“You’re telling me you wouldn’t rather have put the Whip in Kris’s hands?”
Jars took a breath and let it out before he answered. “If you’re going to play these games, Somerset, you need to keep your information up to date. Kris doesn’t want to be Santa, and he doesn’t want me. So what do I care who wears the Watch? But I do care if the current shitstorm, that threatens centuries of peaceful alliance with the Winter Court is your fault too.”
“It’s not,” Somerset said.
“That’s what a traitor would say.”
Somerset smiled thinly. “I was thinking the same thing while you were talking.”
“Yeah? Because you didn’t say it.”
Silence hung in the air as they contemplated the impasse they’d just come to. Somerset rubbed his hand through his hair, with a wince as his fingers found a patch of raw, bald scalp. He couldn’taffordto trust Jars, and he assumed Jars felt the same way. That left…
“You know what they say,” Jars said, as if he could listen to Somerset’s thoughts. “Keep your enemies close…”
“And your brothers closer,” Somerset said. “If it helps, I know someone who’s good with money who could help us look through that laptop.”
Chapter Eleven
The world stopped. Dylanlay flat on the broad, warm span of hair and muscle under him and remembered how much hehatedreindeer. It probably hadn’t been a good idea to remind himself two days before the big night.
He peeled one eye open to look at the sky. It was dark, but not as dark as it had been. They were on the other side of midnight, which meant there was one day left. One day until there were twelve of the hairy brutes surfing the wind while he flapped along behind them and the world spun in two different directions around them.
Maybe he should get some of those travel bands that were supposed to work through acupuncture.
Dylan forced his cold, stiff fingers open and slid-fell down the side of the reindeer. His legs felt raw where the half-frozen denim had chafed. He stiffened his knees and staggered backward a couple ofsteps.
The frozen vomit on the reindeer’s shoulder had started to melt. Chunks of it slid down the thick fur and splattered on the roof. The reindeer fastidiously stepped away from it.
“Stay here,” Dylan told it.
It gave him a blank, placid look that could have been obedience, confusion, or “fuck you, I do what I want.” Dylan thought better of trusting it and stepped forward to try and grab the reins to tie it up to…an aerial or something. The reindeer rolled a big dark eye as it watched him get closer and then bounced away with a flip of its tail.
Dylan stopped, took a deep, icy breath, and said, “Fine, but if you end up in the pound? I’m not going to come get you.”
The reindeer seemed unconcerned by the threat. Dylan left it to whatever it was going to do as he headed over to the door down into the building. Someone had been careless enough to leave the door wedged open, so Dylan was able to just push it, step over the bucket of old butts, and head down the stairs.
Irene’s apartment was three floors down.
Dylan tried the door—locked—and then knocked. There was no answer. He glanced over his shoulder at the seemingly empty corridor and then checked for a spare key. There was nothing under the mat. He stretched up on his tiptoes—this was one of those times it would have been handy to have Somerset here—to feel along the top of the door. His fingertips had just brushed against something metal and pointy when the door opened.
Dylan dropped back onto his heels and stepped back. A rangy woman, chestnut hair pinned back from her face and sports gear under her winter jacket, scowled at him.
“If you’re here to rob me,” she said, “all the Christmas presents are already at my boyfriend’s. So…”
The boyfriend had gotten her diamond earrings for Christmas, and she wasn’t going to like them. She’d wanted a key to his apartment.
Dylan hesitated as that certainty settled like a weight in his brain. OK, so that was either his imagination running wild or Christmas was close enough that Yule had decided to throw himsomesort of bone.
He’d have rather had something he could use in a fight, but he’d take it.
The woman rolled her eyes in annoyance as she waited for him to respond. “What?”
“Umm…” Dylan shuffled his thoughts back together. “I was looking for Irene?”
“You and everyone else,” the woman said. “Look, whatever trouble she’s got herself into? I can’t help you. I told her not to get back together with that loser who’d left her atthe altar, but she wouldn’t listen. So…whatever has happened, it’s her own fault. And… You know what?”
She stepped back into the apartment. Dylan started to follow her, but before he could she appeared again with a box full of stuff.
