Santa’s Secret

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

CHRIS

I t’s easier if I ask people before they ask me. “Spending Christmas with someone special?”

The car’s driver flicked a nervous glance at me in the mirror, then looked away. Fair; creepy question, or could have been. I hadn’t meant it that way.

Which she appeared to guess, because she relaxed a little.

That made it easier for me to hold on to my fake Christmas cheer. Mine can’t slip. It’s not about me—Christmas isn’t for me—it’s about everyone else I need to see. I had lots more to visit that night.

She licked her lips a little, nervously, trying to decide if it was safe to answer my question. I thought she might lie. But when her answer finally came, it sounded true. “Yeah, I’ve got Christmas planned with someone special. My Liam.”

She didn’t say more, just steered the car through the dark around a corner puddled with slush, the morning’s rain mixed with fallen snow. The shush-shush sound stifled both of us.

Her car was perfectly clean and ten years old. She’d probably had it a little longer than she’d had her Liam.

There were no traces of a kid, no crumbs or gum, but I knew Liam was her son, not her husband.

That was why I’d asked for a ride.

“You know what? This is my corner.” I rummaged in my bag as I talked, pretending to look out the window. When I pulled something out I kept my head down and wrote on it, marker cap in my teeth.

No one sat next to me to offer an extra hand. No one had since long before felt-tip markers were invented.

“Oh!” The driver’s laugh was sheepish, rattled. “I forgot where you were going.” She stopped the car.

“Doesn’t matter,” I reassured her as I climbed out, sneakers crunch-sploshing in wet snow.

On the seat, I left a perfectly wrapped gift in shiny red paper.

With To Liam, Ho ho ho scrawled on it in loopy, perfect, old-fashioned handwriting.

Mine.

Sure, I worried a little that some other passenger would find it first, but not much. That woman for sure ran her little vacuum between customers; she’d set Liam the example of always reaching for a perfect score. Plus she wanted money; she had plans.

Easy-to-guess plans. I’d seen a lot of parents with that look. She wanted enough money to get Liam something good, something besides a Force Ranger Plus+. Because it was not possible to buy a Force Ranger Plus+ anywhere for love or money.

Of course, Liam wanted a Force Ranger Plus+.

The whole story was easy to read, on her face, from her car. Driving extra hours while Liam slept safely in bed; wanting a present that showed how much she loved him; knowing he’d forgive his mom for not getting him the one thing he really wanted.

And Liam would forgive. Because he was a good kid. Based on the window streaks, which reached about as high on the windows as a little kid’s stretch, he washed the car for his neatnik mom every chance he got. He never spilled french fries between the seats, and he’d gotten an A on his last spelling test; there was a stack of those tests in the glove box. I saw them when she reached in to get me a mint. Right where they could remind her what a great kid she had. Right where she could brag on them.

But Liam wouldn’t have to forgive, because he was a good kid, and I’d just left a gift-wrapped Force Ranger Plus+ on the seat of his mom’s car.

My battered canvas bag shifted as I walked, sneakers crunch-slosh -ing in the wet snow.

I should have been hurrying. I’m always in a hurry, especially on Christmas Eve, and it was Christmas Eve.

My Christmas Eves aren’t like the stories say. I can’t visit every kid in the world, not even all the Christian ones. I don’t have a sleigh and I don’t get tracked by NORAD.

But I did have quite a few stops to make.

For me it’s more than a dream; it’s a mission. I’ve always felt the weight of it. It’s not charity, it’s... solidarity. No one feels for an unloved kid like an unloved kid.

And there are so many of us.

Of course my informant network is huge. I get letters, postcards, texts, emails. My message apps start blowing up in July.

They’re not friends; they’re informants. They don’t know me. But they tell me things.

It’s a slow, complicated system, and I can’t even pretend it’s fair. I can’t visit every kid who really deserves a gift from Santa every year. Even with all my helpers.

If I missed your kid, maybe one in your classroom, one in your hospital, I’m sorry. It’s good that you tried. Kids can feel that. I think they know when you did the best you could.

It’s all any of us can do.

I’m telling you this because I know better than anyone that no matter how many kids you make smile, you remember the one kid you couldn’t. You need to hear—not that it’s okay, because it’s not okay. Just that you’re not alone.

It’s a heavy, heavy weight when you’re alone.

My short walk felt good, but in a couple minutes I reached the address. I went up the driveway, head down, trying not to attract notice. These days I’m always watching for dogs, electric fences, and guns.

Lots of places I can’t go because of all the cameras. But I try. I go anywhere others don’t, to do what no one else will.

Call me obsessive if you like. It’s been said.

On the back porch of number 3653, my bag swung off my hip as I leaned sideways, nearly invisible in the black air, and peered in the window.

The porch was delightfully sway-backed, dipping toward its step, showing its age. I like houses like that. I got a little excited picturing the floors. They must be wood. I hoped they hadn’t been carpeted.

I opened the skewed screen door.

Behind it, the main door was locked, but that doesn’t matter to me.

I can walk through any door that opens. It’s not because I’m special. It’s a knack. I’ve always had it.

I walked straight through, and my next heartbeat, I was in the kitchen. Outside, beyond the locked door, I heard the crooked metal screen slap gently back into place.

Dang. Linoleum. It was disappointing.

I find the stuff practical, but a terrible way to treat a floor.

Other than that, what I noticed most about the kitchen was its chipped sink and a delightful smell of peanut butter. I looked everywhere for sandwiches or even just the jar. Nothing.

Dang again.

On the home front, World War II was an explosion of chocolate chip cookies, and since then it’s cookies all night, endless cookies. What I really love is peanut butter.

Oh well. That’s what I get, spending my money on informants instead of PR.

I wiggled my fingers sadly at the hidden wooden floors even as I tiptoed over them, silently crossing the little kitchen to the living room arch.

Through it I saw a little boy hunched into a tight oval on the couch, digging his toes into its ugly yellow-and-brown tweed to keep warm. His body tilted against the arm, dark curls over a face illuminated by the TV’s glow.

Noah. I was here for him.

Unfortunately, he was awake.

Clutched to his huddled body with crossed arms was a wiffle bat. Quick as he saw me, he raised that bat like a deadly weapon and whirled into action.

He stopped three feet away, just out of reach.

Thin, probably eleven, just a couple years older than the gig driver’s kid. The pajamas he wore stretched to their limit, ready to give up and let him grow.

Everything was just as I expected, just like a thousand thousand times before. I’m really not that special. All I had was a talent for doors, an ancient bag that’s bigger inside than out, and a lot of years behind me.

I’ve seen some things, met some people. Witches live all over, hidden behind map labels like Armenia, Macau, Louisiana. Some could brew dreams out of powdered lethe, rue, and nutmeg. They sold it in pouches.

I slid my hand in my bag, found the powder. I could blow it, poof, into Noah’s face, and turn his memory of me into a dream. In fact I planned to.

First, I had to ask Noah a few questions. Deciding if kids are naughty or nice, which is how I spend most of my time, isn’t my mission. But it’s a key part of how the mission goes down.

And I had a schedule.

All just as I expected till he asked me a question.

“How do you freaks keep getting in?”

I’m used to a lot. But not being one of a crowd.

“You saw another Santa tonight?”

The bat in Noah’s hands wavered. “You’re Santa?”

Shit. I don’t exactly hide. But I don’t advertise.

I spread my arms to look harmless. “Of course I’m Santa. Who else shows up in your locked house on Christmas Eve?”

“You don’t look like Santa.”

“I look exactly like Santa. White hair,” I pointed at my hatless tangle of hair, then the stubble on my chin. “White beard. Red coat.”

“You just didn’t shave. Santa’s old and fat and jolly,” insisted Noah, keeping me pinned with narrowed eyes. Naughty or nice, he was definitely suspicious.

“I’m old.” A lot older than I look . “I’m jolly. I’m just not fat. People change. Had to cut out the carbs.”

Why I wanted to convince him I was Santa when I usually keep it quiet, I don’t know. Maybe because Noah had clearly seen some things. He needed reassurance; he did not need a lecture about how Santa’s always rich, and back in the nineteenth century when drawing me got popular, rich meant fat .

I haven’t always been rich, either. But people need myths, not my history.

They were drawing the myths, anyway. Not my actual cheeks. They’re not that round and red; I’m sure they’re not.

Dang it.

Truth is, I wish they weren’t.

Noah decided to weigh in on my self-image. “You look like some... underwear ad.”

“Yeah?” Better than fat-face. I ostentatiously surveyed myself. “Maybe a booze ad. Camping gear? Not underwear. C’mon. I’m all about the jacket.”

That he believed. It was all over his face. I unclenched, hopeful I wouldn’t have to wrestle him for the wiffle bat.

It was the jacket that did it. It was a sweet jacket. I don’t buy myself much, but I hadn’t been able to resist a bomber jacket of red wool with silver zippers.

Okay, maybe my look didn’t bring camping gear to mind.

“So how many freaks coming here tonight?” Noah neither sat nor disarmed himself; he stood the bat on end, flat palm swaying it a little.

Acting old for his age.

That hurt my heart. That he’d had to.

I matched him, acting like we just ran into each other, like I was just asking a casual question. “Did you really see someone else?”

The world holds a lot of secret things, but none of them should walk through closed doors.

Door magic is old magic; some old creatures know. But magic costs something to make and something to break. Newton’s laws aren’t just about gravity. It takes a sacrifice of some kind to make a door open where it shouldn’t.

For everyone but me.

He didn’t answer, so I pushed. “What did they look like? Flappy, gray? Like a bat-ghost?” A sluagh couldn’t come through locked windows and doors, but this little house had an air of despair that would attract sluagh like cheese do mice.

Fae can’t ignore locks either and don’t bother; nor would a wise animal. They avoid human houses altogether unless lives are in danger; if they are, they still might not speak. Noah would have seen a stray animal, not a freak .

What could have come in? It wasn’t even cold out.

There were rumors—stories, really—of a prince cursed to live forever as a cat. A cat who could walk through any door, like me. I suppose his curse paid his price.

But I’d never met him.

His story might not even be true. The only other possibility I could think of was a rogue kobold, and those are nothing but trouble. I pushed again. “Was it a little guy with really big ears?”

“No. Fuck you, man. Get out.”

Noah was scared of something, and it wasn’t me. I hoped it wasn’t something that lived here. “You waiting up for your mom? Dad?”

He grasped the bat with both hands, shaking with eleven-year-old rage. “You touch my mom and I will punch your dick so hard you’ll pee out your eyeballs.”

Well, he wanted to look out for his mom.

He’d picked up that language from someone, and that’s part of the reason I don’t lecture. Deciding who’s good and who’s bad isn’t easy. Acts that look good can hide evil intentions; cruelty can come from ignorance. I learned that as a kid myself.

“Where’s your mom, Noah?”

The little hunch of his shoulders said everything. “Asleep upstairs,” he lied.

No, she wasn’t.

I’ve always been good at reading people and he wasn’t tough, given how often I’d seen faces like his.

I didn’t have to check the cupboards to know they were mostly empty. If they held much, it would be cheap crackers and that elusive peanut butter. I didn’t have to look upstairs to see unmade, unwashed beds, or the grimy tub.

Not because these folks were lazy. Because they were poor and dead-dog tired.

I didn’t have to see his mom to know she was overwhelmed, or maybe despairing. Nor would I see her. I wasn’t there for her. She had a power Noah didn’t; she was grown, in charge of her own life.

I was there for Noah.

Since the sixteenth of September, Noah had swiped two lunches at school and six candy bars at the corner store. The incidents were easy to explain; he was hungry, and he was eleven.

He didn’t know that next school year, his town would start free school lunches and his hungriest days would be over. His hungry was now.

He’d also pushed another kid off the swings, broke the corner store’s window with a brick (probably revenge, since after the last candy bar, they’d called the cops), and thrown an eraser at his teacher’s head. He wasn’t just hungry; he was angry.

And enjoyed it a little too much.

My mission isn’t what you think. Most kids deserve second chances. But there are different kinds of second chances.

Some I can’t offer any more, but I have to decide among the options I’ve got.

I asked him just one question. “What did you get your mom for Christmas?”

Scowling, Noah jerked the wiffle bat toward the couch’s side table.

A present huddled on the table, much like Noah had huddled on the couch. A taped-up wad of white plastic grocery bags decorated with red marker. Stars and trees, if I read the squiggles right.

“Mug,” was all Noah said.

Also easy to understand.

His teacher probably got half a dozen mugs. Parent-teacher gifts aren’t usually creative. Noah didn’t have money, but he’d given up robbing the store.

He had sense. Maybe ethics. Certainly the smarts to see a solution staring him in the face.

One mug missing from the crowd on his teacher’s desk? She’d barely notice.

That same teacher had marked Noah way down on attention and cooperation. Somehow she hadn’t marked that Noah wore too-small clothes and was too thin.

Well, I wasn’t here for her, either, but I’d sure ignore her in future.

Noah wasn’t a bad kid. He deserved a present.

He deserved a lot more, but presents were all I had in the bag.