None of it felt like a delusion, though. And even though it was the wrong answer…
“I think maybe my grandfather was Santa,” Dylan blurted out. He watched Alice’s face fall but pressed on to try and explain. “From what people said, he never wanted to be Santa. He had a wife, a family. I think he only took the position to try and keep the peace, to do his duty. Only nothing changed. He couldn’t change things. So when my mom and dad died, he knew he couldn’t take me back to the North Pole—”
“Dylan,” Alice said, pity in her voice. “Listen to yourself.”
He couldn’t. If he did, he’d hear what he was saying and stop. That wouldn’t help him. Real or hallucination, he needed to get this out and think it through.
“—he had to leave me, but he gave me the watch. So I’d… so whatever happened, they couldn’t just make the Santa they wanted. Maybe they had something to do with my family’s death—”
“They?”
“The Wolves,” Dylan said. “The Winter Court. Whoever killed Santa.”
Alice’s mouth twitched. She squeezed Dylan’s hand with her fingers.
“OK,” she said, swallowing before she dragged up a tight smile. “Maybe that’s what happened. It might have been, but it doesn’t matter, though, does it?”
“I…”
“You’re here,” Alice pointed out. She patted his hand. “No more Somerset. No more elves. You’re safe from whatever might hurt you.”
“You mean from myself?” Dylan asked.
She was going to lie—Dylan was pretty sure about that—but she changed her mind. “Maybe,” she admitted. The screen of her phone flickered with a message. She glanced down at it and then back up. “Does it matter?”
“Is that Wylie?” Dylan asked. It would be late for the kid to be up on a school night. He should have been tucked up in bed while he waited for the elf on a shelf to bake a cake.
Alice hesitated. Then she shook her head.
“After you called me, I called Detective Lund,” she said. “I thought you might be in trouble… and I wasn’t wrong.”
“Detective?”
“Lund. She’s in charge of the investigation of what happened to your mystery man,” Alice explained. “They think that and what happened at the hospital are linked. So she asked us to contact her if any of us heard from you. Once she gets here, we can go back to Belling, get you to the hospital… just to get you checked over and— ”
The door to the gas station slammed open. This time, the bells over the door didn’t get a chance to make a noise as they were ripped from their moorings. A tall woman, bundled up against the weather, stepped inside.
Dark eyes flicked around the gas station quickly, from the ATMs to the menu board and then over to Verne. She dismissed him and looked at Dylan.
“Mr. Hollie,” she said and swallowed hard, a tic twitching at the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry about this.”
Three Wolves came in behind her on the Winter wind, discarded trash tumbling around their feet. The others stayed outside, predatory shadows that slid past the windows and watched the roads.
They might not be able to fly, but that didn’t matter if they could get a lift.
Verne disappeared into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him. The snick of a lock being snapped into place sounded very loud.
“What’s going on?” Alice asked. She slid off the stool and stepped in front of Dylan, one arm out to keep him behind her. “What are they doing here?”
Lund licked her lips. “They’re like the FBI,” she said. “This is their jurisdiction.”
“What?” Alice said. “That’s bullshit. I know them. That’s the bachelor party from last night. What the fuck—”
Dylan grabbed her arm. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “Alice, listen to me, it wasn’t a delusion. Do they look human to you?”
One of the Wolves laughed at that question and peeled his lips back in a smile that had no warmth in it. The thorns from his gums had woven around his teeth, black at the roots and white at the tip. Briars had split out of the veins on his hand, strings of blood dried on his skin, and knit together around his fingers to create claws.
“Do we?” he asked.
