Jars sighed and lowered himself stiffly into the chair. He propped his crutches against the table and leaned back.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a lot left to do for you to get ready for the Eve. How fare the reindeer? Are they in good condition for the night’s work?”
There was a pause, just long enough for Jars to look pleased with himself.
“I think they’re enjoying their reindeer games,” Dylan said. “Which is important, after last year. We don’t want to run over anyone else’s grandma.”
He laughed. So did Stúfur. No one else had spent enough time in the mortal world to get the reference. There was a flash of stiff, restrained horror in Jars’s eyes, although he controlled his expression enough that it didn’t show on his face.
Still enough of a servant of Yule to care about that, then.
“That was—” Dylan started to explain.
Somerset nudged him to shut him up. It probably wouldn’t help them find Alice, or uncover the traitor, but the idea of giving Jars an ulcerwasfunny.
“That’sSanta?” Duke Caolán said. He sounded as offended as a child who’d seen a department store Santa take his beard off. “He doesn’t look much like Santa.”
The advisor on his left chuckled from behind unparted, dark red lips. He patted Caolán’s arm.
“Witty as always,” he said. A sharp glance made the other three advisors nod and murmur in agreement.
Caolán’s mouth twitched at the corner, and he moved his arm away. It seemed the young duke had enough about him to not enjoy being pandered to.
“They promised me I wouldn’t have to grow a beard,” Dylan said. “I specifically asked about that beforehand.”
Jars raised a sandy eyebrow in response to that. “I don’t believe that was a binding condition,” he muttered.
His jab was ignored as Caolán cracked an actual smile at Dylan’s remark. He gestured across the table to some empty chairs.
“Sit,” he said. “Even if you can’t stay long, you should know why we are here. It does involve you.”
Dylan glanced at Somerset. That would do nothing to quell the “Saintmaker” murmurs, but Somerset could live with them. He nodded slightly and followed Dylan over to the table.
He pulled a chair out for Dylan and held it for him. Then he pulled another for himself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jars’s mouth crimp in annoyance.
“What the fuck?” Stúfur objected. “He can sit down, but I have to stand here like I’ve got piles?”
“You sit like a slut,” Jars said.
Stúfur screwed his face up in confusion. “What the fuck does that mean?” he asked. “I sit like a normal person.”
Somerset leaned back and hung his arm over the back of his chair. “No,” he said. “Jars is right.”
That got him an offended look from Stúfur. He smirked back. It was good for Stúfur to remember that he wasn’t the only asshole in the family.
“Enough,” Dylan said, the edges of the word clipped with irritation. It caught the corners of the empty room with a soft, authoritative echo.
It shut all three of them up. Stúfur thought better of whatever he’d been about to say so thoroughly that his teeth clicked audibly as he shut his mouth.
At their end of the table, Winter’s representatives looked…the range ran from taken back to angry. With the scale weighted more at anger. Oddly enough, when Somerset glanced at Jars, his brother looked…pleased.
“Enough indeed,” one of the courtiers said abruptly. She was lush-bodied for the Courts, with feathery blond hair and muted ink coloring in her forearms and throat. Her shirt gaped open as she leaned forward, revealing the upper slopes of her breasts and just how far down the ink ran. Pale eyes snapped as she glared at Somerset and then jabbed a finger at him. “When you walk in here with your attack dog unleashed. You forget yourplace, Yule’s man.”
It was an insult, a very old one from back when Yule only needed a mortal man for one short, bloody run. The history was probably lost on Dylan, but from the way his eyes narrowed, the tone wasn’t.
“Which is?” Dylan asked.
The woman peeled her upper lip back from her teeth like a dog. Her gums were freckled like a dog’s, too. “Under the dirt,” she said. “It’s where mortal men spend the longest.”
