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“Father Christmas will stop bringing presents if he does that.”
Holmes shut his mouth to stare at me, but Adam never noticed as his face fell in disappointment.
“Oh. We don’t want that.”
“Certainly not,” I replied, again giving Holmes no chance to speak. Last year had firmly displayed his dislike for the holiday, and he would not hesitate to announce that Father Christmas did not exist. Our resident scrooge did not need to start that argument with this group of children. “He will come at the same time he always does, but sending a detective after him is sure to irritate him.” I lowered my voice to prevent Holmes from overhearing. “Father Christmas and his reindeer love sugar biscuits,” I added. “If you save a few, they might stay for a bit while they eat.”
Interest bloomed at the idea, and even the youngest nodded. They slammed the front door a minute later on their way to a baker on the next street. They always preferred Mrs. Hudson’s biscuits, of course, but she would be busy enough with the holiday cooking that they would have better luck asking Jones.
“Why do you encourage them?”
I ignored him, my attention on their shrinking silhouettes. He did not need to know my reasoning.
“Watson?”
Unfortunately, deflecting their attention from him firmly directed his at me. I remained silent, deciding what—and whether—to answer. His ridicule last year had prompted me to hide every clue I could find to avoid losing his friendship. I had no doubt that he would send me to Bedlam should he ever discover my secret.
“Do you plan to tell me?”
I did not want to, but his tone said he would not leave me alone until I did. I would simply have to be careful.
“Everyone deserves a childhood, Holmes,” I replied quietly, still looking out the window though the children had long since disappeared, “especially them. Father Christmas is part of that.”
“Father Christmas is a load of poppycock.”
“He is still part of a child’s holiday. The oldest of that group turned seven last autumn. Most children keep the magic in Christmas until at least ten or eleven. You do not need to ruin that for them. What you said to Wiggins last year was bad enough.”
He let out a faint harrumph, but silence fell as I slowly returned to my chair. I dared to hope my answer would satisfy him.
“You still have not told me why you encourage them.”
The question drifted from the other chair, where Holmes pretended to read the morning’s newspaper. I raised an eyebrow over my journal.
“Have you lost memories?”
The pages snapped simultaneously to a faint growl. “Your reasoning indulges them,” he corrected, “but you told them that Father Christmas would stop leaving them presents if I took the case. Why do you encourage them? We both know the only presents they receive will be the ones they procure for each other.”
They would receive the ones they gave each other, whatever resulted from Mrs. Hudson’s shopping, and one each from Father Christmas. My old friend had noted the easiest route to that hidden courtyard within days of its founding. Perhaps this year, one of the children would successfully wait up for him.
I could not say that, however.
“Why does it bother you so much?”
“Because they should not believe in nonsense!” The paper landed on the table to let him scowl at me. “Their every day is survival. What will happen to that belief when one of them passes the entire holiday without a gift? You would rather them find out the truth through experience than be warned ahead of time?”
“What about when your warning does not match the truth?”
He stilled, staring at me before scorn laced his tone. “You still believe in Father Christmas?”
“No.” Personal friendship did not require belief. “None of them will pass the holiday without a gift, Holmes, not after the amount of shopping Mrs. Hudson has done in the last month, and believing in magic will not harm them. Let it alone.”
He grumbled something about ‘ridiculous stories’ but said nothing in reply, and I returned to my scribbling.
“He is still a load of poppycock.”
I sighed, wishing I had decided to read upstairs. Untimely caroling had sent Holmes into an argumentative mood, and I had no desire to discuss this again. This made the third time he had renewed the topic in the last hour.
“How can you be so sure?”
Holmes’ derisive snort nearly distorted his words. “Because a single being cannot visit every child in the space of one night. It is not possible. If the fundamental reason for his existence cannot be true, then the man simply does not exist. Someone took the story of a man in the first century and made him a legend.”
A smile flickered at his word choice. I had asked Nicolas something very similar in the first years of our friendship.
“I don’t rightly know that I had a childhood,” he answered slowly, thinking back. “You know born immortals do not mature as humans do. The legend exists, therefore so do I.”
“But some exist before the legend,” I countered. “I had never heard of the Switch Witch before my visit, and I can find nothing about her since.”
He released a hearty laugh. “She found you, did she? Probably caused all sorts of mischief. Morgana is slightly different from the rest of us. King Winter founded his city almost at the dawn of time, but Jack and I did not start our own until much later, and nobody knows when the others arrived. Most of their legends are cobbled pieces of hearsay that have not made sense in centuries.”
The discussion had wandered into a comparison of each creatures’ genuine traits with their legendary ones, but Nicolas’ words would not answer Holmes’. I doubted I could ever tell him the truth.
“That still does not tell me why he cannot exist. You know not everything is logical.”
He grumbled something behind his paper. “Our world operates on fixed planes of logic,” he replied. “You know that as well as I. How many times have you commented on my deductions?”
“I did not argue an absence of logic,” I returned. “I said not everything is logical. You acknowledged just yesterday that people are not logical. Neither are emotions, accidents, or weather patterns. Why are you applying logic to a story based in magic?”
The point irritated him to silence. He snapped the paper at me and resumed reading, but his scowl announced he would return to this argument eventually.
“Poppycock.”
I set the promised shortbread on the table, tensing at the grumble that carried faintly from his place next to the chemistry table. After nearly a week of disagreement, I cared only about making him drop the topic, and I had thought the bribe would be enough. I would not tolerate much more of this.
Nicolas would tell me it did not matter. He dealt with disbelief every time he came to the human world, but I could not ignore the slander.
“He is not poppycock, and you have yet to give a valid reason for your opinion.” I refrained from saying anything more specific as I turned my steps toward my chair. Even the youngest Yarder could hear the anger lacing my tone.
I did not have to look to know he frowned at me. “Knowledge is not an opinion. Are you not a bit old to still believe in Father Christmas?”
“Are you not a bit old to twist a man’s words?” A muscle in my leg spasmed, and I leaned against the settee to let it pass. “I already answered that, and my question asked why you think he cannot exist. Reasonings have nothing to do with belief.”
Belief helped, however. Most clear-sighted humans knew of the magical long before they saw their first, but I could not use that fact yet. I would not be able to use it at all, if Holmes kept the same mentality from last year.
“He cannot exist because magic does not exist. As magic does not exist, we see his fundamental purpose is impossible and therefore illogical. Anyone who tries to say otherwise must either be blind, stupid, or insane.”
His mentality had not changed. Nothing I said would open his mind, and any attempt would only send me to the asylum. As I had no wish to survive Maiwand only to die in Bedlam, I made no answer. Perhaps he would stop if I ignored him.
“The very idea is based in fallacy,” he continued, scornfully destroying that hope. “The child wants to see ‘magic,’ so they believe anything ‘magical’ they hear, never stopping to think about whether the idea makes sense!”
I made no answer as I pushed off the settee, still aiming for my chair.
“No man could reach all the children in London in a single night, much less the entire world, even if he had three others helping him, nor could that Nellie creature be interested in buying the children’s teeth. What would she do with them?!” An idea struck him, and he spun to face me. “Have you been telling them these ridiculous stories?”
Her name was Nixie, not Nellie, and his own fallacy rested in that Father Christmas was not human. I planted a hand on the back of my chair instead of sitting down. If he had stopped to observe, as he so often admonished me, he would have easily seen my rising anger.
“No.”
He ignored the warning to start pacing. “Someone has. The original group did not spout such nonsense at every turn, but recent weeks have carried far too many stories containing a variety of impossible creatures, all referenced as if they existed. Maybe tomorrow I should—"
“Stop. Right now.”
Whatever he intended to say, the plan could not end well. Better to stop him there, and he stilled, staring at me in surprise as he finally registered the boiling anger turning my knuckles white on the back of the chair. I had had enough. If he would not take a week’s worth of hints, I would stop assuming he could deduce my thoughts.
“If you have nothing good to say,” I growled, “then say nothing. You will not ruin those children’s holiday, and if I hear one more word out of you denouncing Father Christmas, the tooth faery, or any other creature of folklore, so help me you will not enjoy the consequences!”
He made no answer, frozen mid pace as I grabbed my cane from its place against my chair and limped out the door. I needed to leave before I did more than snarl at him.
A night alone would provide him ample audience to say everything he wanted, and I would warn Wiggins to limit discussion around Holmes. Lenora needed to learn how to hide her heritage—and the creatures that followed and protected her—before someone woke up in a cell.