the jug,” she said, removing the hairband to wrap it around the tail of her braid. “S’pose you lot want tea and coffee and breakfast?”

Athelas waved the paper at her in a languid fashion. “It is a pet’s job to fetch these, is it not?”

Pet gazed at him for a few moments with her head on one side, grey eyes dancing—trying to decide what he meant by what he said, as usual—and at last said obliquely, “You know you can get those online?”

“You heard the kettle?” countered Athelas. He wondered if she had heard anything else, or if she really had come downstairs after merely hearing the kettle boiling.

“You and Blackpoint should have a word,” she said. Athelas would have liked to know if she was ignoring it or merely sticking to her own point. “Reckon you’d get along real well. And maybe he could teach you how to interact with modern technology.”

“Thank you, I’m sufficiently acquainted with Blackpoint,” Athelas told her. “However, considering what he did to the computer upstairs, not to mention JinYeong, I think we’ll have to ask a few questions of that merman friend of yours rather shortly.”

To his amusement, the pet’s cheeks grew warmer in colour. She said, “Oh yeah? Reckon he can help with Blackpoint?” and turned to enter the kitchen with a very creditable casualness.

“I should think so,” he replied, watching her shadow until it, too, disappeared and all he could see was the flickering of light as she passed by the kitchen window.

He withdrew his gaze, smiling, to find that he was being watched over the top of a book by a pair of dark, liquid eyes.

“You irritate me,” said the vampire coldly.

“The feeling is entirely mutual,” Athelas assured him affably.

“Reckon I should try to tell that human group about where the bridge troll was?” called Pet from the kitchen. “And other thinner places like that where it’s easier for Behindkind to get through?”

“It would certainly free us up for more important things,” agreed Athelas. “My lord? Do you have a preference?”

Zero appeared by the kitchen entrance for a moment, and Pet’s voice said, startled, “Heck! How long have you been there?”

“You can try,” Zero told her. “But I’m not sure they’ll talk to you again.”

“Me either,” said Pet gloomily, appearing beside him. “I’ll text Abigail; even if she only reads the text, she’ll know about it. Then she can decide what to do about it.”

Zero nodded and as Athelas watched, laid his hand on her head briefly.

Pet flinched a little—almost as if she had begun to shy away but stopped herself in time—but allowed the pat on the head, and Athelas felt a faint tickle of amusement.

He met Zero’s eyes and saw in them the same question that was in his own mind, but the other fae looked away quickly enough and went back to the hall, leaving Athelas to his thoughts.

This was new, and potentially interesting. There were at least three or four reasons he could think of that would cause the reaction he had seen, and Zero’s reaction to Pet’s subtle flinch had rid his mind of two of those. The pet certainly was a scintillating housemate.

She returned to the kitchen before he could return his gaze to her face, and he heard the collection of small rustles and clinks that meant Pet was gathering together the tea tray.

Athelas was not quite sure when he became aware of it, but there was a niggling at the back of his mind as Pet came back into the room. The very faint gibbering of banshees became audible a moment later, and JinYeong frowned, looking away from his book.

He opened his mouth to direct a question at Athelas, but shut it again when Pet sat down beside him and peered at his stacks of books as she set the tray on the coffee table.

“Good grief!” she said. She looked as though she was trying very hard not to be horrified. “What are you reading those for?”

“I believe that JinYeong is conducting a species of inquiry into the female mind,” Athelas explained to her, flicking a glance toward the staircase. “Human female, of course.”

“What, through those?” Pet went through the stacks, swiftly and ruthlessly. She said to JinYeong, “You’ll only get a very partial insight if man-chest covers are all you stick to. Where did you get these, anyway? They have library tags, but you can only get out ten books at a time.”

“The librarian was verrrrry helpful,” said JinYeong, looking at her unblinkingly over the top of his book.

Pet grinned. “Female, was she? All right, at least she got you a few others—there’s a few classics in here as well as the man-chest, so you’ll get a bit of variety. Didn’t she tell you that there’s different kinds of romance?”

A slight tug to the house set off one of Athelas’ boundary magic spells, and Zero said from the hallway, “Athelas?”

“Right away, my lord,” Athelas said, which made the pet grin.

“You two are as good a show sometimes,” she told him. “All hidden signals and double-speak. You could do a stage show like that. Oi. Are these all romance?”

“Ne,” said JinYeong precisely, as Athelas rose once again and strode toward the staircase.

There was certainly a disturbance upstairs, and loth as he was to think it, the most likely cause of it was—yes, there it was, just hopping out from the upper living room doorway. The tie frog; as smug as anything made of cloth and magic and mischief could be.

Athelas took the stairs swiftly and silently as Pet argued, “You can’t just read romance if you want to get insight into the female mind! We care about other stuff too, you know! Anyway, you’re always biting women—why don’t you ask them?”

JinYeong’s tones were sulky. “They cannot answer properly when I am biting them. I am a distraction too great.”

“You’re a mosquito, you mean,” Pet’s voice said, without mincing matters. “Oi! Are you all right up there, Athelas?”

Athelas, who had leapt for and just barely missed the tie frog, took a moment to steady his voice before he replied, “Certainly. Do pour out, Pet; I’ll only be a moment. I trust there are shortbreads?”

“Got you some special ones,” she said.

She was a good pet, thought Athelas, making another dive for the tie frog.

He missed. It was certainly getting faster, and it had by now gotten the idea that he was not willing to allow it into the house. As mischievous as Pet, and every bit as determined, it seemed as though the tie frog was set upon seeking out its maker. Athelas caught it with a touch of sticky magic instead of by hand, and escorted it out by the window through which it had evidently gained ingress; an impressive feat, considering the fact that the window was open a bare centimetre.

Had the pet really been sneaking in and out again, then? He’d thought that she had recently become secure enough in her position in the household not to need to do so. This was certainly the same trick she’d used when she was hiding in the house, however; one might wonder exactly what it was that had led her to start sneaking out again.

One did, in fact, wonder.

When he returned to the lower living room, Pet was going through JinYeong’s stacks of books while he alternately objected, pretended to be reading, and hung over the edge of the couch to jealously observe which of the books she was spiriting away into which piles.

Athelas picked up his teacup and the file he had been going through that morning—now perilously close to the pet, and assuredly not safe for pet consumption—and sat back in his chair. The movement made Pet look up at him, her grey eyes bright and sharp.

“Still looking in odd corners for our murderer?”

“Always,” murmured Athelas, resisting the urge to hide the file. The pet would certainly notice—she had a terrier-like nose for discovering things that would be better not discovered—and he fancied it wasn’t yet time for her to go over that particular set of documents and reports. Instead, he crossed one leg over the other and coolly opened the file to sort through its contents. He was already quite well aware of the contents, but he had too much respect for the pet’s nose for trouble to do anything else.

It also seemed good to him, as he was sipping the last of his tea, to enquire of JinYeong, “And what has your reading hitherto taught you of the effects of biting stray women—or perhaps pets?”

Pet gave vent to a small, deep chuckle and said, “That’s just business, though, isn’t it? You need blood and you have to bite to take it. There shouldn’t be any effects that aren’t covered under side effects of vampire spit.”

JinYeong stared at her. “My bites,” he said frostily, “are soft and warm and—”

“If you start talking about how warm you are again, I’m gunna—”

“Athelas,” said Zero from the hall, in a voice that rumbled and couldn’t be ignored. “I’d appreciate it if you took a look at this.”

Athelas closed his file and put it tidily beneath his teacup on the coffee table.

“A bite is not a transaction!” snarled JinYeong. “Would you say a kiss is a transaction?”

“With you, it is,” Pet said, as Athelas rose. “Sometimes I need extra speed and strength, and you need to not feel like I’m gunna die every five minutes. Of course it’s a transaction! What else would it be?”

JinYeong’s eyes widened in outrage, sparking a small, amused delight very deep within Athelas where it couldn’t be seen without careful digging. He crossed the room in the warmth of that amusement and heard the vampire still spluttering behind him.

“With me? With me? Yah! Noh! Who else are you kissing, then?”

“There’s something wrong with you,” said Pet’s voice with finality, softening a little as Athelas passed into the hallway.

Athelas found the eyes of his lord already upon him, and came to a leisurely halt in front of him.

“Are you,” asked Zero, his voice as cold as ice, “encouraging or discouraging JinYeong?”

“In general, whatever is the most amusing in any given circumstance,” Athelas said. There was real ice in his lord’s voice, and for very good reason, but Athelas was also quite well aware of the humour there, too. “Are you suggesting that I should cease to bait the vampire? Or are you perhaps irritated by my twitting of the pet, earlier?”

There was a brief pause where Athelas was quite sure Zero was swiftly working his way through to the safest answer. At length, his lord said, “I won’t concern myself with the pet’s crushes unless they threaten our standing. JinYeong, on the other hand, shouldn’t be encouraged: he’s already unstable and I strongly disapprove of—”

“Yes, my lord?”

“—of whatever it is that’s going on in his head right now,” Zero finished, with an exasperated tone that suggested he was very conscious of how weakly he had finished the sentence.

“I was under the impression that encouragement was a stabilizing force, my lord,” he explained. “Amongst other…influences.”

“Were you,” Zero said, the certain grimness to his tone making a doubt of the question.

“Certainly, my lord. JinYeong does seem rather more…predictable in his wildness these days. Are you saying you wish me to cease er, encouraging him?”

“Don’t bait me, either,” advised Zero, but there was a cool shade of amusement to his eyes. “I still haven’t decided whether it was encouragement or discouragement.”

“You suggested that you might care for assistance, my lord?” Athelas reminded him gently. Zero was holding the heirling sword, and there was certainly something odd about it; had been ever since the pet picked it up and brought it into the human world with her.

Zero frowned, his attention elsewhere. “I’ve a feeling it will have to wait. Perhaps you could tell me why there’s a…disturbance in the toilet room?”

At the same time, Pet’s voice said, “Oi! There’s something fishy going on in the toilet!”

“It is a toilet, not a fish-bowl,” muttered JinYeong, as she got up and trotted toward the back of the house.

Athelas sighed, and set swiftly across the room in an attempt to mitigate the almost certain defeat, but when he caught up with the pet, it was already too late: she had pushed open the hanging door and was in the act of tipping up the edge of the seat with one careful finger.

To Athelas’ faintly horrified startlement, the tie frog was clammily attached to the bowl of the toilet, hunched under the toilet seat like any normal frog might have been.

Pet made a small, explosive sound of laughter and said to it, “There you are! I’ve been looking for you!”

“Really, Pet!” he expostulated, but it was certainly far too late.

“Don’t worry,” she said cheerfully, removing the tie from the toilet bowl. “I’ll wash my hands—and the frog, too. Can’t let it go hopping around in the outside world for people to see, can we?”

“I fail to see why it should hop around the inside of the house, either,” Athelas said, making one last, feeble attempt at ridding the house of the nuisance before it really took hold. “It would be far better off outside and more frog than tie, or turned back into a tie.”

“Heck!” said Pet, sounding startled, as the tie frog attempted a hasty, long-legged leap through the doorway. She caught it and murmured, “No, don’t worry, I won’t let them turn you back into a tie!”

Athelas sighed faintly. She was already crooning at it. “Very well, Pet,” he said. “But if you must keep it in the house, you’ll need to take care of it.”

“What, you mean you’re not gunna feed it and take it for walks?”

She was grinning in a most reprehensible manner.

More coldly, Athelas said, “I shall certainly not bother myself to take care of it.”

“Yes, dad,” she said.

“Becoming attached is a very bad habit of yours,” he said to her, with a three-fold layer of meaning. “You should fix that.”

And the pet, who had understood every layer, still grinned back up at him once more, and said, “Yes, dad.”