Chapter Twenty-Eight Taissa
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Taissa
Magis Rowan Elder seems entirely unimpressed as Taissa—sweaty and smelling less than her best thanks to Head-to-Head—finally manages to corner him in the Nexitory’s media room, which is currently serving as his office.
For all of his conspicuously unhelpful absences, it does seem like the magis has actually been working on the team’s curse (shocking, she finds it) as the long table is littered with manila folders crammed with papers filled with spindly, frustrated handwriting.
The pipe-smoking geancánach looks up from his laptop with a frown as Taissa stomps right up to his makeshift desk and crosses her arms.
“Miss Cho,” says Elder, his violet eyes distinctly unamused. “I take it that there’s been some emergency, for you to barge into here like an angry whale onto a boat.”
Well! Taissa narrows her eyes, quite offended. “I’ve come to tell you that we need your help.”
Elder seems to gather his patience. “This investigation, as I’ve told you, is ongoing—”
“Listen to me.” Taissa jabs an angry finger onto one of his folders. “It doesn’t matter who cursed us, if there’s no sport to play. Help us with the case of the Sleeping Death instead. All the other Wingeds have just gone under—”
“Miss Cho,” says Magis Elder in clear exasperation, “diseases are not part of the CCB’s job description, hence why the capable DMC is currently handling the investigation into the Sleeping Death.”
“We have a lead that it was a púca who did this; part of the Withers’ syndicate. If you ever bothered to answer your phone, you’d know that.” She’d had to come hunt him down instead, rather than taking a hot (or, well, lukewarm at best) shower in the locker room like she’d wanted. Ridiculous.
“A lead?” The magis frowns. “How did you come by this? The DMC has said nothing. Felicity would have told me; I’m sure of it.”
“The DMC is scared. Embarrassed, probably. They don’t know the first thing about how to go about dealing with a gang.
” Not that the NCL Stymphs really do, either.
Hence Taissa’s “barging” into Elder’s “office.” She’ll be damned if their trip to the Shrieking Pumpkin ends with, well, too much shrieking on their end.
“A gang that can deal in dark magic. So, there: This Sleeping Death, this curse, is in the CCB’s wheelhouse.
” Taissa leans forward. “This case could be career-making, Elder. Aren’t you so bored of sifting through all of those online hate-clubs, looking for a needle in a haystack?
Wouldn’t you like to go after Orla Banes and her merry gang of bastards instead?
You lot have been trying to put them away for years. Well, here’s your chance.”
Please say yes. Please say yes. Taissa’s heart aches at the thought of her little wyvern curled up in a bottomless sleep, as still and silent as stone. She’ll brave this alone if it means a chance to save Sansa. But she’d really rather she didn’t have to.
It’s clear, though, the temptation in Elder’s eyes. They’re more purple than usual, if such a thing is even possible. “And what proof do you have of the Withers’ involvement, Miss Cho?”
Easy. She’s been waiting for this.
Triumphantly, Taissa slams the jar of púca powder onto his desk and unscrews the golden lid, shaking a little out onto the table.
As Elder watches her warily, she tugs out her qyl from its holster and etches a simple Level One Fire glyph onto her pointer finger.
As her finger turns into a makeshift candle, a small flame burning merrily on its tip, Taissa touches it to the small pile of powder.
The result is instantaneous. A steed of smoke erupts from the pile, so similar to the one in her sitting room two nights ago.
Taissa squeezes her eyes shut as the dark stallion bursts into existence before rushing straight through her, covering her and Elder from head to toe in the powder before vanishing in a puff of smoke.
“A calling card,” she explains to a stunned-looking Rowan Elder as she quickly etches a Level Two Cleansing glyph onto her skin.
It’ll get the worst of the powder off her, but a good hot scrub is what will really do the trick, later.
Elder, unable to use glyphs, tries in vain to wipe the dust from himself.
“Not what caused the disease, but a sign of who caused it.”
Elder has taken the jar into his slender fingers, careful not to let it too close to the pipe between his lips.
Setting it down and pinching his pipe between his fingers, Elder regards her for a good, long moment.
He looks quite comical, all sooty and suspicious.
“Do I want to know how you acquired this?”
(Absolutely the fuck not, she wants to say.)
“Ah, no,” she says instead, politely as she can manage. “Probably not.”
“I see.” Elder drums his fingers on the table, casting a disdainful look toward his laptop, where yet another online hate-forum glows on the screen. “I will have to call my superiors. This is interesting, indeed.”
“Call them soon,” urges Taissa, turning to leave.
She pauses, casting a final glance at Elder over her shoulder.
“Oh. By the way, if the team’s brutally murdered tonight, it’s because we took a trip to see Orla Banes at Shrieking Pumpkin.
I would suggest you make your phone call before then. We could use your help.”
Evening has fallen on Lantern Street, a cool, early summer chill snaking around Taissa’s bones as she sits with the team at Tally Ho’s rickety outside seating, polishing off a pint.
Liquid courage will be needed for tonight.
Looking across the long wooden table, the others seem as nervous as she feels, clad in various going-out/incognito attire (Bronte is wearing a giant fur coat and sunglasses despite the fact that it is indeed June; óríon for some unfathomable reason is wearing a Victorian-esque top hat).
Before they walk to Alley Hollow, just off Lantern Street, they’ll all apply glamours.
Shrieking Pumpkin caters exclusively to Unseelie clientele, and to gain entry, the disguises will be imperative.
She’d thought it wiser to apply the Glamour glyphs before leaving the Nexitory but Isla insisted that they look like themselves for what is feeling very much like their last supper before an untimely death.
(“Emotional support,” the little redhead had explained, looking tremulously in need of some. Taissa had been too anxious herself to argue.)
Conversation between the team has long stalled, and their nervous silence is only broken when a passing teenage witch stops mid-stride, jerking her boyfriend to a halt while staring at them with wide eyes.
“The Stymphs!” she squeaks, hurrying over to their table. “Can I get a picture with you?” she asks excitedly.
Knox preens, smoothing down his hair. “Oh, sure. Sure. Of course.”
“Thank you!” cries the girl, and presses her phone into his hands before hurrying across the table, where Taissa and Kion sit next to each other.
“You guys are, like, the cutest,” she gushes, and Taissa forces a confused smile as a disappointed Knox snaps a couple photographs.
Meanwhile, the witch’s unsmiling boyfriend takes a selfie with an unsmiling óríon.
“Erm,” says Taissa, blinking in disorientation, “thanks.”
The witch grins and flounces off with her boyfriend in tow, but more come.
Many more.
Within moments, their table is completely swarmed.
Somehow the number of people on Lantern Street has tripled.
How that even happened is a mystery to Taissa.
Witches and elves and banshees and gnomes elbow one another, chattering over the din, shouting their names, crying out for a picture.
Sweaty hands try desperately to touch her, begging for her attention.
Over the chaos, she is dimly aware of the other NCL Stymphs being swarmed by a horde of fans of their own.
Knox is flexing his biceps to the thrill of a young witch while óríon looks on in disgust. Mahina and Adriel are grinning eerily identical smiles underneath matching denim bucket hats as they sign a goblin’s potbelly.
James waves away a trio of giggling girls, looking exhausted by the attention.
Fans. Niamh’s plan…worked. None of them are shouting at her, or booing her, or throwing rotten vegetables in her face while she sobs behind a skip bin.
No, they’re smiling, telling her they’ve missed seeing her play, that she and Kion are the “cutest couple since Puck and Pike.” In her heart, joy soars, and she feels an answering flicker of confused, yet content, happiness from Cronus.
(Is Morgana somehow telling him that all she had to do to worm her way into the public’s good favor was to snog Kion Locke passionately in front of a camera? She would have done that sooner. Much sooner…)
Except, of course, that there’s no actual carriwitchet to go along with these grinning fans. And there may never be again if they don’t make Orla Banes see sense and reverse whatever curse is upon the Wingeds.
“Can you sign this?” a warlock chirps, shoving a glossy copy of today’s Wily Witch into her hands. Her chest tightens as those terrible, awful words stare back at her. The Captain and the Cheater.
She makes herself smile gamely as she scrawls her signature over the magazine cover, where those vile words are: cheater, cheater, cheater.
Yet she feels Kion looking at her in concern, and wonders if he can see how her knuckles shine around the pen and how she’s avoiding the eyes of the warlock bouncing excitedly before her.
Handing a Paint-It Pen back to a greenteeth, Kion takes a protective step closer to Taissa.
“You okay, sweetheart?” he asks gruffly out the side of his mouth as a beaming pixie drags the magazine toward him (looking like a butterfly somehow carrying a brick).