Chapter Twenty-Eight Taissa #2
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Taissa knows that her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are too bright. “I just—” She blinks rapidly as the headline is shoved in her face again. Cheater. Cheater.
“Oi. Enough of that,” Kion snaps, firmly but gently waving the magazine off. “We’ll do a single-file line for pictures, yeah? And then we’re off.”
Her cheeks are still flushed, but not just from the humiliation of the headline. “Giving orders on and off the pitch,” she says, quirking her brow as the fans obey with grins.
Kion huffs something that might be a laugh. (Twice in one day? A miracle.) “Let’s just get this over with.”
Thirty-two minutes, one secretive alleyway, and nine Glamour glyphs later, they have.
Fighting back a shiver, Taissa stands in the queue before Shrieking Pumpkin.
The dress she’s borrowed from Mahina (after another BSL lesson; Taissa’s basic vocabulary is coming along swimmingly—and she can now understand Mahina’s very colorful vocabulary with little difficulty, and spent at least five minutes gasping for breath as she laughed at one of the witch’s amazingly dirty jokes) is short and skimpy, leaving her legs pebbled with goosebumps.
With the disappearance of the sun has come the emergence of the Unseelie, all waiting excitedly in line for a night of escapism and belonging: something that is so sharply different from the barred doors of sneering Seelie during the day.
Red caps, goblins, baobhan sith, (rowdy) clurichauns, and even water-dripping greenteeths chatter excitedly in the queue, done up in their best outfits: sparkling eyeshadow and towering pumps, silk shirts and gleaming watches.
The club on Lantern Street, Rules, isn’t barred to Unseelie—at least not explicitly—but here, they don’t need to fear the curled lip of some Autumntides elf or glowing, glowering pixie.
Shrieking Pumpkin, Taissa learned today after a few searches on the shady side of the aethernet (specifically, a forum-site aptly dubbed “Goety”), is Orla Banes’s “second home” in more ways than one: It’s owned by her.
The sharply geometric building, with its burly bouncers and buzzing lights, is rumored to be a front for the Withers.
Taissa glances at Kion, standing beside her in the queue, glamoured as a vampire.
(Unfair, for him to be attractive even as a bloodsucker.)
If she concentrates, the Level Two illusion ripples just slightly, showing olive skin underneath pasty white flesh and black eyes underneath scarlet ones.
It’s good enough, though, and will pass the troll bouncer’s suspicious gaze.
Her own glamour, disguising her as a dark elf (straight, inky black hair, pale blue skin, and lightly tipped ears) holds steady, as well.
Isla and Bronte linger behind them, also glamoured as vampires, with óríon and Knox illusioned as a troll and a geancánach, respectively.
Mahina and Adriel chose to wait on the end of the queue (matching as two mournful-eyed banshees), with a lightly furred, werewolf James.
“Are you ready?” she asks him over the thrumming of the bass as the line inches slightly forward.
He’s acting like how he does before a game: quiet.
Still. Too still. Her, though? Taissa’s shifting on her feet like she has ants in her pants.
Her new trainers, even more comfortable than her beloved baffies, scuff back and forth on the wrapper-littered pavement.
(Kion Locke bought her trainers. And—and knickers. Either she’s living in a fever dream or Kion’s heart is so very much bigger than anybody has ever thought.)
“Think so,” he mutters back. “You?”
(Halfway certain they’ll be murdered in short time, halfway certain that they’ll show Orla Banes what they’re really made of.)
“Fantastic,” she says.
“Honestly, I feel a bit ill,” Isla chimes in softly. “What if they hurt us?”
“Nobody’s going to touch you.” Bronte’s voice is hard. “I promise.”
Isla blinks, shyly surprised and perhaps a bit confused, but Bronte doesn’t look at her again.
The line creeps onward with all the speed of a sloth, and Taissa sighs, resisting the urge to lean into Kion.
She’s bone-tired, but, really, that’s to be expected from the absolute chaos.
Carriwitchet is supposed to be simple—no curses, no undercover missions, no fake-dating a teammate and utterly confusing oneself in the process.
She tries, really tries, not to do it. But in the end, her head is resting on his shoulder. “I hate queues,” she mumbles.
Kion’s shoulders tense then relax. “Gives us time to strategize,” he says just as somebody cuts them in the line.
“Hey!” Taissa snaps, suddenly wide awake, glaring at the man’s back. “You can’t just jump the queue like that, you arse—”
The person in front of them laughs softly and turns.
Taissa blinks in disconcertment as she meets his eyes, one of them a depthless black, the other a dark emerald green like the forests in the Highlands.
The stranger’s hair is dark and sleek, his skin the same golden-beige as Taissa’s own.
The suit he’s wearing is bared to show his chest, and he is really rather fit…
Kion goes rigid next to her.
That strange, lonely green eye gleams. He spreads his hands. A golden Rolex sits, glistening, on one wrist. “Well, well, well,” says (no, croons) the stranger, “isn’t this a welcome surprise? Hello, Kion. And hello, Taissa. You’ve caused quite the stir recently.”
Her mouth falls open as she hastily checks to ensure her glamour is in place. Yes—her skin is still blue. So how can—
“Jacks,” says Kion, his voice strained.
Jacks. Jacks Clarke? So this is the dullahan friend. Taissa eyes him curiously.
“Fancy meeting you here,” continues the dullahan, sounding not at all shocked, but rather utterly amused. “I’ve not seen you in so long, Kion. It’s almost as if you’ve been avoiding me.”
“You lit my hair on fire,” he grumbles. Taissa coughs, masking a startled snort.
Jacks smiles pleasantly. His hooded eyes crinkle in the corners. “Oh, dear. Did I not apologize for that? Accidents do happen.”
“That wasn’t an accident, Jacks,” grits out her captain.
“It’s in my nature,” says Jacks, smirking.
“My mother is a dullahan. My father, apparently, was some wandering, disgraced Korean trickster god. In no possible world was my birth one-hundred-something years ago going to be the birth of a well-adjusted individual.” He looks at Taissa.
“Your boyfriend, darling, is a tight arse. If you ever want a better time…” A salacious wink.
“Well, I’m pathetically available. Although that may change after tonight.
You may have to battle Orla Banes for my hand in marriage. ”
“Stop flirting with my girl,” Kion snaps. Warmth spreads through Taissa like honey, slow and sweet. His girl.
(Stop it, she tells herself. It’s all a lark.)
The dullahan raises hands in supplication, although a cheeky devil-may-care smile tells Taissa that he’s not sorry, not in the least. Then he laughs in utterly textbook faerie amusement as Taissa again checks her glamour by holding out her light blue hand, still bewildered by its apparent ineffectiveness on Jacks.
“Don’t fret, darling. Your disguise is perfectly intact.
” He taps his green eye. “Inherited from my father. I can see through illusions rather well. And there are quite a lot of them in the queue tonight.”
“Don’t be a snitch, Jacks,” she warns, neck prickling. “It’s urgent. We need to—”
“See Orla, I know, I know,” he finishes breezily. “As do I. I’ve a declaration for her—”
“Merlin, Jacks. You’re in love with a new person every week,” groans Kion, but the dullahan is arching a brow.
“Stop whingeing, Kion,” he says. “I’ve come to offer my services. Grab the rest of your merry little team. The bouncer owes me a rather large favor. Cutting the queue and allowing a group of poorly dressed, glamoured athletes into Shrieking Pumpkin shall cover it.”
As they approach the troll bouncer, following Jacks’s confident stride and ignoring glowers from the rest of the queue, Taissa tries to steady herself and look as dark-elf-ish as possible.
The looming creature, with his bulging bald head and uneven yellow teeth, gives her a curt once-over.
She forces a smile, then realizes a dark elf probably would never smile, and settles into a more comfortable glare instead.
She’s convinced, after all, that her face is more predisposed to glares and glowers.
“Hello,” Jacks purrs, smiling at the bouncer in a way that is more a threat than anything. “My friends and I would be much obliged by early entry.” Somehow, the dullahan manages to pack a menacing subtext into the friendly words.
The troll’s eyes flare as he looks down at Jacks, who is examining his nails.
“You know,” he says conversationally, “if you want that little fact about you doing that thing while high out of your mind on Bliss to be kept secret from your employer. What was it, again? Public indecency? Streaking? Lewd acts with an inanimate object? That rings a bell.” Jacks’s smile grows, and his teeth somehow suddenly seem just a bit sharper.
Taissa wonders if the dullahan-demigod can create some illusions of his own.
“I think it was inappropriate conduct with a telephone pole—”
“Right,” blurts the troll abruptly, as one of his colleagues—staring at him in a mixture of disgust and amusement—opens a black-painted door for them. “Enjoy, yeah?”
“Oh, we will,” Jacks says, tipping an imaginary hat and sauntering inside. “Extortion,” he calls over the music, with a manic grin. “It really never gets old.”