Page 118 of Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

“L—” I began.

But something made me think better of it. I went back to putting stickers on the bike instead.

“Good,” Kringle said. “And, yes. I’ve brought you a gift.”

“Tell me it’s not a pony for Maggie,” I said. “I’ll be housebreaking it for years.”

Kringle tilted his head back and chortled again. It was impossible not to smile when he did. But I could cover it up with a scowl as soon as he stopped, so I did.

“No. It’s not for Maggie.” And he put down his sack and started rummaging inside, muttering cheerfully to himself.

In a twinkling, he’d come up with a small cubic package wrapped in green-and-red patterned paper that—I’ll be damned—had an image of Mouse’s grinning face as part of the pattern. There was a tag on it. TO: HARRY. FROM: SANTA CLAUS.

And the package was warm.

I eyed it and then looked up at Kringle.

“Well, lad,” Kringle said, chortling again, and gestured at the package.

I opened it.

Inside was . . .

Was . . .

A plain white coffee mug. The kind you buy at a craft store.

Painted on it in a kindergartner’s attempt at writing, the scarlet letters drawn like pictograms by someone too little to understand them, were the words: NUMB3R ON3 DAD.

The handwriting was mine.

The cup was full of a light brown liquid.

Something happened to my eyes and I couldn’t see the cup anymore. Just a blur of firelight. But I picked it up and sipped milk and sugar with a little splash of coffee in it.

For just a second, I smelled my dad’s old aftershave. For just a second, I heard him laughing, laughing so hard that tears had to have been rolling from his eyes. For just a second, I felt a hand, his hand, on my shoulder.

I drank from the cup I’d given my father on our last Christmas together, and the entire time I did, the memories of those Christmas mornings, of the laughter and hugs and the play, ran through my mind in IMAX, so vivid that I felt myself losing my breath at the memories of chasing my father around the yard with my new plastic lightsaber.

I left the last sip in the bottom of the cup, kept my eyes closed, and said, “I love you, Dad.”

When I looked up at him, Kringle was smiling down at me. He winked. Then he picked up his sack, slung it over his shoulder, and turned to the fireplace.

“Oh,” he murmured, laughter in the back of his throat. “One more thing.”

I heard a thump behind me.

I turned.

My daughter, Maggie, stood in the doorway from the den. She’d dropped a pillow that she’d evidently been carrying. She was staring, slack-jawed, at Kringle.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he chortled quietly. He nodded politely toward Maggie, laid a finger aside of his nose, and . . . just vanished up the chimney.

“Oh wow,” Maggie breathed. She met my gaze and her eyes were wide. “Oh wow!”

As if the sound of her voice had been a starting pistol, Mouse bounced to his feet, suddenly awake and looking around excitedly.

“What are you waiting for?” I demanded of my daughter. I rose and rushed toward the front door. “Come on!”

Her little face with her big dark eyes went incandescent with joy and she sprinted after me, Mouse hard on her heels.

We all ran to the front door and I flung it open to the night air.

We saw the snow cascade off the roof. We saw the sleigh leap into the air, reindeer and all.

“Oh wow!” Maggie exclaimed. “Santa’s real! And he left me a bike!”

I looked down at her, and then back up at the departing sleigh, smiling hard enough to break my face.

“Yep,” I said. “He sure did.”

And we heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight:

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”