“I definitely am,” Somerset confirmed. It was not a feeling you’d mistake after the first time. His stomach felt like he’d eaten a whole pot of their mother’s stew, and his legs felt like overstuffed sausages. It wouldn't kill him, but that didn't make it pleasant.
“Good,” the old woman snapped. She jabbed a finger at Demre, the nail painted a neutral beige. “And your whining disgusts me. However it started, you should have stopped it.”
Demre looked down, hidden behind the gray-brown fall of her hair. Her hand lifted to her face to poke at her lip.
“What are you going to do now?” Jars asked. He leaned back against one of the long benches, arms extended along the seat. “Even if you kill us, the Court will know you’re here, and they have no compunctions about killing you.”
Somerset snorted. “Neither do I,” he pointed out. “It’s only the oath that thinks they’re worth our time.”
Something squirmed under the woman’s face, oily hair pushed against her cheek from the inside. Bristles poked through her pores, and a beady black eye tried to bulge out of her eye socket. She reached up and pushed it back in with the heel of her hand.
“The Court won’t come looking for us,” she said. “Youdidn’t. They’re looking for her, and they can take their pound of flesh from her.”
Demre’s head snapped up. “No!” She lurched to her feet, and her fingers crooked. Black nails split the skin at the end of her fingertips and poked out. Her lips peeled back from her teeth and kept peeling as her fangs showed. “You can’t do that. You said…you said once we were done I could come home.”
The woman spread her hands. “And you did,” she said. “Now put those away. I don’t want to fight with my daughter on Christmas Eve…but I will.”
Demre folded her lips back down over her muzzle, as much as she could. The woman waited until she was sure that Demre was cowed and then turned to go.
The wolf crossed the hall to cut her off. “And our deal?” he asked.
There was a pause as the Kallikantzaroi looked at him and then primped her lips in a smile.
“A deal is a deal,” she said. “Get your pet to give us the child and we’ll get you home. But not until after we have the others. So either help find them or get out of my way.”
The wolf stepped to the side and the woman left. He let her.
Jars turned his head to watch her go and then tilted his head back. He stared at the ceiling for a long while and then snorted softly to himself. It turned into a choked snickering laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Demre snarled as she pulled the hem of her shirt up to wipe her face.
Jars leaned forward and braced his hands against his thighs. He used his chin to gesture to the hall.
“What’s it been?” he asked. “Centuries of the Kallikantzaroi surviving paw to mouth, hiding in the gutters. Decades here, building yourselves back up with stolen babies—”
Demre barked out a humorless laugh. “And where do you think the Winter Court gets their changelings?” she asked. “At least we pay for them.”
Jars ignored that. “Infiltrating the Winter Court with…what are you?”
She glared at him. “Smarter than you,” she said. “Like that baby, something that the Courts will accept as their own. And all these years under your nose, but you Yule Lads were too far up your own asses to sniff us out.”
“All that,” Jars said. “And it all fell apart when the wolf got scared because someone pulled a cracker.”
He burst out laughing again, doubled over as he slapped his hand against his thigh. Somerset snorted his own contribution at the farce of it. The wolf snarled at them.
Demre lunged across the room and kicked Jars in the chest. The bench behind him broke on impact, snapped in half, and he landed on his back with a grunt. Demre pinned him to the ground with one foot as she leaned down.
“Laugh at us all you like.” She enunciated the words through snaggled fangs. Thick, stringy drool dripped from her jaws onto his face. “But we did all that and you sawnothing.You have no idea how close we came to havingeverything.”
Jars turned his face to the side and wiped it on his shoulder.
“So you failed all on your own?” he said.
Demre’s face contorted, and her jaw cracked open, almost all the way back to her ears.
“The Old Man wanted to keep you alive until we caught the others,” she said. “But the other one will do well enough as bait.”
Somerset tensed his arms to test the cuffs. The iron burned his skin, a hot itch that numbed his fingers and spread a slow, dull ache up toward his armpit.
