Page 198 of Sigils & Spells

Rule Number five: nothing magical can be done to the drinks by her or anyone else.

I’d spent what felt like hours poring over the rules, trying to think of any way Maeve could cheat. All I needed was for her to play at the level of a human. No magic. If there was one game that I could win, it was beer pong. College or not, I’d been to my fair share of frat parties.

Maeve left me to make the arrangements. She’d send someone to the human work to get what was on a short list I’d written that she snatched from my hand. Red solo cups and beer.

Maeve left Lyrei with me, and the Fae was supposed to help me find a table that was about the size of a ping pong table.

We were to play in the throne room. We’d set up the table in the middle of the huge room, and it would be a spectacle for any one that wanted to watch. The thought of having an audience honestly calmed me down a little. I was used to playing beer pong surrounded by loud music and drunk people. It would be just like that, only way, way weirder.

Lyrei led me around the tree wordlessly, taking me to various inexplicable rooms with tables. One room looked like some kind of library, except the shelves all floated and moved about in the air. I eyeballed the tables, trying to picture the size of a ping pong table. We found one in a kitchen several floors down from where we started. The cook, who looked like a mole wearing a white apron and wire rimmed glasses waved at us as we took the table, which involved Lyrei waving her hand and letting the table float a foot off the ground a few feet in front of us.

* * *

The throne room was massive.

Lyrei had led me down an endless spiral of stairs to find the throne room, and it took my breath away. The ceiling was an arch that went up higher than any building I could imagine, and even from here I could see it was painted and supported in beams painted gold. The floor was tile made of rose quartz that caught the light like the rippling surface of still water. The room was lit by a chandelier the size of a house, filled with candles and crystals. On either side of the room were huge round windows that looked out on a sky that was slowly becoming dark. At one end was the throne.

The throne was twisted out of the roots of a massive oak tree. The tree spread its leaves nearly to the impossibly high ceiling, and at its base, gnarled roots twisted into a huge, armed throne that had padding made of pale pink flowers.

Maeve wasn’t even the Fairy queen. She was just a noble. I couldn’t fathom where the queen lived.

As Lyrei and I set the table in the dead middle of the room, Maeve strode in, her antlers once again in full bloom, with a small bird trailing after her and landing again in her antlers when she stopped.

At her side was a human man.

A human man I recognized.

“YOU!” I took a huge step to the man, fists clenched, but Lyrei caught my arms and stopped me with no effort. “You son of a bitch, you’re the reason I’m in this stupid mess.”

It was the man from the party. The one who sprinkled the fairy dust in Lizzie’s drink. The one I’d gotten thrown out of the party, and drank the drink in his face to prove a point.

The point had not been proved.

He smiled at me, an evil, weasel-like smile. “How’d you like your beer, Julian?”

His voice sounded like oil and grease, and I almost shivered, but before I could say anything else, Maeve waved her hand at the man. “Enough, Edward, show Julian what you brought.”

Edward nodded earnestly. “Yes, my lady.”

He skittered around her and placed two grocery store bags on the table. Just like with the pen, it was weird seeing such a mundane logo in such a fantastical place.

From the bags he pulled two cases of beer, a party pack of red solo cups, and a pack of ping pongs.

“Set up the game, Julian Sanchez.” Maeve said, and smiled at me. It was a smile that made it feel like spiders had gotten under my skin and were crawling up and down my spine. “Guests will be arriving soon.”

* * *

As I setup the cups, fairies began to filter in. I wanted to gawk and watch them each, but I needed to focus, so I kept at my task. On each side of the table I set up ten cups in a triangle like bowling pins. Then I opened the beers and poured them into the cups, careful to make sure it was even if Maeve was playing by the rules, I had to too. Since I was setting them up, there was no chance of someone doing something to the drinks. That being said, I kept an eye on Edward whenever he was in the room. I didn’t want to get fairy roofied again when the stakes were this high. Or ever again.

It was done. The beer pong was set up and the room was teeming with Fae Folk who buzzed and hummed amongst themselves laughing and tittering at me, scrawny little me in ripped jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, taking on an eight foot tall tree woman with an army at her command.

The hubbub died a little as Maeve approached the other side of the table. Her antlers were smaller than they had been and the collar of branches was gone. Perhaps for more humanlike movements. Her eyes were the same, and so was the green light throbbing in her chest.

“Julian Sanchez.” she said loudly and clearly. “You have challenged me to this silly human game for your freedom. Please—” She spread her hand to the room. “Tell us the rules.

I cleared my throat, as every eye in the room turned to me.

“This is a party game called Beer pong” I said as loudly as I could without my voice breaking. “It is simple. The goal is to keep as many of your cups as you can, while getting as many of your opponents cups out. We’ll play by the simpler rules, so to get a cup out you toss the ball from here.”

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