Page 9

Chapter Nine

B lood had turned the makeshift bandage of napkins and what might have been a G-string into a thick paper-maché scab. That wasn’t a Christmas craft that was going to catch on. Dylan soaked the edges of it with warm water until he could peel it away from the broken chair leg it had been packed around.

Habit shifted Dylan’s brain back into work mode as he categorized the injury in his mind as if he’d need to write it up later.

Maybe he would. When Jars had produced the first-aid kit that was all Dylan had to work with, he’d explained it with a shrug and a “health and safety.” So who knew.

The man—or what had Somerset called him…a mirk elf?—laid out on the righted table had an impalement injury to the throat. The makeshift weapon had punctured his throat on the left-hand side and continued at a downward angle until it hit his collarbone. From the deformation. it had broken it as well. Dylan pressed carefully at the injury with gloved fingers and felt the bones shift and grate .

Pain made the man…elf, whatever, Dylan had picked up his name was Hill, that would do…writhe on the table he was laid out on. Somerset put a hand on his chest and pinned him flat, like a bug on a board.

“Can you fix him?” he said.

“I’m a paramedic, not a doctor,” Dylan said. When he felt his way along the elf’s throat, he felt the bubble-wrap crackle of crepitus under the skin. “He…he needs a hospital. I mean, I guess. If he was mortal he would, but… Why isn’t he healing? I’ve seen you shrug off worse than this.”

The question made Somerset scowl. A petty part of Dylan that wasn’t over being hauled out of the room over Stúfur’s shoulder like a sack of old clothes was glad about that.

Not like you’d care if it had been Somerset with his hand on your ass , some ruthlessly fair-minded part of himself pointed out. Dylan didn’t appreciate it being right—not entirely right, but close—so he ignored it.

“He should have,” Somerset said. “Some of our kind you can end with wood easier than steel, but not him. It could be a geas. They can be oddly prescient.”

This time it was the young Duke of Winter who shook his head. He stood to the side of the table, out of the way, with Stúfur stationed pointedly but politely at his shoulder. Dylan didn’t get the politics of it exactly—at all—but he assumed the intent was to convey the duke was very much not a prisoner…until he needed to be.

“We vet for that,” Caolán said. His mouth ticked up in not-quite-a-smile, and he fiddled absently with a green holly pin on his lapel. “Do you know many perfectly good parties have been ruined because someone can’t refuse a boon, like ‘break out the good liquor’ or ‘steal me away.’ Never mind the High Kings toppled because they insulted the wrong witch by turning down a meal. He had none.”

“In future,” Stúfur said as he craned his head to look over Caolán’s shoulder, “might be an idea to vet for treachery, as well.”

Caolán gave the Yule Lad an unfriendly look. He took half a step aside to put some distance between them. “As far as I am aware, Hill served the Court loyally for centuries, as did Demre. They held positions of responsibility and regard. If they meant us harm, it could have been done much easier than…this.”

He gestured at Hill’s sprawled body with obvious disdain .

“He’s been poisoned,” Jars said. He stepped forward and ran his finger down the shaft before he lifted it to show the rusty mark on his finger. “Mortal blood. Saint blood. His blood.”

Dylan lifted his hand toward his nose as he remembered the jolt of pain and the taste of iron in the back of his throat.

“We don’t mix well, the Sainted and the Soulless,” Jars continued. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and fastidiously wiped the stain off his skin. A dry-as-salt smile tucked the corners of his mouth as he glanced at Somerset. “It’s a good thing one of us can read, isn’t it?”

The need to make this—all of this—abide by some sort of observable natural law pricked at the tip of Dylan’s tongue. It made no sense that blood was a poison, but other bodily fluids could be introduced with no ill effects. That wasn’t exactly something he could ask about without…explanations of things he wasn’t supposed to talk about.

So…

When he was out on a call, he took the word of friends and family if they said the patient was on something. This was the same principle. And if he believed Jars…he should probably take the needle out of the vein.

Dylan stepped back and grabbed a handful of gauze pads out of the first-aid kit. He ripped them open and layered them on top of each other.

“Somerset?” he said. “When I tell you, pull the chair leg out of his throat.”

He boosted himself up onto the table and straddled Hill’s lean body. If he’d gotten this wrong, he would have another thing to add to his conscience. He wondered if it was a bad sign that he’d find Hill’s death a lot lighter than Alice…than whatever had happened to Alice.

“Now,” he said.

Somerset kept his hand braced on Hill’s chest. He grabbed the chair leg with the other and yanked. It didn’t come out clean. Fresh tendrils of green growth and thin, hairy roots had sprouted from the dead wood; they pulled out chunks of flesh and snapped off around bone. Hill arched up off the table, his mouth open in a soundless scream.

“That explains what didn’t agree with him,” Stúfur remarked.

Blood spurted out of the wound. Dylan stemmed it by slapping the gauze over the hole and pressing it down into place. He could feel the heat of Hill’s raw flesh as it stung through the layers of cotton. He gritted his teeth and pressed down on the dressing to hold it in place .

“Someone toss me the tape,” he said, his free hand stuck out blindly. The roll smacked against his palm, and he grunted not-quite-a-thanks as he pulled it around. He ripped off a length of it with his teeth and slapped it into place. Then another to secure the other side of it. The raw edges of the dressing frayed and crisped as the blood scorched into them, but didn’t catch.

It wasn’t exactly tidy, but it would do.

Under him, Hill made a ragged, gasping sound. His eyes, black beads in a flushed face, opened wide and then sagged shut again. The long, lanky body went limp.

Dylan hissed with relief as he pulled his hand away and leaned back. His palm was sunburn red, and a handful of seed blisters had started to form in the creases.

“Ow.”

Somerset grabbed him by the waist and lifted him off the table.

That was just starting to get undignified. Dylan bit his tongue on a protest—not in front of the Winter Court, after all—and wondered if that was why so many Santas were depicted as fat. Self-defense against being picked up and put somewhere safe.

“I don’t know if I made that better or worse,” he admitted. “The anatomy is the same, mostly. but…”

He trailed off with a shrug.

“We don’t need him to live a full life,” Jars said. “Just to answer our questions.”

Dylan glanced at Hill’s limp body.

“He’s not going to do that for a while.”

“No?” Jars said. He used his broken crutch to drag a chair over and lowered himself into it. “Then his master will answer for him.”

It was a nicely veiled threat, but if Dylan had caught it…everyone had. Caolán stiffened and reached for his hip, presumably to where a weapon would usually hang. Since his belt was empty, he ended up with his hand awkwardly tucked behind his back instead.

“I admit that you were…offended…by my retinue,” Caolán said, visibly careful with the words he used. “So for now I’ll forgive you for overstepping, Yule Lad, and take my reminder in the same spirit. You don’t speak for Yule.”

There was a pause, and then Jars skinned his teeth back in a shark’s smile.

“Don’t I?”

Dylan felt the tension pull wire-taut in Somerset’s body. He stepped forward before Somerset could do anything and cleared his throat. Everyone looked at him. He let a brief, wistful thought about telling them to sort it out for themselves drift through his head, but then banished it. That ship had sailed when he took up the whip last Christmas, and it had sunk to the bottom of the ocean when the wolves had taken his friend.

“So far he’s not said anything I disagree with,” he said. “Last night the wolves attacked me and stole my friend. Today your servants tried to finish the job. I’d like to know why.”

For a second, as Caolán set his jaw stubbornly, Dylan thought it wasn’t going to work. Then Caolán grimaced and his shoulders sagged.

“That’s the problem,” the duke said. “So would I.”

Hill had been taken away by the Yule Lads, to be kept under guard until he regained consciousness. The other two members of Caolán’s retinue were being made comfortable while they conferred. Dylan had expected that to cause some sort of complaint, but if anything Caolán seemed relieved that it was only Dylan and the two Yule Lads who sat around the bloodstained table with him… Stúfur having excused himself because it was about to get boring.

“I was sent here to be a figurehead,” Caolán admitted stiffly. He frowned into the glass of whiskey he’d been given, then shrugged off his misgiving and downed the shot in one. It didn’t even make him blink. “The Winter Court wanted to make a good show for the new Santa, but they didn’t want to overexert themselves, since they don’t expect him to last.”

That was… Actually, Dylan wasn’t sure if that was news or not. Between juggling his mortal life and the investigation into who killed Santa, he’d not thought much about the Winter Court.

And since you only got a new Santa when the old Santa died…they didn’t think much about him either.

“So you weren’t expected to uncover any wrongdoing,” Somerset said.

“Don’t paint me the hero,” Caolán said. “I didn’t want to uncover anything. I wanted to while away the duration of my appointment drunk and well-fucked. I mean—”

He stopped and flashed Dylan an embarrassed look. Red crawled up his cheeks and into his slightly pointed ears.

“Um, sorry, Santa,” he muttered as he rubbed his nose .

“I’ve heard worse,” Dylan said. He could feel Somerset shake with silent repressed laughter beside him, and he kicked the other man under the table. “So what changed?”

“Nothing,” Caolán said after taking a breath to compose himself. “They continued with business as usual, so openly that eventually even I had to acknowledge something was amiss.”

“So you knew Demre and Hill were traitors?” Jars asked, a hint of silky annoyance in his voice.

Caolán warded off that accusation with an upraised palm. “No. Something amiss, that I suspected. But something of this scale? No, I had no idea it went that far. Or that Hill and Demre were involved in anything. Like I said earlier, if they wished to harm the Court, they could have done much worse than this without ever getting their hands dirty. They had the purse strings of the treasury. All it would take would be a few bad trades and that would be gone. They probably wouldn’t even get caught. Who here last checked if they were overdrawn?”

Dylan put his hand up. No one else did. He looked around the table.

“Really?” he asked. “Nobody?”

Somerset shrugged casually. “I pay someone for that.”

Jars rubbed his chin. “I just realized that we pay them for that,” he said, with a nod toward Caolán. “An audit might be in order.”

Caolán curled his lip in a smile that didn’t even try not to look fake.

“Very funny,” he said.

“Most people don’t enjoy mine and my brothers’ sense of humor,” Jars noted. “So if you didn’t suspect Hill and Demre and it wasn’t money—”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t money,” Caolán corrected him.

Jars and Somerset traded a look. It was one of the “known each other for centuries so it doesn’t matter if we like each other” moments of silent understanding. Dylan didn’t know what it meant, but he’d learned to recognize it.

He cleared his throat to catch Caolán’s attention.

“Time is running short,” he said. “So just tell us who it was and what they did, and we won’t use it against you.”

He closed his mouth harder than he’d meant as he finished the sentence, and he felt a snap of something in the back of his mind. It felt more…weighted than he’d planned. From the scowl Jars gave him, he’d done something.

Dylan decided to worry about what in the New Year .

For now it had worked on Caolán, who relaxed his shoulders and nodded quickly. “Money went missing,” he said, and shot Jars a scowl before the Yule Lad could interrupt him. “But not a lot. It was petty fraud, pennies in the grand scheme of the Winter Court. A payoff here, a car bought there, or money transferred into an account. They paid property taxes on a house out in Stillwater County. I doubt he even had to pay off my predecessors. Most of Winter’s nobles would consider the amounts beneath their notice, if they didn’t consider skimming off the top a perk of the job.”

“But not you?” Somerset asked skeptically. “You’re…what…different?”

“Bored,” Caolán corrected him. “And eager to accomplish something in my post other than warm a cushion or someone’s bed.”

“And you thought catching someone with their hand in the petty cash would do it?” Jars mocked.

“I thought—”

Dylan interrupted. “Who?”

“What?”

“You already said you didn’t suspect Demre or Hill until today,” Dylan pointed out. “But you just said ‘he,’ so you know who did it.”

Caolán tugged at his earlobe absently. “I do,” he said. “There’s also a reason he thought he’d get away with it. He’s protected by someone much higher in the pecking order than me. Or you.”

Not like the latter would be hard, Dylan thought dryly.

“I don’t think—”

“He means the changeling,” Somerset said. He snapped his fingers as he paused to think. “The one at the Christmas party. Luke…”

Caolán reluctantly corrected him. “Lucas,” he said. “He’s my brother, by fosterage, and by far our mother’s golden child. I thought that was why Demre and Hill turned a blind eye to it, to stay on her good side. Even my mother’s favor, however, wouldn’t protect them from the open treason they committed today. It might not even protect Lucas.”

“It won’t,” Somerset said as he got up from the table. The edge to his voice was as sharp and brittle as the first frost of winter. “Not from us.”

Dylan had to give it to the Brownies, their clothes did a good job of cutting the wind. He stood on the curb outside the North Pole, the flicker of neon colors splattered over the pavement and his shoes, and watched the Yule Lads get ready for a fight.

It was all black leather and the oily growl of motorbikes. The setting sun flashed off oiled blades as they were sheathed, knives and swords and a few long-shafted axes slung across broad backs.

“He’ll tell us what happened to Alice,” Somerset said, his voice low enough to be muffled by the wind, as he zipped up a leather jacket he’d dragged out of some cupboard. He stood close to Dylan, a windbreak of muscle and broad shoulders, but didn’t touch him. “It will be OK.”

Dylan stuck his hands in his pockets to keep them out of temptation’s way.

“What if that isn’t in Yule’s interest?” he asked. “What happens then?”

Somerset snugged the zip up to his collar and then gave Dylan a crooked, short-lived smile.

“There’s no Yule without Santa,” he said. “That makes getting Alice back in Yule’s best interest, since otherwise you won’t drive the Sleigh.”

“Good point.”

Somerset put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. It wasn’t quite an intimate gesture, but the weight of it was still enough to make Dylan’s stomach fill with butterflies.

“I know you want to come,” he said. “But you’d just distract us. Just this once, let me keep you out of trouble. I’ll send word as soon as we know anything.”

He was right. Dylan knew that. It didn’t mean he liked it.

“I’ll try,” he said. “And if anyone tries to hit you? Duck.”

It was the same advice Somerset had given Dylan once. It made the Yule Lad grin and ruffle his hair with one hand in quick, careless affection.

“If I let them get that close,” he said, “they deserve the shot.”

Over by the bikes, Jars tightened the last strap around his thigh and twisted to look their way.

“Skellir,” he said, his voice thinned out by the wind. “Are you coming, or do you need to take another few decades to rest?”

Somerset gave the usual grimace at the use of his old name, but took a step back from Dylan. He nodded quickly to him and then turned to head for the bike, still parked on the road, swinging one long leg over it and starting the engine .

Once Somerset was ready, Jars pulled on a pair of leather gloves and drove forward. He slowed to a crawl as he passed Dylan.

“Whatever is going on,” Jars warned, “I will find out, and some consequences even Santa can’t escape.”

Point made, he gunned the engine and took off down the road. The rest of the Yule Lads followed after him in a crooked tail.

Dylan watched them until the twilight and the light fall of snow obscured them. Then he scoffed under his breath as he turned to go back into the North Pole.

“With my luck,” he muttered, “it’s going to turn out he’s not the traitor…and I’ll be stuck with him.”

The polo mint lay in the flat of Dylan’s palm, white and round and slightly fluffy, as he extended his hand gingerly into the stall.

He’d not really expected for the strip club version of the North Pole to have stables, but they did. Thankfully the stalls had escaped being themed.

The reindeer that Dylan had approached looked at him with surprisingly easy-to-read disgust. It twitched a fuzzy ear, and shoved its nose back into the hay net strung off a hook on the side of its stall.

“I could get new reindeer, you know,” Dylan told it. “I know a guy.”

The reindeer side-eyed him with a glossy black eye and snorted into the dusty mix of vegetation that it preferred to a perfectly good mint. It showed what it knew; Dylan could do it. He didn’t know if any of his grandmother’s reindeer could fly, but she’d made a pot take off, so she could probably make it work.

“It’s a reindeer,” someone said behind him. “Not a horse. ”

Dylan turned around and saw one of the Saintborn. The tall, dark-haired man was supposedly a cousin a few times removed, or an uncle. Dylan couldn’t remember which off the top of his head.

“I just wanted to…check on them,” Dylan said. He closed his fingers around the mint and stuck the betraying hand into his pocket. “Maybe try and make an impression. I don’t think they thought much of me last year.”

The cousin, or uncle, shook out a tangle of belled straps and then slung them over his shoulder. “That’s OK,” he said. “None of us did.”

He said something to the reindeer in a language that sounded like the one Somerset swore in. The reindeer responded by stamping its foot and shaking its head, the heavy antlers noisy as they scraped against the wood of the stall.

The Saintborn chuckled and swung his attention back to Dylan.

“Don’t worry,” he said. His voice had warmed up to something almost friendly. If you trusted that sort of thing. “If the Winter Court gets rid of you after one year, they probably won’t even put your name in the annals. No one will know we even had a Santa that couldn’t tell the difference between his reindeer and one that a stripper rides onto the stage.”

He sketched a mock little bow and left. Every step he took jingled, just slightly off-key. Dylan watched him go and then rolled his eyes. He’d grown up in foster care. If the Saintborn wanted to make him feel unwelcome, they’d have to up their game. Right now they were trailing the five-year-old who’d cut her own ponytail off and blamed him.

“Seriously, though,” he said as he turned to look at the reindeer. “You couldn’t have given me a heads-up?”

The reindeer rolled its eye back at him. Then it lifted its head from its meal and stuck it over the gate to lip at Dylan’s arm. It smelled of sweaty animal, and it left green slobber on his sleeve from whatever it had been eating.

“Now you want it?” Dylan asked. He pulled his hand out and offered the mint again. This time the reindeer took it and crunched it up with every sign of enjoyment. It let Dylan reach over the steel-shod top of the gate and pet its nose. “Great. At least the stripper’s reindeer likes me. That’s almost like progress.”

He fed the reindeer another mint and then turned to go. His hands were coated with a film of reddish-brown hair, and he peeled the felted pads off as he walked. Halfway to the door he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. It caught him off guard; he’d not been sure he could even get calls here. It was technically in Belling, but it was also the North Pole… And if Santa took phone orders, how come everyone still wrote letters?

Dylan fished his phone out of his pocket to answer it.

“I found her,” Joe said. “Do you have a pen?”

“No,” Dylan said. “Can't you just text me?”

“I don’t want any record of this,” Joe said. “I could lose my job. Get a pen. ”

Dylan tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder as he turned to hunt for something to write with. It didn’t take him as long as he’d expected. Someone had left the world’s tackiest Christmas pen, with a Mrs. Claus whose clothes slid off if you turned the barrel upside down, lying next to a dented bucket on a table.

It would do.

Dylan picked it up, clicked the top of it a couple of times, and tested the ink against his hand. It took a couple of dry starts but eventually scrawled an overlapping circle on the heel of his palm.

“OK,” he said, once he was sure it still worked. “Tell me Irene’s address.”

Joe cleared his throat and hemmed and hawed for a second. The dithery act ran long enough that Dylan was worried the ink was going to dry up again. Then Joe recited the address in a quick, low voice.

23 Adelaide and North. Apt. 14 C.

The C bled into the creases around Dylan’s knuckles, but it was still legible enough. He clicked the pen closed and set it back down where he’d got it, propped up against the barrel to give Mrs. Claus her dignity back.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Wait,” Joe blurted, and Dylan hesitated before lowering the phone from his ear. “If you find Alice, tell her I’m sorry. Fuck. Only good thing I ever gave her was the kid.”

Dylan didn’t want to feel any sympathy for Joe…a thief, a peeping tom, and a bad husband. Somehow he still did. Maybe it was the shared guilt.

“Alice will be home for Christmas,” Dylan said. “Tell them not to worry.”

Joe sniffed and then blew his nose on something. “You shouldn’t lie to a kid about this sort of thing,” he said. “They don’t need false hope.”

“I know. Tell them Santa promised.”

Dylan hung up mid-‘Wah?’ and turned to look at the reindeer. Not one of his team or not, it was still a reindeer at the North Pole.

“Any chance you can fly?” he asked.