Lux glanced at the bottle. “Anti-nausea smelling salts. Although, the name is a misnomer because there’s no salt in the bottle.” She shrugged and capped it, looking much less green than she had a moment ago. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Jacob nodded and blinked. “She told me that she knew.”
“Interesting.” Lux adjusted her glasses and then pulled her laptop out of the messenger bag slung across her body and started typing. “We were working under the assumption that it was just you.”
“Does that make a difference?” Nick asked.
“If we add the weight of the… And then adjust for the…” She typed and worked, ignoring them. Neither man needed to fill the silence, so they waited.
Lux yipped, making both Nick and Jacob startle. “It makes a big difference.” She flipped the computer around, and they watched as the infinity sign grew smaller each day until the two sides collapsed, and there was a tremendous explosion.
Nick folded his arms. “Did ya have to put in the sound effects?”
Lux blinked at him. “I thought it helped get the point across.”
“The point being…” Jacob rolled his hand in the air.
“The timeline will collapse on itself, and we all–” Nick mimed an explosion while mimicking the sound that had just played on the screen.
Snowflakes tickled across his cheeks, and his eyes widened. “The snow.” He pointed to the sky. “This is part of that boom!” He threw his arms out to the side. “Isn’t it?”
Lux pulled up the weather channel. “Look at this!” Jacob ran around his truck, and they all crowded in to look at the screen. “Moose Hollow is the epicenter of this storm.” The clouds swirled around on the screen like a tornado but without the funnel.
“It’s not just Christmas at stake anymore.” Lux frowned. “I don’t understand why it does this, though.” She buried her face behind the screen and click-clacked away, muttering things like “space-time continuum” and “Einstein’s rainbow bridge wasn’t this complicated.”
Nick plucked at his bottom lip, also deep in thought, but less brainy about it. “Maybe I should talk to Lauren.”
“No!” Jacob and Lux barked at the same time.
Nick reared back. “Feel strongly about it–do you? What did I ever do?”
Jacob clamped a hand on his shoulder. “You wanted to drop me into her bedroom and see if I could seduce her after not seeing her for ten years.”
“It worked for Aunt Lux.” Nick pointed at her as if she was his best defense.
The family tree was still fuzzy for Jacob. Aunt?
Lux grunted, though she didn’t look up from the screen. Reflected in her glasses was the explosion happening again and again. “I didn’t seduce Matthew. I saved him from drowning in a frozen lake, cut off his clothing to keep him from getting frostbite, and slept on his couch.”
“Sounds like the same plan to me,” Nick mumbled.
“Okay, let’s get one thing straight,” Jacob looked from one Kringle to the other. “No one is dropping anyone into a frozen lake.” He then pointed at Nick. “Although you might be able to talk me into cutting clothes off.”
Lux punched his arm. Hard. “Ouch.” He rubbed the spot. At least he’d gotten her to look up from her computer. “What are you, like a GI Jane or something? That hurt.”
She looked at her arm. “I ice climb.”
“Yeah, ya do,” he agreed so he wouldn’t get hit again.
“We need a plan,” Nick said. He closed Lux’s computer so she wouldn’t check out on them again. Although, she hadn’t missed a beat of the conversation despite the fact that she was probably running calculus equations in her head the whole time they were talking.
Jacob stared at the sleigh and then at the two of them. “What we need is a bit of magic because Christmas every day makes it feel like there’s no Christmas at all,” he lamented.
Lux snapped her fingers. “That’s the implosion!” She shoved her glasses up on her nose. “Christmas Magic usually has a whole year to build up. But it’s being drained repeatedly without time to replenish.” She grabbed the front of Nick’s shirt. “We do need to do this my way—in a manner of speaking.”
“You want him to cut her clothes off?” Nick asked, shocked. “Aunt Lux!”
Lux pushed him away and patted the hood of Jacob’s truck. “What do you do when a battery goes dead?”
