Somerset shrugged as he grabbed clean clothes from the wardrobe. “Make toast.”
He tossed Dylan a pair of joggers that would probably fit well enough. Or, at least, wouldn’t fall down even if they did trail on the ground. Dylan held them up suspiciously, but it was up to him whether he put them on or not.
The smoke alarm started to beep downstairs.
“Fuck,” Somerset groused. He scrambled into a pair of jeans on his way to the door and padded down the stairs barefoot. It had never seemed necessary to have a kitchen upstairs when there was a fully functioning one behind the bar. It was only ever used to deep fry hot wings and poppers during opening hours.
The bar was filled with smoke. The red light of the smoke alarm as it beeped persistently away illuminated it with a particularly ominous hue. Somerset heard Dylan cough behind him as he finally made it down the stairs.
There were more pressing things to deal with than airing out the bar. Since Somerset didn’t want to deal with the background sound of beeps, he reached up on his way past and twisted the alarm out of its housing. It died mid-beep, and he tossed it onto the bar as he went behind it to head into the kitchen.
He nearly tripped over the Lost Shit box that Dylan had dragged out last night. Somerset shoved it back into place with his foot and pushed the doors to the kitchen open.
Ket was perched on a stool at the table, spoon in hand, as he scraped the sides of a tub of yogurt. He wasn’t the problem. Stúfur was at the stove; every burner turned up to max as he blackened the bases of the pots he’d dragged out. The contents of the fridge and freezer were spread across the rest of the kitchen, popped-open tubs of queso, catering-sized bags of tortilla chips ripped open and left to fall out, and spices spilled on every flat surface.
“What the hell, Stúfur?” Somerset asked as he scrubbed his hand through his hair.
Stúfur turned and waved the half-eaten chicken wing he was gnawing on at Somerset.
“I made breakfast,” he said. “Call it a peace offering. We need to—”
He stopped and scowled as he looked past Somerset’s shoulder. Somerset stepped to the side and out of the doorway to let Dylan step through.
“I asked him to be here,” he said flatly as he put his hand on the small of Dylan’s back. “That makes him more welcome than you.”
Stúfur looked between the two of them and then traded raised eyebrows with Ket. Whatever they thought about it, they had the good sense to keep it to themselves. Somerset nudged Dylan over to the table.
“The chips are mine,” he said. “Help yourself.”
Dylan hesitated as he took in the mess and then shook his head. He dragged a stool over to the table and sat down, picking through the broken chips for ones to eat.
“I suppose you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” Stúfur muttered ungraciously. The bacon fat finally sizzled enough to catch fire, and he was gleefully distracted back to the mess he was making. He grabbed the pan off the heat and slid another pan into its place. “Bacon’s ready.”
Dylan crunched on a chip. “It’s on fire.”
Stúfur curled his lip. “That’s how you know it’s done.” He slapped the pan down in the middle of the table. The smell of charred wood joined the other smells of burning. “Help yourself. Ket, you tell him. I’m doing the eggs.”
A plastic tray of thirty eggs was on the side of the oven. It was already partially melted from being too close to the heat. Stúfur grabbed two eggs in each hand and cracked them over a pan of hot butter. The eggs plopped into the bubbling grease, chunks of shell and all. Stúfur stripped his chicken wing down to the bone, tossed it in with the uncracked eggs, and grabbed himself another from the ripped-open bag on the side.
Somerset supposed that if they were going to face the judgment of the Court, he might as well do it on a full stomach. He’d not had a good home-cooked meal in years. Stúfur had been the only one who’d learned to cook from their ma.
He went over to lean on the table next to Dylan.
“Go on,” he said.
Ket grabbed a strip of bacon out of the pan with his bare fingers. He dunked it into the yogurt and took a bite.
“You think one of us is a traitor,” he said. “One of the Yule Lads.”
“Wolves can’t fly,” Somerset said. He grabbed a bit of bacon and ripped it apart in his fingers to eat it. “And Gull was dropped from a height. Besides, why else would he run to me from the killing ground?”
Ket sucked grease and yogurt from his fingers. “Me and Stúfur, we talked about this last night,” he said. “Right now, all the Courts know is that Santa is missing. We’re the only ones that know what happened to him. To the… watch. Us, and the traitor.”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” Somerset pointed out. “They’ll work it out when no one turns up tonight.”
Stúfur turned away from the stove, pot of eggs gripped in one hand. “That gives us hours to find the traitor,” he said. “We have to at least try. Before we all get the blame.”
He poured the eggs on top of the bacon and turned away to pull a heavy, blackened round of dense rye bread out of the oven.
