Page 27

They are dressed like Santa’s helpers, in the same getup as Mandy.

Red and white stripes, floppy green hat, long toed shoes, candle cane pendants. But these elves are dirty. Their clothing has holes. Their lives are in disrepair. It’s sad to see even if I do hate the little buggers.

“Are they… are they smoking mistletoe?” Lyla asks in a whisper, pointing to two male elves near the woods standing behind one of the cottages.

“Yes,” I say.

“Look, mommy. That one is smoking a candy cane. Why would he do that?” Mandy asks.

I rescue Lyla from that question before she can reply. “They aren’t human. What’s deadly for a human is fine for them. Don’t do what they are doing. Mistletoe is poisonous to humans.” I try to channel a little of Lyla’s confident tone of authority that still has the backbone of love. “Just say no to mistletoe.”

When she smiles at me, a smile that shows me her pretty teeth, I know I’ve gotten close enough.

We stay behind the cottages, avoiding the two elves smoking. The deeper into the village we go, the stronger the peppermint scent grows and the heavier the feeling of wrongness swamps our senses

“It’s a really powerful aroma, isn’t it?” Lyla says, covering her nose and mouth with her sleeve.

“Something is wrong,” I say, the certainty growing in me.

An argument breaks out in the cottage we are sneaking past, and I pull Lyla and Mandy against me and position us behind a tree. The branches drop a little snow on our heads and shoulders from our movements.

A male and female are screaming at each other in elvish. Something about heat. Or flames of passion. I’m not sure.

Littering the perimeters of all the cottages are empty containers of eggnog. “The elves have been hitting it hard, it would seem,” I whisper as we continue to move toward the barn.

“Eggnog is hitting it hard?” Lyla asks with disbelief.

“Here it is. They get drunk on that reindeer piss.”

She snorts a laugh then covers her mouth at the startling loudness of the sound. “This place isn’t what I expected,” she whispers.

I purse my lips in a frown. “It’s gotten worse than I realized. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always been a nightmare. But this is…”

“Off.” she says, finishing my sentence.

“Exactly,” I say, something in my chest sputtering like a nervous bird. “You’ve read my mind.”

I can tell we are near the barn by the new smells wafting toward us. The smell of peppermint scented reindeer shit. There’s nothing else like it.

Mandy wrinkles her nose. “Ew. Gross. What is that?”

“That is someone not taking care of their animals,” I say with a sharper tone than I intended. There’s nothing I loathe more than those who neglect children and those who neglect animals.

I pick up my pace and reach the barn before the girls. I fling open the red and white striped door and gag.

Santa’s reindeers are not living their best lives, as the humans these days would say.

Most of them are lying down in their stalls, the hay long past due for changing. A pile of filth has been shoveled into a corner, swarmed with flies. It’s as if the elves have done the bare minimum to keep the reindeer alive.

“Oh my God,” Lyla says, rushing in past me. “What’s wrong with them? We have to help them.”

“There is no helping them,” a woman’s voice says from the shadows.

Lyla yelps and steps back next to me, reaching for my hand. A thrill runs through me at the contact.

Mandy crowds next to her mom, hiding her face against Lyla’s waist.

A tall, slender woman with snow white hair braided down her back with red ribbon steps out of the shadows. Her pale blue eyes are trained on us. Her ageless face is impossible to read. Even her scent is hard to trace, whether because of the overwhelming vileness floating in the air or because she has gained such mastery of her emotions, I can’t say. But it’s disorienting.