15. Epilogue

Epilogue

I t was nearly Christmas Day when Dylan finally made it back to Bury. He’d left Alice and Irene at a nearby hospital and the Yule Lads back at the North Pole. There had been a long stretch of Christmas Eve between then and now, the second before midnight pulled out like taffy as Santa worked.

Dylan parked the Sleigh on Main Street and climbed down. He winced as his feet hit the road. It might have only been a few hours in the mortal world, but his ass knew how long it had been on that hard wooden seat in practical time.

He stopped to strip off the regalia and folded it up on the bench seat.

“If someone takes this for a joyride,” Krampus remarked over his shoulder, “you get to explain it.”

Dylan turned to look at his dark twin. “I’ll add it to the list,” he said.

Krampus made an unhappy noise in his throat. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked. “You can’t unknow something. Trust me, I’d rather not have a memory of sucking Somerset’s—”

“I’m sick of being in the dark,” Dylan said. “My whole life, people have kept things from me, and I’m done going along with it.”

Krampus sighed and gave a resigned dip of his horned head.

“I’ll tell the Yule Lads you stopped for ice cream if they wonder where you are,” he said. “Don’t trust him.”

Then he was gone in a wisp of coal-sharp smoke.

Dylan wished Krampus had tried to argue more. He was still going to go in, but he’d have appreciated a reason to delay a bit longer. In the absence of that he took a deep breath, the taste of snow clean on his tongue, and walked over to the toy shop. He'd seen it as he'd driven the Sleigh through town, over the rutted bodies of those who'd not been smart enough to run. What he didn't know was if he'd been looking for it, or had he somehow remembered it.

The front door was locked, but the window had been smashed. Dylan just climbed through, into the middle of a diorama of a nutcracker-based nativity. He watched his feet around the hand-painted magi as he climbed down.

Behind the counter was an old man—although he actually wasn’t that old. He looked a hard-done-by fifty or a spry sixty. Certainly no more than that. It wasn’t what Dylan had expected.

The not-that-old man looked up from the little dog on wheels in his hands. He didn't look surprised to see Dylan and gestured with a paintbrush at a wooden chair.

“About time," he said. "Make yourself at home.”

Dylan sat down. The cushion was threadbare tapestry and what felt like rocks. It wasn’t much more comfortable than the Sleigh’s bench.

“I am sorry the girls were scared,” the not-so-old man said. He licked the brush, a line of blue on his lower lip, and dabbed the doll. “It was never meant to be like that. No one was meant to be forced to give up their child, or—God knows—be kidnapped. Whatever price you have Ms. Demre pay, she deserves it. What will she face? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Dylan watched the doll take shape with interest. “The police are going to arrest her for trafficking and kidnapping,” he said. “We have a friend on the force who’ll be able to make it stick with only a little bit of finessing. It’s what she did, after all. I don't know about what the Winter Court will do to her.”

The not-so-old man nodded. “I imagine she’ll take a few people down with her too,” he said. “Not me. She knows better. ”

Dylan leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

“Am I one of them? A Kallikantzaroi?” He got it right this time. He’d had time to practice.

This time the not-so-old man fumbled his brush stroke in surprise. He set the toy down and wiped his hands on his apron as he looked at Dylan.

“Why would you—” he started to ask, then grimaced. He wiped the blue off his lip onto his thumb. “I suppose I can see your reasoning…but no. You’re not one of them—not that there would be anything wrong with that if you were. You’re my grandson, Dylan, from the unbroken Line of Nick. Although I never wanted you to be part of that world.”

“Why not?”

That wasn’t one of the questions that Dylan had planned. It was the question of the little boy who’d woken up on Christmas Day to an empty house and a social worker at the door. Why had they all left him behind?

His grandfather made a disgusted noise in his throat as he turned around to get a bottle of turps and a rag from the shelf. He soaked the rag and carefully started to wipe the paint off the toy.

“The Line of Nick has spoiled,” he said. “The Saint-born are rapacious, power-hungry, and selfish. All they care about is pleasure and self-indulgence. I didn’t want that for you.”

“You thought foster care was better?”

“Kinder, no,” his grandfather said. “But you put your life at risk to rescue your friend. Do you think any of them would do that? I don’t. I don’t think any of them would put their heart first in their questions either. Ask me what you need to, Dylan, not what you want to.”

They looked at each other in silence. Dylan finally got up and walked over to lean on the glass counter. Up close his grandfather looked more like the spry sixty-year-old, with deep wrinkles and thinning hair at his temples.

“Why did you make me Santa when you did so much to keep me away?” he asked.

His grandfather clucked his tongue. “That’s still want,” he said. “But I didn’t. The plan was never to burden you in my place, it was to destroy the institution. I staged an attack and sent Gull with a decoy watch to Skellir, knowing he would try and save Yule. He was meant to fail, and this—” He reached over and tapped a wet finger against the watch face. “—would just have been a memento from the family you'd lost. More family than you ever knew.”

Dylan closed his eyes. The smell of turps was sickly as he breathed it in .

“I fucked that up,” he said.

His grandfather grinned. For the first time Dylan could see Santa in him, the way his eyes twinkled and dimples grooved into creased cheeks.

“Christmas isn’t so easy to derail,” he said. “But you live and you learn, and you try again. Last chance, Dylan. Ask me what you need.”

The temptation not to, just to annoy him, was strong. His grandfather was right though, Dylan needed to know.

“Why?” he said.

And there was the old man. He set the toy down and leaned over the counter. His hands were dry and warm as they cupped over Dylan’s.

“Because they killed my son,” he said. “Someone found out I’d polluted the Line of Nick with a monster bride, and they killed your father to clean it up. That’s the other reason I had to send you away. To keep you safe.”

Of course. Dylan pulled his hands out from under his grandfather’s. It couldn’t just be that his grandfather had wanted to defraud an insurance company or something. No. It had to be something that would throw Dylan’s life, weird as it was, for a loop.

“I assume that if I come back here on Christmas Day…”

“I’ll be gone,” his grandfather confirmed. That twinkly smile came back. “All of us will who matter. I might not be Santa anymore, but I have a few tricks.”

Dylan nodded and turned to leave. The bells over the door chimed cheerfully as he unlocked it and pulled it open.

“What are you going to do now?” his grandfather asked.

Dylan paused on the threshold. “You should visit grandmother,” he said instead of answering. “She misses you.”

And that might keep him out of trouble until next year. Dylan stepped outside and let the door close behind him. Despite Krampus’s concern, the Sleigh was just where he’d left it. Dylan climbed up onto the bench seat and gathered up the reins.

“One more stop,” he told the reindeer.

The wolves were injured—inasmuch as they understood that—and worn. They still ran. That’s what wolves did. Rough paws scraped over the dirt track as they followed the smell of the rat-queen who’d double-crossed them up the mountain.

Her trail disappeared into a cave carved in the side of the mountain. A pile of human clothes and a pair of glasses had been left at the side of it.

Before they could follow the trail underground, a Sleigh, red paint battered and runners dulled, appeared on the road. It bounced as it landed, kicking up snow, and then raced by them into the trees.

The pack leader didn’t chase it. He’d been human too long, learned how to cozen and lie to get what they wanted. He saw a trap. The human on the driver’s seat had lied to them before.

It was the wolf with mistletoe wound in its ruff who gave chase first, and then the wolf whose charred leg was still match thin. The last two broke into a run out of habit, snapping at the back of the Sleigh as they raced after it.

The slap of the reins made the reindeer lunge forward and lean into their harness. The Sleigh bounced and then picked up speed, enough to keep the wolves’ teeth from the woodwork.

Trees and snow blurred around them, and then the driver of the Sleigh cracked his Whip and the world shattered between one step and the next. When it came back, the winter was deeper, the snow cleaner, and the bodies they had crafted of wood and stick and stone crumbled around them.

The dead fell onto the snow, and wolves with fur of wind and bones of ice chased Santa’s Sleigh for a mile until he picked up enough speed to fall back into the mortal, but stilled, world.

He had a home to go to and someone to spend Christmas with this year.

The season might just be growing on him.