Somerset scowled. It wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear.
“Nothing out of the ordinary?” he pushed.
Enid choked out a not-that-amused laugh. “Plenty by my standards,” she said. “All I deal with are business loans and people losing their house, not arms dealers and payoffs. But nothing your brothers hadn’t paid for before.”
The coffee hadn’t cut it. Somerset leaned back and reached for the drawer where he kept the whiskey. He pulled a bottle out, twisted the cap off, and poured a generous shot into his cup. The smell that seeped out of the bottle was of snow, hot milk, and frost-slow honey.
Enid licked her lips and swallowed. Her throat made a dry click as she did so.
Somerset didn’t offer her a drink.
“We all have hobbies,” he said as he put the bottle away. He pushed the drawer shut with his knee. “What about Jars? What transactions went through for him?”
He took a swig of the whiskey. Enid watched him with a thirst that went beyond the physical. The taste of home—stews brewed with fey meat, whiskey touched with blood magic and bee magic, fabrics stitched together with magic and silver—was an expensive indulgence in the mortal world. Somerset should know, since he was one of the people who set the price. Most of the unCourted couldn’t afford it. Enid certainly couldn’t.
“I am not supposed to even have access to these accounts,” she said after she cleared her throat. “I didn’t note down every penny handed out. Just, like you said, anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing.”
“There’s something,” Somerset said. “You’ve just not found it yet. Look deeper. Find out what the Pole spent its money on last year.”
Dismay weighed on Enid like chains. She shrunk down in the chair.
“If I’m caught, I’ll lose my job. If I’m caught, I’ll have your brothers after me,” she pointed out. “I’d be better off if I just let you ruin me now.”
Somerset smirked at her. “Trust me,” he said. “You’re wrong. I—”
Before he could finish what he was about to say, someone rapped their knuckles on the door. They didn’t wait for a response before they pushed it open and stuck their head in. Dark red hair stuck up in unruly tangles around a sharp, bony face.
“Boss?” Gull said.
He didn’t look like the words tasted like shit in his mouth. Like everything else since Gull had been discharged from Belling Memorial, it rang true. He didn’t remember his name, his brothers, or even what he was. By all accounts, both Courts were desperate tofind out why, in case it wasn’t a geas or a curse but just some sort of…infectious mortality he’d picked up in the ward.
So far Jars had been a diplomatic barrier between Gull and the sharp-fingered scholars of the Courts. Whether he remembered it or not, hewasa Yule Lad, and they were the only ones who got to kill their own. That was why Gull had a job at theJust-as-High, despite being a shit barman. If anyone refused to accept Jars’s soft refusal, they’d have to deal with Somerset’s more direct approach.
That and it let Somerset keep an eye on Gull, just in case his brother was more patient than anyone had given him credit for…or remembered something useful in time for Christmas.
“What?” Somerset snapped in annoyance.
Gull looked apologetic, but that didn’t unbreak the tension that Somerset had built up with Enid. He hesitated to either come or go, until Somerset growled under his breath in annoyance and gestured for Gull to come on in.
Gull pushed the door open, but stayed on the threshold. He stuck both hands in the pockets of his jeans and shifted his weight absently from one foot to the other.
“There’s someone outside for you,” he said finally, after a glance at Enid.
“Who?”
Gull shrugged. “Short guy, motorbike leathers,” he said. “Seems like a dick.”
It was a shorthand of a description, but it still worked.
Stúfur. Who else.
Somerset pushed back from the desk and stood up. He pulled his jacket off the back of the chair in one absent movement and shrugged it on.
“What does he want?” he asked.
Gull looked caught off guard by the question. He widened his eyes and then shook his head. “I don’t know. He just said to…um…get off your ass?”
Twelve. That was how many brothers Somerset had. Thirteen Yule Lads. And yet none of the ones helikedcould be trusted not to have broken their oath to Yule and betrayed Santa.
