Holly North

by Emma Savant

  I stared at him. “Christmas—the entirety of Christmas—is one old man’s distraction?”

  He shrugged. “Basically.”

  He hopped down from the platform. I put my hands on my hips and faced him.

  “The entire Workshop exists because he didn’t like being the Guardian of the pole and needed to kill time?”

  “More or less.” Felix grinned and put his hands in his pockets. He rocked back and forth on his heels, unable to be still for more than a moment. “His Christmas journey is part of his annual check to be sure Jack hasn’t found another way to expand his territory. Bringing presents to the kids is just something he does to make the trip more interesting.”

  I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. But then, I hadn’t been able to wrap my mind around much of anything since I’d first gotten here, so why should this be any different?

  “Elves immigrated here because Santa needed help,” he said. “Plus the North Pole has a great quality of life. It’s warm inside the dome because Santa’s from Turkey originally and hates the cold, and so he creates a Mediterranean climate inside it. You should stick around and see this place in summer.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “For real.”

  “I’m totally serious right now,” he said.

  “Wow.”

  It seemed unlikely and absurd—and yet, it made perfect sense, and I was almost surprised I hadn’t figured it out earlier.

  Not that I could have figured it out earlier, because the whole thing was insane.

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “No,” Felix said, raising his eyebrows at me. “It’s cool. It’s really, really cool.”

  “Pun not intended.”

  “Pun always intended.”

  He held up a hand. When I didn’t react, he rolled his eyes, grabbed my hand, and high-fived himself.

  “You now know as much as any elf here,” he said. “You’re basically a citizen now. Welcome to the North Pole.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be a citizen? It’s not like things could get any weirder.”

  Felix grinned, and an icy chill gripped me as the lights went out.

  Chapter 19

  I screamed. Felix’s hand slipped from mine, and I heard his body thud to the floor. I dropped to my knees and felt around in my pockets for my phone. I jammed the button, but it was dead.

  “Felix,” I said.

  My heart pounded so loudly I could almost hear it in my ears. I reached out into the darkness, trying to figure out where he’d fallen.

  Only the light from the pole’s bulb interrupted the pure blackness of this windowless room. It cast a dancing blue and red Aurora Borealis onto the wall.

  “Felix? Felix!”

  My hand landed on him, and I clutched at his clothing to be sure he stayed close. He was still breathing, but he felt cold—as cold as the room.

  “He’ll be fine,” a voice said behind me.

  I jumped up to a crouch and swiveled to face Frost, who was smiling down at me with triumph on his translucent bluish face.

  No, not translucent. He was here this time—here and solid and carrying a chill that made my teeth chatter.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He bowed a little and tipped an imaginary hat, then laughed in a low, cold voice that made my skin crawl.

  “I must say, Miss North, I underestimated how much you wanted to get home. I thought it would take you at least a few days to get this door unlocked.”

  I glanced behind him. He gave off enough of a cool blue glow that I could just make out the door behind him. It was closed, but of course Felix hadn’t locked us in. Neither of us had dreamed that Frost was here to follow.

  Stay calm, I silently coaxed myself. Play it cool. Play it as cool as him.

  “Santa didn’t think you’d managed to get into the Workshop,” I said.

  I stood and put a hand on my hip, fighting the urge to wrap my arms around myself to stay warm. I glanced down at Felix.

  “It’s freezing in here,” I said. “Can you warm it up a little?”

  “For you?” Frost said. He reached out a slender-fingered hand as if to touch my face. I smacked it away. He laughed. “Of course, my dear.”

  The temperature of the room rose a few degrees, from below freezing to barely above it.

  “See? I’m terribly good at compromise.”

  Frost’s eyes flickered up and he looked hungrily at the pole behind me.

  “I really thought it would take longer,” he said. He looked at me, and his eyes flashed with a blue light. “Christmas came early!”

  He moved past me like a ghost and stepped up onto the platform in one stride. He swung his long legs over the railing and approached the pole.

  I looked down at Felix. He was coming to; I could see his dark form shifting slightly in the dark. I crouched and shook him gently. He blinked at me, his eyes only visible through their reflection of Frost’s blue glow.

  “Hush,” I hissed as quietly as possible, and stood back up before Frost could notice.

  He was standing on the platform now with his hand outstretched. The pole trembled, and I made a silent wish that it would blow up in his face or melt him into a puddle of glowing blue goo.

  His hand closed around it.

  The instant his icy skin touched the pole, my stomach fell through the floor. I’d been able to feel the pole’s power in this room before. Now, I felt the energy shift slightly, like a wind changing direction.

  It was back in the hand of its creator, and its power sharpened in response.

  Frost lifted the pole from its golden stand and raised it into the air. The lightning and fire sparkled and threw eerie red light onto his face.

  Slowly, staring at the pole in wonder, he turned to face me. His eyes glinted with reflected light.

  “You have my gratitude, Miss North,” he said.

  I had to get out of here. I had to figure out how to escape and get to Santa. He was the only one who could fix this.

  “You promised me a ride,” I said. My voice was full of false bravado. I trembled inwardly at the thought of him seeing through it. “I need to get my things first.”

  “All in good time,” Frost said.

  He held the pole up and slowly, his body lifted into the air. He hovered over the railing and sank to the ground as gently as a snowflake.

  “I keep my promises, generally, and you’ve been an enormous help. For now, though, I need to escape. I am sorry about this. I’ll be back soon.”

  He raised the pole and slammed it down on the ground. A wave of icy air swept through me, and the room went dark again as I crumpled to the ground.

  Chapter 20

  I woke to the dizzying sensation of someone shaking me by the shoulders, none too gently. The movement made my head throb, and I groaned and tried to shrug them off before I bolted upright with a gasp.

  Lights filled the circular room. In the center, the platform stood empty.

  I groaned and drew my knees up so I could rest my head on them. Mary was kneeling next to me, and Santa was crouching next to her trying to wake Felix.

  “How could you be so stupid?” Mary shouted.

  She had never shouted at me before. I winced away from her.

  The air was back to normal, but my skin still felt cold, and my bones rested inside me like rods of ice. I shivered, and the shivering soon took over until it was all I could do.

  Santa’s warm hands descended onto my shoulders. As he held them there, a dense feeling of heat spread from his hands and all through my body. It was better than sinking into a hot bath. My chattering teeth stilled as my limbs begin to thaw.

  “How could you be so stupid?” Mary repeated, almost hissing this time. “You left the door unlocked.”

  “I didn’t know we were supposed to lock ourselves in,” I said.

  I was getting tired of Clauses yelling at me over things that weren’t my fault. I glared at Mary and leaned over to shake Felix. His eyes fluttered open, b
ut he didn’t look like he could tell any of us were there, not yet.

  “You knew Frost wanted in,” Santa said.

  “A tiny bit of common sense,” Mary said. “That’s all it would have taken. How did he get in? What did he say?”

  I ignored her. Felix groaned and rolled over, then curled into a ball. Santa thawed him out, too, but he stayed curled on the floor.

  It was probably safer to groan and stay in the fetal position than to try to talk to Mary or Santa. I wished I’d thought of it first.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, leaning over him and trying to shield him a little from the furious Clauses.

  It seemed like years ago that Mary had been handing me hot cocoa and defending me from Santa’s irrational anger. Now, even she was glaring at me like I’d just murdered her favorite reindeer.

  “Why didn’t you lock the door?” Mary said.

  “He has the pole,” Santa said, like I didn’t understand that, like I hadn’t been standing there minutes ago while Frost made my blood freeze in my veins.

  “I know that,” I snapped. I whirled on them both. “It’s not my job to protect the pole.”

  Santa looked like I’d slapped him. I may as well have. His face drained of blood and he walked away and started pacing again, quickly, as though he couldn’t be in the same space as me without wanting to run.

  Felix looked up at me. A small frown crossed his features.

  “Yeah,” he said, a little too late.

  He sat up, then swayed a little. I grabbed onto his elbow to steady him.

  He looked at Mary, then yelled after Santa, “Yeah, you know what, it’s not our fault Frost got in.”

  “You left the door unlocked!” Santa bellowed.

  “Maybe Frost wouldn’t have gotten in the Workshop at all if you’d actually dealt with the problem instead of pretending like everything was fine,” Felix said.

  “The last thing we needed was to send the North Pole into a panic,” Mary said.

  “We’re not children just because we make toys for them,” Felix said.

  The empty pedestal sat in the center of the room, and the presence of all that vacant air weighed on us.

  Felix rubbed the back of his head and scowled at the vacant platform, and Mary watched Santa as he paced with her eyebrows drawn together.

  “It’s too late to stop Frost getting in,” I said. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do now.”

  Santa snorted. I scrambled to my feet and ran over to him.

  He was angry, yes, and much bigger than me, and probably in possession of the kind of magic that could make me disappear in half a second.

  He was also Santa Claus, and I had a feeling anyone who would try to soothe their existential boredom by making toys for kids probably wouldn’t kill me, even if he felt like it.

  I grabbed his arm and gave it a hard shake.

  “Santa,” I said. “You cannot give up now.”

  “Of course I can’t,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we have a snowball’s chance in hell of fixing this. Hundreds of years I’ve guarded this pole, and then I was foolish enough to trust the keys to someone else.”

  “That was seven decades ago,” Felix called.

  Finally, one of the elves had hinted at their age. I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to see it, but any rational person would have assumed he was younger than me. I turned back to Santa.

  “I think I can help you.”

  He scoffed. I put my hands on my hips.

  “Or not,” I said. “I guess I can just leave you to your own devices here and we can wait for the world to go into another ice age. Would that make you happier?”

  Mary walked over to the platform and grasped the railing with both hands. She stared at where the pole should be. We all stared. The emptiness was palpable.

  “How can you help?” Mary said.

  I let out a deep breath.

  “Frost trusts me. At least a little. He thinks I let him in on purpose. I didn’t,” I added, when I saw Santa’s eyebrows start to furrow. “He doesn’t realize that, though. He said he’s going to come back to take me home. Maybe—I don’t know, you can have a security team waiting for him?”

  I waited to hear whether this was a great idea or the stupidest thing I’d come up with all week. It was definitely the most dangerous, and I felt a little sick just thinking about it.

  Santa rubbed his bearded chin and scowled in thought. Mary pursed her lips, then tapped the railing with her manicured nails.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Felix said.

  “Particularly as it’s the only one we’ve got,” Mary said grimly.

  “Santa?”

  I looked toward him, waiting for the deciding vote.

  “We don’t have a choice,” he finally said. He ran a hand down his beard, and I could see the tension in his shoulders. “You’ll need to contact Frost.”

  Chapter 21

  Flames crackled in my fireplace. I leaned against the mantel and stared down at them.

  It had been a long day—the kind of day that should have taken years, given everything that had happened since I’d woken up this morning. I was exhausted and just wanted everyone to clear out of my room so I could sleep.

  Santa sat in front of the fireplace, holding a small mirror in a golden frame. He tapped its edges absently.

  “You’re sure you understand how this works?” he said.

  “It’s not that complicated,” I said. “Think about Frost, then talk to him when he shows up.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Noelle corrected. She stood behind Santa and looked disapprovingly at me, like somehow this was all my fault. “You’re a Humdrum. We don’t even know if a magic mirror will respond to you.“

  “Then one of you can call him,” I said. “Just duck out of the frame before he shows up.”

  I dropped into the other chair. Santa and I were sitting opposite from how we’d sat in front of this same fireplace the night I’d met him. It felt like several lifetimes had passed since then. I never would have imagined, that night, that I’d be sitting here now, attempting to contact the Prince of the North through a piece of home decor.

  Noelle crossed her arms. She’d brought the mirror at Mary’s request, but I had no idea why she was involved in all of this. Santa and Mary had been so cautious about letting any of the elves know exactly what was going on with Frost, but Noelle had just happened to be standing outside the elevator when we’d left the pole’s vault, and somehow she’d ended up in my room with the rest of them.

  I narrowed my eyes. Frost had gotten into the North Pole, and I wasn’t entirely sure he’d done it without inside help.

  “Can I have the mirror yet?”

  Santa looked up as if he’d forgotten I was there. He sighed and stood up.

  “I want a word,” he said.

  I followed him out into the hallway, leaving Mary, Felix, and Noelle in my room.

  He closed the door behind us and glanced up and down the empty hallway.

  “You don’t have to call him,” he said. “Just because Mary and I got upset at you doesn’t mean—we weren’t upset at you.” He frowned under his beard. “We were angry at ourselves. At me, particularly.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll still call him, though.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Why are you doing this?” he said.

  Something about the words were softer than I’d expected. For some reason, it made my defenses go up. I folded my arms.

  “I don’t know.”

  He waited for the rest of the answer with a sincere curiosity in his eyes.

  Why was I doing it? Because I wanted to prove to him that I hadn’t let Frost in? Because I wanted to prove to myself that I could actually do something that mattered in this world? Because I thought I was the only one special enough to save the whole planet?

  Every reason felt more pathetic than the last.

  “I don�
�t know,” I repeated. “I’m just trying to stop a nuclear winter. I like to eat and not freeze to death, you know?”

  He shrugged. “If you’re sure.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded before marching back into my room. I held out a hand for the mirror. Noelle held it out to me, but I had to jerk it to get it out of her grasp.

  “Everyone get down,” I said.

  They acted quickly; we’d already discussed this. Felix lay down behind the sofa like he was about to take a nap there. Santa and Mary ducked into the closet, and Noelle, after giving me a glare that said she wished I wasn’t doing this, sank down to sit behind the sofa next to Felix.

  I turned so all the mirror would capture was my face and the mantel behind me. I grasped the ornate golden frame with trembling hands and focused as hard as I could on Frost’s narrow face and the way his presence had filled me with an impenetrable cold.

  “Jack Frost,” I whispered.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to sharpen my attention on him.

  He cleared his throat. I jumped and my eyes flew open. He was there, inside the mirror, looking back at me as though he was my own reflection. The room behind him was icy and full of shadows.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  The air in my room stayed warm, and the heat from the fireplace continued to gently toast the back of my legs. Whatever his powers were, they couldn’t all travel through the mirror. I felt my shoulders relax.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Just wasn’t sure if this mirror thing would actually reach you.”

  “Even Humdrums have access to some of our toys,” Frost said. His voice was sardonic, and he stretched some of his words out into something that was almost a drawl. I hadn’t noticed it before, or the way his eyebrows and pointed nose twitched every time his face shifted expressions. I’d been too cold before, and too frightened.

  I took a deep breath and tried to match his nonchalance.

  “You owe me a ride home,” I said.

  “Demanding little thing, aren’t you?” he said. “It’s been, what, three hours? Have a little patience.”