“Leave me alone,” she said in the direction of the hand gripping her arm. She could see a Delbert-sized opening snow drift created by the blower. He had apparently barreled through. He had probably even left tracks all the way back to the invisible sleigh. Delbert really was not the brightest elf in the workshop.
“No,” he said, tugging on her arm. “We’re going to get in trouble.”
And he couldn’t afford any more trouble.
“If something goes wrong, I’ll tell the truth,” she said. “This is all my idea.”
Behind her, the blower sounded louder. It was moving in a different direction. For some reason, that made her nervous. She started to turn—
When an arc of cold snow coated her. Her and Delbert.
8
MARSHALL WAS MOVING too fast. He hadn’t been thinking. (Well, he had been thinking. Of Julka, not of anything else. Julka and coffee and the fact that she had found him, all on her own, and that she seemed nervous and she let him hold her hand and jeez, he felt like he was thirteen, only he hadn’t felt this way when he was thirteen because he hadn’t been able to get up enough nerve to talk to a girl, let alone touch her, or do anything until he was much, much older. College, really, and then only because he had met girls who were also interested in math and didn’t mind awkwardness—and there he was, not thinking again.)
Anyway, he hadn’t been thinking about blowing snow or the powerful machine vibrating under his hands. He had been hurrying so he could get to that coffee, and hurrying never really did anyone any good. He kept going in this kinda fugue state until he heard the blower go crunch, and then make a growly noise that wasn’t normal.
That caught his attention. He had probably hit some kind of decorative rock—which he really had to remove come spring. He backed the blower up, turned it sideways to get it out of the awkward position it was in, and then turned again—and walloped poor Julka with a mound of snow.
His face flushed so hot he could have powered the entire block. He shut off the blower so he could apologize (even though she did look cute, standing there in her red not-elf costume, with snow frosting her hair, eyelashes, and cheekbones) and that was when he realized that there was something else beside her.
Somehow the snow had formed a weird kinda snow man next to her. Only it looked vaguely like an unfinished Santa. Marshall had never seen the snow do anything like that, and he figured it was probably like the ways that clouds formed animal shapes—at least, he thought that until the Santa shape moved and cursed in definitively not Santa-like language.
“Hey!” the Santa shape said in a burly male voice. “We’re standing here.”
Its (his?) violent movement made half of the snow fall (off? Was there something to fall off of?), leaving a partial Santa shape that reminded Marshall of nothing more than a half-eaten unfrosted Santa sugar cookie.
“Shh, Delbert,” Julka said, not moving her lips. But she wasn’t as quiet as she clearly thought she was, because Marshall heard her.
“There really is someone there?” he asked.
“No!” she and the male voice said in unison. Then Julka turned her head and glared at the half-Santa shape.
Marshall looked at him (it?) too, and realized that just past it was a roundish opening in the snow drift, and footprints in the snow that came from the yard somewhere.
This time, Marshall couldn’t blame it on tiredness or on not having food or on his imagination. This time, he knew he was seeing something odd, and he knew it for two reasons:
One, other people in the Burger King had seen Julka. (And besides, he’d been struggling with ketchup-flavored burps ever since he left, so he had clearly been to Burger King.)
And two, if they had seen Julka, and she had come here (and she had, he knew it, because he could still conjure the sensation of her hand in his), then she was talking to the half-Santa shape, and that meant she saw it too.
In fact, that meant that she knew what it was.
“Someone want to tell me what’s going on here?” Marshall asked.
“No,” the male voice said.
“Delbert!” Julka clearly reprimanded the voice, but Marshall couldn’t tell what for. For talking? For standing there? For being rude?
“Just…just…just fix it,” she was saying as if that thought broke her heart.
“I can’t,” the voice (Delbert?) said. “I had most of my S-Elf privileges removed.”
Julka rolled her eyes. “Okay, then,” she said, grabbing the air in front of her and pulling.
As she did, the air waved, like a tablecloth in the breeze. Marshall wasn’t sure what caused that effect. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. But his mind didn’t linger on it long, because as she tugged, a round man appeared.
He had a white beard and white hair, and he was wearing sweats that clearly needed washing, and a too-small T-shirt that said, Lobstermen do it with nets. He looked like Santa but not really.
“You’re not supposed to see me,” this Delbert guy said to Marshall.
“Well, I think the reindeer missed that sleigh,” Julka said, rolling her eyes.
She clearly wasn’t making the comment to Marshall, who was still having a bit of trouble comprehending all of this.
“It’s not my fault, really,” Delbert said. “I’m supposed to have the power to make you not remember seeing me, but they took my privileges away from me, and now I can’t do that. I mean, how can you blame me?”
“I can blame you,” Julka said softly.
Marshall wanted to ask who “they” were, and what the “privileges” were, but he wasn’t sure he would like the answer. The last time he heard the words “they” and “privileges” in an incoherent context, “they” referred to the mental health hospital staff and “privileges” meant walking the hospital grounds.
Which he didn’t want to think about. Because if Delbert was off the hospital grounds, did that mean Julka was too? And how come Delbert had looked invisible? No one could become invisible. Marshall firmly believed that. If he didn’t, he would need to be led along a sidewalk on the grounds, heading toward the hospital proper.
“So,” Delbert was saying to Marshall, “can you just like pretend that you didn’t see me? Because if an unauthorized someone ever sees me again, then I’m going to be sent home and never be allowed out again.”
There it was. Hospital grounds, couched in the vague terms. Marshall closed his eyes and sighed. No wonder people emphasized the power of “nice” where Julka lived. “Nice” meant that folks with mental health issues had to learn how to get along.
It explained why she had looked so happy when she had come into Burger King. Freedom did that for folks.
It also explained why she was here. She had nowhere else to go, except back.
And somehow, he was going to have to be the one to get her there. How on Earth was he supposed to find out where she had come from without tipping his hand? The only clue she had given him was that she was from up north, but he wasn’t even sure he could trust that. Did folks with mental health issues have a good sense of direction?
He had no idea.
He held up his hands as if he was being robbed. Maybe he was. Robbed of his delusions.
“I’ll make sure no one knows I saw you,” Marshall said to Delbert. “I promise.”
“You don’t have to promise him anything,” Julka said. “He screwed up. He shouldn’t have gotten out of the sleigh.”
Then she clapped both hands over her mouth as Delbert slapped her arm.
“I didn’t say that,” he said. “I didn’t. If they blame me for that, I’m going to give you up. I mean it, along with all that weird behavior. And fraternizing. You shouldn’t fraternize. I told you nothing good would come of it.”
Fraternize. Apparently he meant with Marshall. Apparently, these two weren’t even allowed to talk to people.
Marshall let out a small sigh. A perfect capper to a perfectly bad week. He leaned back, shut off the snow blower, and tucked the
key in his pocket. Then he almost put his hands up again. That robbing metaphor stuck with him, probably because he felt like he’d been robbed.
“Look, you guys are clearly far from home, and in a strange place and I’m sure that’s not comfortable….”
Lord, he was babbling. Julka was staring at Marshall with such disappointment that he felt worse than he had a moment ago. He stopped talking altogether.
He had encountered yet another situation that he didn’t know how to handle. He had no idea how many more of them he could take.
9
JULKA’S BREATH CAUGHT. Marshall thought she was crazy. She had been warned about this reaction in all of her Greater World classes. If she talked too much about the North Pole or exhibited too much magical behavior, the people of the Greater World would dismiss her as a crazy person.
But she didn’t want Marshall to think her crazy. She had liked the way he looked at her before, the interest in his eyes, the way that he smiled at her, the touch of his hand on hers. She had liked that a lot. More than a lot, actually. She had been looking forward to coffee and conversation, and stretching those 35 houses into five days worth of work, and getting to know Marshall and maybe putting in a request to meet the folks who ran the New England advance team—the entire team, not just the Entry Access Quality Control section. Maybe she could be assigned here permanently. She liked the snow, after all.
She hadn’t realized all of those dreams had been in her mind just since lunch until Marshall looked at her like she wasn’t right in the head. If she could righteously punch Delbert right now, she would. But he had just been trying to save her from herself.
And failing.
But he was correct: it was her fault. She had wanted a bunch of things that were forbidden to her. And she was going to get into trouble for it.
Then she frowned.
She was going to get into trouble for it. Anyway. That’s the word she was missing. She was going to get in trouble anyway, so why not go for broke?
It was better than finding an S-Elf who would make Marshall forget he even met her. She had momentarily been willing to follow that rule, and the pain in her chest—in her heart—had been severe.
She liked this man. She more than liked this man. This man felt—she didn’t even have the word. More appropriate? Better? Right? He felt right for her.
So she was going to go for broke. And if they decided to punish her at the North Pole, so be it. Nothing could feel worse than that moment when she had asked Delbert to make Marshall forget him. Her. Them.
Make Marshall forget them.
She shoved the invisibility shield at Delbert, and hit him with it in the stomach. She liked to think that was an accident, but it probably wasn’t.
He caught it and his hands immediately disappeared. Hers didn’t when she held the dang thing, but Delbert’s did. Of course, someone who didn’t even believe in magic probably wouldn’t notice the difference.
She extended her hand to Marshall. “Come with me.”
He looked at her cautiously, that what’s-she-going-to-do-now look in his eye, the one that people got when she misbehaved. He hadn’t used that on her before.
She had to change the look by no longer earning it.
“Please,” she said.
He glanced at Delbert, blinked, and frowned. Marshall had clearly seen the missing hands. In fact, Delbert was holding the shield in front of his legs, so from the waist down, a circle of him had disappeared, leaving only the outside of his thighs, his ankles and his shoes visible.
No one could miss that. She wasn’t sure how anyone could justify it to themselves, but no one could miss it.
She extended her hand just a little farther. Marshall eyed it like it might bite him, when before he had clearly enjoyed touching her.
She held her breath.
He stepped forward and took her hand firmly in his own. “All right,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”
10
HE DIDN’T KNOW what he expected—maybe that she would lead him to his truck or to the vehicle she had stolen (because if she had escaped from an institution, she couldn’t have one of her own, right?). The one thing he did know was this: He hadn’t expected her to lead him through the hole in the snow.
She dragged him around Delbert, and she walked into the hole. Marshall followed.
The first thing that he noticed was that the hole was a Delbert-sized hole, and that the footprints—heading toward his driveway—were Delbert-sized footprints. But they were the only pair of prints. Marshall saw no sign of Julka’s dainty prints, the ones she was now leaving on the way to—what? He couldn’t tell. But he did see some flat deep marks in the snow, marks that looked like they were made by giant skis.
He felt a shiver run down his back that had nothing to do with the cold. Was someone playing a prank on him? Was this a trick to get the terrible investment banker out of the neighborhood? And if so, why do it now? Why not wait until Christmas?
He was feeling paranoid. Heck, no. He was paranoid. But he had to admit, if only to himself, that this afternoon—ever since he had seen Julka in Burger King (if not before) was extremely strange.
Still, it would be impossible to do such a thing in this storm, on the eve of Halloween.
He didn’t say anything. He let her pull him to the marks in the snow. Of course, he did. And he felt really sad. Because he had liked her more than he had liked any woman he ever met, more than he had liked anyone he had ever met. He had found her intriguing and beautiful in her non-elfish way, and just odd enough to make her interesting to him.
And he had sacrificed that for her, so she could have a good trip here, thinking the memory would be enough for him. Then she had shown up here at his house, and he actually had hope for something more, something that would be—he didn’t know, more than coffee, surely, more than a simple afternoon talking.
He only knew that he could have gazed in her eyes forever.
He reached her side only a second later. He wondered where the joke would go now.
Then she reached up and mimed opening a door.
11
THE SMELL OF peppermint and spoiled veal wafted out of the sleigh, so strong that it made Julka choke. She hadn’t realized just how filthy the interior of the sleigh had gotten.
But, she was going to get in trouble anyway, so she was in all the way. She was taking this risk.
Even if no one else wanted her to.
Marshall no longer looked at her like she was crazy. Now he looked at her with that sadness he’d had at the Burger King. The sadness he’d had when they talked about his life. And that made her feel even worse.
“Come with me,” she said one more time, and climbed the flight of invisible steps into the sleigh.
12
HE STILL HELD her hand. His hand rose up as she climbed a set of steps he couldn’t see.
He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t see them; he just knew that he couldn’t. Usually he could see clear plastic or whatever it was that made the steps impossible to see against that backdrop of new fallen snow. But his eyes were really off this afternoon.
He couldn’t see a thing.
Half of Julka seemed to disappear into the air. But he was holding her hand, so he knew this wasn’t some optical illusion.
He felt around with the toe of his boot until he found the invisible stair, then he put the bottom of his boot on it and slid his foot forward. The toe hit the next stair, but it still looked to him like he was standing on nothing.
The illusion made him oddly uncomfortable.
The smell of peppermint mixed with rotting garbage made his stomach turn. When he reached the top of the third step, he could see Julka, standing inside a—what? He didn’t have the word for it. The interior of a small RV? If it was an RV, it was a 1950s Christmas-themed RV crossed with a 1950s version of a spacecraft or an airplane cockpit.
He felt dizzy, and he realized he was holding his breath.
It was that stenc
h.
Then he leaned back out of the door, and peered at the exterior.
There was no exterior. Only a blank spot where there should’ve been a view of the hedgerow between his property and the neighbor’s, and the curve in the road, and from this vantage, the tip of another neighbor’s house.
“Come on,” she said for the third time.
Third time’s the charm, his mom always used to say. He wondered what she would think now. His mom hadn’t had a lot of imagination. She didn’t even understand imaginary numbers, which made his mathematics brain hurt. A mathematician needed imagination, and his mom (face it, his parents) had none.
Although they had been proud of him. Investment banker, venture capitalist. They hadn’t lived to see the collapse, didn’t know about his loss of reputation, had no idea how lonely he would become.
They had always imagined him with a family—his father had said as much before the cancer took him—and that was their only disappointment. They had passed on before seeing grandchildren.
Or seeing their son lapse into complete insanity.
He stepped inside.
And immediately hit his head on the top of the door. The pain sent a shiver through him. He grabbed his forehead with his free hand. The door’s opening had to be really low for him to hit his head because he was not quite six feet tall. And everything in America was built to accommodate a six-foot tall man.
But Julka had an accent, and she had made it clear she wasn’t from here.
She was from up north. And she had looked a bit confused when he mentioned Canada, so maybe it wasn’t that up north, but a different up north.
And she was wearing a red Santa/elf costume.
His stomach twisted—and not from the smell. Oddly enough, he was getting used to that. His stomach twisted because he was getting suspicious.
Santa Series: Three Stories of Magical Holiday Romance Page 4
