“Subject?” Ethan held up a hand as if he could ward off this whole thing.
“She’s running experiments on you as we speak,” Nick whispered from the side of his beard.
Lux rolled her eyes. “I’m running them on you too, wish-boy. I will figure out your wish situation so we can stop disrupting Christmas.”
“There is nothing wrong with my wish situation.”
Lux glared over the top of her glasses.
Ethan cleared his throat uncomfortably.
Nick’s eyes turned mischievous. Ethan pulled back against the wall, expecting an explosion.
“I have a theory,” he started. “I believe Moose Hollow is the Bermuda Triangle of Christmas Wishes.”
Lux lifted her nose. “You will not distract me with the beautiful math it would take to even quantify an experiment that would validate that statement.”
Ethan blinked rapidly at her science talk. The woman looked seriously tortured because she couldn’t pull out a calculator.
He was physically trapped between them, unsure which one was more strange. A man dressed like St. Nick who offered to grant Christmas wishes or a woman who spoke like Einstein and poofed out of thin air.
Maybe shewasan Einstein–didn’t he have a son or something? Mrs. Holland would be appalled at Ethan’s lack of knowledge about one of the most intelligent men who ever lived. He’d even done his 5th grade biography on Einstein.
Lux pulled a laptop out of her messenger bag. “Why don’t we use visuals to speed up the explaining process?” She brought the screen to life and turned it so Ethan could see.
“I’m going to assume Nick told you there were two wishes.” She hit the space bar, and two spools of ribbon appeared on the screen.
“Ribbon to represent the wishes?” Ethan pointed, his eyebrow lifted.
Lux shrugged. “Naturally.” She hit the space bar again, and the ribbons raced across the screen toward one another. “Both wishes have been granted. What will happen sometime in the next three hours, is that they’ll run into one another.” She paused. Onscreen, the ribbons slammed together and then, like curling ribbon gone mad, began twisting around, over, through, and under one another. “That means one or both of these people will miss out on Christmas.”
Ethan lowered his brow. “I don’t want to be the reason for that.”
“Welcome to my world,” quipped Nick. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and crossed one black boot over the other.
“Are you sure?” Ethan asked.
Nick pointed at Lux. “She’s a computer genius. She’s sure.”
“I’m an everything genius,” Lux corrected without taking her eyes off Ethan. “Although I can’t quite map out the wishes.” The ribbons were a complete mess, and the countdown showed three weeks before Christmas.
“Yikes!” Ethan pressed his lips together. “Have fun unraveling that.”
“Oh, we’re not going to unravel it.” Lux smiled at him. “You are.”
“That’s why I need your wish,” Nick explained. “Tell him the other cool part.”
Lux nodded quickly. “This is a new phenomenon, so I’m totally stoked about it.” She sucked in a quick breath. “Because the wishes are so tangled, we have time for you to make multiple wishes and test them out.” She locked eyes with Nick. “You can do that, right?”
Nick tapped his fingertips together. “I’m pretty sure.”
Lux’s forehead wrinkled with concern.
Ethan rushed on–the idea of having an actual Christmas wish made him feel like a kid again. These two were something else, but there was a definite energy around them. “So if I wish for, say, a Ferrari, and I change my mind and want a Camaro?”
“What is with you guys and Ferraris?” asked Lux. She flicked him in the forehead. “Think deeper!”
He blinked and rubbed the spot she’d made contact with.
