Page 29 of The White Stag
“You guysdohave a plan, right? I didn’t just shoot my mouth off and piss off a fucking Boogeyman for nothing, did I?”
“Oh, sweet child. You definitely pissed him off, and we totally don’t have a plan. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough information to make one.”
“Well, how do we get that information? I thought I was just coming here to entertain a princess and help her with her hair, but Ilikeher. I wasn’t sure I would. It’s not the whole princess thing. It’s just every time I go shopping in the mortal world with my boyfriends, some puffed-up buffoon tries to start shit with us because he thinks what happens in my bedroom is any of his business. Some of the women get nasty too.
“All I knew about Reagan was that she grew up thinking she was mortal and spent a lot of time around the ultimate Seelie bigot. I thought I was going to have to convert her to the gay dark side with cookies, but she didn’t give a shit.”
While we were mixing drinks, I told Tucker about the lesbian couple that nearly adopted Reagan and how devastated she had been when the neighbors ruined it for her.
“Alastair can say what he wanted around her and use that tea to manipulate her, but the effects aren’t permanent. Even when Reagan was just a wee bairn, she knew her own mind. The only reason she ever did anything she didn’t like was because that’s how you survive in the foster system. Reagan has always had big opinions, even if it was just about hating peas when she was four. No one tells that girl what to think.”
“I figured that out pretty quickly. I’ll bet she likes my cocktails better than yours.”
He was barking up the wrong tree on this one. Oisin was the competitive one of the bunch. All that sweetness and light just disappeared when Unseelie sports or card games were happening. He got completely obsessed with basketball while we were in the mortal realm and was an utter cunt if his team lost.
That was never me. I was equally secure in my fabulous as I was in my mediocrity. I wasn’ttryingto be perfect at everything, nor was I pretending I was. When someone was better at something than me, I wanted them to teach me, and I generally made a new friend. So I grabbed a tray and handed one to Tucker.
“If she likes your better, you’ll just have to teach me. That pink shite looks delicious.”
“It is. I call it Unicorn piss.”
“Why? They are vicious little bastards. If they aren’t horny and want to fuck, they are just violent.”
“Exactly. And now that energy is in drink form.”
“Ooh. Did you make enough for the class?”
Tucker gave me this conspirator wink.
“You can thank me later,” he called over his shoulder, skipping into the living room.
What was Tucker on about? I didn’t like it when someone else was up to fuckery, and I didn’t know what was going on. And something told me Tucker could throw in with the hobgoblins when he wanted to.
Oisin
This was totally needed. I didn’t regret a single thing about growing up in the Unseelie realm instead of with Seelie like me. I would have loved to have had a Seelie mentor who was like me, so I knew how to access every bit of my magic, but I adored the Unseelie realm.
There were celebrations for everything in the Unseelie realm. We had holidays for our holidays. Even cycles of the moon were cause for a party. Unfortunately, we didn’t do that when we came here. We should have. We should have had all the parties for Reagan while she was living in shit situations. We could do that now, though.
We didn’t just decorate her bedroom to make her happy. I did the living room too. There were dimmable lights everywhere in this room. I knew humans loved their scented candles, but they had nothing on the candles the Hags made. They didn’t just smell amazing. They had magical properties. I also had purple fairy lights strung up to set the mood.
I dimmed the lights and turned the fairy lights up while Tucker and Finnan were making drinks. We didn’thaveto walk around with a lighter. Cyrus was trying to hide it, but I knew he was definitely noticing that Reagan was a stunning adult. We all noticed. Cyrus needed help, and he did like showing off.
“Cyrus, put your fire sign to work and light the candles.”
“What am I? Your fucking butler?”
Cyrus was justnotgood at this at all. I’m sure plenty of women liked the stoic grunting type, so he’d been with women before, but I needed to see some effort here.
“Well, I’m an Earth sign, and Reagan’s magic isn’t awakened yet. You’re a fire sign. Are you seriously going to make me portal myself to a store for a lighter in front of Reagan?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, man,” Cyrus said, waving his hand and lighting the candles.
“Oh my god, what kind of candles are those?”
The candles were all highly scented, but the Hags didn’t stop there. The flames all had different colors, and some of them were in the shape of Unseelie creatures. A few put out sparklers. They were all gorgeous and magical, and I bought them every time we went home because I knew she would love them.
“You know all the human stories about witches? They came from us. The Unseelie have Hags, and the Seelie have sorcerers. They aren’t hunched crones with warts and pointy hats. The Hags are generally gorgeous creatures. They aren’t evil and agents of whatever evil your religion tells you to fear. The Seelie sorcerers think the Hags are evil, but they aren’t,” I said.
