Have Yourself a Faerie Little Christmas Read online

  This was going to be a great Christmas.

  She wondered if Harry knew about kissing under the mistletoe.

  A knock on the door interrupted her daydream, just inches away from Harry taking her into his arms and dipping her into a kiss. Okay, so maybe that was an old-fashioned image of romance, and a lot of feminists would shriek in outrage that it was submissive and demeaning. What was wrong with encouraging a man to be the hunter, anyway?

  Bethany had figured out that men were less likely to bolt, to feel themselves trapped, if they were the hunters. If they thought they had done all the work in capturing a girl's heart and attention, then they would keep working to hold onto her. Men loved challenges.

  She just wished she didn't present quite so much of a challenge that every bozo and weirdo and hopeful alien abductee on the planet wanted to get close to her.

  The door opened and her heart did a funny little skip when she saw Harry, and the way his gaze zeroed in on her all the way across the room.

  "Ready?" He stepped into the room and held out a hand. "This might tingle a little."

  "Kind of like a force field or tractor beam or something wrapping around a ship?" she offered.

  Harry's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open a little, and that funny feeling in her stomach turned heavy and cold and squirmy. Had she turned him off already?

  Then he grinned and took a step closer, still holding out his hand. That lovely zing climbed her arm when their hands touched. A buzzing sensation raced across her bare skin, muffled where her clothes covered her. It sank in so it sort of tickled and massaged somewhere between her skin and her bones.

  "Wow." She flinched when her voice sounded a little off, not quite hollow.

  "Good job," Megan said. "I have to concentrate to get past the deflection."

  "Deflection?"

  "I've done some testing. It's not quite invisibility, when other people are inside the field with me. Like the more people I gather up, the more it stretches and loses its strength," Harry explained as they headed out the door. He held onto her hand the entire time, and that was very nice. "I've run some experiments, and electronics seem less affected by the magic than eyes and other senses."

  "So the security cameras can see us, and the guys in the control room, but people walking down the hall can't?" Bethany giggled. "What about when we talk?"

  "Same with sounds. What I've found interesting is that digital cameras pick me up with minimal blurring, but old-fashioned cameras, with film to expose, don't see anything at all."

  "It's like they postulated in some...oh, I can't remember the titles, but there were some books I read that claimed science and magic couldn't co-exist. Technology works against magic."

  "Something like that," Megan said.

  "How come you can hear us?" Bethany asked, as they stepped out the back entrance of the casino. She scanned the parking lot for paparazzi, gossip rag reporters and that lunatic who claimed that they had been lovers in four previous lives, so she had to marry him or else bring about the end of the world. No one waited, or at least no one popped out of hiding and came charging at them.

  "Harry wants me to hear him."

  "And she's family. When Megan broke the family curse on Alexi, it created a bond..." Harry sighed, offering her a lopsided grin that made him seem so very young. "It's a long story."

  "We'll have plenty of time for talking later," Megan said, and looped her arm through Bethany's as a dark silver Lexus pulled up at the foot of the stairs and Alexi rolled down the window to wave at them. They hurried down the stairs, and got into the car much more easily than Bethany was used to doing lately. She liked being ignored far more than she had when she was in junior high.

  "How are you going to include my Dad in the invisibility field?" she asked, when they were all in the car and heading for the house Alexi had rented for her on the edge of the city. "He's not going to be too good about holding hands all the time."

  "Oh. Yeah." Harry blushed as he let go of her hand. Bethany almost grabbed hold of it again. "A lot of it is control and proximity. Once I've got the field anchored on both of you, we can be five yards apart before the protection is threatened."

  "The stretching thing you mentioned, right?" She nodded, and was delighted with the pleased light in Harry's eyes, like her favorite teacher when she learned her lessons well. Bethany hoped there was a lot Harry could teach her in the three weeks they were together.

  Friday, December 7

  "We've got a date." Maurice perched on the information desk in the center of the Neighborlee Library. He watched Holly climb to the top of the ladder and hang her fourth bunch of mistletoe and holly from the track lighting. "You and me, Christmas Eve, under the mistletoe. Got that, Holly Berry?"

  In his imagination, he heard Holly laugh and promise him. He would get a promise from her tonight, when he visited her dreams.

  Dream kisses were great, but he wanted real ones, flesh and blood kisses. Holly would remember that kind of kiss the next day. He wondered sometimes if she remembered half of what they said to each other, all the adventures they had in her dreams, each time they met in those dreams. Where did those dreamtime memories go, when she woke up? Into smoke and thin air?

  "Miss Holly?" A gaggle of boys, all in that missing-tooth-and-tangled-hair stage, gathered around the base of the ladder. They watched her make adjustments to the clump of mistletoe, ribbons, tiny gold balls, and holly. "Whatcha doing?"

  "Hanging the mistletoe, of course." She smiled down at them. "You troublemakers aren't trying to look up my skirts, are you?"

  "Ewwww!" they chorused, almost in unison.

  Maurice took comfort from the soprano tones of the chorus. They were too young for their voices to crack and change, and too young to be interested in anatomy lessons--and young enough to think such foolery was gross.

  Besides, she wore slacks and a bulky sweater. His Holly was way too smart to give those future juvenile delinquents even a chance of an accidental glimpse.

  She half-slid down the ladder. "How does it look?" Holly laughed when the boys shrugged and gave each other confused looks. They were obviously too young to care about the finer points of interior decorations or holiday traditions, as well.

  "What's it for?" the first speaker asked. He had obviously been dubbed the spokesman for the entire group. Maurice had long suspected that boys at that age had something of a hive mind, moving like swarms of dirty, noisy, constantly eating insects, rather than like the ravenous wild dog packs they would form when adolescence worked its off-key chemical magic on them.

  "Oh, mistletoe and holly are good luck. They ward off the evil spirits that will try to invade during the dark and shorter days of winter, and they help bring light and warmth, and longer days, and eventually spring. The Druids considered mistletoe a sacred plant and used it in magical potions. Harvesting mistletoe was a sacred ritual and crucial to their magic and the protection and health and life of the tribes of Brittania."

  "What's Brittania?" one boy asked from the edge of the swarm.

  "That's those big books that all look alike over in the corner," another boy said, jerking his thumb toward the reference section.

  "Brittania is the old name for England," Holly said, her face rosy as she muffled laughter. She gestured for the boys to move aside, and they obeyed with only minimal hesitation--proof of just how much the boys adored Miss Holly and generally obeyed her without question. At least, the boys under the age of ten.

  They formed an aisle to allow her to fold up the stepladder and drag it over to the arched doorway that led into another room in the massive old house-turned-library. The leader of the group dashed over to the table where Holly had left the last few clumps of mistletoe. He picked up the tray and brought it over before she finished steadying and positioning her ladder.

  Maurice decided he wanted to keep an eye on such an alert child. The ones who could put faint clues together and figure out what people were doing, what they needed, and how
he could get in good with them, ended up as the ringleaders and mischief-makers.

  "Thank you, Tony." Her eyes sparkled as she picked up a clump and held it over his head. "Is there a special girl you're hoping to catch under the mistletoe this year?"

  "What would I do with her when I catch her?" young Tony asked, his mouth and his voice curling up in a sneer.

  Maurice breathed a sigh of relief--definitely, the boys in this group of admirers were too young to realize how great those differences were between boys and girls.

  "You kiss her, of course." Holly burst out laughing when the boys made sounds of disgust and their faces wrinkled up in various levels of nausea and revulsion. "It's for good luck. It makes sure the coming year is healthy and wealthy and full of success." She bent down and whispered loudly enough for the entire swarm to hear. "And it makes sure that the other girls leave you alone."

  "Can I kiss you, then, Miss Holly?" an otherwise-until-then silent little boy asked from the edge of the group.

  "Why would you want to kiss me?"

  "You ain't got cooties like the girls do."

  "I'm a girl." Her face nearly glowed from the effort of holding back laughter. Wisely, Holly picked up another clump of mistletoe and beat a strategic retreat up the ladder to hang it.

  "Yeah, but you're a good kind of girl. You're almost as good as being a mom. You're not gross and you don't squeal and you don't get mad at guys 'cause we forgot to give you a Valentine and all that dumb stuff."

  "You're even better than a mom," Tony said. "You don't make us eat gross stuff like salad and you let us eat cookies in the reading room and you don't yell at us to wipe our feet."

  "That's because Miss Myrtle catches you at the door," Holly said, concentrating on the twisty that fastened the clump of decoration to the nail pounded into the woodwork at the top of the archway.

  Maurice flew over and kept watch over her, just in case she lost her balance, caught up in this very interesting and slightly disturbing conversation. He had a vision of Holly either tumbling off the top of the ladder and the boys scattering like roaches when the light came on--or all of them clumping together to try to catch her. He knew Holly, and she would rather break a leg than risk hurting one of her children by landing on them.

  "And you know what kinds of books we like, and you know great stories, and you belong to us because you ain't got a boyfriend," another boy offered.

  "I belong to you, huh?" Holly still smiled, but the laughter had gone from her eyes and the rosy color from fighting laughter faded to her normal indoor coloring.

  "You belong to me, Holly. I'm your boyfriend," Maurice said, as loudly as he could. After all, if other people who got soaked in magic could finally see and hear him, maybe after a year of hanging around together, she might soak up enough magic to sense his presence. It was Christmas, right? A time of magic and hope. Right?

  Yeah, he told himself a moment later, but what good did it do him to be her boyfriend when she didn't remember him in the light of day?

  "Yep, you belong to us. So nobody's allowed to kiss you but us. Right, guys?" Tony said, nodding so hard Maurice's neck ached in sympathy.

  "You make a very convincing argument." Holly climbed down the ladder. "But what if I already have a boyfriend, and you just don't see him?"

  "What kind of a boyfriend doesn't come see you at work or bring you flowers or candy or nothing?" Tony retorted with his bottom lip stuck out a little in pique. "My sister's boyfriend is bothering her all the time. She says she likes it. She says that shows he's jealous enough to want to check on her, and that means he's really serious." He nodded for emphasis. "Mo's an okay guy. He doesn't get all gooshy in front of us. Know what I mean? But he told me the important stuff guys need to do to show their girls they like them a whole lot. And if you got a boyfriend and he ain't bringing you things and checking up on you... Well, he ain't good enough for you."

  "I figure, if you got a loser boyfriend like that, you got no boyfriend at all," another boy stated, earning nods and murmurs of agreement from the rest of the swarm.

  "Hey, that's not fair. I'd bring you stuff all the time, Holly Berry. If I could," Maurice added, feeling his heart drop somewhere beyond his toes. "We have lots of fun, don't we? I take you places you never thought of. I'd take you through paintings into other worlds and I'd bring you jewels and candy and cover you in flowers every night.

  "If I could." He sank down to the nearest shelf and his wings drooped. "You know what? The kids are right. You really don't have a boyfriend, do you?"

  "What do I need a boyfriend for, when I have all of you?" Holly said, summoning a smile.

  The grandfather clock in the next room solemnly bonged out the hour. Five o'clock. The boys looked around at each other in dismay. Five was the magic hour--time to go home and get ready for dinner. And those who had wasted their study time at the library were doomed to study after dinner, instead of watching TV or sledding on the hill into the Metroparks. The one the police department kept lit and monitored, and stocked with hot chocolate and carefully tended fires in metal barrels.

  "Time to scoot." Holly gestured at the door and all the hats and coats on pegs on the wall, hanging over a long row of little boots standing or leaning or lying on the plastic mats. She let out a yelp when Tony flung his arms around her. "What's that for?"

  "Gotta kiss you for good luck." The boy blushed bright red, wide-eyed with terror and embarrassment for a moment. Then he flashed a smile that was missing two teeth on the bottom and one on the top.

  Holly laughed, and the tone of it made Maurice relax, assuring him that her pain had fled. The next moment, his stomach tied in knots again and he gripped the edge of the shelf to keep from flying off it or hurling sparks of magic at the little boys who gathered around, tugging on Holly's arms and the hem of her sweater, demanding their kisses, too.

  She obligingly bent down and pursed her lips. Before she could do anything more, Tony lunged forward, smashing his lips against her cheek, and darted away. In moments, all of the boys had made their pecking little attack kisses and ran for the wall with their coats. Holly sank down on the second step of the ladder, pressing her fingertips against her cheeks that, fortunately, didn't glisten from all those little boy kisses. She watched the boys clamber over each other, rushing a little more than usual to flee the library.

  A smile crept across her lips. Then a sigh escaped her, turning into weary laughter. She rested her chin in her cupped hands and her elbows on her knees, and didn't move until every last boy had vanished through the doors, outside into the growing twilight.

  "They're good kids, huh?" Maurice said. He fluttered over from his shelf and landed on her shoulder. "But you and me... We're gonna have the real thing for Christmas. I just wish you could remember me, Holly Berry."

  A moment later, Holly stood and folded up her ladder and moved it to the next site for hanging decorations. Maurice stayed close, prepared to use up all his day's ration of magic to steady her ladder and keep her safe. Several times, she turned to look at the door, as if she could still see and hear the slightly embarrassed, excited boys who had taken a large step toward adulthood without even knowing it.

  Maurice wondered with a sinking heart if it would only cause Holly more pain if she could remember him and their dreamtime adventures during the day. The boys were right. What kind of a boyfriend was he, if he couldn't do anything for her, give her anything, visit her during the day?

  He had realized something as he watched her interact with the boys. It wasn't really the ability to do things for her and give her things that bothered him. She wasn't a materialistic kind of girl. Her treasures were in her books and the adventures of the mind that they shared. What mattered to Maurice, and what he couldn't give Holly, was the pleasure of letting the town of Neighborlee know that someone found her interesting. Someone cared about her and wanted to romance her and work to make sure that no one else could claim her heart. He was invisible to nearly every inhabitant of the town, s
o how could anyone see how much Holly had come to mean to him in the last year?

  "And another year to go," he muttered. "All I want for Christmas..." He sighed. "Sometimes I think I'd willingly give up magic for the rest of my life, if I could be visible to you, and full size, and get rid of these wings right now, and stay that way." Another sigh. "You're worth it, Holly Berry, and I wish the whole world could know."

  Saturday, December 8

  "Sorry, folks, but I'm not that big on shopping, and that seems to be the major sport among Humans at this time of the year." Lori let out a yelp when Will and Phill each linked an arm through hers and sped her into the dimensional slit. Two steps took them from the Waldorf Astoria, into a snowy morning in woods outside a small town that faintly rang with undertones of magic. Maybe this self-induced exile would turn out to be interesting?

  "There's more to Christmas than presents," Will said.

  "More than getting them, he means," Phill said.

  "There's giving. And that's enough to keep you busy for a whole year."

  "Umm, isn't giving presents to Humans someone else's job? I mean, the last time I interfered with another ministry or department or whatever... Well, it wasn't pretty. The Tooth Fairy Committee can be brutal!" Lori looked around, as much as blinding brilliant sunlight on dazzling snow allowed.

  "Humans give to Humans. It's great. It's like their own kind of magic," Will said. "Now, you are absolutely sworn to secrecy, understand?"

  He slowed to a stop. Fortunately, so did Phill, or else Lori would have been dragged sideways for a few steps. They both waited until she nodded agreement.

  "A bunch of us sneak out at all the Human holidays to help out. It's fun, pretending to be magic-less like them and doing things the hard way. So now, we're letting you in on the secret and the fun. Get it?"

  "Got it," Lori responded, suddenly breathless with anticipation.

  "Good!" they chorused, and started up again at double-speed.