Chapter Thirty-Six Taissa #4
“Isn’t this wonderful?” asks a breathless greenteeth, who joined the group a while back.
The procession up the mountain is like a parade, by this point: Taissa has to keep moving at a steady pace or risk being squashed by all the Unseelie behind her.
Goblins and trolls, vampires and nuckulavees, banshees and grims, leannán sídhe and fachan, squalid luideags and frightening mumpokers.
“I look forward to this every year! I left the kids at home with their da—I’m hoping he cooks them up something other than Aunt Wally’s Frozen. ”
Something uncomfortable prickles in Taissa’s stomach, something she felt at Shrieking Pumpkin: that same feeling of intruding on a safe space. But she makes herself smile at the greenteeth as they continue their ascent.
Desperate times, desperate measures.
Finally, finally, after what must have been two hours, they reach the top of the mountain.
It’s not what Taissa expected. It’s…a carnival.
The air is filled with the scent of buttered popcorn and candy floss.
Tents line the rocky ground, balancing precariously on the mountain’s edge, and boasting everything from cheese stalls to pop-up bookshops with the latest novels from Unseelie authors.
A banshee is strumming a guitar and singing atop a small stage.
Unseelie roam about, snacking on refreshments, chattering and cheering as the moon chips away another sliver of the sun.
For some reason, Taissa had expected it to be a gathering of warriors, preparing for the race (or perhaps a massive bloodthirsty orgy, thanks to Magis Elder’s comment about debauchery—or perhaps the orgy comes later?).
Instead she finds a family of llamhigyn y dwr, the gilled Welsh water demons bobbing for apples, and a pair of dark elves sharing candy floss with eyes only for each other.
Kion stands beside her. It’s all cramped here, as the threat of falling off the mountain is very real. “Where’s Puck and Pike?” he mutters into her ear. They’ve been separated from the rest of the team, for the better. Less suspicious, this way. “Do you see them? Or Jacks?”
Taissa shakes her head, glancing about. She thought there would be thrones, a dais, but there’s no sign of the Unseelie king and his queen in sight, nor their pale blue skin.
Unless…Taissa glances back to the dark elf couple.
Surely that can’t be Puck and Pike, doing nothing dreadful and instead happily eating candy floss.
Right? There are dozens of other dark elves here.
But as she looks at them, really looks at them, dread uncurls in her stomach.
The elven male is wearing a fine dark suit that looks thousands of times more expensive than even Jacks Clarke’s.
His neck is bared, showing a collection of glittering necklaces, in a very random assortment: Some necklaces look like they might have been purchased from a chemist (with cheap smiley-face charms) while others look lifted from museums (the number of rubies must be illegal).
The elven female wears a leather jerkin, a dagger sheathed at her hip, right atop her flowy white skirt…
And her mouth, as she opens it for a bite of candy floss, is filled with pike’s teeth.
Taissa would bet anything that would the female glance her way, one of her eyes would be a milky blue.
Alarm grips her like a vise, and she quickly hauls Kion into the crowd. “That was them, I think,” she pants. “Puck and Pike.”
His face is grim. “We need to avoid them at all costs. Where are the others?”
It’s impossible to find anyone in the sea of Unseelie. Kion settles for shooting off a quick warning in the group chat, with a description of the royalty and their last spotted location.
“How long until totality?” Kion asks under his breath as a trio of glaistigs stride past, handing out eclipse glasses. It’s dark now, as if the world has been plunged into a low-exposure filter. Kion’s pale vampire skin stands out like a beacon.
Taissa snatches a pair with a thank-you.
Totality is when the Hunt begins, and she’d rather it start sooner than later (jittery, she’s never been so jittery in her life).
Glancing up at the sky through the glasses, she sees that only a small crescent of the sun remains.
“Soon,” she says, yanking off the spectacles and ignoring how her stomach has begun to bottom out.
“Very, very soon. We need to find our marks.” Marks, as in their púcas.
Once they shift into horses for the race, the Stymphs need to do everything in their power to get on their backs.
Holding Kion’s hand in hers, Taissa threads her way through the chaos, searching for a telltale flash of golden eyes. There? No, that’s only somebody’s golden watch. What about there? No, damn it, just a barrette in a goblin’s hair. What about…
“Merlin’s hairy chin,” curses Kion, tugging her to a halt.
“Look.” She follows his eye, and her own widen.
Jacks Clarke leans against a popcorn machine, waggling his eyebrows suggestively at Orla Banes, who’s flanked by two of her Withers.
The dullahan seems to be in the process of complimenting Orla’s “esteemed magnificence.” Orla seems to be in the process of deciding how best to disembowel him.
“It looks like we’ve found our púcas,” Kion grumbles grimly into her ear before they hastily duck out of sight.