by Ellen Mint
The door to the room burst fully open, their father’s limp body strapped to a gurney. One of the wheels squeaked as if it couldn’t make contact with the ground while the three nurses all huddled around him. A cold vice squeezed Nadire’s heart as she realized this might be the last time she saw him.
Her brother stood vigil beside her, both watching until their father…everyone’s father for this season, vanished behind the swinging doors. In a soft voice, Aaron whispered, “It’s what he’d want.”
Nadire glared down at her hands, flexing the fingers that from birth could gift people their wants. But she wasn’t whole, not the way their father was. She knew what people wanted, she didn’t know who deserved it.
“I need your help.” Nadire turned to her brother, still uncertain if this was a good idea. At least if it didn’t work, she could return quickly to the hospital. Hopefully. What if they began to lose their powers with the staff failing? What if they started to age?
Aaron grimaced, his eyes shut tight. “No. I can’t…”
“You can tell good from bad. You can be the naughty list, and I’ll…”
“NO!” he shrieked in her face, sending Nadire skittering back. “Nad, you don’t know what you ask. That isn’t my place. That isn’t where I belong. The staff, father, God himself said as such. I cannot help you.”
“Then…” Nadire gulped, at war in her heart, “what do I do?”
Their mother stepped out of the room, Nadire’s purse under her arm. Before she handed it to her daughter at the end of her tether, she said, “You know who you need, child. Be the better person and ask.”
“Mister Hellswarth…?”
She found him in the cafeteria with most people in scrubs shoveling cold cereal into their mouths without looking up. On a table at the back, he’d stacked up ten plastic cups into what almost looked like a shrine, straws impaled together to form a barrier around it.
After checking to make certain his work was secure, Mirek gazed up at the fumbling girl who should be anywhere else but here. “You look about to fall down, take a seat.” He jerked his clean shaved chin to the chair across from him but Nadire remained steadfast.
“That isn’t necessary. I…I need to ask you for something. For help with Christmas this year.” Every word burned as acid on her tongue. She should be worrying about her father, sitting with her family, not placing all her thoughts on the North Pole.
“So that’s it.” Mirek patted his fingers together in silence, only the tips and first knuckle visible below the gloves he must have slipped on. With the oversized and mangey fur coat, he had to strike some of the nurses as a vagrant wandered in from the cold. Rubbing his finger under his chin, Mirek took a slow pull of breath like it was a cigarette draw. As his weary eyes drifted up to hers, he blew out, “No.”
What? Nadire nearly stepped back as if he struck her. She went against her dying father’s wishes, against every beat in her heart to propose this and he refused? “But…this is what you want. To work in conjunction with the Nicholas name…”
“What I wanted was…” Mirek rose to his feet, both hands slapping onto the table. It rattled his shrine of drinkware, causing the top one to tumble and roll to the floor. That caused both adults to stare at whatever he’d been up to. Perhaps it meant something to the man yanked from the Renaissance. Perhaps it was little more than a nervous tic to distract him. Either way, it felt superfluous in the looming grip of Death’s hand.
Shrinking deeper into his coat until the collar provided the missing beard of the Krampus, Mirek muttered, “He never told you, did he? All these years and one thing that never changed about Nick was his stubborn streak.” Before Nadire could answer or insist that had nothing to do with this predicament, Mirek reached into his pocket and revealed an old envelope.
Cracked and yellowed as a skull’s tooth, it felt fragile as talc while he placed it into her hands. “Go on and look.” He stuffed his fingers deep into his pockets and whistled to himself.
She wanted to hurl it in his face, to shout that if he wasn’t going to help her then he was no use to anyone. But even through the throbbing pain in her heart, Nadire’s curiosity struck. Carefully unfolding the paper even more wrinkled than the envelope she spotted her father’s handwriting instantly.
“Mirek, I write to you with darkness enveloping around me. I cannot do this anymore…”
“The war, the other one. The one we didn’t see coming, it did what none of the others could,” Mirek said while prodding at the next few lines. “It broke Santa Claus.”
Nadire returned to the letter, finding her father begging for Mirek to resume his duties. But it was more than Nicholas realizing the Krampus was needed, he wanted his old friend at his side.
“All those sins, suppose he heard them too. It’s not easy to tune out, not without becoming, well…” Mirek tipped his head to the side as if he understood what trauma WWII put her father through.
“But there’s been other wars, other genocides, other…” Nadire tried to stem away the tears building as she read her father’s collapse in fading ink. He wrote of ending the whole matter, of walking away and never looking back, yet he’d never spoken a word of it to her. To any of them.
“Harden your heart, ignore the pain, or worse—use it—and soon all that bad stuff gets stuffed so deep down you forget it’s there,” Mirek said. He’d faded, his shoulders hunching over his head as if he too was burying skeletons that kept rising from their graves. “I didn’t do this to hurt your father, little one. I wanted to help him.”
“Why didn’t you help him then? He reached out to you!” He’d been looking for a way out. Never a year missed, never a holiday’s duty ducked. But he’d tried to pass the staff to Aaron, didn’t even tell Nadire about it. And when that failed he…he went along to get along. He kept going while paying no heed to the bloody footprints trailing him.
Mirek worried a hand over his mouth as if he had to disguise the tremble in his lips. “Check the date.” It was sent on July of 1945, but her father celebrated that Christmas with the war ending. She remembered that one well, hope in the air for the first time in decades. What could have possibly stopped the Krampus if not his own vanity?
Tears sprung in the Krampus’ eyes like icicles lain by a fairy’s touch. “I knew I was losing her, but…”
His wife. Emeric’s mother.
Quivering lips, Mirek stared down at the letter. “I never answered him. Not in my state of mind, of heart. And it only got worse when she left. Fool that I am, I was too stubborn to apologize. And fool that your father is, he wouldn’t listen anyway.”
That was the great secret he kept hidden from his children, that he risked jail for. Not that Mirek had an affair with his wife, or that perhaps one of his children wasn’t his. No, it was nothing more than for a year Saint Nicholas collapsed under depression.
“Men like us, the one thing we hate more than admitting we were wrong is admitting we were weak,” Mirek said, a hand wrapped around his chest in a half hug. “Your papa he…well, everyone—even Saints—make mistakes and need a hand here or there.”
“Then…help me. Help me do this run. Then, when my father’s better, we can all work through this. Like adults.”
Mirek snorted at the thought. “You are so like him in his ‘younger days.’ All fire and spirit, certain in his path only to have the world drain him down to the nodding yes man who gives every child a gift rather than face the sins of the naughty. This isn’t my place, child. Perhaps it’s not my time anymore either.”
“You’re still refusing…?” Nadire shook her head, unable to believe what he was saying.
He bundled up his stack of cups as if she wasn’t there just behind his shoulder. As the tower collapsed, Mirek hiding them away for some other shrine to pray at, he turned to catch her eyes. “It’s not me you want for this, gel.” He snickered at the realization dawning in Nadire’s eyes.
With a chuckle in his voice, Mirek shambled away from the shocked Na
dire. He gave a parting wave and said, “It was never me you wanted anyway.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
WITHOUT LOOKING, EMERIC yanked on the zipper to close his bag. Metal teeth ripped through his skin causing him to jump back. Curses that’d make sailors blush erupted from his mouth, blood dribbling from the jagged slice over his finger. The urge to put his foot through the wall rose, his leg whipping back to do it.
But as the acute pinch faded to a light throb, he lowered his foot and stuck the bleeding finger in his mouth.
What was he thinking?
Five hours until the flight, but he didn’t care about the long slog in the airport. He wanted out of this city, this country, to stew at home by the stoked fire. Cross his arms while glaring into the flames, body rigid as stone until after the Epiphany. Until the entire damn world walked away from its Christmas-induced hysteria.
At least there was work. Many cases Katarina asked for his input on waited in his mess of an inbox. After the holidays he could bury himself in the books, harden that weeping heart of his to ice and whittle away any foolish thought he’d ever cared. Give into Katarina’s less than subtle requests and bury himself in her too. It wasn’t as if he was some hapless virgin who only waited for love.
Yet, despite no request for exclusivity, no damn reason at all, he’d kept himself to an empty bed for the past six months. As if he owed it to her to be loyal to a false ideal and even falser hope.
Foolish!
What would she care if he…?
It didn’t matter what Emeric’s plans were. Bed Katarina, romance her, even propose and try at marriage again. She’d given her final order and he wasn’t strong enough to disobey.
Checking the ticket one last time, then the local clock on the cable box, Emeric hauled his packed suitcase onto the bed. He gave another sweep of his side of the room, trying to not glance to his father’s suits left hanging in the closet. It would be quiet in the cabin without the clatter of cloven hooves this holiday, but Mirek made his choice as well.
A knock at the door brought a smile to Emeric’s face. He hated to admit it, but when his father told him he was remaining in the hospital Emeric was crushed. Despite being grown several times over, the idea of spending Christmas truly alone rattled chains in his wounded heart.
“Have you changed your mind or did they evict you just as quickly?” Emeric called to the closed door while rising to his feet. “Good timing,” he continued, tugging back the chain and opening the door. “I was just about to…”
It wasn’t Mirek standing at the threshold, his fingers fiddling with a pile of ruten. It wasn’t Katarina dressed in nothing but a trench coat insisting he finally give in to her unsubtle hints. It wasn’t even God or the devil come to take back the years one of them foolishly gifted to these mortals.
It was the absolute last person Emeric thought he’d ever see again.
Her trembling fingers swiped back through her hair as if realizing that a tendril tumbled free from the low knot. A pregnant breath puffed from her lips and eyes as broken as the river Styx stared up at him. “I’m sorry,” Nadire said, her whimper snapping Emeric’s brain off.
She was here? Why was she here? At his hotel? At his room?
What of her father? Wasn’t he in surgery? Or about to be?
Why was she here?
“I’m sorry, what I said to you. How I…” Her wounded eyes darted anywhere but his as if she couldn’t face him. “I was angry, and scared, and…” Tears resounded in her words, Emeric expecting to find waterfalls cascading down her cheeks, but she kept them dry by willpower alone.
“You were right, I’d never faced death before.”
“Your father,” he gasped. While Mirek had kept him updated, as updated as a strange German man floating around at the hospital could be, it confounded Emeric that if the worst had come to pass Nadire came to him. For comfort? For vengeance?
“He’s…I was about to say all right, but I don’t know that. In surgery.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated her words, feeling no blame for what happened but not knowing what else to say.
Nadire winced at that as if he was mocking her. “It’s not your fault. I…I know that.”
“Didn’t seem like you did at the hospital.” His wounded ego wouldn’t let him fold to her tears or pleas.
She nodded as if he spoke God’s truth. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, her arms wrapping around herself. “To lose my father, to even think of it…I never had before. None of my family. No one who ever got close to me. That fear, and pain, like swallowing coals. And I, I guess I had to swing at anything in my way. That sounds pathetic.”
It looked as if she was about to turn on her heel, to vanish after offering up her apology. The prideful side of Emeric wanted her to go, for Nadire to know what she put him through. Let her be the one to sit on tenterhooks this time.
His hand darted out, gently wrapping around her arm to keep her from pivoting away from him. “When my mother was fading, I…” He did the same, severing nearly all his ties to friends, to colleagues, to students, to fellow professors. Even his father. The two were at such odds they nearly came to blows themselves in the wake of her death, but it was Mirek who broke first. Who abandoned that wall of machismo they built to disguise their pain and pleaded for absolution. They may have lost her, but they weren’t going to give up on each other.
“I forgive you,” Emeric said. Light rose in her beautiful eyes, Nadire breathing deep as if she could take in air for the first time in hours. “But I don’t understand why you’re here if your father…”
Her grateful head dropped a moment as if she was trying to weigh her words carefully. But she raised her eyes to him and said, “I need your help.”
Emeric slipped back inside, leaving Nadire standing alone outside his hotel room. She didn’t cross the threshold, as if she was a vampire, only kept speaking to try and explain, “I know this isn’t the ideal time. And that it looks more than suspect for me to show up now begging for it, but…I require your assistance to…”
He reappeared before her with half of an arm in his coat and the other trying to slide it on properly. Nadire gulped at the sight, her watering eyes blinking as if to keep him in focus or make certain he wasn’t a mirage. “What are you…?”
“I assume wherever we’re going will be cold,” he explained his jacket, already aligning the zipper and making certain to keep his flesh out of its teeth this time.
“Ye…yes.” Nadire nodded. “Immensely. Though, I… You don’t need to know why?”
Emeric paused in securing his wallet to turn to her. He could refuse. No doubt, find her motives suspect. For her to come hat in hand so quickly after denouncing him because she needed his favor certainly didn’t reflect well on a person’s sincerity. To have this woman who for half the year was his nemesis bounce from shouting him out of her life to begging for help could be easy for a man to dismiss.
Gently, he cupped his palm against her cheek, his skin rubbing off the tracts of tears as he said, “You asked for help. That’s all I need to know.”
Something was wrong.
Aside from Father Christmas on his death bed, and his only daughter having to race to the North Pole in some convoluted attempt to try and save him, something was wrong. She’d gripped Emeric’s hand and strode onto the wind, but where it usually was a steady beat until landing, now it tossed her about like a paper snowflake in a hurricane.
The Office. Nadire gritted where her teeth would be if she were corporeal. Eddies bashed around them, swirling both in a corkscrew instead of a straight line. She lashed both hands back, clamping down on the poor man she’d pulled into this.
The Workshop. She tried to picture it, not as it was now with death in the air, but how it should be. Elves prepping for the big run in a day. Pallets stacked all around the walls as they quickly unboxed last-minute supplies and rushed to add the final touches. And, at the center of it all, her father.
Now…
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Cold wind blasted from behind, nearly tearing Nadire’s grip from Emeric. For a breath, she saw his eyes white as ice in panic, but she wasn’t going to let the world tear him away. Clenching all the muscles in her body, Nadire folded herself around the man she pulled into this. The cruel winds wouldn’t cease, slapping into them as if a dozen tornadoes touched down right at their feet.
With as focused a mind as possible, Nadire nearly screamed with her mouthless voice, “The North Pole.”
The wind released, revealing naught but stark white surrounding them. Nadire opened her mouth to inflate her lungs when ice stung her nose and reached for her tongue. Shit. They weren’t in the workshop, they were outside!
She whipped her head around, praying for a miracle, when a groan broke from Emeric. “Something’s wrong, I…” Her apologizing snapped away as she watched the man who’d been in little beyond an overcoat rise up. The brittle winds kicked snow from the desolate banks. When a flake touched Emeric’s cheek, it evaporated in an instant. As he twisted his neck, Nadire caught horns of pure gold reflected in his silhouette over the snow.
After pulling in a breath, he said, “This isn’t what I was expecting. Are you…?”
Once frozen air turned to steam from his lungs, pillars of it snorting out of his nostrils and he stomped a foot against the snow. One of her eyes saw the mild-mannered lawyer Nadire chewed out in the hospital, but the other…
A chill shattered the dual-illusion, Nadire folding inward from the impenetrable cold of the top of the world racing to shatter her. Emeric wrapped his arms around her, enough of his innate heat transferring to revive her brain. “We have to get out of here. The workshop, it’s…” Limply, she pointed in a direction that felt right.
Emeric shouted over the rising winds, “Are you certain?”
No. They were supposed to be inside, not risking death upon the doorstep to Santa’s workshop. What was happening?