“Maybe when we’re old.” He chuckled.
“Sometimes I feel old now.”
He picked me up by my waist and slid me onto the kitchen counter, pressing in close between my legs. He ran his hands up and down my arms. “Nope. Don’t feel old to me.”
Come to think of it, he didn’t exactly feel old either. “Where’s Clara?” I asked.
“Asleep.”
I glanced over his shoulder at the clock. It was almost six-thirty. “Still? Do you think she’s okay?”
He kissed me again. This time right on the lips. “I think we shouldn’t question a good thing while we’ve got it. Hold on.”
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and locked my legs around his waist and he carried me back into the bedroom.
Clara slept until eight. I was almost frantic by the time she actually woke up. Frantic, but also relaxed and showered and dressed. Motherhood was so weird. “I wish we could take them back to the pit now,” I said as I got her dressed.
“I know, but we have to wait until the site empties out. Luckily it gets dark early,” Ted said.
I walked into the dojo with Clara on my hip and a bunch of Kallikantzeroi (a Kalliklatsch?) grabbed tree branches and lined up. Clara clapped and began pointing at them one by one, lighting them up like a row of Hanukkah candles. I sighed, set her down, picked up the fire extinguisher and put them all out. “You’re a menace,” I said, picking her back up.
“Mamamama,” she said and kissed me.
Fine. She was my menace.
“We’re down to about five fruitcakes,” Sophie said, chewing on her lower lip. “Do you think it’s enough?”
I tossed a bag to her. “I’ve got new supplies. Turns out Grandma Rosie and her friends are a great source for old fruitcake. They like it, but they’re afraid they’re going to lose teeth in those little fake fruits. I’ve got about fifteen more in here. Toss about ten to them. We need to save a few to lead them back to the pit.”
“Good thinking.”
It was a long day and the main way we survived was because we knew it was the last one. We’d gathered up as many discarded trees and decorations as we could find, but the Kallikantzeroi were still restless. Tumbling, rolling, begging Clara to set things on fire. I honestly thought I’d lose my mind a couple of times, but we made it to six o’clock. It was dark outside and the construction site should be deserted. Paul and Alex and Ted showed up and it was time to get our show on the road.
We crumbled up one of the remaining fruitcakes to lure the Kallikantzeroi out of the dojo and back into Paul’s van. As back-up we had the route lined with colanders.
“Do you think we’ll need to lure them back into the pit to go home?” Sophie asked. “Shouldn’t their homing instinct or whatever they have be telling them that it’s time to go back down now?”
I looked over at Paul. He shrugged and looked into the crowd of creatures. “Hey, Herb!” he called.
One of the creatures lifted a hand and waved. “Paul! How’s it hanging, my man?”
“Can’t complain. You guys ready to go home?”
Herb began jumping up and down excitedly. Paul turned back to me. “I’d say that’s a yes.”
“I still think we should save a loaf or two just in case.” I took two of them and put them into my bag. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
I opened the door to the dojo and Paul opened the back doors of the van. The Kallikantzeroi streamed along the fruitcake littered path, gobbling and shoving as they went. Paul slammed the back of the van shut after the last one hopped in. Sophie and I turned and shoulder to shoulder viewed what River City Karate and Judo had become.
“Oh, Melina,” she sighed.
“Maybe I should let Clara loose on it. I’m not sure anything but fire could actually purify this.” The floors were nothing but a tattered mess of fiber with scattered burn spots. The walls were streaked and filthy. Bits and pieces of ripped apart Christmas trees were scattered about. The whole place reeked. The smell was almost a visible fog on the floor.
“At the very least, we’re going to need a lot of bleach,” Sophie said.
We sighed and got in our cars to go to the construction site. I really didn’t anticipate much trouble when we got there. The Kappas Construction people’s plan had been to frighten the Kallikantzeroi into going home early and attacking the World Tree before it had fully healed. Too late for that now. It had had its full time to heal. There was no point in trying to keep them from going home, but we wanted to make sure they got there safely nonetheless.
We got to the site, Ted got out, popped Clara into her backpack, and took two fruitcakes from my bag. “I’ll make a trail to the pit and text when I’ve got it set up.”
I gave them both kisses and then watched them go on their way. Paul got out of his van and wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve. “I’m going to have to have the van fumigated when this is done.”
“Maybe we can get a package deal on your van and the dojo.” I leaned against the side of the van and then immediately stood back up. I could smell them even outside the van.
“We’d probably still have to give them some kind of combat pay.”
My phone buzzed. It was Ted down by the pit: Trail laid. Let ‘em loose.
I signaled to Paul and he opened the van door. We watched as all twenty-four of our stinky little guests hopped out, saw the fruitcake trail, and took off for home. Paul whistled Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
“There’s no place like home?” I asked. My phone buzzed again. It was Ted. Again. This time his message read: We’ve got company.
What kind of company? I texted back.
He texted: the kind that has a stack of chainsaws to give the Kallikantzeroi as they go home.
I showed Paul the text. “That’d bring the World Tree down a whole hell of a lot faster than a bunch of handsaws.”
I texted back: on our way.
He texted: Clara holding them off for now, but hurry.
Clara? Holding them off? I didn’t take the time to text back the question. Instead, I started running. Paul passed me before I was halfway to the pit. He got his shirt off, but his jeans basically disintegrated as he transformed while he ran. Alex was right behind him, gliding along close to the ground. Sophie and I glanced at each other and sprinted.
We got to the pit. Paul was on the far side from us of where the Kallikantzeroi were making their way back into the hole that led to their home. He was a beautiful wolf, thick at the shoulder and bristling with dark hair. His growl was so deep and strong, I could feel it in the pit of my stomach when we got close. He was holding off three men, each holding chain saws. Each time one of them tried to feint around him to get to the Kallikantzeroi, Paul lunged and snapped. Alex had two men busy in hand to hand combat. The Kallikantzeroi cowered in the near corner with one at a time making a break for it to get home.
I made it to where Ted stood. “How many of them have gone in?” I asked, gesturing at the Kallikantzeroi.
“Five,” he said. We watched one more slip into the hole. “Six now.”
Eighteen to go. Over by Paul, I heard the sound of a chainsaw starting. Werewolves, vampires, and Messengers heal fast, but not that fast. We turned to see one of the three men that Paul had been holding off had started his saw. Ted squeezed Clara’s little leg. “Can you do it again, sweetie? Can you hit the man with the loud thing?”
Clara pointed a finger and sent a fireball toward the man with the chainsaw. It hit about three feet to the left of him, but it was enough to distract him for a moment. That was all Paul needed. He leapt and took the man down. The chainsaw went flying. The other two men dropped their saws and ran.
I turned not wanting to see the rest of the carnage, reaching up to turn Clara away, too.
“It’s okay,” Ted said. “He’s not, well, you know …”
I did know. Or thought I knew. I turned back. Paul kept the man down using one huge paw. He snarled at the men who were fighting Alex. They, too, looke
d at their fallen comrade and ran. Paul lifted his paw and the man scrambled away.
“If he broke the skin anywhere,” I said. Well, if he had, there’d be one more werewolf in the world.
Ted put his hand on mine. “Let’s trust him to take care of it.”
I nodded. I didn’t see that I had another choice at the moment. “So that thing you did with Clara. Is that how you held them off before we got here?”
“Yep. Her aim is terrible, but shooting fireballs at men with chainsaws is kind of like horseshoes and hand grenades. Close counts.” He craned his neck to look up at her. “Right, sweetie?”
“Dadadada,” Clara said, clapping her hands.
Sophie jumped down into the pit to hurry the Kallikantzeroi back where they came from. It was a matter of minutes until the last one went home. Paul loped off and the rest of us trudged back toward our cars. “It’s a good thing we have keys to his van,” Ted said.
I grunted. One of these days, Paul was going to learn not to put his keys in his pants pockets if there was even the slightest possibility he was going to transform. Of course, none of us had thought we were going to be in the kind of situation where he’d have to change. I would never have brought Clara if I’d had the slightest idea, although it apparently was a good thing we had.
“You know what?” I asked Ted as we walked.
“No. What?”
“I am getting really tired of greedy ‘Danes using ‘Canes to do their dirty work.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“That’s always where I end up getting involved. It’s neither Arcane nor Mundane so nobody pays attention, but all hell’s breaking loose.” I kicked at a loose rock. “That’s what happened here. That’s what always seems to happen. Then we all end up in danger trying to fix it.”
“Not right now. Now we’re safe,” he said, looping an arm around my shoulder and pulling me close.
“I suppose,” I said, snuggling in. “Not right now.”
We ended up having to repaint the dojo to get the smell out. It had seeped into the walls somehow. On the other hand, Sophie and I had more help with our annual cleaning than we usually did. Paul and Ted both pitched in. We had too many windows for Alex to come by during the day and Norah had to work, but it went fast. We were on schedule to re-open by the eleventh of January.
I walked into my office to send out an email to the students. I went to sit down in my office chair and saw one last foil-wrapped loaf lying there. I shook my head. Sometimes these adventures seemed like a bad dream. Other times, I felt like I couldn’t ever get away from them.
My stomach growled. It had been a few hours since breakfast. I unwrapped the loaf and broke off a piece.
“You know, this stuff isn’t half bad.” I broke off another piece and put it on the aluminum foil. I pulled Clara up onto my lap and pointed at the piece of fruitcake. “Toast that for Mommy, baby.”
She clapped her hands and pointed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eileen Rendahl is the national-bestselling and award-winning author of the Messenger series and four Chick Lit novels. Her alter ego, Eileen Carr, writes romantic suspense. When she’s not being one of the Eileens, she writes cozy mysteries as Kristi Abbott.
Both Eileens were born in Dayton, Ohio. She moved when she was four and only remembers that she was born across the street from Baskin-Robbins. Eileen remembers anything that has to do with ice cream. Or chocolate. Or champagne.
She has had many jobs and lived in many cities and feels unbelievably lucky to be where she is now and to be doing what she’s doing.
Melina’s adventures began in Don’t Kill the Messenger and continue Dead on Delivery and Dead Letter Day. Don’t miss Melina’s previous holiday adventure in Dreidels and Demons or Payback for a Post-Mortem, a short story from the Messenger world.
Learn more about Eileen at www.EileenRendahl.com, like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/EileenRendahlandEileenCarr or follow her on Twitter at @EileenRendahl. Or what the heck. Do all of the above!
Heart Wide Open
Elizabeth Maxwell
Widow. It was a word that conjured up gray haired ladies in frumpy black dresses and veiled hats. It was not a word Julia Orchard associated with herself and yet she’d been wearing it for over two years now. The Widow Orchard. That poor girl. How does she manage?
The answer was she managed just fine. Or had until this particular December the twenty fourth when things suddenly went altogether sideways. Most people didn’t schedule big meetings for the day of Christmas Eve but Julia was not most people and here she was zooming toward the forty second floor of 1166 Avenue of the Americas where she would convince the Beauty Now! executives and convince that if they hired her company, VonA Advertising, and followed her marketing plan, they would achieve skin care world domination. This in and of itself was not a problem. Julia had helped achieve world domination before, particularly in organic iced tea and thong underwear for athletes. Her reputation as a slayer of competing brands was practically legend, which was something considering she was barely twenty nine years old.
So needless to say, Julia was ready for the Beauty Now! people. She entered the large conference room on the forty second floor of 1166 Avenue of the Americas wearing four inch heels and a suit she considered her own personal Teflon. Nothing touched her in this suit. She was invincible and ready to offer her seemingly bottomless wisdom on how to sell youth to the sagging middle aged.
She smiled and greeted each executive seated at the narrow conference table by name. Each of them longed to be home wearing fuzzy slippers and wrapping presents, but this was Julia Orchard and she’d insisted. “You want to wait another day to kick Olay’s ass,” she’d said, “that’s fine. But I wouldn’t.”
It was all going so well, just as she’d envisioned it! She could practically see the executives glowing as she described a recent investigative trip to CVS where she asked regular women, the kind with gentle laugh lines and crows feet, what they wanted from skin care. No, she couldn’t give them back their twenties or make a failed relationship work but she could give them the light scent of lemon verbena and a firming lotion that might hold things up for the duration of the annual company holiday party.
“And this is what we’re after with this marketing campaign,” she told her enraptured audience. This was the part where she was to dazzle them with concept. Beauty Now! for a better You. In other words, you didn’t have to look like a supermodel because even supermodels didn’t look like supermodels. You just have to be yourself and that’s plenty beautiful. Julia intended to use only real women in the ad campaign. Of course, she’d pick pretty ones but still, they wouldn’t be ridiculous stick figures with lollypop heads. No human clothes hangers for Beauty Now!.
But Julia never got to the dazzle part because the door to the conference room opened and in walked Nick. Which was strange because Nick was dead.
CHAPTER 2
Naturally, everything went off the rails when Nick showed up. Julia froze, just like the champagne spewing ice statue at last week’s drunken holiday party for the thong underwear company. Her mouth hung open. She blinked a few times. To those seated at the table, it appeared Julia Orchard was having a seizure of some sort but to point that out would be awkward so everyone just sat and watched.
After blinking failed to make Nick disappear, Julia began to sweat. It rolled down her back soaking the waistband of her Teflon suit pants. Why was it so damn hot in here? And why did the Executive Vice President of Sales wear so much perfume? What was she hiding? Julia pulled at the collar of her crisp white oxford. It was strangling her.
As the executives squirmed in their comfy leather chairs, Julia faced the floor-to-ceiling windows and tried to catch her breath. Outside was a panoramic view of New York City. A light snow was falling. She could see the Empire State Building. VonA’s offices were downtown in a trendy loft district that had no view. It was the price of hipness.
When she turned back, she was sure
the apparition would have disappeared but instead she found Nick wedged in next to the Executive Vice President of Product, a bony, angular woman whose Botoxed face carried a look of permanent surprise. Boy, she’d be surprised for real now.
“No!” Julia yelped. “Don’t sit there!”
The EVP raised a professionally engineered eyebrow. “Excuse me?” she said. “Is everything okay?”
Of course not, Julia wanted to scream. The ghost of my dead husband is sitting on your lap! But she couldn’t scream because her throat was closing, growing smaller and tighter and soon no air would pass through and she’d die right here on the floor of this fancy conference room while trying to sell moisturizer to the unsuspecting masses. There were many things in life that Julia didn’t understand but there was something she knew for certain: she did not want to drop dead on the floor of this fancy conference room.
Sweat poured down her back. Her field of vision narrowed to nothing. “Excuse me,” she gulped, grabbing the back of the perfumed EVP of Sales’ chair for balance. “I think I need a minute.” Despite everything, Julia managed to catch the look of pure horror on the woman’s face as she fled the room.
By the time she got to the elevator banks, she would have chewed her own arm off if it meant a faster escape. People popped out of their cubicles to stare. A well-intentioned receptionist approached cautiously as if Julia might be rabid. Julia dodged hard left to avoid her. Her heart beat so quickly now she could see it thumping through her shirt.
Finally, the elevator arrived, blissfully empty, and Julia jumped aboard. She pushed her back against the wall and put her hands out to her sides for balance. She closed her eyes, panting and praying for an express trip to the ground floor.
But oh my god, what had she done? She’d run away from VonA’s potentially biggest client this year! What would people think? What would her boss say?
“There you go again,” came a voice. Julia’s eyes flew open to find a wavy, transparent Nick standing before her in the elevator.
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