by Ellen Mint
“I see,” Emeric whispered almost to himself. While running with the reindeer she could see the rugged barbarian of the Krampus in him. His wild black hair buffeting with each dodge, his wide form practically bulging as it shook against the strength of the deer’s horns. But standing here, a finger placed contemplatively to his lips, he was a scholar, a clerk, a man of thoughts and compassion.
A snicker did alight in Nadire’s chest at that idea. Compassion from the Krampus? That was as impossible as Santa Claus being real.
“I have seen the letters, or at least that you have access to them. I will petition the judge to have your father released,” Emeric announced, causing hope to swell in Nadire’s heart. “On the condition that you and I translate them together.”
“What?”
“Have your lawyer establish a place and time for the meetings. Seems there are quite a few to get through, so I’d suggest we begin soon.” He was all business, the giddy man who’d been rubbing a reindeer’s horns snapped away. Emeric slid his arms behind his back, his posture one of power and strength.
Nadire clucked her tongue, weighing her thoughts. “What makes you think I’d agree to that? I’d lose months of prep work alone just having to…” Spend days trapped in a small office alone with Emeric. Just the two of them, attempting to translate their fathers’ mess, laughing, growing closer. Oh shit.
A smirk brightened his teeth, those shapely lips mouthing, “Because you don’t have a choice.”
Cold reality snapped away Nadire’s foolish thoughts. “Very well. Petition the judge and we shall begin tomorrow.”
That surprised him, Emeric stumbling back. “Tomorrow? But I need to gather up various documents and…”
Rather than let him finish, Nadire waved her hand and tugged them both into the windstride. Only a solitary reindeer munching upon the grass watched the two not-quite humans vanish into thin air.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FATHER…
She didn’t voice the thought aloud, but Nadire tapped her foot impatiently while watching Saint Nicholas have to say his version of goodbye to the desk sergeant. It took him nearly an hour to get processed, and she suspected that was due to him and not the molasses wheels of bureaucracy.
“Perhaps, what he really wants more than the motorbike is to have his mother home.” Her father’s hands were folded tight as if in prayer while he stared through the gated hole at the weary woman seated at the desk.
“All right.” Her dad sighed at the woman’s narrowed eyes. “He does want that motorbike, but if your son is exceptionally good he might be surprised.” Father Christmas all but gave the game away, speaking to a grown adult as if Santa were real. Nadire had enough.
Stomping forward, well aware she still smelled of reindeer, she latched an arm around his elbow and said, “Come on, Dad. We need to be heading out.”
“Ah, daughter. Right you are.” He seemed none the worse for the wear after a half-day in lockup. In truth, Nadire felt bad for the others sharing his cell. She’d heard whispers that the various men thrown in for DUIs, drug possession, and other minor crimes were all holding arms and singing a song. Not the traditional Christmas carols about to fill the air soon, but an old song no one outside of the dead buried in Myra would know.
After patting Nadire on the arm as if she was the one who needed help, Nicholas raised a thumb at the desk sergeant. “Think upon what I said.”
“I will, sir,” she muttered, clearly trying to shake the man off as another crazy in a long line of them. But it wouldn’t fully take. They couldn’t see it, taste it, smell it, but the humans always sensed the providence in her father. Despite his not looking and rarely acting the part, their lizard brains knew him to be special.
And a pain in Nadire’s side. Locking her grip so he wouldn’t wander off on another helping mission, she guided him out the door. It took a few hours for the judge to acquiesce—clearly she was tired of this case and the defendant failing to show her proper obedience. But, if she thought a night in jail would alter his mindset, she had no idea how stubborn Nicholas could be.
When the glass doors parted to reveal a city huddled under umbrellas to shake off the September rains, Nadire winced. She’d forgotten about the weather, but there was no chance they’d windstride this close to a city building. “Sorry father, I didn’t think to bring a jacket.”
“A little rain never killed anyone.” He snickered, dropping her arm and taking the lead. The spry old man jogged sideways down the stairs as if he was late for his own wedding. Nadire sighed, keeping pace as best she could in her heels. Judging by the smell that wouldn’t leave her, she suspected one of the edges caught in those reindeer droppings her mother warned her about.
“So,” Nicholas muttered, his head whipping about in the drizzle as if he was looking for a cab, “I take it you found whatever they were looking for.”
“Not precisely, and God knows you did not make it easy.” She hadn’t fully thought through Emeric’s request, nor the strain it would put upon…the North Pole.
“Naddie!” Her father cranked on the patronizing tone to keep himself out of trouble. “The Lord’s name.”
“After the stunt you pulled, I have every right to curse up a storm,” she thundered, wishing God did truly send a bolt of lightning for every use of his name. It’d at least save her from her current troubles.
Nicholas clucked his tongue as if he wanted to chastise her more, but he didn’t have a leg to stand on. Instead, the man dashed across the street like he spotted a loose dog. Sighing, Nadire gave chase. Because she always gave chase.
Chilly puddles splattered up her slacks, the fall weather demanding they pay proper tribute. Nadire dreamed of a log fire, a fleece blanket, a mug of proper coffee, and… Warm arms snuggled around her, tucking her into his broad chest even as she tried to take a sip of her strong brew. How she’d laugh, a drop of coffee clinging to her lips before she’d turn to dig fingers into his midnight locks and kiss him.
A desolate breeze blew through her gut, shaking away the foolish thought. Beyond pointless. Even forgetting who he was, who she was, she didn’t have time to meditate beside a fire at some mountain lodge. It didn’t matter if there was no one else to share it.
Shaking off the thought, she spotted her father wiggling a damn paperclip inside an old trunk lock. “Dad,” Nadire whisper-shouted at him, “what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” was his answer, as if he wasn’t attempting to break into someone’s private car not even a block from the police station. Nadire reached out, about to slap his hands away, when the trunk popped open. A golden shimmer coated her view and, from where there was once nothing more than a tire iron, appeared a small motorbike.
Her father tugged his hands up from under the car, producing the front wheel that someone would have to attach as the bike couldn’t fully fit. After laying the tire over the unexplainable present, Nicholas slammed the trunk shut and walked off as if nothing happened.
“Why bother now? You can just gift it to him later,” Nadire mumbled.
“Too late by then. She’ll work herself to naught but bone for that. Now…” He parted his hands as if the gift wasn’t for the kid but the mother. They didn’t do that. It wasn’t that there was a definite age cut-off, but adults would ask too many questions. Kids, especially ones that believed, were much easier to fool. And parents, happy their kids had something to delight and keep them busy, didn’t care either. The mysterious presents' origins slipped away fast during a happy Christmas morn.
“How is your mother?” Her father turned on his heel, looking even more pathetic as the rains drenched his suit. Though, she couldn’t be in a much better state. They needed to get somewhere warm and dry to windstride.
“Good,” Nadire answered, pointing to a small cafe on the corner. Both she and Nicholas took off towards it.
“Still with the reindeer?”
“Yes.” Nadire nodded before glancing at her father. “Do you not talk?”
<
br /> “We do, we do. When we can find the time. I saw her…” His face scrunched up as he tried to crunch the same numbers Nadire did. The answer was so disquieting he too fell to silence. More cars blew past, horns blaring, puddles erupting from the gutters as rush hour picked up.
Nadire reached the small cafe’s door first, her hand locking around the cylindrical door handle, but she froze. “Tell me the truth, father. After this runaround I deserve it.”
“Oh, this should be good.” He sighed, stuck as she guarded the door.
“Why Mirek? Why did you even work with him?”
Nicholas gazed up into the dreary heavens as if to ask God to save him, but he was trapped with his daughter. “It was a different time, Naddie. The world was so much…”
“Smaller?”
“Disjointed,” he said. “I had to rely upon locals to coordinate, helpers not that they liked to be called such. Knecht Rupert — a man who I couldn’t keep out of the fireplace or from playing with bells. Belsnickel. Sweet Mary, it was like owning twenty cats when he’d stop by for a visit. Hair just everywhere…”
“Zwarte Piet,” Nadire responded with a knot to her lips.
“Yes, fine, that one was an ill choice I will give you. All of them faded in time, along with Krampus. They didn’t fit in the picture anymore. But now that bastard’s back, demanding I give everything I fought for, everything I struggled to maintain and grow over to him. As if he didn’t just sulk off and…” Her father’s ranting snapped away, shrewd eyes taking in Nadire as if he said too much.
“But he meant something else to you. Mom said—”
“Your mother likes to invent drama to keep herself occupied.” Nicholas waved it off, but Nadire put more stock in her mother’s cautious words over her father’s attempt at gaslighting. “Mirek was as much a friend as the rest of them were. But when’s the last time you saw me talk about Belsnickel or that giant cat that eats peoples' clothes?”
“I believe it eats people who don’t get clothes.” Nadire sighed, aware she was being led but having no recourse against it.
Her father slapped his hands to wipe away the conversation. “Regardless, it’s not a part of our myth now. I am…we are Santa. And that is an ideal I cannot live up to with Mirek Hellswarth barking at my feet.” With his final pronouncement, he grabbed to the door and tugged. Nadire gave up, letting him march himself inside the warm and dry cafe while she stared up at the rain.
The fact he was hiding something didn’t surprise her. He’d lived far too long through far too many ages to not have vast secrets. It was that he was willing to upend Christmas itself to the point of staying in jail that had her grinding her teeth. Sixteen hundred years and he hadn’t missed a feast day yet. What was it about Mirek Hellswarth that threatened all of that?
A fat raindrop plummeted off the bunting onto Nadire’s forehead. Sighing, she slipped into the cafe just as her father got a waiter’s attention. “Where’s the restroom?” he asked, pretending to dance on both feet. After the man pointed to the back, Nadire followed.
Nicholas took the men’s stalls while she slipped into the women’s. Just as both crossed the threshold, making certain no one was inside, they slipped on the winds to the North Pole and the mess of Christmas awaiting them. But she couldn’t stay there long. She had a date with a box of her father’s secrets and the son of the Krampus.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE HAD THIS.
Emeric paused outside the windowed building staring at his hazy reflection. The rains of the city had expired, though the clouds lingered as if to herald his oncoming storm. Thumbing the cuffs of his pinstripe button-up, the closest he came to a power shirt, Emeric thought on the vague advice his father gave.
He hadn’t wanted to receive it, Emeric gritting his teeth in the hotel room before the upcoming meeting. His father wandered in from wherever kept him busy, stared at the man praying as if he were to walk to the gallows, and said, “Don’t let her walk all over you. Myras are good at that misdirection shit and even better at making you think it was all your fault.”
Nodding that he’d understood, it was a cold eye that glared at him through the bathroom mirror. She could be the greatest spinner of lies, even outdo the devil himself, but if Emeric didn’t keep on his toes he’d fall head over heels for them all. After returning from the unexpected trip to her mother’s, there was a pause before parting ways. Both stood there, work in arms—he to meet with the judge, her to free her father—frozen. Almost as if they couldn’t say their goodbyes without a kiss. Though, knowing them, that would turn into a reverse cowgirl in ten minutes.
It had taken nearly all his strength to turn from her enchanting eyes and walk away. By the time he had gotten down the street, he’d turned to find her long vanished. And now he was willingly walking into a room with her. Not just willingly, he set it up. He thought it a good idea.
God’s nails it had seemed a good idea when cold winds chilled his lust, and the scent of deer flatulence filled his lungs instead of her intoxicating perfume. Now, to be trapped in a room with her, both peering at the same paper, his chest pressed to her back, hands sliding over top one another… Emeric started from his thoughts to find he’d hooked a finger into the collar of his shirt and was trying to tug it apart.
He was a dead man.
Shaking the fear away, he marched into the law offices of Weir, Weir, and Hook. The guardian of the main desk tried to stop him, but he flashed her a smile and she froze in place. “I know where I’m headed, ma’am.” Before she could recover, he glided into the elevator and rose to what he prayed wouldn’t be his doom.
There was a great box of records—over a hundred letters by the time he finished counting—that needed to be translated, recorded, sent to the judge. And the clock was ticking. Focus on work, on long cramped nights at a tiny student desk. Whale oil burning as he rewrote his sentences in German, English, and Latin. His mother brushing back his untamable hair and telling him to get to bed before his vision worsened from the strain.
The elevator doors parted, revealing the same sterile hallway as before. This time, a few of the offices were open, Emeric doing his best to not smell what occurred inside. He did catch a few eyes, most bent over at their computers or digging through old papers. Time marched on, but some things never changed.
Reaching the conference room, Emeric gave a quick knock of his knuckles and pushed his way inside. Being both polite and forward had served him well over the years. His eyes darted over a mass of the ancient documents spread across the table, the overhead lights low to protect them, and notebooks for each ready to aid in the translating. He was about to comment on such when the breath from his lungs scattered.
While he’d dressed in his business best, she was softened by an ivory sweater clinging to her body for dear life. Long silk pants, the type that Katherine Hepburn favored, floated around her never-ending legs as Nadire rose from her lean. There was probably makeup, styled to make her soft brown complexion even more bright than usual, but he was done in by the smile flitting across her succulent lips.
“Morning,” Nadire called, with a cheer as if she wanted to see him.
“Guten Morgen.” Emeric’s gobsmacked tongue slipped to his first language, his heart racing as a tender blush bloomed over her satin cheeks. To glide across the carpet, swoop his palms around her soft skin, and pull her in for a kiss. His libido took hold, yanking him deeper in, when another voice spoke.
“Took you long enough.”
Trevor.
Emeric’s head whipped over to find the foolish man seated while throwing back the last of a cup of coffee. So they had a chaperone. And you nearly grabbed her in your arms for a kiss. It’s a good thing. His eyes met hers and a pang of guilt drifted between them.
“I hope you can read this gibberish,” the useless man groaned, hurling a priceless relic of Sinterklaas across the table without a second thought.
Did it have to be this foolish chaperone?
Tuggin
g off his overcoat while leaving the jacket on for the time being, Emeric peered over what Trevor threw away. It was Nadire who spoke up. “Dated fifteen seventy-two. I hope your Early New High German’s good.”
“Rather rusty, I’m afraid.” Emeric turned the letter around, his gaze digging up words here and there but the context eluded him.
“Well.” Nadire rose up from her side across the table, walked to him, planted both hands around the document, and bounced her shoulder into his. “You best put some tarnish remover to it because most of these letters are only in that language.”
She seemed softer than he remembered. There were only two settings he knew Nadire as—rabid badger salivating to bite his face off, or carnal vixen about to leap on him. It surprised him to find a third option that wouldn’t look out of place snuggled up in a library.
“I thought more would be in Latin,” she mused, her delicate fingers picking up a letter mentioning the American Revolution. Absently, she brushed a fallen black tendril behind her ear, the rest of her hair bundled in a ponytail. Emeric knew he was staring at it, aching to be the one to yank the binding free and rustle his fingers through her hair. But, as a stink grew in the air, he pivoted his head to find Trevor practically drooling into his lap.
Emeric hurled his pile of books onto the table, loudly. It startled the amorous lawyer so, he spun in the high back chair as if he intended to bolt. With a shrug, Emeric cracked open the first to aid in translating. “I assume most of these are from my father and not the other way around.”
“Not a fan of Latin?” Nadire asked.
“Not a fan of the pope. Any of them,” was Emeric’s response, which he knew caused her plush lips to purse in contention. The Myras were Catholic before it was called Catholicism. The Hellswarths were not. It didn’t take a Reformation to figure out why.