Gat flashed a sharp grin at that and loped off to get to work.
The kelpie snorted, the inside of her nostrils red and froth-white, and dropped her head. Her hair escaped the ponytail it had been in to bristle aggressively down the back of her neck. She charged at Jars.
Somerset sheathed his knife and watched the fight intently. Was there any sign of recognition in the kelpie’s black-on-black eyes as she snaked her head out, skin pulled so tight over her bones it looked skeletal? Or a second of hesitation from Jars as he punched her between the eyes?
If there was, Somerset had been away too long to read the tells. It looked like an honest fight to him. Short, but honest. The kelpie’s eyes crossed as Jars knuckles cracked into her skull and she dropped like a rock. Her body twitched and thrashed on the ground, bloody froth on her flat, saw-edged teeth, as her brain tried to reset from the insult.
Jars braced his weight on the spear, the tip dug into the carpet tile, and bent from the waist to grab the kelpie’s mane and drag her out of his way so he could step by her.
“Aegir, help me find our mouse’s laptop,” he said. “The rest of you, find his hole.”
Stúfur, halfway back to his feet, gave a dirty snort of a laugh.
“That’s what he said,” he cracked. The rest of the Yule Lads burst out laughing as they snorted and elbowed each other.
Jars looked annoyed for a moment, his jaw set in that familiar way it had when he thought they should take something seriously. Then it relaxed into a smirk.
“Enough,” he said. “It’s not Skellir talking to Santa, so get to work.”
Somerset hesitated as he tried to pull up a disarming response on the fly. Before he could, Jars grabbed hold of Aegir’s shoulder and headed into the office.
“Well,” Ket muttered at his shoulder. “Shit.”
Nik glanced at Somerset as he slung his halberd over his shoulder to sheath it. He took in the expression on Somerset’s face and then jabbed his elbow into another Lad’s ribs.
“Shit, Kerr, he really thought we didn’t know,” he crowed. “Like he doesn’t look like a dog in front of a plate of sausages every time Santa breathes in the same room as him.”
Kerr grabbed Nik’s shoulder and gave him a shove forward to get him moving. “Don’t be a dick,” he said. Then he shrugged at Somerset. “But he’s not wrong. If you wanted it to be a secret, you shouldn’t have grabbed so much ass when you thought no one was looking.”
He pushed Nik ahead of him as he headed off.
Nobody said anything for a long moment, and then Ket said, “I mean, I told you that.”
They found Lucas two floors down, wedged under an IT desk in a tangle of cables. He cut Gat’s hand to the bone, the nasty little knife he pulled splitting it from the heel to knuckles. It didn’t do him much good. Gat might have one eye, but he had two hands.
“This is…this is—” the changeling spluttered as he dangled from Gat’s grip, his feet a couple of inches off the ground. “My sponsor willendyou for this. She’ll make you crawl the length of the Court and feed youglasswhen you get to the end of it. She’ll—”
Gat shook him. Lucas shut up as his teeth clattered and he bit his tongue. He was bound, plastic ties zipped tight around his wrists, and dragged out of the building by a couple of Somerset’s brothers. He protested==briefly—as they slapped the red hat back on his head, but no one listened.
“Must be nice,” Stúfur remarked. There was a bowl of candy on whoever’s desk it was. Gat had dripped blood all over it. Stúfur grabbed a handful and then tipped the rest out to confuse the scene.
“What would?” Somerset asked.
“Having a mother who’d go to bat for you,” Stúfur said. “We went whining to ours, she’d give us a cuff and tell us we deserved it for getting caught.”
“She’d not be wrong.”
“I know,” Stúfur said. “Still. You gotta sometimes wonder what it’s like to be soft.”
Somerset thought briefly of Dylan, who was still mortal and had gotten dragged into all of this because he’d not been able to leave a stranger to die alone.
“Dangerous,” he said. “Go back with the others and check on Dylan. I’m going to talk to Jars.”
That plan made Stúfur raise an eyebrow. He tossed a bloody jelly bean into his mouth. “You sure?” he said. “He’s played that card close to his chest until now. There’s probably a reason he decided he didn’t need it anymore.”
“Yes,” Somerset said. He slapped Stúfur on the shoulder as he headed out of the office. “And I need to know what it is.”
It didn’t take him long to track down his oldest brother. Jars was in the damp, sporadically lit parking lot under the building, strapping Lucas’s laptop into a saddlebag on hisbike. Somerset hesitated for a second, one foot in the elevator doors to stop them closing again, as he watched him. Then he stepped out and walked over.
