Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
The drive to the North Star Reindeer farm takes about twenty minutes.
Marcy supplies cheerful road trip chatter about laundry triumphs, cocoa rations, and something called ‘the great scarf debate.’ Neither Holly nor I engage in it deeply, but we try the best we can.
I can’t pull my thoughts away from that brief moment we shared.
They’re arriving more frequently, those brief moments, and I wonder about how I might make them last longer.
Before we left, I saw the real Holly, the determined and resilient event planner, on full display.
She contacted half the town—her army of assistants—by group text, assigning them tasks before signing off with three snowflakes and a candy-cane emoji.
Someone’s rebuilding the gazebo. Someone else is making sure the power grid isn’t damaged.
Others are cleaning up the destruction on Main Street. Truly, she makes logistics look easy.
I sigh and look out the window, letting Marcy’s chatter wash over me. I barely catch the last of what she’s saying.
“I took three loads before I was done.”
“I’m sorry?” I blink myself back to attention. “I missed the start of that.”
“Marcy’s been telling us about her laundry adventures,” Holly says. “It’s thrilling.”
“I’m just saying, a visit to a reindeer farm is more exciting than what I had planned for this evening.”
“Brakes!”
I clutch the side of the car as Marcy rolls through an intersection without coming to a complete stop. She didn’t even look in both directions. Holly shoots me a long-suffering look but then undermines it completely with a smile.
“He’s afraid of cars,” she stage-whispers to Marcy. “You should drive slower.”
“I maintain a healthy suspicion about cars,” I counter.
Marcy steers this absurd death vehicle down a dirt road, and just like that, we find ourselves at the reindeer farm at the edge of Willow Creek.
North Star Reindeer is a perfectly charming place, complete with a cheerful cottage at the end of a winding dirt road, lit with dozens of lanterns that cut through the darkness.
A hand-painted sign hangs crookedly from a spruce bough.
Warm barn light spills like butter. It even has some perfectly placed pine trees decorated with some scattered red ribbons to add festive cheer.
“Look at this,” Holly says as she exits the car. She’s bent down and pointing to the torn-up dirt driveway. “You can see the path the reindeer took. It goes all the way around to the back.”
Marcy turns on the light on her phone and angles it at the ground.
The moon casts long shadows as we follow the skid-scuffed hoofprints and trail of shredded red ribbon.
Behind the house, the fence hangs wide open, and the door to the small hut beside the enclosure bangs in the wind.
We hurry inside, and I’m relieved Holly won’t freeze, but disappointed there’s no socially acceptable reason to stand scandalously close.
The interior is a mess. There’s obviously been a struggle. A table lies overturned, and the chairs are scattered. And in the middle of it all stands a face I haven’t seen in...let’s call it ‘a while’ for everyone’s comfort. Long enough that it should have stayed that way.
The person in the middle of the ruin is older, with a deep, gray beard that runs down to his chest. A huge, painful-looking welt is rising on his perfectly bald head.
As we enter, he’s groaning and using a chair to pull himself off the floor.
He grabs his head as he slumps down into the chairs. Holly and Marcy rush to his side.
“Jackson,” Marcy breathes. “Are you okay? I was worried something bad had happened when we saw the reindeer stampeding.”
“My head,” the man says miserably.
I lean against the doorframe, trying to hang back, wondering how I should handle this.
This…person isn’t named Jackson. He’s not a humble reindeer farmer, and he certainly isn’t all sweet and innocent.
I know exactly who he is, and if I had been aware he was living here, this would been the first place I came looking for answers when all this madness started.
All the pieces fall into place. I knew this was too familiar. Too calculated. Far too vicious for a mere prank. Something truly evil is at work here—and it’s not just Willow Creek that’s in trouble.
Now I know who’s behind this.
Who’s been pulling the strings.
I know exactly what I’m dealing with, and I am not pleased about it.
While Marcy and Holly fuss over him, I turn my collar up and get to work tidying the place up. I re-right the table and pull up a few chairs up. ‘Jackson,’ meanwhile, is preening under the attention, telling them what happened.
“I was getting ready to feed them when I heard a noise. Next thing I knew, someone clonked me on the head. That’s all I remember. You say my reindeer were in town?”
They both nod their heads, looking worried. Holly is genuinely concerned, and this farce has to come to an end.
“All right, Jackson—let’s skip the performance.”
Marcy gasps at my rudeness, and Holly gives me a nasty glare, but my eyes are pinned on this so-called Jackson. He lifts his head, and his eyes widen when he sees me. For a moment, I think he’s going to try to bluff his way out of this.
Instead, he sighs and waves his hand.
A tinselly draft lifts, bells chime like a drawer of teaspoons, and with a pulse of magic, the room rights itself.
Items levitate back onto shelves, and a broom whisks its way across the floor.
Marcy and Holly watch, and I’ll begrudgingly concede that the tinkling bells are a nice touch.
Even the welt on ‘Jackson’s’ head vanishes, and in seconds, everything is put back together, pristine and perfect.
Four mugs of steaming hot cocoa have appeared on the table, and he gestures towards them.
“Didn’t know you were involved, Draven. Why don’t we all take a seat and not do anything crazy?”
“Does everyone else in Willow Creek have magical powers except us?” Holly asks.
“You know each other?” Marcy asks.
“He and I go back a few years,” I say as I pull a chair up to the table. “Hello, ‘Jackson.’ Or, should I say…Jingle?”
I wait for impressed gasps or other demonstrations of awe from Marcy and Holly. Marcy sips her drink politely. Holly chews her lip.
“Jingle? Santa’s second-in-command, logistics elf, bell enthusiast? If Christmas ran on clipboards, he’d be the clipboard.”
Humans always get the lore wrong. It’s all ‘vampires are dark and brooding and vicious’, and ‘elves are cute and cuddly and would gift you presents every day of the year if they could.’ It’s a long way from the truth, and I’m going to have to set a few records straight before this Christmas carol is finished.
“You expect us to know the ins and outs of Santa’s operation?” Holly asks. She turns to Jingle. “Wait, you’re an elf? How do you know Nick?”
“Small world,” Jingle shrugs. “Draven knows everyone.”
I step close and let my fangs drop an inch. Just one.
My hands curl into fists and the urge to slam Jingle into the nearest wall slams through me. It hums, old and violent. But Holly’s somewhere behind my shoulder. Watching.
“Santa,” I say, as the last pieces fall into place. “Santa is behind this, isn’t he?”
Jingle goes very still. His gaze flicks to my fists, then my fangs, then back to my fists. He lifts his hands slowly, palm out, like I’m something that might bite. Which, to be fair—
“Easy, Draven. I’m not in the middle of this. The big guy sent me here to watch, that’s all. That’s all I’ve done.”
“Tell us everything. Now. And maybe I won’t send you back to the North Pole wrapped in return-to-sender tinsel with a strongly worded card. I’m sure the snowman look would be good on you. I’ve heard it’s coming back into fashion.”
Jingle pales because he knows I’m capable of that and more.
I glance back at Holly. Her mouth is set too tight. Her fingers are curled into the sleeves of her coat like she’s bracing herself. She looks between Jingle and me, her gaze lingering a fraction too long on my teeth before snapping away.
A cold edge settles in my chest.
She hasn’t seen this side of me before.
And for the first time, I’m not sure what she sees.
“You’re saying Santa is behind all of this?” Holly shifts, like she’s trying to square the idea with reality. “The Santa? The jolly fat man with the beard?”
“He’s not jolly,” I say. “Why don’t you tell them, Jingle?”
My fingers drum on the table, each tap sharper than the last. Heat crawls up the back of my neck. This should have been obvious. It would have been—if my attention hadn’t been elsewhere. On Holly. On the swing of her chestnut curls, catching the light as she bounces through the snow.
A distraction.
One that stopped me from helping her.
“It’s not like that, Draven. It’s not what you think.”
“I think Santa is intentionally trying to sabotage Holly’s festival for his usual, devious purposes.”
Jingle blinks. “Fine. It’s exactly what you think.”
Holly puts her mug down. “Santa wants to ruin the Willow Creek Christmas festival? Why?”
“He’s taken over Sulphur Ridge,” Jingle says.
Both Marcy and Holly gasp. They look surprised. Shocked. I’d already guessed, and the only reaction I give is the look of unbridled threat that I shoot Jingle for upsetting the woman I’m becoming very, very attached to.
Sulphur Ridge sits a short drive away from Willow Creek, and the difference is immediate.
Where Willow Creek leans into warmth and goodwill, Sulphur Ridge runs on something darker.
Demons, mostly. It’s like a supernatural Las Vegas—flashy, excessive, and built on very questionable morals, which I suppose makes it not all that different from the real thing.
It’s not a place you go looking for anything good.
It’s exactly the sort of place you’d base an operation like this. Loud enough to hide in plain sight. Corrupt enough not to care what’s being drained or who it hurts.
“This makes no sense,” Holly says.