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Elsa jerked awake to the shrieking of the wards.
The spells that protected Bloodstone Manor from its inhabitants’ many enemies had been laid down in layers over multiple centuries, and when something massive and powerful slammed into them at three o’clock in the morning, they screamed in a thousand voices like the tortured choirs of the damned. Elsa rolled off the couch in the library, tugging her dressing gown around herself as she frantically searched for the cause of the alarm. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary in the library itself, she snatched a sword off the wall and stalked out of the room.
The corridor was dark and quiet, except for the howling of the spell-voices, which she silenced with a gesture. Then she listened.
No footsteps. No voices.
Not only was there no one making noise on the first floor, no one on the upper floors seemed to have reacted to all hell breaking loose. Had every werewolf and super-soldier in the place suddenly gone deaf? Or was something more sinister at work?
Elsa adjusted her grip on the sword and crept forward into the dark.
*
Bucky gasped as he opened his eyes out of a nightmare to perfect darkness and a distinct lack of fur in his face.
He sat up. “Alpine?” he murmured. “You here, girl?”
No response. He sat for a moment, listening to the whistle of the wind in the eaves. Half-remembered faces from his dream flitted through his vision, screaming silently and then vanishing like smoke.
Hell with it, he decided, and tossed the covers back. Not like I’ll be getting any more sleep without her anyway. He shrugged on a robe and shuffled out of his room, glancing around as he did so in case a small white shape appeared in the gloom.
After a few minutes of wandering, his feet turned themselves toward the narrow spiral staircase that led up to the cupola, the one he’d turned into a sniper’s nest. It was a horrible thing to do, he realized, now that he thought about it. He’d taken something beautiful and made it a tool for killing.
Just like me, he thought miserably. I used to be a halfway decent guy, didn’t I? I thought so, anyway. And now look at me. He flexed the fingers of his metal hand with a series of clicks. Everything I touch runs away or dies.
His bare feet thumped slowly up the spiral stairs, and the trap door opened with a creak as the wind tugged at his sleep-tousled hair. The night was cold and clear, glittering with stars like tiny diamonds scattered across dark blue velvet. He closed the trap door behind him and stood, gazing out at the glimmering sky and the silent forest.
Something jingled suddenly, off to his left, and he whipped around.
There was a man standing on the roof beside the cupola. He was short and a little rumpled, wearing a long white shift. His wispy white hair stirred in the wind. He smiled genially at Bucky.
“I hope you’re not thinking of jumping,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to earn my wings yet.”
*
Ted opened his eyes.
There was a pig in the conservatory.
No, he corrected himself as he sat up a little straighter from his lotus pose and looked over the head of the massive bristle-backed boar currently snuffling at his chest, there were four pigs in the conservatory. Four enormous feral-looking pigs, with mud on their hooves and a shine on their tusks and—and this seemed particularly important—bright red harnesses trimmed with gold.
There was a huge hand-carved sleigh hitched up behind them. The back of it was piled with wrapped gifts. One of them looked suspiciously like a longsword taped up in glittery paper. Dangling from its pommel was a false beard with wire ear hooks and, above it, a red hat with white fur trim.
HO HO HO, said Ted, but out loud it sounded like urf urf urf.
*
Jack wasn’t actually asleep when it happened.
He was puttering around in the warm glow of the manor’s kitchens, happily stirring up what he’d decided would be cinnamon rolls for everyone to enjoy on Christmas morning. He didn’t always need as much sleep as the others, and the moon was bright enough—just past full, and wasn’t that nice—for him to be in a baking mood.
The clank of chains made him spin around so fast that his whisk clattered all the way around the rim of the mixing bowl.
There was a dead man in the kitchen.
Worse, there was a dead man he’d met in the kitchen.
The dead man was hunched and shriveled and translucent, wrapped up in what looked like iron chains, if iron chains could also be made of fog and moonlight. They clinked when he lifted a twisted hand to point at Jack.
“Abomination,” Ulysses Bloodstone snarled.
Jack’s mind whirled through half a dozen possible responses before settling, almost randomly, on the worst possible one.
“I hope you washed your hands,” he said mildly. “This is a food preparation area.”
*
Bugger all this, Elsa thought as she elbow-crawled her way through a hidden passage in the first-floor ceiling. Once I kill whatever’s holding the lads hostage, I’m taking a proper Christmas Day off for once. She stifled a sneeze. And having this passage professionally cleaned.
*
“Why are you showing me all this?” Bucky snarled. “I goddamn know this already!”
The self-described angel—who insisted that his name was Clarence and whom Bucky was almost certain was a hallucination at this point—raised his eyebrows. “I’m granting your wish, James,” he said, in the tone of someone reminding a child that they had asked for a dinner consisting entirely of brussels sprouts. “Isn’t this what you wanted? A world where you were never born?”
“I,” Bucky growled, grinding his teeth, “did not fucking wish for fucking anything. You know why, Clarence?”
Clarence brightened. It was the first time Bucky had bothered to use his name. “Do enlighten me!”
“Because I’m Irish, you stupid bastard.”
Clarence blinked.
Bucky flapped a hand. “Irish American. Ish. Point is, I know better than to use the word ‘wish’ after the word ‘I’ around anybody who acts like one a’ the feckin’ fae.” He threw his human arm wide, encompassing the snowy Brooklyn churchyard surrounding them. “And I already know what you brought me here to see!” He kicked at the nearest snowbank, knocking the accumulated snow off a small metal plate, the sort of grave marker used for burials too poor for a headstone.
It was engraved with the name Steven Grant Rogers, followed by a pair of dates less than twenty years apart. Clarence didn’t look even slightly surprised.
Bucky made a noise in his throat that he wanted to end up in Clarence’s. “I know,” he said in a deadly quiet voice, “that Steve wouldn’t have lived to grow up without me lookin’ out for him. I tell myself that every time I wake up screaming. At least I did one thing right, I say, I helped make Steve. I don’t need a guy in a nightshirt to tell me that.”
Clarence looked down at the grave marker, then back up at Bucky. “Then … why am I here?” he asked.
“Hell if I know.”
*
The flaming arrows were a surprise. Luckily the manor was full of mounted suits of armor with easily removable shields.
Elsa sheathed her sword and tightened her grip on her newest weapon.
“Now I have a halberd,” she muttered. “Ho, ho, ho.”
*
Ted sat upon his throne in the grotto and watched the little girl and her mother scurry toward him. The faint strains of Hogswatch carols drifted in from the department store outside.
HELLO, LITTLE GIRL, he said, although to her mother it probably just sounded like burbling.
The woman stopped in her tracks. “Er, are you the Hogfather?”
Ted nodded.
“The actual Hogfather?”
Ted shrugged. Was there anyone else around wearing a fake beard and a floppy red hat? He turned his attention to the child. AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR CHRIST—ER, HOGSWATCH, SMALL HUMAN?
The mother took a deep breath. “She wants—”
Ted snapped his fingers.
The mother froze.
The girl’s eyes went enormous.
“I want a narmy,” she blurted, “an’ a castle wif a real drawbridge, and a sword—”
Ted lifted his facial roots in his approximation of a smile and began pulling things out from the shadows behind his throne. A wooden castle and a box of wooden soldiers, followed by an actual sword.
The little girl’s eyes widened, and her smile was broad enough to split her face.
ONE MORE THING, Ted burbled. He reached into the shadows one more time and withdrew another box.
The girl set her sword down to accept her final gift with both hands.
THIS, Ted burbled happily, IS A CHEMISTRY SET. YOU’RE GOING TO GET A LOT OF USE OUT OF IT.
*
Elsa stepped out into a corridor and looked down when she heard the crunch.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered. “Where’d all this broken glass come from? There’s no windows in here.”
She stalked forward, her reinforced boots grinding the fragments to harmless powder beneath her weight.
*
“Stop it!” Jack shouted at the Ghost of Christmas Present, a jolly fat man with his fur-trimmed green robe hanging open to show his bare chest. “Let them go!”
The Ghost paused in the middle of his speech. “Er, what?” he boomed. “Let who go?”
Jack’s nostrils flared. “The children,” he snarled. “The ones you’re hiding under your robe.”
The Ghost blinked at him. “You’re not supposed to know about them yet,” he rumbled.
“I can smell them,” Jack said through his teeth. “They’re starving. You bastard.” He gestured at the enormous pile of food that had suddenly materialized on the long oaken prep table at the end of the kitchen: roasted hams and turkeys, piled-up loaves of bread, steaming Christmas puddings and every kind of potato dish known to man, along with enough fruits and jellies and bottles of wine to make the table groan. “You’ve got all of that, and you can’t be bothered to feed your own children?”
“They’re not mine,” said the Ghost, a little testily. “They are the children of Man.” He lifted his robe to reveal a skinny, ragged pair of children, a boy and a girl, crouching by his ankles and scowling out at Jack. “This is Ignorance,” the Ghost said, placing a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt on the boy’s head, “and this is Want.”
Jack dropped to his knees and tried to look the two children in the eyes. “Hey,” he said gently. “Are you hungry? I’ve got leftover tamales in the fridge that I can heat up. You like tamales?”
The two children stared at him as if he’d started speaking Martian.
At the far end of the kitchen, a door creaked. Jack didn’t bother looking up.
“Oh, dear,” the Ghost sighed. “Back it up, Mort. I think there’s been a mistake.”
Now Jack did look over his shoulder, just in time to see a black-robed figure frozen in the doorway to the pantry, a skeletal hand resting on the doorknob.
“What the hell is Santa Muerte doing in Elsa’s kitchen?” he demanded, turning back to the Ghost.
The Ghost sighed heavily. “I don’t suppose you’re a greedy miser, are you?” he asked.
“I certainly hope not!” Jack crossed himself.
“Yes, I thought as much. Usually no one tries to feed the anthropomorphic personifications of societal ills.”
“But they’re children,” Jack said, uncomprehending.
“You’d be amazed how rarely that matters to some people. So would we be correct in assuming there’s no point in trying to traumatize you into becoming a loving and generous man?”
Jack looked from the Ghost to the scowling children, over his shoulder at Santa Muerte (who was apparently also Mort), and then back at the Ghost. “Er,” he said. “I can heat up tamales for everybody, I guess? If that would help?”
The Ghost sighed again. In the doorway, Apparently Mort sighed, too.
*
It had only been hours, but it felt like years before Elsa stepped into the ballroom-turned-dojo with her halberd gripped tightly in her hands. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows, illuminating the enormous beast crouching at the other end of the room.
It was a mass of blue-gray fur and gleaming golden eyes, crouched low to fit under the ballroom’s ceiling with its thundercloud tail wrapped around its paws.
Mjá, it rumbled. Elsa felt her sternum vibrate with the sound.
“Right,” she growled. “Giant cat invading the house on Christmas Eve? What’s that about, then?”
I am Jólakötturinn, the beast rumbled. I have come to collect what is due to me.
Elsa frowned. Jóla—wait, I know this one. Bloody Scandinavian languages. Is this Finnish? No, Icelandic?
The penny dropped abruptly, and she groaned.
“The Yule Cat?!” she demanded. “I’ve spent this whole bloody night dodging flaming arrows and jumping away from explosions because there’s an Icelandic folk spirit in my house?!”
Jólakötturinn began to purr. The windows rattled.
“Fine,” Elsa spat. “What do you want, then?”
Only what is due to me. I feast upon those who have not received new clothes for Yule. The Cat slitted its eyes at her. There are three within this house. As well you know.
Elsa felt a cold drop of sweat run down her spine and then out the ballroom door. “You’re joking.”
Do I seem to you a mirthful spirit?
Elsa closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and screamed a little, just for catharsis. Then she opened her eyes again and glared at the Yule Cat.
“Fine,” she snarled. “I’ll give them the bloody jumpers.”
The Cat blinked lazily. What jumpers?
“The ones I had made especially for them. The ones I was thinking about not handing out after all because they were too ridiculous and I have a reputation to maintain.” She grumbled under her breath. “The ones with the white cats and the skulls on them.”
The purr deepened. Now the floor was vibrating. And what of you, then? No new clothes for Elsa Bloodstone? Will I feast upon your flesh?
She shot the Cat a flat look. “As if you don’t know Jack has knitted me the most hideous hat in existence in what he probably thinks of as total secrecy.”
The purr grew louder until the walls shook and the chandeliers jangled and Elsa was sure the manor was about to fall down around her ears—
—and then it was gone.
*
It was nearly noon on Christmas Day before the inhabitants of Bloodstone Manor dragged themselves out of bed and shuffled downstairs to the library, where Jack and Bucky’s approximation of a Christmas tree (a listing fir decorated with a fascinating assortment of popcorn garlands and small animal skulls) waited with its small pile of presents under its boughs.
“This is perfect, Elsa!” Jack enthused, stroking the softness of the dark green sweater that covered his chest. The calavera-style skull over his breastbone was wearing a Santa hat and surrounded by little white figures of seated cats.
“Where the hell did you find it?” Bucky asked, holding his sweater up. It was navy blue, with a single large cat surrounded by little skulls.
“Commissioned it,” Elsa replied. “Honestly, the artist was surprised I wasn’t asking for a bunch of protective charms knitted into the pattern.”
“You didn’t?” Jack asked, blinking.
“Of course not. They’re on the wool.”
Jack grinned.
Ted burbled happily to himself. His sweater was large enough to be a tent, and his skulls and cats were decorated with yellow daisies and a pattern of ivy leaves.
“Speaking of cats,” Bucky remarked, “has anybody seen her majesty this morning?”
Elsa sipped her coffee. “I thought she was with you.”
“No, I woke up in the middle of the night and she wasn’t there.”
Elsa froze. “You … woke up?”
“Yeah, I had the weirdest dreams, too. Not the usual nightmares. Think I’ve been watching too much Frank Capra or something.”
Elsa paused, her mouth slightly open, but didn’t get the chance to speak.
Mi!
Alpine stood in the doorway, her fur shining with sunlight reflected off the snow outside, her tail waving like a happy flag.
“There’s my princess,” Bucky said fondly, and wiggled his fingers to summon her.
Alpine trotted forward with a little trill, then broke into a run and sprang onto the sofa where Bucky sat with his sweater on his lap. She settled down across the knitted effigy of herself and began to purr as Bucky stroked her.
“Hold on a minute,” Jack said. “What’s that on her face?”
“Huh?” Bucky looked down.
“She’s got a bit of fur or something near her mouth.” Jack crawled forward from where he’d been sitting beside the tree with Ted and reached out to pluck the tuft of fluff from the white cat’s lips.
“Awww,” Bucky crooned. “Has my baby been out hunting?”
“She shouldn’t be outside in this weather,” Elsa pointed out.
“I don’t think she was,” Jack announced. He held up the tuft. “Unless you know something in the woods that’s got bright green fur.”
The four of them stared at the tuft. It was, much as Elsa hated to admit it, a very familiar shade of green. Rather like a seasick crocodile, in fact.
Jack cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Okay,” he said, dropping the tuft and the subject. “Who wants cinnamon rolls?”