“Who—” Dylan started to ask. He realized who ‘Gull’ had to be at the same moment Somerset narrowed his eyes in annoyance. Dylan raised his hand in a quick ‘I got it’ gesture. He thought about lying for the third time, but the words stuck in his throat.
Whatever was going on, Somerset had saved him. And he was the only one who seemed to have any idea what was happening.
Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out the watch. He held it out in the palm of his hand.
“Nothing,” he said with a shrug. Snow melted on the glass face and trickled down onto his fingers. “Just this.”
Somerset reached out, and Dylan had to fight the urge to snatch his hand away. It wasn’t his grandfather’s watch, but it looked like it, and Dylan was used to protecting it.
Instead of taking it, though, Somerset grabbed his wrist and pulled him closer.
“The watch,” he said, his voice almost reverent. Then his face darkened, and he tightened his grip on Dylan’s wrist as he looked up at him. “Thisis what Gull had?”
“Where else would I get it?” Dylan asked.
He tried to tug his wrist away, but Somerset ignored him. It was… Dylan had plenty of fantasies about Somerset North being a big, strong man around him, but the reality put his hackles up. Since he couldn’t take his hand away, he closed his fingers into a fist around the watch instead.
Somerset didn’t seem to care.
“Did he give it to you?” Somerset asked intently.
“I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you mean,” Dylan said, his voice prickly at the insult. The rhythmic thud of bodies had stopped. It might be a good thing, but it probably wasn’t. Dylan glanced over his shoulder and saw the door had more cracks. Some big enough for the Wolves to reach through and dig at the wood with their bloody fingers. “Are they going to get through?”
“Eventually,” Somerset said. He snapped his fingers to get Dylan’s attention. “This is important. You’re sure hegaveit to you? He didn’t drop it, or it slipped out of a pocket or—“
“No.” Dylan hunched his shoulders as he tried to ignore the sounds of the Wolves tearing their way through the door like beavers. He closed his eyes and thought back to the night before. “He put it in my hand; he asked me to hide it for him. But… I think he thought I was you. He meant to give it to you.”
Somerset scowled, the corners of his mouth turned down, and dropped Dylan’s wrist.
“What hemeantdoesn’t matter,” he said. “Only what he did. Come on.”
He turned and stalked away over the roof. The tails of his coat flapped dramatically behind him in the wind as the snow swirled around him. Dylan hesitated, baffled as to what Somerset planned to do next, but in for a penny…
One of the Wolves knocked on the door behind him. It was oddly polite, and for some reason, Dylan turned to look.
The first Wolf had his face pressed to the door. It was bruised and bloody from his fall from the stairs, but patches of green growth wriggled from the split skin and stitched it back together. The eye that Dylan could see was bright green, almost like it was lit from within.
“This isn’t your fight,” the Wolf pointed out, the rough voice suddenly cozening. It forced its fingers through the gnawed crack in the door, its knuckles ripped open with splinters. “Tell us where Santa is; we’ll let you go.”
It waited, the tip of its too-red tongue caught between its teeth.
Dylan thought about it. He squeezed his fist tight around the watch; the face and buckle dug into his skin. If it was what they wanted, he could toss it across the roof and make a run for it while they scrabbled in the snow. After all, whatever it looked like, this wasn’t his grandfather’s watch.
He had promised, though.
It had been an off-hand promise to someone he didn’t owe anything to, but… There were Wolves here who fell six floors and got back up. Doors that locked with a bloody hand print.
Fairy-tale rules… And in those stories, people kept their promises.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
The Wolf widened the eye he could see. Dylan had the unexpected impression that it was trying and failing to do puppy dog eyes. It was weird on that battered, vine-stitched face.
“You don’t trust us?” he asked. “Fine, but you think you can trust him? The first-born Yule Lad? Santa’s own attack dog? He has blood on his hands that won’t ever come off and black on his soul. Do you really think he’ll not kill you in Santa’s name?”
Dylan laughed, a choked snort of desperate humor. He didn’t mean to. It was such a bizarre thing to say, that was all. As if Santa was the boogeyman here.
The Wolf’s face twisted in quick, feral anger. He snarled and threw his weight against the door, the fingers he’d shoved through the crack clenched around the splintered edges so tightly that it drew blood.
