7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

D ylan did his best to hunch down into his hoodie as he loitered in the stoop of the Just-as-High and endured the flat crackle of on-hold Muzak through his phone . His dramatic exit from Somerset’s office had gotten him this far before he remembered he’d still not replaced his car, and his pride wouldn’t let him go back in. Not yet, anyhow. It might have to throw in the towel soon, though, since Dylan wasn’t dressed for the weather. Hopefully the person he’d called in the hospital’s billing department would pick up soon.

The season had turned harsh overnight, with storms predicted to hammer the region up until Christmas Day.

Dylan would have felt guilty, but he doubted it was down to him. So far he’d failed miserably to achieve anything with the power of Yule other than his duties on Christmas Eve…which had more to do with the tools of trade than anything he did. More likely the wolves had brought winter with them. It had been a rough year last year too .

The instrumental version of some ten-year-old pop classic cut off into a human voice. Dylan tuned back in long enough to learn his “call was important” and then let his mind drift again.

At least no one would expect him to fix the weather. That was something the city was prepared for. It was always a white Christmas in Belling—the city boasted about it—so they were ready for it. Most people put it down to freak weather patterns due to unique geographic features…but they probably didn’t know it was the anchor point for the North Pole in the real world.

Dylan’s brain caught on that for a moment, but it couldn’t hang onto it. It was one thing to pretend that it was all a dream when he was the only one caught up in it. That wouldn’t work now that other people had been dragged in, because the consequences to them if he couldn’t fix this would be very real.

It was the mortal world, he reminded himself grimly as he rubbed his arm, and with the wolves involved it could get very mortal.

The recording of a slightly out-of-tune piano cut off into a bored monotone of someone’s voice. It took Dylan a second to realize it wasn’t another taped interjection, it was who he’d wanted to talk to.

“What can I do for you?”

“Joe?” Dylan checked.

There was a long pause, and the click of absentminded data entry stopped as the person on the other end shifted out of autopilot. A roughly indrawn breath rasped down the line, and then, “You bastard. I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Good. Dylan had gotten the right number.

“I didn’t do—”

“Oh yeah? Then why are the cops asking questions about you?” Joe interrupted him to ask. “Why do they want to know what your ‘relationship’ with my wife is?”

“Ex-wife,” Dylan corrected him.

His brain almost immediately caught up with his mouth, and he winced. It had just been habit to parrot the correction he’d heard from Alice every time her ex came up in conversation. After three years of marriage, and a move from California to his native city, she liked to be clear about that change in status. This probably wasn’t the time to point that out to Joe, though.

“Fuck you,” Joe spat at him. “You don’t get to be a smartass when I can’t tell my kid where mommy is. ”

“That’s fair,” Dylan said.

“Like I fucking care what you think?” Joe said. “If you did something to Alice…”

“I didn’t.”

“Then why do you sound so fucking nervous?”

Dylan hadn’t realized he did. Then he paid attention to the tremor in his hands and the way his teeth chattered together.

“I’m just cold,” he said. “Joe, I swear that I didn’t have anything to do with what happened. But I need your help.”

Joe snorted. “Why the hell would I want to do that?” he asked. “Even if I believe you—and I don’t—I never liked you. You always thought you were better than me, out there saving lives when I’m generating bills for cancer patients.”

That was true. Dylan hadn’t thought it had been that obvious, though.

He took a breath of cold, sour air to try and argue his case, and it filled his lungs until they hurt. Icy fingers pinched at the seams of his skull and cramped his ribs. The taste of burnt grease and the bitter tang of charcoal filled his mouth, thick enough he could feel it coat his teeth.

“Joseph Breslin,” Dylan’s mouth said. He bit his tongue and the inside of his cheeks as he tried to keep pace with the words coming out before he knew they were there. The words hurt as they came out; the voice was his, but it stung and itched in his throat like papercuts. “When you were fifteen, you used to spy on your neighbor, Mrs. Watkins, when she had a shower.”

“What are you talking about?”

Dylan wished he knew. It wasn’t helping , whatever it was. Joe didn’t care about what he’d done as a child. He thought Dylan had killed his wife. That needed something more recent to use as leverage—

“When you were thirty-one, you billed Medicare for $30,000 dollars worth of cancer treatments for indigents who were not patients at the hospital,” Dylan said. He nearly choked on that one as he tried to shut himself up before he made it worse. It didn’t work. “You’ve thought about doing it again, but you worry your boss suspects you did something. She does.”

Dylan finally realized he still had control of the rest of his body. He slapped his hand over his mouth and dug his fingers into his cheeks to shut himself up. Joe breathed raggedly in his ear .

“How do you—” he started to ask, then interrupted himself with a justification. “I had to. That was… They threatened to hurt… Is that what this is about? Do you work for them? She’d nothing to do with this.”

Anger cracked Joe’s voice as he came to that conclusion.

A bit more detail would help , Dylan thought frantically. It had worked the first time, after all, but this time his tongue stayed his own. He held his breath and flicked through a mental hand of cards to play next, trying to decide which one would get him what he wanted.

“I know Alice isn’t involved in this,” Dylan said. “Neither am I. Right now, though, the police don’t know that. They’re looking at me, and not at who they need to look at. Because they don’t know about that, do they?”

Silence on the other end.

Joe took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I could tell them,” he said, his voice low and defeated. “I should tell them. If this is down to what I did—”

“Not yet,” Dylan said. Guilt tried to shoulder its way in as he said that, since confession probably was the right thing to do. It just wouldn’t be useful, since there was almost no chance Joe’s little bit of fraud had anything to do with Yule. “This is what’s going to happen. You get me what I need and I’ll get Alice back. After that…it’s your conscience. OK?”

That got him a snort. “What the fuck are you going to do?” he asked. “You’re a paramedic. You don’t have the money to pay them or the muscle to scare them off.”

Dylan clenched his teeth to hold in the exasperated noise that wanted to get out. It wasn’t like Joe was wrong after all. If this had been a mortal issue, Dylan wouldn’t have been much use against criminals. He couldn’t exactly explain the leverage he did have, though.

I’m Santa Claus —that would end with him back in the hospital under an involuntary hold. Somerset would probably be thrilled, as long as he could break Dylan out on Christmas Eve.

“Maybe not,” Dylan said. He didn’t actually have a “but” prepared, but he hoped that once he started talking it would come to him. It didn’t. He hesitated as he groped for something …and the door behind him opened.

Somerset stopped in the doorway, one hand up to pop the collar on his coat. He raised one sandy eyebrow as he looked down at Dylan.

“And here I thought I’d have to come find you,” he said .

It galled, but…it would work. Dylan stepped out of Somerset’s way and made a quick “give me a minute” gesture as he focused on the phone. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Somerset’s expression go from miffed to amused as he finished adjusting his coat.

“That doesn’t mean I’m not dating someone who has both,” Dylan said. “Joe. Trust me. Like you said, I always thought I was better because I helped people. Let me help Alice.”

Joe laughed. There wasn’t a lot of humor in the cracked noise…but there was a little.

“At least you admit,” Joe muttered. He took a breath and then let it hiss out through his teeth. “OK. OK, what do you want?”

“I need an address for Irene…” Dylan drew a blank on the name. It had been Alice who’d taken her details last night, since she’d reacted so negatively to him. A hand on the small of his back nudged him out of the Just-as-High’s door and onto the street. He absently cooperated with the guidance as he focused on the call.

“There’s a lot of those,” Joe said. “And I can’t do that. I’m not allowed to share that sort of information.”

“You’re not allowed to commit Medicare fraud either,” Dylan pointed out. “Irene was the patient we picked up last night. She was at the hospital last year too, the woman whose husband-to-be attacked her in the stairwell. I’m sure her surname is in—”

“In the settlement paperwork,” Joe said. He sniffed hard, a wet, muffled sound, and cleared his throat. “OK. I’ll see what I can do. Is that it?”

It seemed like a wasted opportunity, but Dylan couldn’t think of anything else.

“Yes, that’s all. Just the address.”

Joe grunted his agreement and hung up. Dylan listened to the dead line as if it was going to tell him something before he finally lowered the phone. On its way down he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the flat black glass of the screen. Except Dylan’s reflection didn’t usually boast horns and the glimpse of sharp teeth behind his lips.

Krampus. That made sense, if anyone had knowledge of the Naughty List it would be him.

The back of Dylan’s neck itched, and his shoulders tensed as he resisted the urge to look around. He already knew that Santa’s dark shadow wasn’t there. There was a flicker of a wink from the phone screen, and then it was just Dylan caught in the glass again.

He looked like…someone who’d been run off the road by a truck the night before. So it could be worse.

Dylan stuck his phone into his pocket and finally looked up to acknowledge Somerset .

“I—”

“Let me guess,” Somerset interrupted. “You didn’t listen to me and you aren’t going to stay out of my way to let me do my job?”

That did, pretty much, cover it, Dylan supposed.

“Are you going to try and stop me?” he asked.

“No,” Somerset said. He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket as they walked, the snow globe fob dangling from his fingers, and hit the Unlock button. Ahead of them the lights on a silver-gray sedan parked on the side of the road flashed twice. “I’m going to make sure that if you’re going to do anything stupid, I’m there to make sure you don’t get hurt. Again.”

He stepped in front of Dylan and pulled the door of the sedan open. Dylan paused on the sidewalk despite the cold that pinched his toes. He chafed his hands together as he tilted his head to peer into the car. It was all charcoal leather and dash, with a reindeer-shaped air freshener dangled from the mirror.

Dylan recognized it as one of the ones from the North Pole’s fleet. He’d driven one for a couple of weeks, until he realized the convenience didn’t make up for giving Jars the opportunity to jerk him around.

“What happened to your truck?” he asked.

Somerset looked at him and raised his eyebrow a notch. “You bled all over it,” he said mildly. There was nothing mild about the look in his eyes. “Get in.”

Dylan swallowed the excuse on the tip of his tongue—that really hadn’t been his fault, but he’d probably pushed his luck enough for today—and did what he was told.

The leather seats were warm and comfortable. Dylan shifted uncomfortably as he sank into them.

“Where are we—”

Somerset closed the door before he could find out.

It felt like High School all over again.

Dylan, wedged into the back seat of the sedan as he stripped out of his jeans, snorted to himself at that thought. High School on the TV maybe. Foster kids with a chip on their shoulder tended to have a very different experience .

He kicked the ball of damp denim under the seat and bent forward to pull the hoodie up over his head. When he looked up, he caught Somerset’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Heat flushed up from his chest and stung his ears. He wasn’t sure why; it wasn’t as if Somerset hadn’t seen it all before.

“I thought we were back to pretending we don’t know each other,” Dylan said.

The corners of Somerset’s eyes crinkled. Dylan didn’t need to see his face to imagine, in detail, the quick flash of a smile.

“I don’t need to know you to enjoy the view.”

Dylan snorted and reached into the bag Somerset had handed him. He pulled out…

Santa’s clothes.

Sexy Santa, apparently, in starched white shirts and waxed denim. It wasn’t what Dylan had expected. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. His own clothes, maybe, or a Santa suit like he had moonlit at a mall.

“Don’t tell me,” Dylan groused as he pulled the shirt on and buttoned it up. The light cotton felt warm against his skin, as if it had been hung in front of the fire instead of stashed in the trunk of a car. It wasn’t a spell, exactly. Things made in the North Pole just tended to be cozy, to be comfortable. “Another of my grandfather’s hand-me-downs?”

Somerset snorted. “If I’m caught going through any of Santa’s drawers, it won’t be your grandfather’s,” he said. “You have your own wardrobe.”

That felt… Dylan paused halfway through buttoning his cuffs and tried to decide what exactly it did feel like.

Convenient, he supposed. But it did raise one question.

“How did they get my size?” he asked.

Somerset reached up and adjusted the mirror. Instead of his eyes, the only reflection was the street, the sidewalk wet and gritty with salt and snowmelt. A homeless man huddled on the steps of a building, bundled up in a ratty old coat, and two women with coffee cups in their hands gave him a wide berth as they walked by.

“Jars probably sent brownies to measure you in your sleep,” he said.

“What!” Dylan sputtered. That was not … OK, he didn’t know what answer he had expected, but it wasn’t that. “Are you serious?”

Rather than answer, Somerset just got out of the car. He slammed the door behind him.

The women had nearly reached the car, arm in arm now as they put their heads together. Even with the heavily tinted windows to protect his modesty, Dylan still flushed as he grabbed the jeans to put them on. He wasn’t sure if it was the situation or Somerset’s joke that made him feel exposed.

“It better be a joke,” Dylan muttered under his breath as he hurriedly pulled thick socks on and shoved his feet into black leather ankle boots. He’d just finished and moved on the coat when the back door opened and Somerset bent over to look in.

“Ready?” Somerset asked expectantly.

Dylan shrugged to settle the black denim on his shoulders and glanced down at himself. Brownie measurements or not, the clothes fit him like a glove, and the warmth soaked down into his cold bones. He supposed that he was as ready as he was going to get, although…

“Ready for what?” he asked as he slid over the leather seat to the door. “Where are we, and how will they help get Alice back?”

Somerset held out his hand. “You’ll see.”

Dylan stared at it. He wanted to take it and feel the press of Somerset’s cool, callused fingers against his palm. Except then he’d have to let go, back to pretending that Somerset was just his bodyguard.

“What if someone sees?” Dylan asked dryly. “Is this appropriate for a bodyguard and his boss?”

Somerset ducked down to look into the car. “You’re not my boss,” he corrected firmly. “And yes, it is. Move.”

Dylan groused under his breath and grabbed Somerset’s hand. It turned out that it wasn’t actually that intimate a moment. Somerset just unceremoniously yanked him out of the car and slammed the door. He put his hand on Dylan’s shoulder and turned him around so he could see…

…the North Pole. Which was still a strip club.

Dylan scowled and tried to back up. “Oh no,” he said. “I told you. I’m not getting locked up out of the way—”

“That’s not why we’re here,” Somerset said as he caught Dylan’s elbow. “We need to talk to whoever paid us a visit at the Just-as-High , and since we don’t have time to do it the fun way…that means we go through the proper channels.”

It sounded reasonable. Dylan still dug his heels in as he tried to think up an excuse. He’d not dodged every summons, appointment, and meeting set here for the last year just to walk in now without protest. It wasn’t even the threat that the last Santa’s killer might be under the same roof as him. At least, not entirely .

His reluctance was more to do with the flashing neon stripper pole and member’s only sign on the door. If he was Santa, if Yule really belonged to him, then it would be a reflection of him.

The traditional Santa’s workshop or some sort of Christmas first-aid tent. Instead it was a tittybar, because it didn’t matter what watch he wore or whip he cracked.

He didn’t belong, and somehow Yule knew it.

“We don’t have time for the proper channels either,” he said. “Why don’t you deal with this, and I’ll—”

Somerset gave him a shove into the road. Dylan staggered as he tried not to trip over his own feet.

“Don’t worry,” Somerset said as he crossed under his own steam. “The proper channels aren’t going to take long. The Winter Court is probably already on their way here.”