Dash buttons his shirt. Two buttons. From the bottom. The collar stays open. "Your mother operates a dominance-based social hierarchy with economic gatekeeping. Standard tribal structure. I've negotiated with warlords who use the same framework."
"Cool, so Thanksgiving should be a breeze."
His mouth does the thing. The almost-thing. The ghost of a twitch at the corner. It's not a smile. Orcs don't smile, according to the fourteen websites I stress-read at 3 AM before hiring him. But it's adjacent.
I grab my garment bag from the van wreckage pile by the door and disappear into the bathroom. Eighty-seven minutes. I can do this.
I cannot do this.
Forty minutes later, I'm standing in a lavender dress with my hair pinned into something that suggests competence, and Dash is beside me in the full armor-silk suit, and we're walking across the country club's grand lawn toward the rehearsal dinner pavilion, and there are torches.
There are torches and there is mud.
The entire south lawn has been transformed. Gone are the white linen tables and the crystal stemware and the string quartet. In their place: a churned field of dark earth, a series of wooden barricades draped in enchanted ivy, and a pen at the far end containing six enormous magical boars. Their tusks glow faint amber. Their eyes are red. One of them is eating a croquet mallet.
A tall Elven maitre d' is at the pavilion entrance in a spotless white jacket, holding a brass horn and a scroll.
"Welcome to the Silverleaf Country Club rehearsal dinner. As per club tradition dating to the Third Era, all guests willparticipate in the ceremonial boar hunt before the evening meal is served."
My sister Petunia is already in the mud. She's wearing a silk jumpsuit and custom hunting boots that probably cost more than my monthly rent. Her fiance, Todd, a perfectly symmetrical man who works in private equity, stands behind her holding a ceremonial spear like it's a golf club. They look like a catalog spread for people who've never experienced a real problem.
"Maggie!" Petunia waves her spear. "You made it! I love that you're wearing that color again!"
Again. She says again like lavender is a crime I keep committing.
"Tradition dictates," the maitre d' continues, unrolling his scroll with the gravity of a man reading a death sentence, "that each couple must work in tandem to capture and subdue one boar. Only upon successful capture will dinner be served. Weapons are provided." He gestures to a rack of wooden shields and blunted lances wrapped in enchanted vines. "The boars have been fed a mild aggression potion. They will charge. The club assumes no liability."
"I'm sorry, what?"
No one else looks surprised. The other couples are already selecting weapons. Mark is here, solo, flexing his way into the hunting gloves across the field. Mom waits at the pavilion under an umbrella held by a member of the waitstaff, sipping champagne and watching like a Roman empress at the Colosseum.
Dash picks up one of the wooden shields. Turns it over. Sniffs the enchanted vine binding. Sets it down.
"Substandard construction. The binding will snap on impact."
He picks up a lance. Bends it between his hands. The wood groans. He sets that down too.
"These weapons are decorative."
"They're traditional," the maitre d' sniffs.
"They're kindling."
A boar screams from inside the pen. The sound is somewhere between a chainsaw and a pipe organ. The ground vibrates. The enchanted ivy on the barricades starts writhing, reaching for anything warm-blooded.
"Dash." I grab his forearm. The muscle underneath is like gripping a tree root. "We don't have to do this. We can skip it. We can eat in the room. I have protein bars in my?—"
"The contract specifies full event participation."
"I wrote that contract on a bar napkin in blood!"
"Blood contracts are the most binding kind." He rolls his sleeves up. Both forearms, exposed. The scars catch torchlight. "How fast can you run?"
"What?"
"In those shoes. How fast."
I look down at my kitten heels. Look back up at him. Look at the mud field. Look at the boar that just headbutted its pen gate hard enough to crack the bottom hinge.
