by Ellen Mint
“Naddie, what did I tell you about taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Her father clucked his tongue and she bridled even while hoisting his death box into her arms. “We have to set an example,” he continued to berate her as he led the charge away from the boat.
She fell into step, apologies dripping from her lips on autopilot when a sneer snapped away the spell. “No,” she shouted at her father. “You will not pull that on me.”
“What are you speaking about?” The old man kept up his pantomime as if she hadn’t seen right through it. Still, he maintained the lead, walking them deeper into the campsite of tents and RVs.
“You, attempting to obfuscate by treating me like I’m a child.” Nadire tried to keep her voice level and cold. In any other situation she could, but her father disrupted every skill in her reach. “What is going on?”
“We’re walking…”
“Nicholas of Myra!” she fumed, her heels digging into the torn-up dirt.
Her father paused and a thousand years crashed upon his brow. Beleaguered, his head plummeted to his chest and the shoulders slumped. “You sound so much like your mother when you do that.” She was never sure if that was a compliment or a denigration. Weary, nearly black eyes took her in. As the sun’s rays caught behind her father’s silhouette he sighed. “We’re having a minor legal issue.”
“You must be joking,” Nadire groaned. The upending of power reverted instantly, the paterfamilias taking the charge once again. His stride lengthened as he seemed to spot whatever he wanted up a small hill of low scrub brush and weeds.
Nadire was hobbled by her heels, having to dig a hand into the cool dirt to get leverage while scrabbling to keep up. Still, she wouldn’t cease her questioning. “What is it this time? Another family trying to sue because Santa Claus gave their idiot man child the idea to climb down the chimney.”
“Not exactly,” her father’s cagey answer brought a renewed glare to Nadire.
“Did you do something while on holiday?” she accused, causing the technical Saint to part his hands wide as if he were being martyred. Instead of the crown of thorns, he wore a ball cap with a patch that said “My Sleigh, My Rules.” Subtlety passed by her father in the gift department.
Scrabbling up beside the rail-thin man, Nadire leaned close to hiss near him, “Do not tell me you struck a man again.”
“I barely touched him. It was a graze really, with a cane. Hardly worth making a federal case over.”
“Merciful mother Mary in heaven,” Nadire groaned, rubbing her palms over her face as if that would baptize her of her troubles. The last thing they needed was a repeat of that 34th street mistake. It was a wonder they managed to weasel out of it intact. By the time the family learned of their father’s trial, he was already merrily skipping on out as if nothing happened.
“So you’re not in trouble with the police?” Nadire asked, watching her father to make certain he didn’t try to pull one of his half-truth tricks.
“Do you see any here to arrest me? My record is spotless. Ignoring the millennia-and-a-half of breaking and entering, of course.”
“Dad,” she groaned, fearing she’d never outgrow being embarrassed by him.
“It’s nothing, really.” He patted her on the back and turned to find whatever drew him to this tattered campsite. Three children sat beside a makeshift fire, each hurling pinecones in and watching them pop.
They didn’t care much for the brown-skinned woman in their midst, but as the blank, exhausted eyes shifted from the flames to her father a new light arose. While he didn’t look the part outside of the season, something of what her father was—of what he represented—shown through to those who knew how to look.
“Hello there,” her father boomed in his talking-to-small-children voice. “This is for you,” he handed the stringer of fish to the solitary parent who didn’t see the magic but could sense something odd and miraculous occurring. She nodded, staring down at the potential dinners a stranger handed to her.
“And these,” Nicholas placed both poles into the hands of the elder children, “are for you.” Their eyes opened wide as saucers, fingers digging in tight to this present personally placed into their hands by Father Christmas himself. Without having to be told, Nadire bent to her knees and put the tackle box upon the ground.
“Have you been a good boy, this year?” Her father ruffled the smallest child’s hair. While the adult grinned in joy, the youngest could only gulp, fingers worrying through the fallen tresses. As a parting gift, Nicholas dropped his worn fishing hat upon the child’s head. “Of course you have. You all have. Enjoy your day.” He gave a wave and laughed.
Not the ho-ho-ho of legend, poem, and card stock. Her father would giggle in the pits of his chest, his cheeks lighting red as he’d clutch to his knees and nearly keel over. It was infectious but also unnerving, many people fearing the thin, old man might suddenly pitch over from a stroke.
Turning away from the family he gifted both a fish and the means to catch more, her father led Nadire down the road away from prying ears. She didn’t give him a chance to get far before continuing, “Do we need to get Mom involved?”
“No!” Her father winced instantly. “It’s not a problem. Barely a bent nail really. How’d you even find out about it?”
“Tin called me,” Nadire answered, realizing that wasn’t the best backup she’d hope for.
Her father snorted at that. “Tin’d call in the water bucket brigade if she got a spark off her sweater. Look, we’ll head straight to the office and the lawyer can tell you the same he told me.”
“Lawyer!” Nadire gasped, throwing off her father’s steps to windstride across the globe. “Do not tell me there is a warrant out for you.”
“Naddie, child.” He patted his hand to her cheek in an assurance. “It’s all under control.” Her father threw his shoulders back and stepped forward. “Trust me.”
As he vanished into thin air, Nadire moved to follow. Just before she took the step across the planet, she heard the child testing his new cap ask, “Mama, was that Santy Claus?”
“No, it…” The confounded woman’s brain fought with her heart for an explanation. Her words whipped through on the breeze as Nadire followed her father. “It couldn’t be.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HE SHOULD HAVE known where to find his father, despite the airport offering such wonderful amenities like back-breaking benches with people huddled around the outlets as if they were a fire. Or a bookstore containing every copy of the latest mystery thriller about a man who has to solve a dead woman’s gruesome death while also seducing co-eds in explicit details.
No, there was only one possible answer. Mirek Hellswarth was drawn to a bar the way blood sucked up the spine of a cut feather. At the moment, he had both elbows hunkered to the counter while his hands rustled in secret between them. A nearly empty glass sat just within reach, Emeric not needing to draw close to know what was in it.
“Another?” The bartender forced to work with jet-lagged and cranky travelers asked in a chipper voice. He was clearly hoping for a tip.
“Ja,” Mirek ladled on his accent, not bothering to glance up from the collar of his aged, calf-skin coat.
“And you still only want…” The bartender rattled a bottle that was best used as a mixer and rarely taken straight.
His father craned his head up from whatever he was working on, the bartender blown back by the prickly fire stare of the Krampus. Before the bottle could slip from the man’s terrified fingers, Mirek smiled. “Ja. Schnapps. Fill ‘er up good.”
The bartender seemed perturbed at the concept, no doubt having already sent four or five glasses down his father’s gullet, but Mirek only grinned like he wasn’t even buzzed. His father rolled a hand through the air as if that could speed up the flow of liquid. Once finished pouring, the bartender tried to reach for any garnish to touch the glass up, but his father was already downing half the drink in one go.
“Ah, really warms the cl
oven hooves,” Mirek chuckled to himself. The fact he said it in English instead of German brought a sneer to Emeric’s face. This wasn’t home, as far from it as one could get without digging a hole into the middle of the earth. Some people honestly feared the devil and thought he walked amongst them in this country, some working in politics. Last thing either of them needed was to wind up on an Interpol watchlist.
“Vati,” Emeric called to his father. The man spun on the high backed stool. A grin split apart his lips, revealing a tooth lost before modern dentistry existed.
“My boy, took you long enough to get here. I was worried the plane would leave without you.” His father finished off the bottom half of the glass and placed it back on the counter. Mirek’s flaming eyes tried to beg for more from the bartender, but it was Emeric who placed his hand over the rim, cutting him off.
Snorting at his son policing his drinking, Mirek turned to stare him up and down. “What took you so long?”
He’d woken to an empty bed. Normally, that wouldn’t have bothered Emeric, his life being little beyond comings and goings. But, as he’d curled cold arms back to his chest, his heart wondering what happened, he had smelled her perfume lingering on the sheets. Brazen as a brasier, the ginger, cinnamon, and cloves wafted down his throat along with the memory of her taste. Yet, even after the long Uber ride to the airport, it was the myrrh that wouldn’t leave him.
For a moment Emeric had thought of contacting the people in charge, fearing perhaps something foul occurred. But, waking to find the convention and its idolization continuing without pause, he shook the thought away. If she didn’t wish to see him after their night together, then he felt the same.
“There was traffic,” Emeric answered, trying to not wince.
“Potzblitz,” Mirek cursed, “you look like warmed-over fertilizer. What were you up to?”
“Nothing of consequence.”
He’d first spotted her in the convention hall, trapped between the muddled masses shifting from one garish booth to another. In all his years, he’d never seen a woman such as her. Not only in her fairness of face, or the nostalgic curves of her body, but an aura of golden light appeared to emanate off her. He ached to speak to her, to learn who she was. But, Emeric was a no one to the group’s obvious importance, so he couldn’t even stand a chance to get close. Not until the dinner when he made a move.
And it ended well enough for you, fool. Stop dwelling upon the past. One mortal means little in a world teeming with them.
Trying to shake away the lingering shame in his heart, as if he’d done something wrong to chase her away, Emeric instead glanced to his father. They shared some traits in common, thick dark hair that often sprouted like a forest, a v-shaped frame and arms built for smithing. But where his father always had eyes a hauntingly yellow-brown, Emeric was gifted his mother’s. They didn’t carry the same heart-stopping effect of his Vati’s glare, which sadly left Emeric to have to cultivate charm to get through life. His father needed none.
“Here.” Mirek finished whatever he was working on and shoved it at the bartender.
The man accepted it cautiously, his eyes narrowing as he picked up…
“For Christ’s sake, Papa,” Emeric cursed in German as the bartender slowly spun around a bundle of knotted together twigs. “You cannot keep gifting people ruten.”
“Why not?” his father asked in their language, hands returning to pockets no doubt filled with even more broken sticks and twine. No matter how often Emeric tried to empty them, Mirek always managed to gather more.
Grabbing onto his father’s shoulders as if the man was a frail geriatric instead of appearing to the world to be in his late 40s, Emeric guided the man off the seat. “Because they don’t know what it means.”
The Krampus snickered at the thought, his head lifting as the golden flames of hellfire glanced across the bartender. “They will soon,” he chuckled to his son before turning to the man left with a pile of twigs instead of a twenty.
“You’re a good soul, you have nothing to fear,” Mirek assured the man who raised an eyebrow at the thought.
Still, customer satisfaction was molded into them and the bartender said, “Thank you, sir.”
“Put that up over the door or on that wall.” Mirek pointed to the far one that led to a VIP room. “Reminds people to watch themselves. No one sins for free.”
“Okay then…” The American who had no idea what he was given placed the ruten on the bar counter, no doubt until the crazy, bearded man left. Then, the bundle of kindling would go in the trash.
“Vati, we have a plane to catch.” Emeric tried to steer his father out the door and away from the current problem that could get worse. Mirek nodded once more to the man with few sins, a lightness in his old bones only the pure could cause.
With his father’s back turned, Emeric slipped the man a couple ten notes. “Sorry about that, he’s…old country,” Emeric said, trying to swallow down his accent.
“Not a problem, sir.” The bartender touched his forelock and laughed, already tugging the schnapps glass away for cleaning. “I have a grandmother like that. She doesn’t seem to realize it’s a new century.”
Try a new millennium.
Shaking away the thought, Emeric smiled at the stranger once more and turned to find his father…looming over a woman in the corner. She wore the stench of new money that stank of scams and lies instead of sweat. And if Emeric could pick up on it at this distance, whatever his father smelled had to be worse.
“Dad,” he warned, rushing over to yank the scary foreigner away from the tiny white woman in a four-thousand euro suit. Praying he was quick enough, Emeric slipped a hand to his father’s bicep and pulled as hard as he could. The old man could lock his hooves in when he wanted, but mercifully he slipped away from the sinner without a second glance.
Emeric was certain they made it out when the woman’s soul-stricken voice gasped, “How?!”
Groaning, he turned along with his father to watch her trembling hands clasped so tight together the fingers looked like bleached bones. “How did you know?”
A cruel smile twisted up his father’s lips. “We always know. Your sins cannot hide forever.” Before there was more ruten or worse, Emeric hauled his father out of the bar of people trying to drink away their sorrows or flight anxiety.
“Blessed baby Jesus,” Emeric gasped, not letting go of the death grip on his father’s coat until they stumbled into an alcove away from every prying ear. “You cannot do that. You cannot do any of that yet.”
“Why not?” Mirek refused to give up what he knew, what he believed in for nearly a thousand years.
“It means nothing if they don’t understand,” Emeric tried to explain.
Raising his hand, Mirek flexed his fingers through the air. As he did so, the glimmer emerged transforming the long but human fingers into demon claws. “They’re learning, they’re listening.” His dad smiled at the change that’d been growing more pronounced with each year. The reason they were in this country in the first place.
“Fine,” Emeric admitted, “you can punish the sinners, but stop tying up sticks as a warning. They think you’re giving them garbage. We’re in the states, if you want to terrify them give them a medical bill.”
His father laughed at the thought, the claws vanishing back to an old man’s fingers which he slipped into his pockets. Instead of producing more switches to whip naughty children, he tugged out a boarding pass. “I do believe we have a plane to catch.”
Emeric had been working for this day for nearly a year and a half. Or, in truth, nearly his entire life. Things had gone wrong in the intervening years of his father’s retirement, things that others failed to maintain.
The world was crying for a change and, if it had to be led not by the Saint but the devil, so be it.
“Mr. Weir.”
“Mr. Myra.” Hands clasped as the man in the largest office of the sky-high, floor-to-ceiling windowed building greeted her fathe
r. They’d been ushered up the moment they appeared in the lobby, setting Nadire’s teeth on edge. Whatever was happening was worse than her father let on. He’d never admit to the full consequences of a problem, but the fact the secretary didn’t even take the time to buzz her boss and ask if they wanted refreshments told Nadire they were at def-con level two.
“Please, call me Nicholas.” Her father shook his head, both hands smacking into the jacket Nadire insisted he wear. The last thing they needed was to add ‘eccentric who dresses in turn of the century robes while at meetings’ to the long list of weirdness from the family.
“As you say, Mr. Myra,” Jonah Weir responded. Rather than slide back to his imposing desk, he sat perched on the edge as if they were only stopping by for a little chat. “I assume your daughter is here because you intend to bring her in on this matter.”
Her father glanced back to her, Nadire crossing arms tight over her chest. “Yes father, are you bringing me in out of the cold?” her tongue spat the words, a headache brewing as she realized they’d all known about this problem for some time. And he let her traipse about the world as if nothing was wrong.
After nodding his head that Nadire was fine to be privy to all his legal secrets, Mr. Weir began. “You were officially served a month ago…”
“A month?!” Nadire gasped, only getting a shrug from her father. “For the love of the holy infant.”
“Naddie,” he chastised for the only thing he had left, like her cursing wasn’t warranted. She dare say this required a few four-letter ones that would turn her father’s beard white.
Their lawyer continued on as if the family spat didn’t happen. “Which now puts the ball in our court. I’ve requested copies of the document in question, as well as the right to exam all of their records, which they will also do to us.”
Nicholas nodded his head like this was all to be expected, but Nadire wasn’t having any more of his cloak and dagger stunts. Cutting her hand through the air, she stepped forward to command Mr. Weir’s attention. “What precisely is happening? My father was…vague on the details.”