“Are you okay?” she asked, gnawing at her lip. She looked more serious than usual.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, wondering if she could tell what he had been up to the night before—and that morning. “Why?”
Tulip breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s just that Pat said that the new Santa went to talk to you. When you didn’t come in on time this morning, I was worried that he’d done something to you.”
“Like what?” Billy asked before he could stop himself. Tulip looked at him with a strange expression, and Billy couldn’t help the blush that crawled up his throat and spread over his cheeks.
Tulip gasped. The sound was filled with so much glee that Billywas honestly worried for her.
“Oh. My. Grinch. What happened?” Tulip grabbed his arms and stared into his eyes with an intent expression that could rival any alpha’s. “Tell meeverything!”
Billy pulled away. He bent down and picked up his rods, trying to hide his horrible blush, turning his back on Tulip. He lifted the shaping rods to resume work on his seven-speed bikes, getting ready to pull the magic out of the castle and into the rods to make the bikes.
“No! Billy, wait!” Tulip called out, but it was too late. Billy had pulled the magic into the rods, but rather than the weak current he was used to, magic rushed into the rods with enough force to blast him off his feet and hurl him five feet into the air.
Falling to the floor, ears ringing, Billy landed hard on his back. He stared up at the ceiling, Tulip’s head popping into view.
“That’s what I came over to tell you!” she said, sounding very sorry. “The new Santa channeled enough magic into the castle to last us the rest of the year. I’ve never seen anything like it! You need to be very careful when you pull it into the rods.”
Billy blinked, wishing he’d had that information a minute earlier. He let Tulip help him to his feet, shifting his body to make sure he was okay. His back hurt, and he’d have one hell of a bruise on his butt, but he was basically fine. Elves were hardy creatures, and it would take a lot more than a bang and a fall to injure Billy.
Looking down at his ruined rods, Billy sighed. Pat wasn’t going to be happy with him about this.
On the plus side, he wasn’t blushing any more.
Oh wait. Yes he was. Tulip was giving him the same expectant stare, and his cheeksflamed.
When she saw his expression, she cackled, the sound loud and sharp like she was some kind of evil witch. Which he suspected she was.
“Tell me all about it while we get you some new sticks,” Tulip said, taking his arm and leading him away. Billy sighed, knowing that he might as well admit defeat, and started telling her what had happened.
“Wait,” Tulip said when he came to the part about the playroom. She looked thrilled. “He put a Krampus room in Santa’s castle? That’s…brilliant. Did he put you in a sack and beat you with his stick until you’d learned your lesson?”
Billy huffed, walking faster and forcing Tulip to jog to keep up with him. “No, he didn’t,” he said, secretly wondering if that was something that Nick would be into. “And you know very well that Krampus hasn’t been allowed to punish children for over a thousand years.”
Tulip laughed, and Billy shot her a confused stare. She hugged his arm closer and cackled again.
“Billy, Krampus might not punish children, but elves are fair game. What do you think it means when people say that you have to have ‘special urges’ to want to live on the mountain?”
Wait, what?
“What do you mean?” Billy asked. Tulip shook her head and looked like she wanted to laugh, but was trying to be nice.
“They like to be punished. You know, how we like to get together and sing songs and dance? They do that to, only with whips and chains and a scary alpha dressed in head to toe leather. This can’t be news to you, can it?”
Billy was reeling. He knew that the elves on the mountain were weird, to put it frankly, but that that weirdness was of a sexual nature was new to him.
“Billy! How could you not know this?” Tulip asked. They had reached the magic tool workshop, and Tulip stopped with her hand on the door. She was obviously waiting to go inside until Billy answered the question.
“I don’t know!” he said defensively. “I’ve never been curious about what they do up there. It’s cold and dark and sad—and they spend all day mining for coal. Why would I think that there was something else going on?”
Billy was feeling slightly hysterical. Tulip laughed at his expression and opened the door, stepping inside while he wondered how he could have missed the fact that everyone on the mountain was apparentlykinky.
Giving himself a shake, his body still sore, Billy followed Tulip into the magic tool workshop. This was where they made the shaping rods, the snow globes, the magic mops and all the other magical tools that were used in the castle.
There were four workers in the workshop, and not a single one of them lifted their heads when Tulip and Billy entered.
“Hello!” Tulip said, her voice bright. The magic tool workshop personnel were notoriously grumpy, and Billy hoped that they weren’t catching them on a bad day. “We need two more shaping sticks. Magical overload, you know how it’s been today.”
