by Ellen Mint
After tugging off his glasses, Mr. Weir began to swipe at the oil clinging to the bifocal lenses. It was always odd to be in his presence, Nadire only ever getting snippets of his life. Like watching a time-lapse video of a rotting apple, he’d aged from the young child of a partner to one himself. They always explained the un-aging of their family by not, most either sensing it best to not ask, or not having the wherewithal to bring it up. The glimmer certainly helped as well.
“Your entire holdings,” he began, “are being sued for breach of contract.”
“Breach of…by whom?” Nadire gasped. “Our contracts are paid in full and on time, as is typical. We’re slightly in the red but it’s June, that’s also normal. Is it a disgruntled employee? Father, do not tell me you tried to hire Billagon back again.”
Most of the elves were acceptable, occasionally prone to fits of mischief, but could be managed. Billagon was another matter entirely, fires often following his footsteps. Nicholas scoffed. “That milk-drinking sop isn’t allowed within a thousand feet of the nor…northern workshops.”
“This is not a work dispute, nor an issue from any current contracted industry to the best of my understanding. Rather an interesting reading of an ancient contract that couldn’t withstand a moment’s scrutiny in a real court,” Mr. Weir didn’t explain. No one was explaining, which caused the hair on Nadire’s neck to stand on end.
Tapping her toe into the plush carpet, she eyed up her father who was somehow melting out of his lanky six-foot-four height. “It’s not our business that’s being attacked, Naddie,” he spat out, causing her to glare at the lawyer. Her father raised his head and a deafening silence radiated from him. It blanketed away every other sound in the room, their ears gulping as if they were adrift in a vacuum of space. Only the thumping of her heart and slush of blood washing about in her veins filled the space.
Nicholas met her eye for eye and told his daughter, “He’s suing me.”
“You as in…?”
“As in Saint Nicholas of Myra,” Mr. Weir answered, his fingers pausing in their scrubbing of his lenses. The poor glass was spotless but he couldn’t cease the rubbing, his mortal brain struggling to understand precisely what was in front of him.
Nadire scoffed at the thought. “Who would sue you? The Easter Bunny?”
“He hasn’t been able to hold a pen in over a thousand years,” her father laughed, causing Mr. Weir to join in. But there was a crackle in the lawyer’s guffaw as if he wasn’t certain how much of that could be true. After all, Santa Claus kept the man on retainer.
“Father.” Nadire tried to raise up higher above him as if she could ever cow the man. “Who is—?”
A buzzer erupted from Mr. Weir’s phone, the lawyer reaching over to get it. His secretary announced, “Sorry to bother you, sir, but we have a new development.”
“What is it?”
“The complainant just arrived.”
“In the building?” Mr. Weir gasped as if he couldn’t believe such luck. Or feared it. Nadire tried to read his shrugging and twitching but mortals often reacted indecipherably when the glimmer of her father pulled back. “Well, this changes things. I’d intended to meet with them privately, to discuss how exactly we would pull records of such a delicate nature, but—”
“That bastard is here?” Nicholas roared, causing Nadire to rear back in shock. She hadn’t heard him use that word since Pol Pot. “Take me to him, now.”
The lawyer who didn’t want his client to blow up his case with another unexpected whack of the cane, gritted his teeth, and smiled. “Of course, Mr. Myra. Angela, please reserve the conference room and escort the guests. We’ll meet you there.”
As they all shuffled to the elevator, Mr. Weir being the one to man the buttons like a common paralegal, Nadire leaned closer to her father. His eyes blazed fire and he kept cracking his knuckles as if he intended to use them. After the third snap, she grabbed onto his fist. “Don’t you dare.”
“He’s got it coming. Both of them after this stunt. I thought we agreed, but no. Everyone’s got to get a piece of the pie.”
Her father was raving like the loon everyone assumed the man claiming to be Santa would. “What in the world are you talking about?” Nadire sputtered.
Eyes aflame from his temper darted to her as if to reveal his thoughts, before rolling away. The fists fell to his side and he muttered, “Nothing.”
When the elevator door pinged, Mr. Weir held it open so they could walk past. No doubt the conference room was at the end of the long hall, most of the doors to the offices shut up tight. Almost as if someone worried about other eyes catching a view of Father Christmas beating the snot out of a man in the hallway.
Taking a deep breath, Nadire began the march to the last door. “Father, you still haven’t told me who’s suing you.”
“Mirek,” he spat as if it was cursed. “Mirek Hellswarth.”
“Charming name,” Nadire shuddered at the hint of the underworld woven into the family title. It was certainly an ill omen to have hell coming up against a Saint.
As she approached the door, about to grip the handle and walk in, Mr. Weir suddenly bounded ahead. “Please, my…lady,” he sputtered at the woman centuries older. “Allow me.”
In the lead, their attorney walked into his own conference room first, no doubt eyeing up this Mr. Hellswarth. God save her, but that name did strike an old chord. “Father, does he have another nom de plume?”
“Yes.” Her dad sighed under his breath as the duo of Klaus Holdings stepped in to meet their enemy. An older gentleman about her father’s age sat in a high backed chair, tenting his fingers in thought as he furrowed his neanderthal brow. That man should be no challenge; he looked like they defrosted him out of an iceberg.
She laughed at the thought when her eyes danced from the elder gentleman in a long calf-skin coat to striking silver-blue eyes. Thick midnight waves were brushed back into place instead of crumpled against the pillow. A muscular body presented professionally inside a suit instead of naked and glistening from exertion. A smile glittered brighter than a star. Though, as Emeric took in her arrival, it fell to a deep frown.
Nadire’s legs froze, her mouth gawping as her father — grumbling to himself — said, “He’s the Krampus.”
CHAPTER SIX
THIS WAS A joke.
A trick, a jape her father…no, if her father knew about the night before Nadire would have combusted on the spot. Someone else then. God? The devil?
“Mirek.” Her father eyed up the older of the pair that Nadire hated to admit shared a striking resemblance. “Nice to see you bothered with trousers.” He glared as the apparently Krampus himself rose to his feet. Hooves?
Oh god. There weren’t really hooves, were there?
“Nicholas,” Mr. Hellswarth spat back, both hands flat to the table while he leered at her father. “I hardly recognized you without that tacky outfit of yours.”
The two men older than most countries on the planet glared daggers at each other. It was a soft cough that pulled Mirek away, his shaggy head of wild hair shaking. His look pivoted to the other man in the room. “Forgive my manners,” Mirek said.
“As if you ever had any…” Nicholas cut under his breath.
“This—” Mirek glared first at the man he was litigating, then nodded to both the lawyer and Nadire, “is my son, Emeric.”
“A pleasure.” Emeric reached to shake Mr. Weir’s hand, both men giving that 'meeting across a battlefield before the shooting begins' look. Then, he turned to the question hanging in the room.
Dashing forward, Nadire picked up his slack hand and spat out fast, “I am Nadire, daughter to Nicholas Myra.”
Emeric’s mouth hung slack, that bottom lip she’d more than nibbled upon flexing as if he couldn’t believe this turn of ill-fortune. Their hands pumped through the air, the shake stretching into such an awkward embrace both their fathers glanced over in confusion. “So I gathered,” Emeric mumbled, finally releasing
his grip to her fingers.
Stumbling back beside her father, Nadire tried to focus on Mirek, but her eyes couldn’t stop drifting to the shell-shocked son. Unlike the night before, spectacles perched upon the end of his sharp nose. Both them and the form-fitting, jet-black suit softened his heart-racing primal visage into one of the scholar Nadire accused him of not being. There was certainly no sign of goat horns, a foot-long forked tongue, or three-inch-long claws in the academic man laying a messenger bag upon the table.
Nor was there any hint when his naked body entwined with hers.
God’s blood, don’t think of that!
While Nadire did her best to not fall into a panic attack, Mr. Weir took command of the situation. “Normally, we would not want our clients to waste their precious time with such specious accusations…”
Mirek snickered under his breath, his thin upper lip rising enough to show a hooked tooth. “He knows not what he says,” the man whispered to himself, but it drew the wide-eyed glare of the professional liar trying to keep himself together.
“But,” Weir continued, “given the precarious and unorthodox situation I thought it best to try and solve this problem before it becomes a federal matter.”
Federal court?
Nadire whipped her head at her father, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. All his wrath was focused on a man yanked from history. Mirek seemed to find the entire matter humorous, his fingers continuously dipping into his pockets. At first, he laid a few small cough drops on the table, but when Nadire caught sight of a tiny twig, Emeric slapped a hand over his father’s, and the mess all vanished.
“We’re willing to hear you out on neutral territory,” Weir finished.
Mirek snorted. “Neutral…? You always were the weavers of words. Very well, let us see how this listing of misdeeds goes for you, Nick.” Instead of the ice-blue glare of his son, the man burned whiskey-colored flames at each of them. While Emeric set her heart aflutter with a look, Mirek’s caused Nadire’s head to droop as if her heart weighed every sin in her past.
Only her father was unaffected by the Krampus’ stare, arms akimbo as he glared down at the man. “Did you remember to even bring a lawyer, Hellswarth?”
“Indeed I did.” Mirek reached over to slap Emeric on the back. “Son?”
As Emeric bowed his head, a cold snort erupted from Nadire. A lawyer. He was a lawyer. She took a lawyer to bed without thought and… And everyone was staring at her. Trying to wipe away the blush of embarrassment, she said, “Seems almost comical, that the son of the dreaded Krampus is a lawyer.”
It went over like a lead balloon, but the elder men all shrugged off her distracting attempt at a joke. Only Emeric’s gaze tried to catch hers, a grit in his jaw at her reaction, but she wouldn’t meet it. She felt like a newborn foal under his stare, all her limbs scattering without control. Instead, Nadire focused on the table while trying to look the part of someone paying attention to the proceedings.
“If I may?” Emeric began, getting a nod from their family lawyer. His head swiveled to her father and he unclasped his bag. “Nicholas of Myra?”
“Yes?”
“Also known as Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Santa—”
“Boy,” Nicholas interrupted, “if you’re going to read every one of my names off we’ll be here all day. I think we all know who I am.”
The others nodded, wanting to be away as fast as possible. Even Emeric acquiesced, focusing on freedom instead of her father’s patronizing tone. “Do you also acknowledge Mirek Hellswarth as the Krampus?”
Her father snorted at the thought. “Like anyone else would claim the job.”
“You’d be surprised, Nick.” Mirek leaned back on his chair, hands tucked behind his head as if he held all the cards.
“Fine, yes, he is clearly the Krampus, cloven hooves and ram horns be damned,” Nicholas spat out with a groan. “Can we move on?”
Popping open his bag, Emeric carefully removed a notebook-sized piece of plastic and placed it upon the table. Preserved behind the mylar was a contract written upon vellum. Emeric pointed a finger down the chicken scratch instead of the beautiful calligraphy expected of Santa Claus. While legible, there were a few missed words added in the margins and sentences scratched out wholesale. Also, a kitten’s paw print claimed the signature area, which was where Emeric’s finger paused.
“Is that, in fact, the legally binding signature of one Saint Nicholas of Myra?” He hovered above the ancient parchment as if afraid a single touch would shatter it.
Her father was less gentle. Snatching at the top of the plasticine, he yanked it across the table to stare at the looping reds that bore the name ‘Nicholas of Myra.’
“I think so,” he answered.
“Please be certain.” Emeric was patient, arms folded tight to his chest.
Grumbling, her father reached deep into a pocket and excised an old club card to a grocery store in Atlanta. Nadire stared in confusion at that when he returned to his pocket and pulled free his reading glasses. As Nicholas perched them upon his rounded nose, eyeing up the contract anew, she heard a soft chuckle from across the table.
Emeric was smiling at her father’s antics, or… She caught his own dad once again pulling cough drops from his pocket. Perhaps he was noticing a painful similarity. Her nose prickled and she turned to catch his eyes boring into hers. The smile was perched upon his lips, almost as if he whispered, ‘Can you believe them?’ A warm gurgle rolled in her stomach, Nadire moving to shrug her shoulder in agreement.
He’s suing your father. He’s the son of the Krampus. And he didn’t tell you any of this after picking you up in a hotel bar. He’s using you.
The spell snapped, her chin plummeting to focus on the aging contract — one of no doubt hundreds in her father’s past. What made it special? It looked to her eyes like the usual employment ones littering their archives. Nodding his head, her father glanced from Emeric to their lawyer. “Yes, that’s mine. The old one.”
“The official one,” Emeric pronounced while tugging the contract back to his side.
Mirek chuckled. “Before you put on your Nike Airs and guzzled a can of coke while doing the Charleston.”
“It pains me how out of touch you are, Mirek,” Nicholas bit back. “Too many years wallowing in the manger?”
“Gentlemen,” Weir interrupted, “please. I ask that you remain civil or we will have to rethink this matter.”
Both of the old holiday anthropomorphizations shrugged, but at least they silenced their bickering for the moment. Once again taking control, which Nadire realized was practically their family motto, Emeric turned to Weir. “We’ve already verified that the other signature is my father’s, noted here as both Mirek Hellsworth and Krampus.”
“If you don’t mind.” Mr. Weir tried to assert his domain but it was faltering against the cold steel of the interloper. Still, Jonah pulled the bounding contract to himself. “We’d like to verify it ourselves. Test the validity of the contract. I assume you have no problem with us making copies.”
“No,” Emeric smiled, “though they must be done by hand and in my presence lest there be any unexpected accidents which disintegrate our only copy.”
Weir sighed, but he seemed to expect as such. “Trevor!” he bellowed through the closed door, causing everyone to turn in confusion. To their surprise, a young man appeared as if by magic.
“Yes, sir?” He smiled, both hands bunched behind his back. His dark blonde hair was oiled up and away, with a part deeper than the Mariana trench on the left side.
“Copy the contract in question down in triplicate,” Weir ordered the eager beaver who was staring at first across the table, then over her father. It was when his eyes landed upon Nadire that they paused and the tip of Trevor’s tongue lapped over his lips.
“Yes, sir,” he whispered in a throaty voice as if he was asked to catalog a woman’s underwear drawer instead of attempting to decipher a millennia-past contract in Old G
ermanic. Gung-ho to show off, Trevor fell into a chair, cranked on a light hidden inside the table itself, and took to copying every umlaut in place.
It left everyone hapless, fingers dangling against their legs as they all glared at Trevor instead of each other. Even as distracted as possible, Nadire could still feel the heat of anger flickering between her father and Mr. Hellswarth. And she knew better than to glance anywhere in the other Mr. Hellswarth’s direction.
“So, do we just wait around for the pup to finish…?” Mirek began while the quiet seconds ticked to minutes.
“How much more of my time must I bother with this preposterous accusation?” Nicholas thundered, turning to Mr. Weir.
The man gazed first at the angry Krampus, before letting his sight land upon Saint Nicholas. “Mr. Myra, I know your time is vital to…everyone across the world.”
That caused another snort from Mirek, but he didn’t interrupt.
“But I ask that you please be patient with us. Once Trevor has finished, we will discuss what happens next.”
“Meaning you hurl these two out on their furred behinds,” her father demanded, jabbing a thumb at first to Mirek then Emeric.
“As stated, please be patient.” Poor Weir was struggling to keep her father from doing anything to ruin the case while also having to be incredibly respectful. “You will receive the justice you are due.”
Mirek launched to his feet. “Justice? Funny ideal coming from this Santa Claus.” He jabbed a finger at her father. A perfectly normal, nary a dagger-like claw in sight finger. But Nadire’s breath caught in her throat at the hint of a threat to her father. With a swing of his head, Mirek put the full force of his glare on their lawyer. “And you aren’t planning on doing anything naughty to win, are you?”
“Never, sir,” Weir stated with impunity, his head high. But as they stood on the same side of the table, Nadire could see his knees were trembling at the Krampus’ insinuations.