Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 20

Nothing. Is happening. In. This. Book.

I just wrote a book in which a woman travels from one city to another. It took me one fucking chapter to get her from South Texas to Boston. ONE CHAPTER. ONE. YOU CANNOT EVEN GET FROM SOUTH TEXAS TO BOSTON ON ONE FUCKING PLANE. So why in the name of all things good and holy and pure has it taken this fucking long for Merry to get to St. Louis?

I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY THEY'RE DOING THIS. There's a party that they have to do, and there are balls, but...but why are they going here. WHAT IS HAPPENING. WHY IS THIS HERE.

We entered the lounge that is just for private planes and there met the rest of my guards.

WE MET THE REST OF MY GUARDS IN THE PRIVATE PLANE LOUNGE. STOP. KILLING. WORDS.

Merry and Frost have a tiff over Frost's fox fur coat. Because it's floor length and it's far more interesting to argue about how many foxes died to make it than it is to discuss how fucking silly Frost looks in a floor length fur coat. 

 Coming from Los Angeles to St. Louis in the middle of winter was almost a physical wrenching.

Is there a reason why Merry has to bitch about everything? Also: It probably felt colder in Los Angeles. Mostly because Los Angeles is a coastline city, and humidity makes 40F fucking miserable. When it freezes, the humidity drops out of the air and suddenly all those lovely winter clothes actually work. When it's just that little bit above freezing, the humidity seeps straight through however many layers you're wearing and makes you cold. I go up north during the winter, I wear a long sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a coat. I stay down here, there are not enough sweaters in the universe.

Also: Merry made Nicca wander around a St. Louis January in a blanket and pants and nothing else. Because his wings can't be accommodated. Nevermind that one chapter ago, Nicca had a decent cloak. Nevermind that there are many, many kinds of blanket he could be wearing. Nevermind that you love this person and you really want to take care of him. Nope. Just give him a cotton blanket.

Barinthus is here. We get a long, long, LOOOOOOOOONG paragraph about his hair....AFTER we discuss everyone's winter gear in detail. EVERYONE'S. GEAR.

 The Unseelie Court's publicist talks to the cops.

Okay, that's awesome. Why can't we have her story? She'd actually have to do things. Lots of things. It'd be interesting.

But of course she's another female, so she has to be dumb as a post. A cop asks her if there's a problem, Publicist says there's no problem, Cop makes the duck quote (looks like, talks like, ect) and Merry has to explain it to Publicist chick thusly:

I’d never had much patience with women who hid their intelligence. I thought it set a bad precedent for the rest of us. “He means if it looks like a problem, sounds like a problem, and acts like a problem, then it’s a problem,” I said.

And then we get the Obligatory Pissing Contest between the Faerie guards and the cops, because it wouldn't be an LKH book if we didn't stop whatever passes for a plot dead so we can measure somebody's dick.

It turns out that one of the Guards the Queen sent--as opposed to the ones that Barinthus picked--is a chronic drunk, and the head cop doesn't like it. Neither does Barinthus. So we're going to TALK ABOUT IT for a while.

So then Publicist and Merry fight over making the men and Merry look pretty enough for photographs.

DO SOMETHING. DOOOOOOOOO SOMETHING. FUCKING DO SOMETHING. PLEASE.

Merry resorts to threats to get out of being primped up and the chapter ends.

Trees died for this. Forests of trees. We have accomplished absolutely nothing and we are almost halfway done with this book. L. Ron Hubbard wrote a book about a man deliberately sabotaging his own mission (And someone else sabotaging the sabotage, and someone else sabotaging the sabotaging of the sabotage, and so on) and that book accomplished more than this. For fuck's sake, MICAH did more in less space than we've done here.

THERE. IS. NOTHING. HERE.