Chapter Text
“God, Harry,” I said, once he’d been let loose to make the rounds. He’d arrived late, the party already in full swing.
The invitation to the Unseelie Court’s Halloween celebration had specified formal wear. Harry was technically wearing that. A cheap black suit with Velcro enclosures all down the back. He was also covered in a layer of dirt that had me leaning back from him when he walked past.
“Hey ‘Los,” Harry said. He knocked one hand against his thigh, sending brown dust in the air, then held his knuckles out to me. Cleaner, if not clean. His fingers themselves were black with dirt and congealed blood. His fingernails ripped away.
I tapped my knuckles against his. My skin prickled afterwards.
“Grave dirt?” I asked. The theme of the party suddenly clicked. The somber lighting. The heaviness to the air. The strange way sound carried, odd words traveling far, others impossible to land on the ear louder than a murmur. It was a wake.
“Mab’s still working through some things. It was a bitch to dig through,” Harry said. He glanced around. "How’s the food? Have you eaten yet?”
He didn’t wait for my answer before he was crossing the room. The crowd parted around him in a ripple.
My leg was better than it had been, but Harry’s stride was longer than mine in the best of health. By the time I reached the buffet table he already had a plate.
The food was a strange mix. Cold cuts, casseroles, pasta salads. A cake in the shape of a headstone took a place of honor in the center of the table.
Harry’s name was piped on its face in white frosting, with only a single year listed beneath it. The year of Chichén Itzá.
Harry wolfed down three sandwiches in rapid succession. “I’m surprised the Council sent anyone,” he said, casting a look over me. “Did you draw the short straw?”
I’d had to argue to be allowed. With Chicago as host city, Ilyana should’ve been our representative by right. I could only imagine what she, or any of the Senior Council would have to say right now.
Before I could answer, our host appeared.
“Happy birthday, my Knight,” Mab said. She was dressed in a floor-length black gown. A veil trailed down her back, long enough that it dragged the floor. Both were dotted through with seed pearls, their sheen making the mourning crepe all the more dull.
The Sidhe changed their appearance on the regular, and Mab was no different.
Today her hair and her face were a bleached-bone white. Her eyes cat-pupiled. Lilac.
Harry bowed. “Mab,” he greeted, with more respect than he had ever shown to the Merlin. A sexton beetle crawled out from under the collar of his suit coat and dropped to the ground, its black-and-orange body shiny against the floor. “Good spread this year.”
Her smile was a cruel thing, but Harry returned it easily enough.