Winter Break

by Ivy Hearne

  For the first time since this thing had taken over my body, I was silent inside my own head as I watched it open the door to Headmistress Gayle’s office and step inside.

  For the most part, I had tried to avoid this office since Ms. Gayle had taken over the position of headmistress. Mr. Finnegan had been headmaster when I was admitted to the school—something that Ms. Gayle took every opportunity to remind me she had opposed.

  Since right after Finnegan had been abducted and apparently tortured until he was broken, I had done my best to stay out of his old office. It made me feel guilty for not having recognized the role Shane played in his abduction sooner. It didn’t matter that I knew that Headmaster Finnegan had been the one to assign Shane as my tutor in the first place. Guilt doesn’t work that way—it doesn’t really pay attention to reality.

  My body closed the door behind me. Us? Anyway, closed the door and leaned against it, my gaze taking in every detail. For some reason, the enormous walnut desk and shelves took up quite a bit of its interest.

  And then it began a quick, systematic search.

  The thing controlling me made an attempt to hide the fact that it had been here, putting things back more or less where they had been, and apparently checking for magical traps as it went.

  One of those traps zinged my finger, and the shock of it made me realize that I could still feel everything—physically, I mean. I wasn’t walled away from my body, not entirely. I still had some connection to it.

  That could be very helpful, I suspected. And it gave me the beginnings of an idea. As the outside of my body continued rifling through Headmistress Gayle’s belongings in her office, inside my body, I began attempting to trace the route of the magic it was using.

  The problem was that I had no idea how magic worked from a practitioner’s perspective. For that matter, I barely had any idea how my own psychic abilities worked.

  But I began to pay attention to the physical sensation of the magic passing through me. And soon, I started to be able to trace it. I followed the trail the magic left behind all the way out my hands as they flickered through the motions required, watching as it connected with the incantations my mouth whispered.

  Knowing where it ended up allowed me to backtrack, to trace it to its point of origin.

  And I was stunned to discover it emanating from the very center point of my being.

  I don’t think this is coming from outside me at all.

  Yet another thing to discuss with my instructors if I made it out of this alive and in control of myself.

  But that point of origin was also a surprise because when Ms. Gayle had been in charge of the magics class, she had insisted that students pay attention to their thoughts. Everything she discussed had to do with the intellect as if magic emanated from the head. But whatever this was came from what I felt, not what I thought.

  “Well. Isn’t that interesting?”

  The sound of my own voice seemed loud in my ears, especially when I wasn’t the one speaking through it. It startled me out of my internal investigation, and I focused again on what was happening in Ms. Gayle’s office. I glanced down to discover that my hands were reaching into one of the desk drawers and pulling out a velvet case.

  I flipped it open, revealing a necklace with a large, emerald green stone—though to be honest, I would not have been able to tell the difference if it had been something that wasn’t a real jewel.

  “It’s about time,” I heard my body breathe out. Then, I reached in, unclasped the chain, and slipped it around my neck.

  As the pendant settled against my chest, the thing inside me sighed aloud in relief. “Oh, that’s better.”

  And as it spoke, a jolt of something powerful slammed through me. My head dropped back, and my eyes closed for a long moment as my controller—my enemy, I reminded myself—reveled in the sensation of power throbbing through my veins.

  Finally, it snapped the empty case closed and dropped it back into the drawer, sending out a tiny bolt of energy to relock everything before tiptoeing to the door and preparing to leave.

  I hoped someone would see me leaving, demand to know where I’d been and where I was going, question where I’d gotten the gaudy necklace I was wearing.

  But it didn’t happen. Instead, I slipped outside as quietly as I had moved through the entire building.

  Outside, the sun had set, and I kept to the shadows as I moved across campus, down the drive, and out to the road.

  And when I got there and turned downhill, I knew exactly where I was going.

  Right back to town.

  Back to where this it all started.

  I was going back to Santa’s house.

  Chapter 8

  At least now I knew why I had been targeted—I was probably the first Academy student who had come to town since this thing had realized where the necklace was and started making plans to steal it

  I think part of me was glad to learn that I wasn’t special. I was just available. Convenient.

  Though if I have my way, whatever is controlling me right now is going to wish that it had never targeted me at all.

  That didn’t stop my fear over the fact that whatever had control of my body was still trotting toward town just after sunset on Christmas Eve.

  For the first time since I had arrived at the Hunters’ Academy, I missed my family intensely. My parents were so normal.

  But it was also the first time that I had considered the question of genetics and the role they played in magic. If the magic I felt my controller using really was from me, then did that mean that one or both of my parents was a magic user? Or at least had the potential to be?

  I wanted to rub my eyes or my forehead to help me think, but instead, I just kept moving down the mountain, running on the switchback roads that curved back and forth down to town.

  The moon was already shining down on the snow by the time I got to the square with the Christmas display.

  Somehow, I wasn’t surprised when I got to the tiny gingerbread house where Santa had been sitting and saw children filing in from all different directions. They didn’t stand in line this time.

  This time, they stood in a circle, equidistant part, their gazes blank and empty.

  The part of me that was still actually me wanted to cry for all these little ones, these small children drawn out to the cold of the night, many of them without coats, a couple without shoes, even. I wanted to reach out to them, to comfort them.

  I wondered how many of them were trapped inside their bodies like I was, under someone else’s control.

  I wondered how many of them were sobbing inside their own heads.

  My body came to a halt, and I stood several feet away from the circle of twenty or so children, none of them older than maybe nine or ten.

  My heart ached at the thought of them being used this way. I wanted was to scoop them up in my arms and take them home, back to their families. Back to their lives before monsters had entered them.

  And in that instant when I most felt for them, when I ached for their plight, a surge of power flashed through me, and I gave a single, lurching step toward the circle.

  Toward the children I wanted to save.

  It wasn’t a step I’d asked permission to take.

  And for the first time since the imp had jumped on me from a tree and dug its long, sharp nails into my skull, I felt like I really could fight back.

  I wasn’t sure how yet.

  But I was going to figure it out in time to save these children.

  I didn’t have much time, I was sure of it, but I needed to deal with the director of this little scene.

  The imp came trotting around from one side of the Santa house first. Its squashed little face shone with an unholy glee—an expression that I would have initially assumed was all its own, had I not heard my own voice giggling at Tony’s dismay after his apparent rejection.

  The creature scuttled up beside me and squatted down in the snow, looking up and grinning at me.
Its fingers trailed through the snow, occasionally stabbing down into the ground as it watched the children as if reminiscing about every single child’s possession.

  But even if the tiny monster next to me was enjoying it, the imp had not created the situation.

  I let the rage at being controlled, and seeing the children controlled, build up inside me. With every swell of fury, I gathered more emotion and shoved it down into the center of who I was.

  A whole new range of emotions flooded me when Santa stepped out of the house and into the circle of children. He scanned the circle, a broad smile on his face, his hands on his hips. He was dressed in a typical American version of Santa Claus—red suit, white fur trimming, boots, beard, and all.

  When he caught sight of me, his joyful laugh rang out. I had never wanted to hurt someone as much as I wanted to hurt him at that moment.

  “I see you got our girl to come back with my gift,” he said, his deep voice echoing across the otherwise silent square. “Good job, Blitzen.” He strode up to me where I stood paralyzed, stepping up so close that I could smell him—and it felt like he should smell evil somehow, like he had broken a compact by smelling like pine trees and looking like Santa Claus.

  But it wasn’t even a compact with me.

  It was one with these children. As Santa reached around my neck and unclasped the pendant my body had stolen for him, I let my rage at betrayal of the children’s trust swirled around inside me, adding to the flames of the fire I was stoking in my heart.

  Santa wrapped the chain around his own neck and fastened it. The emerald began to glow.

  As he turned away from me, he paused to glance at the imp, then flicked his fingers toward me dismissively. “When the ceremony is over, you can have this one,” he said. “She’s too old for me.”

  If I could have attacked at that moment, I would have.

  I should’ve known it was Santa from the beginning. Of course, the vacant act in the house had been just that—an act.

  I should’ve realized it as soon as I read that the imp was a servant creature.

  As I gazed around the circle, though, it struck me that all these children and one recalcitrant teenager were an awful lot of bodies for the imp to hold mind-control over.

  Slowly—so slowly that I hoped the imp wouldn’t notice—I began searching within me for the threads binding me to the imp.

  It was something I hadn’t thought about much, but one thing Erin had told me when we were both studying together one night—a night when I was absolutely dismayed at my inability to do any kind of magic—was that giving magic a structure made it easier to handle.

  I flashed to a memory of that conversation now, wondering if my thread metaphor would work in this case.

  I focused all my energy inward, sliding through an almost infinite number of threads in my imagination. And then I found them. Red lines running all through me that glowed with the same malignancy as the imp’s power

  I had to be careful now. I had no doubt that if he noticed what I was doing, either the imp or Santa would take care of me. Permanently.

  So I began slowly severing myself from those threads. One at a time. So carefully.

  While I did that, Santa began walking in a circle around the children, chanting in a language I didn’t understand.

  About a quarter of the way around, he stopped and slid a knife through the palm of his hand, opening it up so that when he held out a fist over the white snow, the blood dropped in big red globs, landing and glittering black under the moonlight. I wanted to frown, but I couldn’t.

  More than that, I wanted to jump in and intervene when he stopped at a little girl, around four. She was bundled up, so she was warmer than the other many of the other children. But she was still terrified. I could see it hovering behind her eyes.

  And that sweet girl didn’t even cry when Santa ran his knife blade through her palm, too.

  It was sickening, and if I’d had control over my body, I would have tried to grab her.

  As it was, all I could do was continue snipping at the threads that bound me to the imp, and hope that I would be able to save these kids before something horrible happened.

  Chapter 9

  Before something horrible happened.

  I couldn’t believe I’d had that thought. Something horrible had already happened—these children’s bodies had been taken over and brought here. And now, the Santa monster was slicing their tiny hands open and bleeding them onto the snow in some complicated order I didn’t understand.

  When he stopped in front of me, my surprise was a strong enough reaction that my body twitched a little. I had assumed when he said I was too young for him that it meant I’d be left out of this “ceremony.”

  Apparently not.

  Oh, no. What else is he planning for these children after the ceremony?

  His big hands were callused, the way I would have expected a real Santa’s to be—but they were also freezing cold and impersonal as he whisked the knife across my hand.

  The sting of the knife’s cut caught up with me a few seconds later, but I couldn’t even pull my hand away from him to cradle it.

  I watched for a second as my blood dripped out into the snow. Then Santa dropped my hand and moved on and I went back to snipping internal threads.

  But time was running out. Santa began going back through the circle, slicing the hands of the children he’d missed the first time around.

  His chant, slow and measured before, began to pick up a faster pace.

  In the center of the circle we made, red and green lights began playing under the snow. At any other time, I might have thought they were festive, even pretty.

  Now, however, all I could think was that the red was malignant, the green nauseous.

  They were the colors of sickness, of infection.

  And they were growing brighter as if moving up from someplace deep in the earth.

  Or maybe from another dimension.

  Just like that, I knew what I was facing.

  Oh, hell.

  Literally.

  He was one of the portal-summoning demonic creatures I’d read about in my books. Whatever he had planned for these children, it was nothing good. In fact, it was something so bad that everything I’d read about them—not nearly enough, apparently—said that if they opened a portal, a hunter’s best bet was to let them go ahead and use it. Without following them.

  I needed to get free of the imp’s hold and...

  What?

  What could I do against the imp and the evil Santa impostor?

  As the lights under the snow spun and flickered and grew larger and closer, I knew it didn’t matter. I had to try something.

  With a final sweep of the imaginary blade I had been using to cut the threads, I swept them all aside and pushed as hard as I could against the creature holding me in its mental grip.

  The imp hadn’t been paying any attention to me, focusing instead on the light show beneath our feet. I shoved against its hold on me, and it stumbled at the same moment that I staggered forward, out of the circle inscribed by our blood and into the center of Monster Santa’s spell.

  I hadn’t brought any of the kinds of weapons I had been training with before Shane had proven to be one of the Lusus Naturae. Headmistress Gayle had decided that I didn’t need any more private tutoring, so those lessons had stopped.

  All I had was myself.

  But for the first time in hours, I actually had myself—I was in complete control of my body and I was determined to stay that way. With a screech, I spun around and lashed out against the imp with a kick aimed at its face.

  I connected with something, felt bone crunch when I hit, but I didn’t wait to see what kind of damage I had done before I began running around the circle, shaking the children, trying to snap them out of their mesmerized stupors.

  Behind me, Santa screamed, “Stop her, you useless idiot!” I assumed he was talking to the imp but didn’t turn around to look.

&nb
sp; “Wake up,” I urged the children, one after another. “Wake up. Wake up and run.”

  None of them responded.

  The lights were spinning so fast that I knew they had to be close to the surface now.

  I could not leave these children here to learn what happened when the portal opened.

  Red fog drifted into the corner of my vision, and I realized it wasn’t real at all, but the imp trying to take control of my mind again.

  Terror and rage and anguish swirled inside me, and I spun around, shoving at all the children at once with one single thought: WAKE UP!

  All around the circle, the children staggered, some of them crying out, others falling to their knees.

  Among the pandemonium of the children regaining control of themselves, I froze. I didn’t know how I could possibly get them all away in time.

  As if being drawn out from the very center of my being, that place where I had built a powerful fire to use against these monsters, a silent wail erupted.

  Help me!

  For the first time ever, I knew I had sent out a psychic blast. I had to hope it would reach up the mountain, all the way to Souji and Ms. Gayle, to Tony and Colette, to anyone who was up there and could hear me.

  But I didn’t have time to wait.

  Spinning around to face Santa, I held my hands straight out in front of me.

  “You are not welcome here,” I bellowed, not knowing where the words came from or why I chose them—not at first. But I had moved around the circle he had created initially, and when I had awoken the children, I had somehow claimed that circle as my own.

  As if he were being physically shoved out of it, Santa slid across the ground, the force of it knocking him off his feet.

  I turned to the oldest of the children, a little girl who looked about ten and a boy of about the same age, and said, “Get the little ones out of here.”

  “Where should we go?” the boy asked, frowning.

  Randomly, I pointed at the steps of the library. “Keep everyone together over there.”

  Stranded outside his circle, the Santa monster howled his outrage. The imp, still able to move into that circle, eyed me warily.