Dylan smiled, a tight twist of his mouth that didn’t have much humor in it. You need tocareabout doing something wrong to feel guilty.”
“I didn’t say we felt it,” Somerset countered smoothly. “Just that we are it.”
Dylan folded his lower lip between his teeth, snorted, and walked out. The door swung shut behind him. Light from the bar glowed in a thin, reedy line through the crack their visitors had left. Somerset frowned at the damage as he walked around the desk to grab his coat from the back of his chair.
Only to close his fingers on empty air instead of cashmere. He curled them into his palm and let his hand drop back to his side. Last time he’d seen his coat it had been in a plastic bag on the floor of the hospital room, blood smeared wet over the plastic. It was probably in a dumpster now.
He needed a new coat, but the inconvenience was worth the reminder. A resentful Santa was better than a dead one.
For some reason just the idea of that made Somerset’s chestcreakwith sudden, painful tightness. He rolled his shoulders impatiently as he tried to shrug it off. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen dead Santas before. In fact, he’d seen them all until the latest one.
That didn’t help.
Somerset made an annoyed sound under his breath.
He braced his feet on the floor and reachedthrough. Ice bit down through his shirt and muscle, straight down to the bone. He’d been born on a mountain, weaned on snow melt, and he rarely felt the cold. This was different; it felt hostile in a way that true winter would never turn on one of its get. It scraped Somerset’s skin raw and hardened the meat.
It was Yule magic, but the old kind. Back when it was cruel and the wolves ran with the Sleigh instead of behind it.
Somerset gritted his teeth and focused onwant.The smell of fresh wool, with the hint of blood that the dry cleaners could never get out. The weight of the coattails around his legs and the…warmth against his chest when Dylan squirmed into it…
No. Focus on the itch of cuffs against his wrist and the smooth, round discs of old horn or bone, same difference, that served as buttons.
His hand closed on something. In the cold he couldn’t tell what it was, if it was soft or hard…or bloody. There was a reason that Yule rarely used the sack for its old purposes anymore. Mistakes had been made.
Not by him, though.
Somerset pulled his hand out. His coat, or the closest to it his memory could draw, came with it. Frost matted on the collar and dropped from the sleeves in chunks onto the floor as the heavy length of fabric dropped back into the world.
It smoked from the cold, the collar and cuffs darkened as it smoldered.
Somerset gave it a quick shake and a slap to dislodge most of the ice. Once it was clean enough, he pulled it on. It felt the same. He ran his fingers down the row of buttons until he found the nick taken out of the edge of one. All the details were there.
It would do. He didn’t really need a coat, but it gave him somewhere to keep his things.
He took the knife off the desk and sheathed it under his coat. Then he grabbed his keys.
It was best this way. There were only days until Christmas Eve. It was no time for Santa to take any sort of risk. That was what the Yule Lads were for, to do what Yule either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Somerset had sent Dylan away for his own good.
That had worked last year…
Chapter Seven
Dylan did his bestto hunch down into his hoodie as he loitered in the stoop of theJust-as-Highand endured the flat crackle of on-hold Muzak through his phone.His dramatic exit from Somerset’s office had gotten him this far before he remembered he’d still not replaced his car, and his pride wouldn’t let him go back in. Not yet, anyhow. It might have to throw in the towel soon, though, since Dylan wasn’t dressed for the weather. Hopefully the person he’d called in the hospital’s billing department would pick up soon.
The season had turned harsh overnight, with storms predicted to hammer the region up until Christmas Day.
Dylan would have felt guilty, but he doubted it was down to him. So far he’d failed miserably to achieveanythingwith the power of Yule other than his duties on Christmas Eve…which had more to do with the tools of trade than anything he did. More likely the wolves had brought winter with them. It had been a rough year last year too.
The instrumental version of some ten-year-old pop classic cut off into a human voice. Dylan tuned back in long enough to learn his “call was important” and then let his mind drift again.
At least no one would expecthimto fix the weather. That was something the city was prepared for. It was always a white Christmas in Belling—the city boasted about it—so they were ready for it. Most people put it down to freak weather patterns due to unique geographic features…but they probably didn’t know it was the anchor point for the North Pole in the real world.
Dylan’s brain caught on that for a moment, but it couldn’t hang onto it. It was one thing to pretend that it was all a dream when he was the only one caught up in it. That wouldn’t work now that other people had been dragged in, because the consequences to them if he couldn’t fix this would be very real.
It was the mortal world, he reminded himself grimly as he rubbed his arm, and with the wolves involved it could getverymortal.
The recording of a slightly out-of-tune piano cut off into a bored monotone of someone’s voice. It took Dylan a second to realize it wasn’t another taped interjection, it was who he’d wanted to talk to.
