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An enormous beast glided down a slope, legs churning in a silent gallop.
His hooves touched the snow, and a white veil rose in his wake. The frozen ground walloped beneath heavy steps. Without the momentum of a sleigh, he slowed much faster than the last time he’d made this landing. Three figures rolled off the reindeer’s back before he came to a stop.
The sharp whine of the timesnapper crackled around him.
The reindeer was frozen mid-stride outside the bubble, his head thrown back. He’d spent too much time in the snap already. Extended time-warping could risk decay at a cellular level. Time was valuable, but they could not be careless.
Claus’s lead reindeer remained in regular time.
The triplets stood back to back to back. As tall as they were round, their clothing reflected the colors and textures of their environment. They stayed perfectly still. Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and even tasting, they studied their surroundings. A mental snapshot was forming in their minds.
A square roof. Footprints.
Beardless, the three elven had identical faces. Not even their mother could tell them apart. They could blend into society when needed—walk the streets of London midday, loiter outside a baseball game in Chicago or ride the subway in New York. Short and heavyset, they would gather second looks but nothing more.
Dane twittered his fingers.
Duke and Deke didn’t see the gesture, but they felt it. They dispersed to the perimeter of the roof and shed equipment from their belts. Detectors and identifiers were soon scanning for anything out of the ordinary—a pebble or feather or even a speck of sand would be captured and analyzed.
Not one snowflake went unobserved.
As they covered the area, not a word was spoken. It was legend among the elven that the triplets didn’t even cry at birth. They had simply looked at each other and nodded.
They captured a three-dimensional image of Claus’s tracks and the mysterious path carved across the roof. There was evidence that he fell by the chimney, perhaps put his hand against it. But there was no record of his exit. Like he had disappeared.
None of the reindeer had any recollection of what happened. They told the handlers there was a blur of movement followed by a blinding light before they were compelled to leap from the roof. Realizing what had happened, Ronin had turned them around and circled the roof. By then, it was too late.
Claus was missing.
Dane released the timesnap. The bubble engulfing the triplets vanished. Back in regular time, they watched Ronin finish his gallop, snorting with wide and impatient eyes. Dane made a quick gesture and the reindeer stopped pawing the roof.
Silence was imperative.
This was an unusual mission. They couldn’t be seen stalking the rooftops with a flying reindeer. But Claus was gone. That was more than a little unusual.
Dane pulled food from the saddlebags while Duke and Deke circled around them to analyze the hillside. They didn’t want to spend any more time outside the timesnapper than necessary, but Ronin needed to feed as well as rest. A tired reindeer could lose bladder inflation when soaring thousands of feet above the planet.
That was not wise.
Dane had fixed the feedbag when his scalp began to tingle. It was Deke. He had raised a finger and circled once. The three of them converged on a patch of snow. Deke passed an infrared scope over it. A pixelated image sharpened on the monitor. A distinct pattern was taking shape. It was a paw print.
A very large one.
There was no evidence of tracks coming or going from this spot, as if the paw print had dropped out of the sky. Dane studied the pattern, taking into account the weather. Perhaps a mountain lion had ventured down the slope, but that didn’t explain the lone print.
“Hey!” someone shouted.
Dane reacted with instinct, flicking his fingers in the direction of the voice. A crystal small enough to balance on the tip of a pine needle descended to the ground and found an old man staring up. Mouth open and eyes wide, he was looking at three elven standing on his roof. And a reindeer with the largest rack of antlers he’d ever seen.
The microscopic crystal flashed.
For a moment, sharp shadows were tossed behind him. The old man became catatonic—still clutching the coat around his neck. The memory flash was a last resort, a tool the triplets didn’t like to use. There were other ways to deal with a discovery.
Not this time.
He would remain that way until they were finished. He’d wake up with a strange memory that felt more like a dream. No one would believe him about elven on his roof, even if he told them.
But just in case.
Dane and Deke held very still as Duke retrieved a clear bag and tweezers from his belt. His retinal optics captured what he was seeing on the ground and uploaded it for his brothers to see. Dane and Deke watched his view in the corner of their vision as he carefully plucked something from the snow and held it up for them to see. It was long and kinky and bright red. So red that it seemed to burn.
They’d seen a hair follicle quite like it.