by Emma Savant
I wished I could take them back to Colorado with me. Even dealing with rich tourists all day wouldn’t be so bad if I had one of these guys to come home to.
The thought of trying to cram a pet reindeer into my apartment made me chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Felix asked, popping up from where he’d been washing out brushes in a tub of soapy water. He had on enormous neon green headphones, which I’d assumed had been playing music at full blast, which seemed to be the way Felix preferred it. Whatever he’d been listening to clearly hadn’t been loud enough to block me out, though. Or maybe he just had a sixth sense for laughter. It wouldn’t have surprised me.
“Nothing,” I said. I dusted off my hands. “I’m about done here. You coming for lunch?”
He held up a soapy rubber brush. “Almost. Listen, would you do me a favor before we go for food?”
“Maybe.”
“We’re still operating as if Santa’s going to get out of here on time,” Felix said. His resolute expression was at odds with the neon headphones. “Which means it’s time to get the Christmas harnesses out of storage. Would you mind? They’re over in the wing to the right of House of Claus, first floor at the end of the hall. Room 1224.”
“Why so far away?”
“It’s kept with the Christmas Eve stuff, not the reindeer stuff,” Felix said. “Santa’s suit and boots are in there, too, but don’t touch them or Mary will have your head.”
He tossed me a key from the ring on his belt. The key was heavy brass and looked ancient. I slipped it in my pocket.
“Noted.”
I reached into Rudolph’s stall and tried to give him one last pat, but he was focused on his food and too far away for me to reach.
I cut through the central workshop like Noelle had the first time she’d brought me to the stables. That had only been a week or so ago, but it felt like longer. Working with the reindeer was the best part of every day, and it felt like I’d known them forever.
I came out on the other side of the workshop and found the wing Felix had mentioned. This hall was as long as the others, but quieter. No elves rushed around here; in fact, the whole wing seemed almost empty.
I found the room and tried the door. Locked, of course. I slid the key into the lock and had to wiggle its heavy weight around to get the door to swing open.
The room inside was dark and cool and had the dusty, upholstered smell of a neglected closet. I felt around for a light switch, but before my hand found one, a small chandelier overhead brightened slowly and illuminated the space with a soft golden glow.
A wardrobe was up against one wall, its wooden surface carved with an elaborate depiction of reindeer flying across a starry sky.
I pulled it open. Santa’s suit hung there, the velvet thick and the color a deep, almost living red. I’d seen Santa costumes before at the mall and in holiday movies, but they were nothing to the richness of this suit. The fur that trimmed the collar and hems was soft and inviting, and I clenched my hand on the wardrobe door to stop myself from petting it. His boots gleamed on the floor below, coal black and polished to a gleam that reflected the light in the room.
Cautiously, slowly, I closed the wardrobe. There was another polished cupboard on the other side of the small room, this one carved with snowflakes and pine trees. I opened it and a rich leather smell filled the air.
Nine beautiful harnesses hung from hooks on the back wall. They were made of embossed leather and intricately woven fabric. I lifted one down from its peg and examined it. Each harness had a different pattern woven into the material, of snowflakes or pinecones or holly leaves. This one was covered in tiny poinsettia flowers. A small brass nameplate on the harness said Vixen.
It was heavy. I might have to make two trips. I lifted a second harness down and tried to figure out how to hang them on my arm in the most efficient way possible.
The lights went out.
I sighed and waved my unburdened arm through the air. Even in Santa’s magical Workshop, motion sensor lights were crap.
Nothing happened. I jumped and waved my arms. Still nothing.
The door had swung shut behind me, and I could barely see a hint of daylight underneath the crack beneath. I held my hand out in front of me and moved cautiously toward the door, then leapt back.
The room felt as though someone had opened a door to the outdoors—not the mild, charmed outdoors within Santa’s reach, but the real outdoors beyond that, the freezing, punishing, dangerous world of night and ice.
A thin blue flame flickered into being in front of me.
I screamed, leapt backwards, and slammed into the wall. The harnesses tumbled from my grasp. My arms shook from the cold and my teeth started to chatter.
The blue flame was moving. It grew and shifted into the form of an icy, translucent man standing between me and the door.
Part of my mind thought this had to be some kind of sick practical joke. The other part of me screamed in silent terror, because I’d met a lot of elves in the past month and not one of those optimistic Christmas-lovers would be capable of scaring someone like this. Not even Noelle would think this was funny.
I stared back at the man. He had a narrow face with thick white hair and a white goatee, and his figure was lean and well-dressed in a slim-cut suit with the top few shirt buttons undone beneath the jacket. His eyes were piercing, and so pale blue I could have been staring right through him and to an iceberg reflecting the light of the moon.
“I heard you were looking for me,” the apparition said. His voice was as solid as his body was insubstantial, and it sent a chill down my already freezing spine.
I thought of screaming, but I’d already screamed and no one had come running. If this was who I thought it was, the elves were all panicking right where they stood, or deluding themselves that another power outage didn’t mean the worst.
“Prince Frost,” I said.
He nodded, slowly, his thin body almost dipping into a bow.
“I understand you’re trying to get home.”
I rubbed my arms, which did nothing to warm or soothe me. I eyed the door, but there was no way to reach it without going right through him.
“Santa’s going to take me home when he can,” I said. “There’s no rush.”
He smiled, as though this was fine and not at all a wrench in his plans—and he had plans, I was sure of that. Cold calculations were written all over his shimmering, ghostly face.
“Let me out,” I said.
His delicate eyebrows furrowed.
“I just want to talk.”
“We have nothing to talk about.”
“I think we do.”
His image grew sharper around the edges. I glanced at the floor, looking for something I could throw. But the harnesses were the only loose thing in the room, and I couldn’t imagine them doing much damage to an elf, let alone this tall, powerful man.
“Hear me out, Miss North,” he said. Then he laughed softly, as if surprised. The sound made the goosebumps on my arms harden to tiny points of pain. “I do like that name,” he said. “Miss North, I’d be happy to take you home at your earliest convenience. All I need is for you to help me get my pole back. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
“You already have the North Pole. That’s what everyone told me. Everything except the Workshop and city.”
“Not the North Pole,” he said, a fine line appearing between his eyebrows. “The pole.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I looked around for an escape, as if one might have magically appeared in the last two seconds.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Miss North,” he said, his expression wounded. “Heavens, I only want to see you safely home. I can’t imagine being in the old man’s wonderland is much of a treat for a sane person like you.”
“I’m not going to help you give the Humdrums oil,” I said. “Letting them into the North Pole would be a disaster for everyone here.”
&
nbsp; And, in spite of myself, I wanted to protect that everyone.
I imagined what Joy’s face must look like right now, frightened of the power outage on top of all her sleigh and Christmas worries.
Frost laughed in earnest this time. “The oil? Goodness, no, I have no intention of letting Humdrums anywhere near that oil if I don’t have to. It’s just a bargaining chip. I want the pole, and Santa wants his Workshop to continue churning along in peace. It’s a simple enough compromise.”
“What pole?” I said.
The lights flickered on overhead for a brief moment, barely long enough to register before they died again.
Fear crossed Frost’s face. He fixed his iceberg eyes on me.
“Bring me the pole,” he said. “You bring me the pole or I’ll come get it, and I assure you, Miss North: You wouldn’t like that.”
The lights turned on with an abrupt hum of electricity, and Frost was gone.
Chapter 16
My heart pounded like a hummingbird’s and my stomach felt like it had leapt up into my throat.
That had been Jack Frost.
He was everything I’d imagined from Joy’s comments and much more besides, and just thinking of him standing there made my skin crawl.
Or maybe that was just the cold. The lights had come back on, but the chill in the air didn’t budge.
I grabbed all the harnesses, stringing them on my arms until the weight was almost enough to knock me over, and bolted out of the storage room.
This corridor was still empty, which did nothing to ease the unsettled feeling in my gut. I walked as quickly as I could down the hall and threw myself into the central workshop.
The usual busy industry of the room had shifted. They were still working, but everyone seemed tense, and elves kept glancing up at the ceiling like they were going to be plunged back into darkness at any moment.
It was a real concern. The ceiling of the workshop was one enormous skylight, but the sky outside was black and foreboding, and I didn’t want to look at it for more than a few seconds.
“Holly!”
Felix rushed toward me from the other side of the balcony. He held out his hands and took half the harnesses from me. The worry on his face was, I realized, more for them than for me.
“They’re fine,” I assured him. “I dropped Vixen and Comet’s but they’re both okay. I need to talk to you.”
“You dropped them?” Felix said in consternation. He lifted his arms and started looking for the injured harnesses. I rolled my eyes and held up Comet’s, which was in one piece and didn’t have a scratch on it.
Felix’s utterly misplaced anxiety calmed me a little. This was ordinary, and I needed a dose of ordinary after what had just happened.
And to think I thought that any of this was ordinary. I looked out across the sea of uniformed elves carving the kinds of rustic wooden toys new hipster parents probably lost their minds over. My life hadn’t just been turned upside-down. It had been shaken, then stirred, then thrown into a blender and turned into a smoothie of weirdness.
“Felix,” I said sharply. “I need to talk to you. Actually, no, scratch that. I need to talk to Santa.”
“He’s busy.”
“He’s not too busy for me.”
I marched toward the stables to drop off the harnesses, which were getting heavier by the minute. He rushed after me.
I hung my harnesses up in the stable’s tack room and then turned to face Felix, whose arms were still weighed down.
“What’s the pole?” I said. “Not the North Pole, the pole.”
Felix blanched.
“Where did you hear about that?”
“It’s in danger,” I said. I took a harness from him, while he frowned at me. The frown looked absurd on his jovial face, like he was a toddler who was trying a little too hard to convey what a bad mood the idea of naps elicited.
“I know it’s probably supposed to be a secret from me,” I said in a quick undertone. “Well, it’s not. Today I learned that Santa has it, and Frost wants it. And I want to know if there’s anything I can do to help, because now I’ve met Santa and Jack and I do not like Jack.”
“You what?” Felix sputtered. I took another harness from him before he dropped them all.
“Let’s just say it’s been a heck of a day,” I said. “Frost offered to take me home if I’d helped him, and let me tell you, I don’t want to go home that badly. Where’s Santa?”
Felix dropped the last harness. I caught it.
“When did you talk to Frost?”
“Come on,” I said. I grabbed his hand and dragged him into the hallway.
Santa was already looking for us. We ran into him just outside the stables, and a storm was brewing on his face.
“Holly,” Santa boomed.
I ran up to him, the story about to spill out.
“Holly, you’re to stay in your room until I get you home,” Santa said.
I froze and stared at him.
“What?”
“I’ve already called security.”
I couldn’t quite process what I was hearing. Frost had showed up, I’d defended Santa, and now I was getting sent to my room? I didn’t need house arrest, I needed information on the pole and maybe some therapy. I could still feel Frost’s icy presence closing in around me.
“The Workshop definitely needs security,” I said sharply. “But not because of me. What’s going on?”
“I told you not to talk to Jack Frost,” he bellowed.
Mary rushed around the corner and up to us, looking exactly like Santa’s opposite in a sophisticated black sheath dress.
“Nick,” she said sharply. “Nicholas, what is going on?”
“Ask her,” Santa said. He scowled at me, and my knees shook. I never could have imagined jolly old Saint Nick looking so scary.
He still wasn’t as scary as Frost had been. I turned to Mary.
“I didn’t exactly have a choice,” I snapped. “He kind of had me cornered.”
“How did he get in?” Santa said.
His beard quivered with rage. I took a step back.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I was just standing there in the storage room, trying to do my job, and then the lights went out and he just sort of—appeared. I couldn’t not talk to him. The guy is crazy.”
“Nick,” Mary said sharply. She grabbed his arm and spun him around to face her. “You need to calm down.”
“Jack Frost—” he started. She shook his arm.
“Nicholas Claus,” she said. “You are being absurd. This poor girl has no idea what you’re upset about, can’t you see that? Now, you need to take a deep breath and get ahold of yourself, because none of us can protect this planet if you can’t even keep your head on straight.”
She glared intensely up at him, and I watched him slowly deflate. The anger seeped away, and underneath it, strong enough to make his shoulders shake a little, was fear.
“Mary,” he said.
“I know. But you need to listen right now.” She turned to me. “Holly, honey, why don’t you come to our place for some cocoa? I think we all need to sit and discuss this rationally.”
I eyed Santa. I wasn’t in the mood to discuss things with someone who would rather sling accusations around than listen, but Mary was looking at both of us expectantly and I had a feeling that declining wasn’t on the table. I nodded.
“Felix?” she said.
He shook his head quickly. “I don’t know anything about what happened. The team’s a little unsettled, though.” He jerked his head toward the stable, and Mary nodded and shooed him back to work before putting an arm around me.
“Let’s go have a nice chat,” she said, walking me down the hall.
Santa followed beside us, not looking nearly as inviting as his wife.
Their rooms were a long walk from the stables. We went to the hall where my rooms were, and then took an elevator to the third floor. From there, a glassed-in sky bridge arced away from t
he Workshop and to a lighthouse that sat on the very edge of the ice.
The elevator let out near the top of the lighthouse; if I looked up, I could see a giant contraption of glass and crystal that was dark now but probably too bright to look at when the light was shining.
Mary noticed me looking.
“We only turn it on when someone’s gone out,” she said. “It helps the reindeer find their way home.”
The reindeer. I hoped they weren’t as spooked as I had been, and that Felix was taking good care of them.
We walked down a spiral staircase. At the bottom of the lighthouse was a small room with a gleaming tile floor. There were two doors here. One had a glass window etched with snowflakes, and I could see the beginnings of a snowfall through it. The other door was wooden and polished to a high shine; Mary pushed this one open and led me through.
Their home was as cozy as I might have expected from Santa and as sophisticated as I might have expected from Mary, with cushioned crimson furniture and a crackling fire in the elegant stacked rock fireplace. An enormous plate glass window looked out on one side toward the sea. All I could see was my own reflection in the warm glow from the lamps, but I imagined that the view was beautiful in the summer when there was daylight to illuminate the horizon.
“Have a seat.” Mary pushed me gently toward one of the overstuffed chairs.
I perched on the edge of the cushion and pressed my hands between my knees. Santa paced in front of the window, and Mary disappeared through an archway into the kitchen.
I watched Santa as he walked back and forth with his thumbs hooked under his suspenders and his fingertips worrying them like they were a security blanket.
“I really didn’t mean to talk to him,” I said.
He glanced up, startled, as if he’d forgotten I was in the room. After a moment, he furrowed his thick white eyebrows and nodded, then went back to pacing.
I looked at the photographs on the mantle. They were all of Santa and Mary and sometimes elves or other clearly magical beings with pointed ears and oddly colored skin. I couldn’t tell how old the pictures were, just like I couldn’t quite tell how long the Workshop had been here. People talked about Santa like he’d lived here forever, and I had no idea what the lifespan of an elf was. Maybe he was immortal. They didn’t seem to have children, but a white mop of a dog did show up in two of the pictures. I stood to get a better look.