Holly North Read online

  “Can I?” he said.

  The old man nodded.

  Felix turned to me, glee all over his face.

  “Welcome to the North Pole,” he said.

  Chapter 3

  I blinked and looked from Felix to the old man and back again.

  “Um,” I said.

  My brain felt like it had frozen, and I had to mentally play his words back over a few times before they could sink in.

  Then reality crashed in on me.

  “No,” I said.

  “No?” Felix said.

  “Under no circumstances,” I said. “No. Absolutely not. Do you think I’m insane?”

  “I don’t really know you yet,” he said. “Anything’s possible.”

  “No, anything is not,” I said.

  My heart began beating so quickly it was like a hummingbird had gotten trapped in my chest. I looked around the room for an escape, but it was dark outside and impossible to tell how high up this room was, and the only door was behind my two captors.

  The old man chuckled. His overweight belly jiggled—

  Like a bowl full of jelly.

  “No,” I said.

  “We’re pleased to meet you, Holly,” he said. “Even if you’re less than pleased to meet us. Are you all right? Do you need a drink of water?”

  Panic flooded me, and then the panic turned to a hostility that burned hot in the pit of my stomach. It was a relief. I couldn’t be terrified if I was angry enough.

  “I need a drink of sanity, please, and then I need to go home.”

  Had I been kidnapped?

  Was I actually in a hospital and hallucinating that I’d been kidnapped?

  Had I died, and this was hell?

  I threw off my blankets and struggled to stand up. Felix tried to stop me, but I wrenched my arm away from him and kicked at him to make him keep his distance. Blankets tangled around me, trapping me against the bed.

  The old man held out a hand, like he was trying to soothe a skittish horse.

  “I know this is disorienting,” he said.

  “That’s not the word,” I said, yanking the blankets off and slamming them onto the bed. It was hard to feel like I could intimidate anyone while wearing a pair of polka-dotted pajamas, but I did my best. “This is not disorienting. And I am not staying here. You have got to be out of your mind.”

  I tried to stare him down, which was a challenge as he was at least a foot taller than me and twice as wide. Felix was still sitting, though, so I glared down at him instead.

  “Why am I here?” I said. “Did you knock me out so you could drag me back here to—to whatever this is? Or is this some kind of Christmas prank? Because let me tell you, I am not about to sign some talent license so you can put this on some second-rate cable show. Who even has cable anymore? I’m trying to come up with a scenario where any of this would be okay.” I waved my hand around the room, with special emphasis at the absurdly large tree. “And I can’t do it. Give me my phone.”

  “Fine,” Felix said mildly. He opened the drawer of the nightstand by the bed and pulled my phone out. I snatched it from him.

  It was dead.

  Of course it was.

  “Someone around here will have a charger,” Felix said. “Not that it will help much.”

  “Felix is right,” the old man said. “We don’t have much call for cell phones up here. Don’t really get service. Folks at the North Pole use our own systems of communication.”

  “So which one of those ‘systems of communication’ can get me home?” I said. “Or, better yet, in touch with the police?”

  I could have slapped myself. Why did I mention the police? I should have just played along and figured out how to escape. I froze and braced myself for whatever would happen next, but Felix just shrugged.

  “You can talk to Law Enforcement if you want,” he said. “But they’ll just tell you the same thing.”

  I eyed both of them. They seemed calm.

  Too calm.

  Quickly, I darted away from the bed and toward one of the windows that reflected only the lights of this room. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe it’d be on the ground floor.

  The many-paned window was twice as tall as I was, but the latch was within reach. I grabbed it, my head throbbing, and flung the window open, prepared to jump out and run.

  But there was nowhere to run to.

  I was on the ground floor, all right. Just outside the window, no more than ten feet away, the snowy ground gave way to churning black waves and an endless starry sky.

  “We’re on an iceberg,” Felix offered from behind me. I spun around, but he was still sitting next to the bed, which was much bigger and more elegant than I’d realized. “If you’re trying to escape you’ll want to go out the other side of the Workshop.”

  Santa nodded his agreement.

  I couldn’t think of him as anyone but Santa. The realization made my breath catch in my throat, and then my heart started pounding so loudly it drowned out the sounds of everything else in room.

  The walls began spinning around me and I clung onto the windowsill and leaned out. Icy air bit my face. It should have calmed me, or at least brought me to my senses, but I still had to take a few long, slow breaths before I could open my eyes.

  “This is the North Pole,” I said.

  “Yes,” Santa said.

  “You’re Santa Claus.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to be sick.”

  I heard footsteps, and then a large, warm hand descended onto my back. Part of me wanted to shake it off, but I didn’t. I took more deep breaths as Santa patted me on the back.

  “I hate Christmas,” I moaned.

  “You give me that impression,” he said.

  “Why am I here?”

  “Bad luck,” he said. “Or bad driving. It really was an accident. They didn’t mean to hit you with the sleigh. I shouldn’t have sent two new drivers out on their own. I thought they could handle it.”

  “Clearly not,” I managed, and then the world started whirling around me again and pain cracked through my head like lightning.

  Felix jumped up and grabbed my arm before I fell. It took a few seconds for the world to steady, and then I nodded at him and he helped me across the room to a chair in front of the fireplace.

  The flames jumped up and down in a glowing dance. Embers popped up into the air and spiraled around the flames. Of everything in this room, the fire seemed the most normal, so I stared at it while Felix moved around behind me.

  Santa Claus was not real. I knew that as well as I knew anything. Reindeer did not fly, and no one lived at the North Pole except for maybe a handful of researchers. And yet he stood next to me, and I didn’t have to poke his belly or tug on his beard to know he was the real thing. His presence filled the room, bumping against the edges of my consciousness no matter how hard I tried to push it away.

  Felix pushed a warm mug into my hand. I looked down.

  Hot cocoa. Of course.

  “Is it science?” I said. I poked a marshmallow, and its puffy overheated body collapsed into the cocoa.

  “It’s a marshmallow,” Felix said slowly.

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  I glared at him, but he tilted his head and looked genuinely confused.

  “Reindeer don’t fly and no one gets around the world in one night,” I said. “It’s not possible. But I’m here, and you’re here, and whatever’s going on outside is definitely real. So what? Is ‘Santa Claus’ a conspiracy theory some government came up with to hide something?”

  Santa sat down in the other chair opposite the fire. He sighed deeply, crossed his legs, and rested his hands on his stomach.

  “No, it’s all real,” he said. “Me and this place and magic, too.”

  I snorted. He chuckled. I eyed the cocoa, then took a cautious sip. It was warm and delicious. Nothing happened after the first sip, so I took another.

  “I don’t believe in magic,” I said
. “Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Santa said. He nodded and watched the fire. I waited for the rush of explanations, but he didn’t seem like he was in any hurry to convince me.

  After a moment, he tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair and looked seriously at me.

  “We can’t get you home,” he said.

  I opened my mouth, ready with a wave of demands, but he held up a hand.

  “I don’t mean we’re not willing to. I just mean we can’t.”

  “I thought you had magic.”

  “Well, the magic’s busted,” he said. He glanced at the door Crystal had left through. “Getting out of the North Pole isn’t easy, even for me. The only vehicle that can do it is the sleigh, and the sleigh barely made it home. They hit a lamppost before they ran into you and the techs told me most of the systems failed on the way home. It’s going to take a while to repair.”

  “Can I at least call someone?”

  He nodded. “We have a phone. Connection’s patchy sometimes, but it’ll do the job. It’s the middle of the night in Colorado, of course, but I’m sure your family will be looking for you.”

  “Not to call my family,” I said, more to the cocoa than to Santa. “Just my boss. She’ll wonder why I’m not at work tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” he said mildly. “In the morning, then.”

  “Santa?” said Felix. The word burst out like he’d been holding it in for a while, and like it was killing him to have been out of the conversation for so long.

  “Felix?”

  “I’m on duty in five,” he said.

  “Oh, of course,” Santa said. He shook his head and waved. “Yes, go. Can’t be late for your shift again or she’ll have your head.”

  “I already owe her my head,” Felix said grimly. “I think she’s started eyeing other body parts.”

  Santa laughed, a boisterous sound that caught me off guard. A laugh bubbled out of me, too, and I immediately choked it back.

  Where had that come from? I was not happy.

  I turned to see Felix leave, and then it was just me and the elf of my stupid childhood dreams, sitting in front of a fire in awkward silence.

  “You’re welcome to explore the place,” he said after a while. “This will be your room, but there’s lots to see. Felix can show you around.”

  “I’ll probably just chill in here,” I said. “No offense, but I’ve had enough Christmas cheer.”

  He raised his bushy eyebrows, and I realized a second too late that it had probably been a rude thing to say.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Nothing against your job or whatever. Just… not my thing.”

  “It wasn’t always mine, either,” he said. He stood with the soft groan of an old man with creaky hinges. “Let me know if you change your mind. In the meantime, we all ought to try to get a good night’s sleep. Ring the bell on your nightstand if your head keeps bothering you and a nurse will come in.”

  I forced a thin-lipped smile. “Thanks.”

  He patted me on the shoulder, and then he left, too, and it was just me and the cocoa and the fire and the Christmas tree the size of a school bus.

  I looked back at the window, half-hoping that the landscape outside had suddenly changed, but the sky outside was dark and all I could see was my own reflection in the glass.

  I didn’t want Christmas cheer, and I had no interest in exploring the North Pole. I did want to escape, though, and he was right: Everything would be just outside the door. Maybe even a way out.

  Chapter 4

  I took some painkillers on the nightstand, then paced the room room for an hour, stopping occasionally to look outside the windows at the terrifying expanse of sea outside. It churned like a living thing and lapped against the ice with a sound I could hear even through the windows.

  When the clock on the mantlepiece said four in the morning, I cracked the door and looked out onto a dimly lit wood-paneled hallway with crimson carpet. Lights in sconces paraded down the walls, all turned down to a dark golden glow.

  Everything was quiet, and the hallway held the stillness of a sleeping house.

  I slipped out and closed the door silently behind me. The words Dendrite Suite were engraved on a bronze plaque next to the door. Other plaques were next to all the other doors: Onding Suite, Skift Suite, Névé Suite, Crystalline Parlor, Floe Suite. I noted their names as I crept down the hall, listening for any sign of life.

  The corridor came to a dead end, and a bronze plaque mounted on the wall politely pointed arrows in the directions of the Diamond Ballroom, Dining Hall, Observation Deck, and Lobby.

  I turned left and kept following signs for the lobby.

  It still felt like a hotel here, with suites and meeting rooms and sitting areas full of plush couches and coffee tables featuring holly and pinecone centerpieces. Still, I saw no one, and didn’t hear anything aside from the occasional ticking of a clock or whispering of a heater vent.

  At one point, I passed a large door with the word Santa’s Workshop arching over it in glittering gold. I darted past it.

  How had I gotten here? Of all the billions of people on the planet, how had I, Holly North, ended up as the single solitary one to get hit by a sleigh and abducted to the North Pole?

  I could think of a dozen people off the top of my head who’d have appreciated the opportunity more. The only person I could think of who might appreciate it less was Alicia at work, and that was just because she was Jewish.

  What did I know? Maybe Alicia would love it here.

  A variety of pamphlets sat in a gleaming wooden rack next to a sitting area. One of them had the words Workshop Tour in big letters on the front. I slid it out and flipped it open.

  I scanned it, noting colorful photos and a list of tour hours.

  Who on earth came to tour the North Pole? As far as I knew, I was the only ordinary person on the planet who even knew it existed.

  But there was a map.

  I squinted at it in the dim light and figured out where I was, based on the position of the ballroom I’d just passed. This building was even bigger than I’d thought, and shaped like a snowflake, with six wings branching off a central hub that was marked, simply, Santa’s Workshop. My room was in the residential and convention wing, and my way out—yes, there it was, one wing over.

  I sped through the hallways as quietly as I could. The silence persisted, as though the entirety of the North Pole was off dreaming of sugarplums while I crept around like the Grinch.

  There was a lobby, but I ducked back down the hall as soon as I saw the front desk. Someone was sitting there, flipping through a magazine. She was probably the only other person in the building besides me who was still up. I couldn’t risk her seeing me.

  Instead, I traced my steps backwards and crept up a different wing, which was marked as Facilities on the map. I didn’t know what Facilities meant, but it seemed a more likely candidate for a backdoor exit than any of the ballrooms or suites did.

  The red carpeting and rich wooden doors were the same here, but everything had a slightly more worn look, and the plaques near the doors were silver instead of bronze. Near the end of a long, silent, dimly lit hallway, I saw a large silver sign: Aeronautics & Transportation.

  I raced quietly towards it. Santa’s sleigh might be broken, but there had to be another vehicle that could get me out of here.

  My heart pounded in my chest as I reached for the doorknob. I slipped through the door and shut it behind me before letting out a deep breath.

  The room was enormous and lit by bright bluish-white lights, more than half of which had been turned off for the night. I stood on a metal balcony, and stairs led down to a giant, gleaming room with cement floors and rows of metal shelves and industrial tables. In the center of everything, on a circular platform, stood the sleigh.

  It probably would have been impressive on any other day. But Santa hadn’t been exaggerating: It had been through the wringer. The front was so badly dented that the navigation panel wa
s in the shape of a V. Buttons on the silver panel were falling out of their holes or missing outright, and a large screen near the center of the panel had cracked entirely apart.

  The side of the sleigh had been dented, too, and the sight made my stomach turn over. I recognized the red paint and polished wooden trim; I’d last seen them sliding toward me before everything had gone black.

  There had to be another way out. This sleigh couldn’t possibly be the only vehicle capable of escaping the North Pole. What if there was an emergency? What if Santa ran out of hot cocoa or something?

  I stepped quietly down the metal stairs. Maybe there were other vehicles somewhere off this main room. If there was a hangar or garage, it had to be close by.

  My bottom foot landed on the cement floor, and someone cleared their throat from under the stairs. My heart stumbled over its next beat.

  “I thought you were going to bed,” Santa said.

  Chapter 5

  I turned. He had his arms crossed and was holding a large red-handled screwdriver.

  He’d been standing there underneath me the whole time. I was an idiot.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I lied.

  “Didn’t believe me about the sleigh?” he said. “Or do you just enjoy sneaking around other people’s homes after you think they’re asleep?”

  I cringed. This was not the warm, jolly Santa Claus my childhood had prepared me for. It wasn’t even the warm, kind-of-tired Santa Claus who’d been in my room earlier.

  This guy looked exhausted—and annoyed.

  “You said I could go anywhere I wanted,” I said.

  He gave me a look, and I wished I could swallow the words. Obviously he hadn’t meant this. I’d known that before I’d left my room.

  “The sleigh is broken,” he said. “Crystal and Aspen have both lost their driving privileges until they retake the training. There is no other way in or out, and Christmas is on its way. I understand that you want to go home, Holly, but I’m going to have an even harder time getting either of us out of here if I can’t trust you not to make trouble.”