Chapter 1
Chapter One
Crystal
The magic Claus calendar sat open in front of me while I stared at it over my morning cocoa with marshmallows.
I looked into my mug and sighed. The North Pole had the best cocoa I’d ever tasted, hands down, but I still missed coffee.
Yule was still adamant that coffee wasn’t for Little girls, and even though I had to function as a grown-ass Mrs. Claus eighty percent of the time, he still insisted it was only for special occasions.
Today’s agenda was the usual pre-Christmas stuff. Make cookies for the elves’ lunch break, host a gift-wrapping workshop with Mama Claus, plus the usual chores that needed to be done to keep Santa’s workshop in tip-top shape. How could things be fun while being boring at the same time?
While I sipped my cocoa, the calendar started to glow bright yellow, its screen blinking at me every couple of seconds.
Gasping, I gripped my mug tighter and stared at it with furrowed brows.
I’d heard of it glowing, of course, but I’d never seen it happen.
It hadn’t even happened yesterday, for Yule’s fortieth birthday.
I frowned as I looked at the glowing, blinking page.
Or maybe it had. The whole North Pole had taken the day off to celebrate Yule’s birthday.
We’d had cookies and cocoa flowing all day, a ton of visitors dropping by with even more goodies and well-wishes, and a party in the evening.
The eggnog flowed and spirits had been merry and jolly all night long.
Well, until the clock struck twelve anyway.
Then the mess had cleaned itself up and everything went back to business as usual just like he was Cinderella instead of Santa.
Was the calendar blinking at me because it hadn’t been opened yesterday? I didn’t think it would do that.
December 11th. December 11th. December 11th.
I repeated the date over and over in my head as if repeating it would somehow unlock the answer to the mystery that was currently taking up all my brainspace.
December 11th. The day after Yule’s birthday…
“Oh Kringle Crap!” I hollered, jumping up as it finally hit me. I hit the bottom of the table with my thighs when I jumped, making it shake and tip, and knocking over my nearly empty cocoa mug. It clattered to the floor, and Dixie, who’d been napping at my feet, yelped and ran from the room.
“Sorry, Dix!” I yelled after her before grabbing a pile of napkins and mopping up the mess I’d made.
Once the mug was in the sink and the chocolatey napkins were in the trash, I found Dixie and gave her a cuddle before returning to look at the glowing calendar.
December 11th. The anniversary of the day a man claiming to be Santa had poofed into my apartment and forced his way into my heart.
And it was in the calendar as a special occasion. Because due to our actual anniversary being two days before Christmas, we’d decided it would be much easier to celebrate on this day instead, if we wanted a chance in hell at actually celebrating together.
Even though I’d sworn to him last year that I was practically dead inside and didn’t have a heart for him to melt, it grew two sizes as I stared at the glowing screen.
Suddenly the doldrums of the morning didn’t seem quite so doldrummy, because I knew that I had something to look forward to.
If Yule had marked this as a special occasion, that meant he’d for sure be home early tonight.
And I planned to surprise him, with a nice dinner, a clean house, and a very dirty wife.
Which meant on top of my planned activities for the day, I had a lot to do.
Good thing I could use some of that special Mrs. Claus magic.
Within thirty minutes, I was dressed and ready for the day, the cookies were made, a fresh apple pie with a lattice crust was in the fridge waiting to bake, vegetables were cut, and a chicken was prepped for roasting.
I had fresh rolls rising and I was off to Mama and Papa Claus’ for the wrapping workshop where I would train our elves’ teenage children for their first North Pole job of wrapping gifts for good girls and boys.
Or more like Mama Claus would train them and me, and then, more than likely, I would just use some of my good ole Mrs. Claus magic to get the job done in the future. With almost no experience, I didn’t see myself being very good at gift-wrapping.
Nevertheless, three hours later it was done, and I was on my way home to clean up the house, dirty up my usually wholesome Mrs. Claus aesthetic, and wait.
And as it turned out, wait some more. And wait and wait, and wait.
Yule
My plan all day had been to get out of the office early enough to enjoy a nice evening with my wife, and surprise her by celebrating the anniversary of the first day we’d met.
Apparently I’d been kidding myself.
Not just about tonight, but all around, by thinking that taking over as Santa full time was going to be quick and easy. It was not.
Sure, when you’re the guy in the big red suit you have a lot of helpers running around all of the time to make your job easier.
But I still had to know all of the different jobs that those helpers were doing at any given time and since I was the one ultimately responsible for the success of the second-most-celebrated holiday around the world, I had to be completely on top of all of it.
It was exhausting and all day I looked forward to getting home to my girl and shutting out all of the heavy responsibilities of being Santa Claus.
No matter how busy or stressed I was, I was not oblivious to the fact that my brand-new wife was having a hard time of her own.
I tried my best to make sure she was taken care of and things were as easy as possible, but I could only control so much.
Last night, celebrating my birthday with everyone had been a nice break.
But tonight, I was in the mood for a different kind of break.
As I was getting up to put my coat on and head home for the evening my overseer elf, Bernadette, peeked her head in my office. “Santa, you’re needed in list management. We have a discrepancy.”
Sighing, I pinched the bridge of my nose as that famous song that everyone loves to sing about Santa making his list and checking it twice jingled through my head.
It was a blatant lie. Santa didn’t make the list, the list made itself.
But it was thoroughly checked and I always had the final say.
“Discrepancies” happened when children somehow ended up on both lists at the same time and I had to be the one to decide where they really belonged.
“Can it wait until tomorrow?” I asked, already knowing what the reply would be.
“Well it can, sir, but you know how the list management team gets when one of these sits for too long.”
I forced in a slow deep breath as I took off my coat and hung it back up.
“All right then. Let’s see to it.” I swept my arm toward the list room, trying to remind myself that this was not Bernadette’s fault. She was just the messenger. She didn’t deserve my frustration.
The list was constantly changing so there was really no reason things couldn’t wait.
It definitely didn’t need to be analyzed so intensely every single minute of every single day, in my opinion, but I was too wet behind the ears in my position to suggest any changes on how things ran.
I quickly made my way to the list room and looked at the name that was causing the issue. Garret Rodgers.
Laying my finger on the side of my nose I closed my eyes and focused on the name of the child in question.
A series of images flashed through my mind and I chuckled out loud.
Garret was nothing but a rambunctious little five-year-old with a heart of gold.
Sure he had busted the window of his neighbor’s car, but he had also helped a new friend at school not feel so alone and scared and taken care of his crying baby sister while his mom took a shower.
Mistakes didn’t belong on the naughty list. Not as far as I was concerned.
Using my quill I turned it over so that the feather part could be used to magically erase the name from the naughty list.
“There now, all taken care of. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.” I smiled at Dashell, one of our list keepers, and Bernadette, as I tucked my quill back into my pocket.
The moment I turned to walk out an alarm sounded announcing another discrepancy.
I dropped my chin to my chest in defeat.
“Son of a Nutcracker,” I mumbled. It looked like it was going to be another late night which my little elf was not going to be happy about.
I wasn’t happy about it either. I vowed right then and there that after Christmas, when the entire North Pole was on our month-long hiatus, we were going to do whatever her heart desired, because this job wasn’t only hard on me, it was hard on the both of us.
We both were going to need a break and that break was going to occur somewhere warm and tropical away from all of the stresses of Christmas.
And far away from the North Pole and well-meaning elves.
She’d mentioned the beach multiple times in the past couple of months and the beach she was going to get.
The alarm sounded four more times before I was able to make it out of the building which meant I was two hours late for dinner with my very unhappy wife.