Kris smiled. “I appreciate that you are willing to try. Please don’t worry. In time, everything will make sense to you. And it isn’t such a stretch, is it? Why is it any harder to believe my story now than it was to believe in flying reindeer when you were young?”
“I don’t know. It just is. Maybe because you look like a man and not Nast’s elf.” Adora turned away. “Good night,” she said.
“Good night,” he replied.
She paused once more as an idea struck her. “Kris, I think I have the title for this book.”
“Yes?”
“Santa Claus: The Second Greatest Story Ever Told.”
Kris chuckled. Adora found herself smiling too as she headed for her quarters.
“Sweet imaginings,” Kris called after her. “Dream of me.”
“Like there was ever any doubt,” she muttered softly. Kris likely heard, for he chuckled.
And so it came to pass that the Sons of Man divided themselves again, this time the Rich from the Poor. And the Rich climbed into the mountains and built fortresses around their treasures and around their hearts, and became ever more removed from the Source of Love. And in fear of the Celebrants and the Worshipper Poor, whose numbers increased yearly, they made more weapons for their armies and began to hide the sacred rituals and words. Soon the Poor could only talk to Divinity with payment to the Rich, which payment they were made to offer inside special houses of worship open only on certain days.
Saddened by their cruelty and ignorance, still Niklas did go among the Sons of Man, rich and poor alike, and he did more good works amongst them.
—Niklas 4:7
There was a low fire in the hearth, and a few patches of cobwebbed light thrown out by the odd lantern. Planks had been laid over the hard-packed earth of the tavern’s ancient floor, but other than that, the building was the same as in the year it was rebuilt after the Great Fire, right down to the ale and bitter cider stored in the blackened barrels that had been old even when Charles II brought Christmas back to England.
Few of the hard-faced laborers that patronized the establishment could read or write, but they would still recognize the name Charles Dickens, so the two men kept their voices low.
“Charlie, the pen is mightier than the sword, as we both know. But I need something mightier still this time. I need a hammer to strike at the new world—and you’re going to craft it for me.”
CHAPTER SIX
The bedroom was more than generous, and elegant, decked out in its silk and brocade. The bed was raised and had to be approached with a prie-dieu that was carved out of cheery warm wood.
Stepping into the bathroom, Adora sighed ecstatically. It was all marble, every last bit. There was a gigantic shower, but also a large tub deep enough to offcially qualify as decadent. Reaching out, she plucked one of the bath towels off the rack and brought it to her face. She rubbed the cottony velvet, allowing herself to feel spoiled for the first in a very long while.
Turning, she walked unsteadily into the small alcove on the right. Two works of porcelain perched on marble steps seemed too pretty to be called anything as mundane as toilet or bidet, yet that was clearly their intended function. And she was going to get to leave her toothbrush and comb on the counter of this art-deco palace? They’d never been so honored. The rest of her ablutions would have to wait for morning; she was just too tired to cope with the little jars and bottles that were supposed to preserve her youth and protect her from sunburn and wrinkles.
Exhausted, weary to the bones, Adora treated herself to a hot shower and then sought out the comfort of her bed. Her last thoughts were about Kris—if that was even his name.
Who was he really? she wondered sleepily. Mr. Bishop S. Nicholas? Kris Kringle? Niklas? Until she had a name—a real one—she could hardly do any research on her own.
Should she ask for a birth certificate? No, that wouldn’t work. He’d just say they didn’t have them ten thousand years ago. So what about a driver’s license? He must have one of those. Or at least some form of ID. Who did the IRS think he was? Surely he didn’t pay taxes under the name of Santa Claus! She’d seen one of his old cards in the file folder. The yellowed card stock actually said:
S. CLAUS
PURVEYOR OF TOYS
Like he couldn’t get ID to be the Easter Bunny if he bribed the right people, Joy sneered. Hell, he could have had his name legally changed to anything.
Damn it. Adora sighed. She just wanted to know his real name. There was a certain power in that. And how could she ever get a handle on him if she didn’t know who or what he was?
Just as she was drifting off, lines from an old poem, “The Glory Hand,” came into her head:
And the North Wind howled,
And the shadow prowled,
And the Lightning did claw and bite;
And they huddled together
As they hid from the weather,
On that terrible Beltane night.
Yeah, it’s almost May Day, Joy said. She didn’t sound happy, but Adora couldn’t imagine why.
Kris stood in the doorway, watching Adora sleep. He felt guilt for having gotten her drunk and using his truth-magic on her while they were talking, but he sensed that there were many hidden layers to this woman, and that it was important to know the facts about her. Was she the one the Goddess had predicted would come into his life? Certainly she’d come from the west.
Adora Navarra. She had an inexpressible delicacy that hinted she was at least part fey. But how to tell her this? She identified herself so completely as human. She could barely allow for the possibility that he was fey; would she ever be able to accept that she herself was of mixed blood? Even if she eventually accepted, the cultural collision could be messy, and she really didn’t need any further pain.
Adora’s description of her last brief affair had at first made Kris suspect that she’d been fey-struck by another oblivious half-breed. But the longer she spoke, the more he’d come to understand that all the compulsions moving her were strictly internal and uninfluenced by magic.
Which was something of a relief. The fey-struck rarely recovered from the experience.
He felt for her, though. A child of mixed fey parents who didn’t realize what they were and who had therefore given in completely to the attraction of a magical mating would be very lonely indeed.
Unchecked, the attraction between fey mates— especially between certain kinds of feys—would slowly exclude everything and everyone, even a child of that union. Not necessarily selfish people, like Narcissus they would become obsessed, so taken by the object of their affection that there would be no room for anything else. A few feys, away from their shians—their underground homes, their magical centers—had starved to death. They had made love incessantly, going without food or water until they finally died.
That wouldn’t happen to Adora, though. He had found her. He could protect her from such a needless waste, eventually inform her and warn her of the truth.
Kris knew it was a bit voyeuristic, but he enjoyed watching her sleep. Adora lay like a child, or maybe a pill bug, rolled up in a ball, hands pressed together in prayer position and tucked under one cheek. She looked innocent—angelic, even. How very misleading. He was an excellent judge of character, and though he could see great kindness in her, there was mischief in equal measure. Which was to be expected in one of Seelie blood.
Kris doubted that Adora was aware of it, but something—probably her parents’ steady application of indifference to her existence—had given her a little-girl-lost air that remained with her even in the rare moments when she smiled and laughed. Combined with her startling thinness and the soft murmurs of her emerging fey nature that rose from her like perfume, it made her almost irresistible to him. He wanted to protect her, to slay dragons for her—at least, metaphorical ones; he had nothing against the flesh-and-blood creatures.
He wanted to do a few less noble things as well.
Which was a very bad idea. It was, as
his English friends were wont to say, a bit of a sticky wicket, because he was not—really not—cut out for the role of a lover.
Despite his unsuitability to the role, he wasn’t blind to her reaction to him. He hadn’t forgotten what often happened between death feys and certain other magical beings—sirens, especially—and he could see that she felt the same attraction that pulled at him. She was resisting it with all her unconscious might, which helped, but it was hard for both of them, and getting more difficult with every passing hour. He was almost certain that it was Gaia, again at work in the form of the Goddess, gathering up her lost lambs before the storm and mating them like the creatures on Noah’s ark so that Her fey would survive.
He wished he knew for certain if this was Her will. She wasn’t talking right now, though. Perhaps he was too far from the shian. Still, there was a way to test his theory if he really wanted to know. One kiss would do.
But . . . no. It was probably too soon in their relationship to suggest such an intimacy to Adora, and he didn’t dare risk a permanent bond forming between them before she understood and believed what they both were; there was too much danger that such a relationship could entail. He had turned away from romantic love and hope of a mate when he had turned away from his magic and his people. For death fey, the two were often bound together. He’d had to let his magic go if he was to live among the warring tribes of Men and not be seduced into killing. But magic didn’t die simply because he denied it. Left alone, its need grew ever stronger. It was reasonable to assume that his need for love— for a permanent bond with another of his kind— had grown too.
But to love one such as he was to willingly embrace death, and Kris could see that there was something in Adora terrified of her mortality and unwilling to trust anyone. No, it would be a long time before he heard the words that Adora needed to speak to make their union possible: Eat my heart. Drink my soul. Love me to death.
Kris closed his eyes as yearning washed over him. It had been so long since he’d heard anyone say those words. His dusty memory of love was buried under a sort of cataclysmic ash hangover at least as thick as what covered poor Pompeii. But his memory wasn’t dead like that city, wasn’t yet petrified. He’d thought he’d given up on the idea of a wife long ago, that he’d put all thought of romance from his mind. But something about Adora Navarra made the old longings struggle against the suffocating darkness and try to dig their way out of his partially voluntary amnesia.
Making a small sound that might have been a sigh, he turned from temptation. The Goddess would have to wait. He had a previous commitment, one that was ten thousand years in the making.
The seas he traveled were never calm, but this was likely to prove the most turbulent yet. He would have to be careful from here on out. His dark dreams of unanswered love could call storms, and the part of Adora that was magical would answer with lures of her own. They both had to be careful.
Unless . . .
Kris decided spontaneously—which was the way he decided almost everything—that it would be wise to take Adora to Cadalach. The mound would know if she was fey, and it could help her adapt if she was disturbed by the news.
At the end of next week, after they visited San Francisco.
A ferocious downpour began at midnight, alarming because it was out of season and because she shouldn’t have been able to hear it so clearly through the thick walls that guarded her. Pushing aside the covers and going to the chattering window, Adora was puzzled and then alarmed to see that the rain fell only on their building. The streets beyond looked dry in the glow of the streetlights, and the line of demarcation was clear even through the blurred glass.
Her ghostly refection in the window frowned back at Adora. This was impossible. Was she dreaming? There had been movement in the darkness. Something sly. She peered out sharply, but now there was nothing. Just rain, just wind—black and cold, beating at the French doors, they demanded she let them in so that they could ravage her with chilly fingers.
Unable to explain why, Adora was suddenly filled head to toe with mortal dread. It was not concern of an unexplained weather phenomenon; she had seen enough strange natural disasters and meteorological anomalies to no longer be amazed by Mother Nature’s seeming schizophrenia. No, this was an atavistic fear of something out there in the night, a fear that told the hare to flee before the hound, to run for its life because danger was coming swiftly.
“Don’t open the door!” a voice behind her said urgently. It sounded like Kris.
Adora looked down, surprised and appalled to find her hand resting on the door latch. Unable to help herself, she ignored Kris’s words and watched her fingers depress the handle.
Wind tore the French doors from her grasp, then reached for her with vicious fingers.
Adora cried out, terrified that she would be carried onto the balcony and flung off, then swept to the coast and out to sea. But in an instant Kris was there, wrapping her in his arms and pulling her back from the killing wind. He murmured words in a strange language, soothing her.
He closed the door, and Adora willingly fainted.
When she woke again, it was seven in the morning and the sun was shining. Shade dappled her wall and urged her to leave the comfort of her bed. Like the old TV ad used to say: It was just another perfect day in Paradise. There wasn’t the slightest trace of the storm—except perhaps inside her body. She felt . . . waterlogged. Like she had nearly drowned. And her thoughts were confused, as if a cyclone had blown through them.
What might have happened if Kris had not pulled her back in time?
He had pulled her back in time, hadn’t he? It seemed that she remembered this, but her recollection was hazy. Could it have been a dream?
She stumbled to the doors and threw them wide. Stepping out onto the balcony, she looked over the edge. The hotel swimming pool was below. Hundreds of ragged mimosa blossoms littered its surface. Others were captured in the pool boy’s net, which he dragged to and fro.
So, it had rained. There were also bruises on her arms in the shape of a man’s hands.
Too tired to care, Adora got back into bed and pulled the covers over her head. She fell into an uneasy sleep and her brain, with Joy’s help, soon forgot most of her nightmare.
Somewhat heavy-eyed because she had been woken by exuberant birds on her balcony, Adora wandered into the hotel library a little after eight. Kris, looking bright-eyed and cheerful, was at work writing a letter longhand. He didn’t seem to care for computers, leaving cyber-business to Pennywyse. Adora understood this. The damn things were always breaking down on her and losing files. She herself preferred to take notes in longhand. Luddites of the world unite!
“Good morning. How did you sleep?” Kris asked, and he smiled warmly before going back to his letter.
“Good morning.” It wasn’t yet all that good, but Adora lived in hope. Coffee sometimes improved her outlook.
She stared hard at Kris’s bent head, not wanting anything to do with the thoughts in her mind but unable to escape them. Scrutiny didn’t help. The more she looked, the more she liked. Kris was wonderful—absolutely gorgeous. Almost . . .
Inhumanly beautiful? her inner voice suggested.
Adora swallowed but didn’t correct Joy. She had learned from numerous bloody battles with her inner voice that if you couldn’t win an engagement, it was wisest to back off and look for a battle you could.
Fine. So she might be a little attracted Kris. But that wasn’t so bad, was it? It was just magnetism. It wasn’t like she had wandered into quicksand.
No?
Well, maybe it was a little like that. But she could still breathe and think . . . and escape, if she wanted. It wasn’t as if she had fallen in a snake pit and needed to be rescued from a giant pit viper.
Isn’t it?
Of course not! Hell, she wanted to be in love—or at least lust—didn’t she? As long as the guy wasn’t an asshole.
Or insa—
Shut up! What a Johnn
y-One-Note, she hissed at Joy. And he isn’t insane. He just has different ways of seeing things. And I’m not in love—just attracted, she clarified.
Uh-huh.
Still, this attraction was hardly ideal. How could she be objective about a book, dig for the truth, when she was so sympathetic—okay, fascinated— with its subject? Even if they never slept together, she could never be unbiased, and therefore might get led astray by his wilder imaginings. The critics would crucify her. Assuming there was anything left after an editor tried to “fix” things.
Worse, what was she going to do about Kris in the flesh? Her fingers actually itched to touch him. Could she flirt gently to see if he responded? Sneak up on him when he wasn’t paying attention and move in for a fast kiss?
Why be subtle? Go right for a direct fondling with an indecent proposition.
Adora snorted. Yeah, like she’d ever walk up and fondle anyone, let alone Kris. It wasn’t the kind of thing she would do. For God’s sake—he was her employer. And she had rules.
And he’s Santa Claus. Let’s not forget that, Joy laughed.
Okay, that too.
And he’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
I’m not listening, Joy. If you don’t have anything new to say, go away.
Fine, but you know I’m right. Get involved at your own peril.
Peril? Adora almost snorted. Still . . .
Her brows knit as she watched Kris study the report on his desk, apparently oblivious to her.
How could he ignore the tension in the room? He liked her, didn’t he? She’d read the signs. He was definitely attracted, and old-fashioned enough to probably want to do the chasing himself.
So, why was he waiting for her to say something, for her to start the dance? Didn’t he want to relieve some of the pressure building between them?
Maybe he felt like she did: that this was something important. That it was something that shouldn’t be rushed or treated cavalierly. And maybe he was as concerned about the book being compromised as she was.
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