Page 56 of A Beastly Court

Someone had set up a little wooden table and four chairs in the atrium, a red tablecloth matching the fat red cushions of the chairs. The table had been set for afternoon tea, though it was still on the morning side of noon. Steaming pasties were stacked high next to a crystal dessert tower filled with custard tarts and persimmon pudding.

“Move faster,” Sawyer urged, his little pink nose twitching frantically.

Seated around the table were Flora and Shari, and Daphne had her large square horse teeth clamped on the back of a chair and was in the process of dragging it out of the way. Charlie was there, too, absent his enthusiastic brother Cohen, sitting beside the porcupine and quietly conversing. It was clear he was trying to remain professional, but the tip of his black tail wouldn’t stop wagging. Around his neck was a barrel of beer or apple cider, maybe even brandy, but the porcupine was too preoccupied with her crochet to unhook it, and the honey badger was so face-deep in the pasties that she probably had no idea the Labrador retriever was even there.

Yet at the sound of my approach, Flora lifted her head from her devouring, flaky bits of crust clinging to her muzzle. She exclaimed something unintelligible behind a mouthful of food, so it was up to Shari to greet nervously, “Hello, Meadow.” The porcupine had an untouched lemon tart on her plate.

“Milady,” Charlie said, immediately rising and padding over to me. He sat once more and lifted his chin, allowing me access to the little barrel. “From Cernunnos.”

I unhooked the barrel, thanked the dog, and set it on the table without opening it. Shari’s eyes lifted from her crochet to the barrel, then they darted towards the Labrador.

“Bye, Charlie,” she whispered.

His tail betrayed him, giving one big swipe from side to side until he mastered his emotions. “Bye, Miss Shari.” Then the dog trotted away, a spring to his step.

The porcupine watched him go, her fingers absolutely still until even his shadow was gone. With a little sigh, she twisted around and impaled both the ball of yarn and her current work on the quills along her back, then turned back to the lemon tart on her plate.

“What are you all doing here?” I asked, dropping down into the remaining seat and grabbing a pasty with one hand and a big cloth napkin in the other. I draped one half of the napkin on my lap, placed the pasty where Sawyer could reach it, then folded the remaining half of the napkin over his head. The cat spared no time wiggling his head free of the bag and tearing into the food; the scents of salmon and leek wafted up to my nose a moment later.

“Visiting you, dear,” Daphne said, stretching her long white neck across the table to lip up a custard tart topped with a glazed apple floret.

“But we’re not supposed to be here,” Shari whispered, looking around. Her nails drummed against the edge of her plate. “It’s not Thursday. We’re here ahead of schedule. Something’s not right. Do you think he knows about yesterday?”

“Of course not,” the mare soothed. But she gave me a worried glance anyway. “You did make it back in time, didn’t you?” she whispered. “You and your little friend?”

“Yes, and I used the moonflower just this morning,” I whispered, glancing about. “I’m not sure exactly how helpful it was, but it was something.” Then I eyed the honey badger, preparing to ask if she knew why her name was in my notebook and why it insinuated she could do magic, when the porcupine said in a frantic little squeak,

“Well if your little fieldtrip to the farmhouse—Daphne told me—is still a secret and that cat you’ve got in that bag on your lap—again, Daphne—hasn’t been discovered, then what are we doing here?” Her quills, which she normally kept flattened out of fear of stabbing someone, had only flared with each word, and now she resembled a massive pincushion.

“Listen, if he rounded us all up with the perverse motive to beguile us with snacks before letting the hammer fall,” Flora said, her mouth finally clear enough that she could speak without risk of biting her tongue, “I’m going to play along and at least get my belly full before being thrown into prison. We never get snacks here. Almost makes up for the high-handedness of our arrival, you know?” The honey badger added two pasties and another tart onto Shari’s plate.

The porcupine’s wide eyes slitted, and she used one long nail to poke everything to its own section of the plate so nothing was touching. Then she returned to her anxious nail-drumming. Rat-ta-ta-tah. Rat-ta-ta-tah.

“Can you believe he had the audacity to tell me I come along for girl time and deliver flowers?” Flora continued, moving on from the savory pasties to the desserts.

“You literally just did exactly that two days ago,” Daphne pointed out.

“No, no, no,” the honey badger said, lifting a claw. “That time he invited me to stay. This time, it was an order.”

“You’re here as an apology to me,” I told them, helping myself to a pasty. Beef and potato with carrots and peas and a thick onion-mushroom gravy. Oh, Mrs. Bilberry, you wonderful old badger.

Flora didn’t need further explanation. “So how did the fae king screw up this time?”

“Flora,” Daphne neighed, flinging her head up and flicking her ears to sense if anyone had heard.

“We were, um…” My cheeks were darker than the cranberry curd of those tarts.

“O-oh,” the mare said, catching my embarrassment. “You don’t need to say anything else, dear.”

“We were making out in front of the bear,” I said in a rush. “And—”

“Oh you little adrenaline-junky exhibitionist,” Flora cackled. “That bear is terrifying. How did you ever—”

Daphne snapped her teeth perilously close to one of the honey badger’s ears. “Quiet. You were saying, dear?”

“A-and it was just wrong, okay?” I shoved the rest of my pasty into my mouth and reached for another one.

My friends went silent, and I knew they were sharing some looks as I hunched over my plate. After fleeing to my room, I’d felt… dirty, and that had nothing to do with me retching into the toilet. I’d taken a bath immediately after, scrubbing every inch of me hard like I had a month’s worth of grime on my skin. Then I’d tried to destroy some more of those chain mail links under my own power and unite with my oak tree, but my concentration had been fragmented, like bees buzzing around their hive all willy nilly instead of congregating inside. In the end, I’d just stroked and kneaded Sawyer’s fur until the epiphany of the moonflower-milk bath had struck.