It was the same advice Somerset had given Dylan once. It made the Yule Lad grin and ruffle his hair with one hand in quick, careless affection.
“If I let them get that close,” he said, “they deserve the shot.”
Over by the bikes, Jars tightened the last strap around his thigh and twisted to look their way.
“Skellir,” he said, his voice thinned out by the wind. “Are you coming, or do you need to take another few decades to rest?”
Somerset gave the usual grimace at the use of his old name, but took a step back from Dylan. He nodded quickly to him and then turned to head for the bike, still parked on the road, swinging one long leg over it and starting the engine.
Once Somerset was ready, Jars pulled on a pair of leather gloves and drove forward. He slowed to a crawl as he passed Dylan.
“Whatever is going on,” Jars warned, “I will find out, and some consequences even Santa can’t escape.”
Point made, he gunned the engine and took off down the road. The rest of the Yule Lads followed after him in a crooked tail.
Dylan watched them until the twilight and the light fall of snow obscured them. Then he scoffed under his breath as he turned to go back into the North Pole.
“With my luck,” he muttered, “it’s going to turn out he’s not the traitor…and I’ll be stuck with him.”
The polo mint lay in the flat of Dylan’s palm, white and round and slightly fluffy, as he extended his hand gingerly into the stall.
He’d not really expected for the strip club version of the North Pole to have stables, but they did. Thankfully the stalls had escaped being themed.
The reindeer that Dylan had approached looked at him with surprisingly easy-to-read disgust. It twitched a fuzzy ear, and shoved its nose back into the hay net strung off a hook on the side of its stall.
“I could get new reindeer, you know,” Dylan told it. “I know a guy.”
The reindeer side-eyed him with a glossy black eye and snorted into the dusty mix of vegetation that it preferred to a perfectly good mint. It showed what it knew; Dylan could do it. He didn’t know if any of his grandmother’s reindeer could fly, but she’d made a pot take off, so she could probably make it work.
“It’s a reindeer,” someone said behind him. “Not ahorse.”
Dylan turned around and saw one of the Saintborn. The tall, dark-haired man was supposedly a cousin a few times removed, or an uncle. Dylan couldn’t remember which off the top of his head.
“I just wanted to…check on them,” Dylan said. He closed his fingers around the mint and stuck the betraying hand into his pocket. “Maybe try and make an impression. I don’t think they thought much of melast year.”
The cousin, or uncle, shook out a tangle of belled straps and then slung them over his shoulder. “That’s OK,” he said. “None of us did.”
He said something to the reindeer in a language that sounded like the one Somerset swore in. The reindeer responded by stamping its foot and shaking its head, the heavy antlers noisy as they scraped against the wood of the stall.
The Saintborn chuckled and swung his attention back to Dylan.
“Don’t worry,” he said. His voice had warmed up to something almost friendly. If you trusted that sort of thing. “If the Winter Court gets rid of you after one year, they probably won’t even put your name in the annals. No one will know we even had a Santa that couldn’t tell the difference between his reindeer and one that a stripper rides onto the stage.”
He sketched a mock little bow and left. Every step he took jingled, just slightly off-key. Dylan watched him go and then rolled his eyes. He’d grown up in foster care. If the Saintborn wanted to make him feel unwelcome, they’d have to up their game. Right now they were trailing the five-year-old who’d cut her own ponytail off and blamed him.
“Seriously, though,” he said as he turned to look at the reindeer. “You couldn’t have given me a heads-up?”
The reindeer rolled its eye back at him. Then it lifted its head from its meal and stuck it over the gate to lip at Dylan’s arm. It smelled of sweaty animal, and it left green slobber on his sleeve from whatever it had been eating.
“Now you want it?” Dylan asked. He pulled his hand out and offered the mint again. This time the reindeer took it and crunched it up with every sign of enjoyment. It let Dylan reach over the steel-shod top of the gate and pet its nose. “Great. At least the stripper’s reindeer likes me. That’s almost like progress.”
He fed the reindeer another mint and then turned to go. His hands were coated with a film of reddish-brown hair, and he peeled the felted pads off as he walked. Halfway to the door he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. It caught him off guard; he’d not been sure he could even get calls here. It was technically in Belling, but it was also the North Pole… And if Santa took phone orders, how come everyone still wrote letters?
Dylan fished his phone out of his pocket to answer it.
“I found her,” Joe said. “Do you have a pen?”
“No,” Dylan said. “Can't you just text me?”
