consider:
professor!Jaskier, who teaches in the winter, and travels with Geralt in the summer.
it's winter, jaskier's got to oxenfurt in good time, his students are polite and attentive, and they've been going missing. not many, and not often, but alice didn't turn up to that guest lecture she'd insisted she'd be going to, peter hasn't turned up in a week, and catherine never came to that meeting the other day.
his colleagues think it's some monster. he has to talk them out of hiring a witcher, citing the fact that they don't know what it is, witchers don't take contracts on people, and, oh yeah, it's winter. the only witchers currently available for hire are the Cats, and it's incredibly unlikely that their caravans will stop by oxenfurt.
now, jaskier's been travelling with his beloved emotionally-constipated witcher for a fair few decades now. it might be a monster, some necrophage, or a werewolf. but it probably isn't. there's a reason witchers don't work in winter, and it's that monsters hibernate. and besides, the dates that the students went missing don't line up with any particular cycle, lunar or otherwise.
they do however, line up with the dates for a fae festival. now, jaskier isn't saying that the fae did this, but the fae did this.
so, he checks the next relevant date, sends a letter to yennefer, triss and one for when geralt hits the path again, as a precaution, because he's not an idiot, no matter how he likes to play the part.
he brings an iron dagger, enough food and water for 2 weeks, his best lute, his composition notebook, his path notebook, and, begrudgingly, some of valdo's less terrible works and a few of essi's latest ballads, because they have different styles of performing, and he waits outside that mushroom circle he found a few years back.
he hopes that they're only after some music to live their festival up.
(they are, thankfully, and, aside from all the word games, mind games, and actual games, it's fairly easy to get their leader to sign a contract with him stating that they will play at this festival and his festival alone, they may, willingly play at other festivals if they choose, that they're all free to leave after the allotted dates for the festival are up, and that this contract will be good for 1,000 years irrespective of any changes in leadership, with him personally, and that any changes to the contract must be verbally, and explicitly signed by all the people involved in the signing of the contract.
it's actually fairly entertaining.)
(yen and triss have a go at him later, of course, and geralt has him go over all the loopholes in his own contracts for their next five years on the path, supposedly to help him get the most money he can, but they both know it's so he doesn't accidentally leave a loophole in any other contracts he might make with the fae. but it's out love and relief, more than anything.)
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