Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
We step away from the cars, ready for anything.
Santa doesn’t notice us.
The air shifts—not dramatically. Nothing so considerate. Just wrong enough that the back of my neck prickles. The red glow deepens, the light flickers, and something in the center of the square…unravels.
His veneer has gone. No more jolly, cherubic man in the red suit, but him as he really is. A wind sprite. He isn’t even solid.
He’s there, but not quite present. A smear across the air, like a painting rubbed while the paint was still wet.
His face pushes through the middle of it, wrong and shifting, familiar only in the way a nightmare sometimes borrows a face you recognize.
The beard remains, but it’s no longer hair—it fractures into crystals of frost that catch the light and splinter it.
The red suit clings to the shape of him in pieces, darker now, like the color’s gone off.
He looks like a snowflake that’s turned on you. Not the charming kind you embroider on a tea towel. The other sort.
“Oh,” I say, because that’s apparently all I’ve got. “That’s…different.”
The townsfolk sway in loose, vacant unison around him, eyes glassy, expressions smoothed down to nothing.
Whatever’s coming off him—whatever he’s pulling through that grotesque snow globe at the center—isn’t harmless.
The air is thick with it, a cloudy, creeping miasma that curls through the square and sinks into everything it touches.
I’ve dealt with terrible things.
A basilisk in Bruges who knitted.
This is worse.
A low hum vibrates from the snow globe, a sound that pulses through the air and settles in your chest. It’s pulling in all the energy, the corrupted glow deepening with every second.
Vampires don’t really need sleep—not properly—but something in me is dragging anyway. Not physical. Not quite. Just the slow, grinding exhaustion of someone who’s been at this too long and would like five uninterrupted minutes of peace.
I suspect this is what it’s like to be a woman with an opinion on the internet.
I shove the thought aside before it can become a personality.
We’re far enough away that he still hasn’t noticed us, the corrupted snow globe holding his full attention.
The red glow pulses, thick and insistent, while rogue elves scurry at his command, and the hum of dark magic rises steadily beneath it all.
The air tastes like frost and old pennies; the spruce garlands hang limp under the red throb of the globe.
Before I can say anything, Holly produces a clipboard like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat and brandishes it with alarming authority.
I have no idea where she got it.
At this point, I’m forced to assume she simply generates them as needed.
She squares her shoulders and takes command of the night—brisk, bright, entirely unflappable—the sort of person who can turn chaos into a checklist and make you grateful for the opportunity to comply.
The clipboard even catches the light as she gestures with it, like a general who prefers stationery to swords.
Even now, Holly Frost is completely in her element.
And I—
No.
We’ll come back to that.
“Ronan,” she says, “take half the coven and circle round behind Santa. Quietly. No yelling about battle or glory. Tiptoe. Can you do that?”
“Aye!” Ronan roars.
Holly smacks him on the arm.
The warrior who has inspired poetry about violence looks faintly chastened.
“Quiet,” she says.
“Aye,” Ronan whispers, then leans in with great solemnity. “It will be my honor to show these elves that Ronan doesn’t just fight. He creates legends. Blood, tinsel, and sheer unhinged grit will etch our tale into the annals of battle, and they shall sing our names—”
Holly ticks a box on her checklist labeled ‘Ronan: pointlessly dramatic monologue’ and moves on.
“Wes, take the rest. Shadow us. Peel two off to the choir—get them humming something steady, just not “Carol of the Bells,” we don’t need panic.
Keep some vampires by the bakery: cocoa, blankets, first-aid, spare mittens.
Nick and I go first and figure out how to wake the townspeople.
If it goes wrong, plan B is loud carols and louder thermoses. ”
“You okay with this, boss?” Wes arches an eyebrow at me, lounging against the car like we’re about to run errands and not confront a deranged Santa with apocalyptic tendencies.
Holly flushes. It suits her.
“Oh my god. Nick. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“All good,” I say. “Do what she says, Wes. She’s the event planner.”
Wes flicks me a salute. “Aye, boss.” Then to Holly, with sudden gravity, “Ma’am.”
Holly flashes me a tight grin, and it’s like the sun breaking over a gray morning. Bright, quick, gone again before I can decide what to do with it.
I should have kissed her in the factory.
It occurs to me now, with the clarity of someone who has made an excellent decision approximately ten minutes too late, that there was a moment—right there, between the homicidal elves and the questionable caramel—when it might have worked.
Now we’re here, and she’s looking at me like that—like I’m worth trusting—and I have absolutely no idea if I’ve earned it or how quickly I might lose it again.
Inconveniently, I would like very much not to.
She turns away before I can do anything foolish. Or more foolish.
“Damian—take a small strike team, thin the elves on the flanks. Ranu—set up recovery: Nanaimo bars, cocoa, seats by the diner heaters. Borrow extension cords if you have to. Three on the roofs—there, there, and there—if it jingles and isn’t festive, sing out.”
And there it is again. That stubborn miracle of Willow Creek. A town that brings casseroles and extension cords when the world misbehaves. A place full of stubborn, ordinary people who keep showing up, again and again, and who somehow expect that to be enough.
Absurdly, it usually is.
The coven moves. No hesitation. No debate.
Just…movement.
I watch her for a second, the way she stands there with that clipboard like it’s a weapon of mass organization, turning chaos into something almost reasonable.
She is, infuriatingly, very good at this.
And I—equally infuriatingly—am a little in awe of her.
I give the barest nod as the others pass, which is all the permission they need. We’re doing this her way.
Assuming we survive, I suspect they’ll be doing it her way rather often.
“Our priority is waking up the townsfolk,” Holly says, already moving onto the next crisis.
“We can’t do anything while Santa’s got them magically captured.
We use carols, cocoa, and contact. Warm hands, warm voices, familiar faces.
We start bringing them back and get them to help us rouse the others. ”
My brethren spread out, serious in their tasks. In short order, we’re divided and slipping through the streets toward the town center.
On impulse, I take Holly’s hand.
Her fingers are cold from the night, faintly dusted with sugar and glitter—evidence of her recent proximity to festive sabotage—and they fit into mine with a kind of alarming precision.
She startles, glancing at me, and for a moment I think I’ve overstepped.
Then she doesn’t let go.
That steadies me more than it has any right to.
When I moved the coven to Willow Creek, it was meant to be another distraction. Something to occupy immortals who’ve already fought most of their wars—including the one that got us banned from Christmas in the first place.
In hindsight, defeating Santa and expecting him to take it well was optimistic.
Now there’s a town being slowly hollowed out by a corrupted ornament, a centuries-old grudge unfolding in real time, and a woman beside me who has decided—clipboard in hand—that this is a logistical issue we can solve if everyone would just cooperate.
Against all available evidence, I find that reassuring.
It has been a very long time since I’ve had a reason to involve myself in anything quite this enthusiastically.
Longer still since I cared whether I got it right.
But I’m walking next to the woman who is Holly Frost, marching toward a supernatural disaster like it’s a poorly managed gala with inadequate staffing and a theme that’s gotten out of hand.
I tighten my grip on her hand, a fraction.
We creep forward until we reach the first line of townsfolk. I lean in, close enough that her ridiculous blood-orange-and-cinnamon scent threatens to derail my concentration entirely.
“The last time I fought Santa, it was just the two of us,” I murmur. “He didn’t have this kind of reach. He’s drawing on the globe—look. You can see the pull. We’ll need to be careful. He’s not just a man in a suit. He’s an elemental, and he’s very good at holding a grudge.”
“How did you beat him last time?”
“I tricked him.” I shrug. “It was close, though. He had me beat, but elementals are notoriously fickle and rely on others for their power. If we make him sip from a source that isn’t fuel—something thin, dissonant, disruptive—it’ll gum the works.
Elementals are fickle engines. Foul their intake, and you stall their storm. ”
“Who’s got the energetic profile of cold porridge?
” she asks. “A person so hollow and emotionless that there would be nothing to drink. Utterly unsurprising. Passion-free. Bureaucratic, ideally. We’d need someone completely devoid of passion or life.
Someone who flattens the energy of a room simply by existing. Who’d even come close?”
There’s a brief, terrible pause while the answer assembles itself.
Holly inhales.
I wince.
“Crinkshaw,” we say together.
The zombie is the definition of functional despair.
Every bony, shuffling step suggests he’s already filled out the paperwork for the worst possible outcome and filed it somewhere inconvenient.
His suit predates at least three of my coven members, and the pockets contain string, receipts, and exactly one boiled sweet of uncertain vintage.
He never smiles, never hurries, and approaches catastrophe like a forms-in-triplicate problem.
If apathy ever required a patron saint, it would nominate Crinkshaw.
Holly grins and nods, and I smile back. Ten out of ten from each of us. My knees tremble.
“I think this will work,” I say. “If we can get him close enough, Santa will absorb his energy. It will be like pouring concrete down a water slide. The entire thing rests on Crinkshaw.”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
“It’s…not ideal,” I agree. “But if anyone can save Christmas, it’s Crinkshaw, the depressed ghoul.”
“You do hear yourself, right?”
“I’m trying not to.”
I squint across the square, the cold needling my eyes, and pick out Ronan and his team taking position.
Subtle as ever, Ronan moves like a raccoon approaching a dumpster—committed, enthusiastic, and not especially concerned with stealth—while the others fan out behind him, weapons ready.
On the other side, Wes slips into place.
His jaw sets as his eyes scan the area with practiced focus.
Past him, more headlights blink as if they’re waiting for our signal. Scouts hold salt and shovels. Mrs. Lee steadies a rolling urn of cocoa like it’s a sacred object. Meribel’s carolers stand poised to shake out harmonies like blankets.
For now, they’re still. Held under Santa’s control.
But Willow Creek has a way of starting itself. A familiar name called across the square. A cookie pressed into a mitten. The choir catching the next verse.
That’s all it will take to shake it free.
And when that happens, Santa is going to learn that you can’t out-magic a town with grit, glitter, and a group chat.
We crouch behind snowbanks and improvised cover—Crinkshaw tucked in behind us like a disapproving coat rack—outside Santa’s line of sight. His focus is locked on the tree, the thing pulsing and twisting at the center of the square, and for once, his obsession is working in our favor.
This is the moment.
The hinge.
If it swings our way, we get Christmas back.
If it doesn’t, we get…January.
“Okay,” I murmur, giving Holly’s hand a brief and very deliberate squeeze. “Let’s go get Christmas back.”