“I’m going to need more than that from you, buddy,” Patrick says.
“I said my name isHobart,not Buddy.” Hobart crinkles his face in cartoonish disgust, leaning away. “As if I would ever be as careless as Buddy. How could you mistake me forhim?”
I shake my head. These two are sorely ineffectual communicators, which makes sense given how Patrick kept his unemployment from me for five whole days. Could he not have asked me to unplug the vacuum for a minute so we could talk? How hard would that have been?
“How rude!” Hobart adds.
“Hobart, I apologize for my husband again, but please focus. We don’t know any Buddy or anything about your beef with him. All we know is that Santa broke into our home, transformed into a grumpy much-younger man, and then left his sleigh on our roof and his cloak on our floor, so what do you mean that hewasSanta Claus? Who’s Santa Claus now?”
“No one,” Hobart says with head-of-his-class snootiness. “That cloak is enchanted. Its magic masks the wearer as Santa or hiscultural equivalent in other cities and countries and continents across the world. What you see is what you believe.”
“So there could be more than one Santa Claus?” Patrick asks.
Hobart tsks. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s only one cloak. Whoever wears it has the job. The magic bonds to you.”
Enchanted cloaks? Magic bonds? I can’t wrap my head around any of this.
“How was that guy able to walk right out of here if the cloak is bonded to him?” Patrick asks, sounding nearly intrigued and excited. It’s the same voice he uses when he’s walking me through his budding ideas for a new project.
“We really don’t have time for me to explain the complex magic system of the North Pole to you,” Hobart says, producing an ornate golden pocket watch from the front of his overalls and cringing at the time. He shakes his head. “I need you two to make a very important decision very fast.”
The banging on the roof interrupts us again. The sound is so loud I fear those flying reindeer might come falling in on us at any second. Hobart taps his fingers on his chin, clearly antsy. “Decision? What sort of decision?” Patrick asks.
Hobart nods. “Put on the cloak or cancel Christmas.”
“You’re joking.” I look to Patrick, who is possibly seriously considering this. “He has to be joking, right?”
“I’m afraid I’m not joking. On Christmas Eve, if the enchanted cloak gets taken off, time stops for exactly one hour.” Hobart toys with that golden pocket watch, which has a similar dusty golden aura to it as the cloak that’s still balled on the floor. “If nobody puts it on by the stroke of sixty minutes, then the reindeer are rerouted back to the North Pole and the rest of the gifts go undelivered.”
“Why don’t you put it on?” I ask, voicing the obvious.
“I’m an elf! There are rules! Which again, I don’t have the time to get into right now.” His eyes sparkle with sudden pleading. “I onlyhave forty-five minutes to get one of you into the cloak, prepped on sleigh navigation, and off to New York or we’re done for.”
I can’t believe the entire fate of Christmas is hanging on our shoulders. Why us?
Well, I guess there’s an easy answer: because my husband nearly made an omelet out of the last guy.
“We’ll—” Patrick starts to say, probably about to step up and play the hero. I love that he wants to be a reliable helping hand, but what kind of husband would I be if I just let him bond with an enchanted cloak without talking it through first?
“Sidebar!” I shout. “We’llsidebar. First. Give us five minutes to discuss this.” I’m marching toward the stairs as I whisper, “Our room.Now.”
11ADVENTURE AWAITSPATRICK
Santa. Is. Real.
It doesn’t matter at all that Quinn just sounded frustratingly like Calvin Carver when he said “Our room.Now.”
I’m too awestruck to care.
When we make it to our bedroom it’s as if all my senses have sharpened past their peak. The world is candy-cane crisp. Everything from the framed photos of us in college displayed on the dresser to the overstuffed built-in bookshelves with Quinn’s novels and my coffee table books is in high-definition. Like my glasses’ prescription got an upgrade.
Normally, when I stumble into our room at this hour after a late night of working on some project or another, the queen-sized bed calls to me. Right now, I’ve never been more awake.
“We have to do it,” I say. The warmth and lure of the enchanted cloak we’ve left in the foyer sizzles in my fingertips still.
Quinn is half-heartedly making the bed. “Pat, listen to yourself. You’re out of your mind. The only things we have to do are fix up this house, cook a ham, and be ready for your parents to arrive by threeP.M. tomorrow. Whatever else happens is not our business.”
I empathize with Quinn in this moment because I know I threw us in the deep end by agreeing to host Christmas. And I know he’s under immense stress at work. And Iknowhe’s unhappy with me for not telling him I lost my job. But… but…
