by Lizzy Ford
Hunter stood to the side of Santa’s massive chair, glaring at the long line of kids and parents in front of him. Normally, official Mall Elves performed these types of missions, not an assassin-trained Ninja Elf like him. He should be tracking enemy operatives working for the chocolate-obsessed Cupid. Instead, he stood in a mall in Arizona, assigned to gather intelligence on the hottest selling toys and protect a mall Santa from what? Crying kids?
It was a fitting punishment for what he’d done.
A few days ago, he’d had a little too much eggnog, mistaken a snowman for a snow-goblin and beheaded him on his own lawn. In response to the outcry at the North Pole, Santa banished him to a place where they decorated cacti instead of pine trees. Hunter shuddered, still able to hear the screams of horror from the snowman’s family.
Today was the day Hunter dreaded: when Santa decided his fate.
The mall Santa tapped the arm of the chair to get Hunter’s attention. This Santa didn’t look remotely like the real Santa. The mall Santa was scary looking, with a beard too white to be real and make-up around pretty hazel eyes.
Hunter looked twice. Was a woman pretending to be Santa?
Santa tapped again, this time raising a manicured eyebrow at Hunter.
“Kid, time’s up,” Hunter said to the boy on Santa’s lap.
“I’m not finished!” the boy cried.
Hunter bent over, until their faces were level. The kid reminded him of Cupid, whose chubby face hid a diabolical brain intent on replacing Santa as the most beloved holiday figure. Hunter had lost more than one of his platoon members after they were lured into Cupid’s boiling pots of chocolate. He’d learned not to trust kids.
“If you don’t want me to slip you a poison gumdrop in your sleep, get off Santa’s lap,” Hunter whispered.
The boy burst into tears.
“Next!” Hunter barked.
The first few people in line looked at him nervously. At over six feet tall and fit enough to wrestle a rabid reindeer, he wasn’t the type of elf people messed with. He’d do whatever it took to keep the line moving.
“You get sixty seconds each with Santa!” he yelled to the crowd.
“Can you stop scaring people?” The mall Santa hissed at him. The female voice confirmed his suspicions.
He glanced back. “It’s 9:05. At sixty seconds each, you’ll be here until noon. I’m expecting the line to grow by approximately twenty percent each hour, meaning –“
“It’s Christmas Eve. I don’t care if I’m here all night,” she replied. “Just chill, okay?”
“Look, I might not be an official Mall Elf, but I know how to run an operation this size,” he said. He pointed at the little girl at the front of the line. “You, double-time it or get out!”
“Is there an off switch to you?” the mall Santa mumbled.
Hunter ignored her and started the timer the minute the girl sat on Santa’s lap. At the sixty-five second mark, the girl was still trying to determine what color pony she wanted.
“Santa is not going to shove a horse down the chimney,” he snapped. “Time’s up.”
Santa sighed. The little girl looked at her parents, before she began crying.
The whole morning went the same way. By eleven, he understood why Mall Elves received hazard pay. By noon, he wasn’t sure he could listen to one more request for the latest video game, puppy or iPad.
Santa rose a little after noon and put up the flimsy, velvet rope in front of the chair.
“What are you doing?” Hunter asked.
“It’s lunch time, and I definitely need a break. Be back in an hour,” she replied.
His gaze scanned the line. He calculated how long it would take to catch up. Turning to tell her a break was out of the question, he saw her disappear into the flimsy structure at the center of the workhouse denoted, Santa’s House. He followed and pushed the door open.
There was hardly enough room for the card table where employees took their breaks. To the right was the door to an equally small bathroom, and to the left was a white board with everyone’s hours on it.
“We can’t …” Hunter stopped.
“Can’t what?” Santa had pulled off her beard and wig.
She was beautiful. Aside from eyes the color of apple cider, her dark hair was curly, her features tan. She had a delicate elf chin but not the ears, and her lips were shaped like a bow. His elfin senses picked up on the shimmer around her, and he tried to identify it to figure out if she was a threat. It seemed almost like … sorrow.
“The line. Too long,” he managed.
“Tarzan-the-dictator-elf.” She rolled her eyes at him. “I’ve got to get my daughter.”
Hunter watched with interest as she unzipped the Santa suit, wondering what she wore beneath it and hoping it wasn’t much. He was disappointed when he saw jeans and t-shirt. She was a small, shapely woman beneath the fat suit. His eyes went to her feet when she sat to pull on shoes. Unlike elves, humans had five toes on each foot.
“You really gonna walk around the mall like that?” she asked. She tossed her curls over one shoulder and glanced at him.
“I’m required to stay in uniform until the duty day is over,” he replied. Hunter wore his green elf clothes, a red hat with a bell and black boots.
“The ears are a good touch, too. You look like a real elf.”
“It’s a deformity. Medical science has proven there’s no such thing as an elf.”He repeated the standard line for addressing the ear issue with humans.
“Whatever. I’ll see you at one.” She grabbed her purse, mumbling under her breath, “She can have this one.”
“Have what?” he asked.
“You heard that?”
“My medical deformity gives me sharper hearing than humans.”
She squeezed by him. Their bodies brushed, and an odd, warm energy flew through him. It was like the shock of grabbing a short circuiting Christmas light, only it didn’t hurt. A foreign thought passed through his mind. Ninja Elves remained single while serving Santa, because there was no guarantee of returning home from every mission. However, he’d heard normal elves talk about how the thrill of Christmas Eve – a combination of hot cocoa, anticipation and peppermint – filled them when they found their mates.
Touching her felt a lot like Christmas Eve.
The woman was staring up at him with large eyes, caught in the same spell. She was close enough for him to smell the combination of her light perfume and womanly scent, made stronger by being trapped in the suit for hours.
She cleared her throat. “A friend and I had a bet to see which one of us could take you out first.”
“Take me out?” he asked, eyes narrowing. “Did the snowpeople send you?”
“What? We just thought you were … you know.” There was a small blush across her cheeks, one that made her eyes glow.
Hunter crossed his arms. “Unarmed? I have plenty of tinsel traps. They can immobilize a full-grown elf for twenty-four hours.”
“You’re so weird, but there’s just something about you …” She studied him then shook her head. “Never mind.” She turned and walked away.
Hunter couldn’t take his eyes off her bouncing curls or swaying hips. His blood was racing, and it had nothing to do with battle. He found himself too interested in touching her again and experiencing the strange energy.
The snowpeople chose their operative well, he thought bitterly. He should’ve brought more than throwing bells and tinsel traps.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t heard from Santa yet. Maybe Santa was going to let the snowpeople have their revenge. There were two places where a body could be buried and never found: the mile-thick ice around the North Pole and the desert. Grimly, Hunter realized he was sent to southern Arizona for a reason.
He left the workshop for the food court. Out of respect for the polar bears that protected Santa’s compound, he couldn’t eat at the place with the Panda bear logo. He’d tried chickens long ago but found the feathers
and beaks tough to swallow. There were no spits of roasted reindeer, and he didn’t understand the concept of salads – the food they fed reindeers up north. That left him with one real option: cheeseburgers. They came with sticks called French fries.
He chose a table in a corner and sat with his tray. He examined a French fry, uncertain of its origin. Did it grow like this in the wild? He tried it, pleased to find he liked it.
A little girl at the neighboring table leaned over and stared at him with big blue eyes.
“Are you a real elf?” she asked.
“Who told you?” he demanded, looking around. “Was it Cupid?”
She shook her head then pointed at his ears. She was alone. Hunter knew enough about humans to know they didn’t leave their kids alone like this in public. But Cupid often used lone children to bait gummy traps.
“If you lie to an elf on duty, you’re automatically entered into the Naughty table of the worldwide Naughty’n’Nice database,” he told her. “That means no presents. Understand?”
“Does that mean Santa’s real, too?” Her face lit up.
“You won’t get to him through me.” His eyes narrowed. This one was going to be hard to break.
Just as quickly, she looked sad. “Mama says there’s no Santa.”
“Of course there’s a Santa,” Hunter said. “Is your mother an elf?”
“No.”
“Then why would you believe her?”
“Really?” she gazed up at him. “Then I can ask him for something? I only want one thing.”
“I might be able to arrange that,” he said. He’d humor her, until certain she wasn’t an enemy operative.
“Can I