16

Back at Fenster’s, I wanted to find Lucky and Max to tell them the news right away. Lopez wouldn’t say anything to me about the identity of the shooter, who was still at large, though he told me it would probably be all over the news once the gunman was apprehended. So this was the break in the case that Lucky had been hoping for.

Depending on who the shooter was and what could be learned once the news broke, this might also assist with our mystical problem at Fenster’s, if our poltergeist was indeed connected to a nefarious scheme to commit polterheists. (Well, I thought it was clever.)

The cops were done searching the locker room and all gone by the time I got back there—which was to be expected, I thought, when I saw the time. I’d been gone longer than I’d realized. Time really flies when you’re lip-locked with a man about whom you’ve fantasized far too much.

I took off my coat, donned the elf ears-and-cap which I had shoved into my pocket earlier this evening, and checked my reflection in the mirror. I looked disheveled and excited . . . and my ears were a little smooshed and bent. Oops. Oh, well. They only needed to last for two more days.

With less than an hour left before closing, I decided not even to bother touching up my makeup, and I left the locker room as I was. I realized that after I got out onto the floor, I probably wouldn’t be able to leave it again until closing time. So, just in case Max and Lucky had gotten tired of searching for me (or had gotten hungry and thirsty), I popped quickly into the break room to see if they were there.

“Oh, hi!” I said, startled. “Um, sorry,” I added, realizing I had interrupted something. Followed by, “Uh, is everything all right?”

I was looking at Rick and Elspeth. This late into the shift, no one else was in the break room—everyone who wasn’t on the floor now had clocked out—and they were alone together in here.

And this wasn’t just happenstance, I realized; they were clearly together. But not in a good way, it seemed.

Rick was holding Elspeth by the shoulders, and he looked furious with her. I saw the way his fingers were digging into her flesh when I walked in on them, and I thought she’d have bruises tomorrow. Elspeth looked . . . oh, pretty much the same as always. Sulky, sullen, angry, snide, slouching. And . . . triumphant, I realized with surprise.

Maybe she was glad she had made Rick angry—which, for someone like Elspeth, probably counted as an achievement. Or maybe she had the upper hand in their argument, whatever it was.

“Hi, Esther.” Rick took a breath and released Elspeth.

“Hi.” I noticed that Elspeth didn’t move away from him. He must have been hurting her a moment ago, or perhaps trying to intimidate her, but she didn’t seem to be upset with him. Mostly, I thought, she just seemed annoyed that I had intruded on their scene. After an awkward pause, I asked, “What’s up?”

Rallying, Rick said casually, “Miles couldn’t find you before he left for the night, so we all thought you went home and forgot to clock out or something.”

“Oh, I had sort of an unexpected detour this evening after Karaoke Bear malfunctioned,” I said vaguely. “I’ll talk to Miles tomorrow and explain.” Actually, Miles would do most of the talking, and since I didn’t really expect to get paid for kissing Lopez, I’d go along with having my pay docked for the time I’d been missing.

“The singing bear malfunctioned?” Rick said alertly. “What happened?”

He and Elspeth exchanged a glance. She looked smug. Rick’s face—unusually, for him—was unreadable.

“Yes, what happened?” Elspeth asked me.

I hadn’t realized these two were more than scant acquaintances; but it was obvious from their body language and eye contact now that there was a relationship between them. The extent or the nature of the relationship wasn’t at all clear to me, though.

“He short-circuited or something, I think,” I said.

At Rick’s prodding, I elaborated a little; but I didn’t hint at what had really happened. Not with Elspeth in the room, watching me with those simultaneously hostile and avaricious eyes. There was actually something vampirish about this ardent Vampyre fan, I realized. This was the way she had looked at me when asking me what it had been like to be embraced by actor Daemon Ravel, and also when later asking me how I’d felt upon thinking I might die. It was as if, lacking access to her own emotions, she fed off of other people’s.

“That’s all there is to tell about the bear,” I lied with a casual shrug. “Short circuit. Smoke. Pop! Keel over. Dead.”

“Dead?” Elspeth repeated—exactly the way I might involuntarily repeat Lopez’s name if someone said it right now out of the blue.

Well, no, not exactly the way. I had never been and sincerely hoped I never would be that creepy. But it did make me think of the way a woman would respond to hearing her absent lover’s name unexpectedly said aloud.

Stop right there. He’s not your lover.

Well, not yet. But he said he wanted to see me naked.

God, how did he make such a bald statement sound so hot?

I thought again of his lips on mine, his breath brushing my cheek, his hands . . .

“Oh, calm down,” I said aloud.

Seeing their startled expressions, I felt embarrassed. Until I realized they thought I meant that Elspeth should calm down.

Rick chuckled and gestured to the goth girl. “She gets a little excited by death.” He tried to make it sound like a joke. He failed.

“And men get excited by genitals,” she said with open disgust.

Well, she must be tremendous fun in bed.

Given Elspeth’s consuming interest in Daemon Ravel aka Lord Ruthven, I assumed she was heterosexual, at least in theory. So I wondered if she was extremely disappointed in her sex life—with Rick? Or resentful of not getting sex from Rick? She’d certainly had a clumsy way of expressing her attraction to Lopez, followed promptly by being resentful when he didn’t reciprocate.

Then I wondered if “excited by death” meant . . .

No, not going there, I decided firmly. These were not thoughts I had any interest in pursuing.

In any event, I would not have said that the sullen, emotionally stunted, poor little rich goth girl seemed to be Rick’s type . . . But then, I hardly knew Rick. Maybe she was exactly his type. His clean-cut appearance and wholesome persona weren’t necessarily evidence of his sexual tastes or emotional needs, after all. Maybe his intellectual passion for psychology translated into a personal passion for deeply troubled women . . .

Certainly he had seemed passionate when I’d entered the room. But not in a good way. I glanced at Elspeth, recalling that moment and wondering whether I should leave them alone together. But it was clear that she considered my presence an annoying intrusion. So I said that I needed to go finish the shift on the floor, and I left the room.

As the door closed behind me, I thought of Lopez’s unfounded and probably unfair assessment of Rick as an opportunist. And it occurred to me that, especially for someone who had insight into the way people’s minds worked, the rich, unhappy, and insecure Elspeth might be very easy to manipulate . . .

* * *

When I got to the throne room, I found Diversity Santa, Belsnickel, Sugarplum, and Vixen all waiting for me.

Jeff took advantage of the fact that things were slow this late in the shift to start berating me immediately. “Where have you been? I’ve been stranded here in holiday hell with Belsnickel the blind elf, his drooling reindeer, and the meanest Santa’s helper who’s ever lived! Do you have any idea how many people Sugarplum has frightened away this evening?”

“I thought you liked kids?” I said to Lucky.

“I do,” said the Santa-bearded elf. “I just don’t like their parents. What a buncha whiny schmucks.”

“Where do you find these people?” Jeff said.

I still thought it best, as I had thought earlier today when asking for his help with makeup and wardrobe, not to tell Jeff where I had found Lucky.

“Diversity Santa’s been a little cranky all evening,” Lucky told me.

“Oh, he’s been cranky for longer than that,” I replied. “Don’t take it personally.”

Lucky made a dismissive gesture that indicated he hadn’t let it bother him. In his line of work, after all, he had dealt with more much difficult personalities than an actor who was unhappy about the wasteland his career seemed to be stuck in.

Hoping this news would distract Jeff from his doldrums, I told the three men about tonight’s hijacking, the shooting, and the possibility that the shooter would soon be identified.

“This is great news! I gotta go out to Forest Hills and tell the boss in person. The family’s problems with Fenster’s might be almost over!” Lucky added to Max, “Doc, Nelli’s had a hard day. Do you want me to take her for a walk and drop her off at your place, since I’m heading out now?”

I glanced at the familiar and realized she looked weary and worn. Her fuzzy antlers looked floppy, her head was drooping, and she was panting with fatigue.

“Thank you, my dear fellow. That is most considerate.” As Max handed Nelli’s leash over to Lucky, he removed his sunglasses. “It will also be a relief to me to cease wearing these. It’s been almost impossible for me to see anything in Solsticeland today!”

“There is a sense in which that’s a blessing,” I said, thinking of the Hanukkah-goes-Vegas display.

Lucky said to me, “Kid, I guess the doc will catch you up on what we been doin’ today. I’ll talk to you both tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Lucky,” I said as he left.

Jeff stared after him with a thoughtful frown. After a long moment, be turned an accusing gaze on me. “Oh, my God, Esther.”

“Max,” I said quickly, “maybe we should—”

“Lucky. The family. Forest Hills?” said Jeff, each phrase getting louder. “The boss!”

“Hello!” I said brightly to a child who was approaching the throne. “Are you here to see Santa?”

“‘The family’s problems with Fenster’s’?”

The kid and her parents took one look at the bellowing Diversity Santa, changed their minds, and left.

“Are you insane?” Jeff demanded. “Do you know who that man is?”

“Well, I gather you know now,” I said.

Jeff was a pretty voracious news consumer. I had hoped he wouldn’t put it together, but I really hadn’t counted on that. Mostly, I had hoped to be in another part of the building when he figured out who Lucky was.

“There is a valid explanation for Lucky’s presence here today,” Max said to Jeff. “As there is for mine.”

“Yeah, yeah, your poltergeist.” Jeff rolled his eyes dismissively.

Unlike Lopez, Jeff wasn’t stubbornly conventional and obsessively prone to seeking rational explanations in terms which adhered to his established belief system; he was just obtuse.

“Dreidel!” Twinkle came trotting over, his bells jangling as he bounced along. “I didn’t know you were still here!”

“Nobody did,” I said. “And I’m starting to wish it had stayed that way. Are you working the throne room with me now, Twinkle? I warn you, Diversity Santa is in a bit of a snit.”

“Isn’t he always?” said Twinkle.

“You brought a Gambello hit man here?” Jeff raged. “You got me to help you smuggle a wiseguy into Fenster’s?”

“Lower your voice, would you?” I snapped.

Realizing this was good advice, he did so. “You brought a Gambello . . . Have you lost your mind, Esther?”

Twinkle gave Jeff a puzzled look, then said to me, “No, I’m on photo duty, Dreidel. The store’s clearing out now, of course—”

“Well, it is getting late.” I said to Diversity Santa, “Just a little longer until we clock out for the night. So let’s all try to stay calm in this highly public place!”

Twinkle continued, “So I’ve just been uploading to the system the candid shots taken this evening. Probably no point, really. We fell hours behind today—we’re so understaffed! So I’ll bet all of these people have already left the store.”

“It’s all right, Twinkle,” I said reassuringly. “We’re bound to fall behind on things.”

“Especially when a wiseguy-fraternizing elf doesn’t even show up for her shift!” Jeff snapped.

“I came as soon as I could.” I added primly, “I was detained for a police matter.”

“Anything to do with smuggling a famous mob hitter into Fenster’s today?” Jeff muttered.

Twinkle continued, “And what I found when I was uploading was so . . . so weird. Photo after photo.”

Max said to Jeff, “The two problems may be linked. But even if they’re not, Lucky recognizes the danger of the mystical evil haunting Fenster’s—”

“Do we still think it’s a ghost, Max?” I asked. “A poltergeist?”

“A ghost?” Twinkle asked doubtfully, tapping on the computer monitor to bring up some images. “Do you really think that’s what this is?”

Max said to me, “I’m leaning away from that theory, now. I’m theorizing in a bit of a vacuum—”

“But that won’t stop you from talking,” Jeff grumbled.

“—but I suspect that Nelli’s reactions today, which were at times dramatic, were not consistent with a ghostly presence at Fenster’s. I think the entity we’re investigating may be something else entirely.”

“Good, because I don’t think it’s a ghost, either,” said Twinkle. “I think it looks like . . . something a lot worse, don’t you?”

He turned the flat screen monitor so that we could all see it.

We fell silent and stared in stunned alarm at the twenty or so digital photos he ran past us in a quick slide show.

In picture after picture, ordinary people smiling for the camera—in front of Solstice Castle, posing with Prince Midnight, greeting an elf, or visiting Santa—were unaware that, within easy reach, something indistinct and shadowy, with glowing red eyes and dripping fangs, was reaching for them with sharp, grasping claws.

When we got to the last picture in the batch, Twinkle said unnecessarily, “Here’s one of you, Jeff.”

“Holy shit,” Jeff said with feeling, looking at the glowing eyes that peered over his shoulder as he posed with a wailing toddler on his lap. “What the hell is that?”

“That is not a poltergeist,” Max said apologetically to us, as if taking responsibility for the problem being bigger than we’d feared. “It’s a solstice demon.”

* * *

“This is the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Jeff said.

I replied, “That’s what you said to me this morning about a different idea. Make up your mind. Anyhow, this is Max’s idea, not mine.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Jeff said. “I was talking to myself. What was I thinking when I agreed to do this?” After a moment, he added, “But, just to be clear, though it wasn’t your idea, I do blame you for this.”

“Of course.”

“Why do I let you talk me into these things?” he moaned.

“Because I’m much stronger-willed than you are.”

Also, he hadn’t needed much convincing at the time. Jeff had been really spooked by seeing a demon peering over his shoulder.

Now, of course, he was rationalizing it, speculating that Twinkle—who was safely outside the store now, serving as our lookout man—had probably digitally altered those photos to enjoy playing a gag on us. Never mind that a possessed tree had nearly strangled me the other day while vocally craving flesh and blood. No, we were the dupes of a silly joke pulled on us by a college kid.

I had seen Jeff do this before, so his change of heart didn’t surprise me. I had expected it.

But it was too late now. Max, Jeff, and I had remained hidden in the store after closing to confront whoever was, Max believed, planning to raise a demon at midnight.

As he had explained it to us earlier, after dropping his bombshell about the solstice demon, “Since before the dawn of history, going back to the long-ago eons when men gathered around the fire at night—”

“And women,” I said.

“When men and women gathered around the fire at night to ward off the menacing darkness and protect themselves from the creatures, both mystical and mundane, which lurked in the shadows, beyond the light,” Max had told us, “many cultures have feared these days of deepest winter, when night is longer than day and the barriers between dimensions crumble and give way.”

“Wow,” Twinkle had said to me, transfixed. “Your blind friend is one good storyteller.”

“He’s not blind,” I said.

“On the longest night of the year,” Max continued, “the winter solstice, darkness tumbles into darkness, the night is too long for the fabric of this dimension to easily withstand, and that is when demons can emerge from their hell dimensions to enter this world!”

Looking back now, as we waited for midnight, I was pretty sure that was where Max began to lose Jeff, who had started shifting restlessly and looking skeptical.

“Winter solstice demons go by many different names in many different cultures, but they all impart an almost identical sense of dread. They are the reason that so many ancient faiths, dead and still surviving, created a midwinter celebration of light—to ward off the demons trying to break through to our world on the longest night of the year!”

“But Max,” Jeff had interrupted then, “those festivals occur all over the calendar. Hanukkah is already over. Christmas isn’t for three days. Winter solstice was last night. Other cultures—”

“Well, it’s not as if demons keep digital calendars in their hell dimensions,” Max said prosaically. “These events happen around this time.”

“Wait, what about what Jeff said? Digital calendars notwithstanding, is that why we saw this thing in these pictures today?” I asked then. “Because last night was winter solstice, so this thing is already here? We’re too late, and Hell has come to Fenster’s?”

Well, it turned out that the good news, so to speak, was that winter solstice was actually tonight, December 22nd. I objected vociferously to this information, since everyone knew that solstice fell on the 21st of the month.

“Only sometimes,” Max had said.

“That’s right,” said Twinkle, treasurer of his astronomy club.

The cosmos and the earthly calendar used for tracking time weren’t in perfect harmony. So just as we have Leap Year once every four years to straighten things out, it also happens that once every few years, winter solstice actually falls on December 22nd rather than on the 21st.

Which meant that tonight was the longest night of the year. And all of this mystical activity at Fenster’s over the past couple of days indicated that the barrier between dimensions had already been pierced and weakened, so to speak, and that the store was the epicenter of whatever was coming through the dark veil tonight.

“Someone is actively helping this demon,” said Max. “Someone is inviting it here. That is terribly dangerous.”

So, naturally, we had decided to stay in the store after closing and hide in the dark to confront it.

Actually, I was just hoping to confront Elspeth, who struck me as the most likely person to try raising a deadly solstice demon, given her interest in death, her flirtation with vampirism, and her easy access to Fenster’s after hours, as a family member and a stockholder.

Of course, Arthur was another possibility. Lopez had influenced me more than I liked to admit with his sheepish “least likely person” theory. But Arthur seemed sad and harmless, whereas there was something genuinely disturbing about Elspeth, though she was also adolescent and seemingly ineffectual. She was a grown woman who appeared to live under her father’s thumb as if she were still fifteen. She was the sort of person who’d had the time to be at The Vampyre night after night for weeks, since she had no job, vocation, or personal life to occupy her.

That somehow struck me as a ripe personality for falling into the mad notion of raising a solstice demon for kicks.

But it wouldn’t be a kick. According to Max, these creatures were horribly destructive; people had been sensible to fear them for millennia.

I was scared by the prospect of the three of us taking on this thing alone and without preparation, but Max had reassured me. “It is a relatively simple matter to prevent a solstice demon from entering this dimension and to force it to return to hell—or some abstract variation of that concept—where it belongs.”

“Okay, what’s the secret?” Jeff asked.

“There is no secret,” Max said. “It’s the same tool that has been used for millennia.”

“Fire!” I guessed.

“And light,” Max added. “That is how solstice demons are kept out of this dimension. Fire and light on the darkest nights of the year.”

So after closing, we had gone sneaking up to the home and garden department on the fifth floor (I’d never even known it was there until Twinkle mentioned it tonight), careful to avoid being seen by the occasional—very occasional—security guard, and we had collected flashlights, strobe lights, and patio torches. Although there had been menacing mystical activity in several areas of the store, Max believed that Nelli’s increasingly erratic behavior when investigating the fourth floor suggested that Solsticeland itself would be the site of the dimensional rift.

It was a fitting setting, since the entire exhibit was murky even when all the operational lights were on. It was always supposed to seem like the darkest night of the year in Solsticeland. We planned to throw the main switch for the operational lights when the time came, to help illuminate the scene . . . but that certainly wouldn’t suffice, Max had said. Hence the additional lights collected from elsewhere.

So Max, Jeff, and I huddled together nervously in the throne room with our torches and bright lights. We planned to make the demon, when it tried to break through to this dimension, feel like it was entering our world on the pitcher’s mound during a night game at Yankee Stadium—which should force it to turn around immediately and go back to where it damn well belonged.

It seemed like a workable theory—right up until about 11:00 PM, roughly an hour before we were expecting trouble, when the first stuffed teddy bear in the toddler’s play area started cackling madly as it raced across the floor of Solsticeland toward us, fangs bared, eyes glowing red.

I shrieked and fumbled with my flashlight, my hands shaking so hard that I dropped it. Jeff turned his strobe light on the possessed bear.

It keeled over instantly and lay there silent and inert.

“Oh, thank God,” I said, shocked and trembling with reaction. “Is it—arrggh!”

Another one came rushing at us, then another—then another!

Then a dozen little Chef Chéries appeared out of the dark, having freed themselves from their packaging. They were chattering and cackling, racing toward us in their porn aprons with their little kitchen knives in their clawed hands. We shone our lights on them, but as fast as they lost animation and fell, others rose and appeared to replace them.

If we shone our lights one way, something attacked us from the other direction. I was screaming my head off, terrified, turning on flashlight after flashlight, then fighting off leaping, shrieking, stinking, drooling toys as I tried to light the patio torches.

“Esther!” Jeff screamed. “Watch out!”

I turned in the direction of his horrified gaze and saw an old-fashioned mannequin of Santa Claus coming at me, looking exactly as little Jonathan had described him to me yesterday morning—eyes glowing, claws reaching for me, fangs dripping with saliva. He had entered this area from the North Pole—where, to my horror, I saw other displays coming to life, too. Maniacal elves were heading in this direction, bloodlust in their glowing eyes, evil grins on their sharp-toothed, drooling mouths.

Sweet old Mrs. Claus was racing toward us, grinning with homicidal intent, shrieking, “Kill . . . kill . . . kill you! I want flesh! And blood!”

She chased me, cackling and screeching, as I ran around in circles, trying to light my patio torch. I’d lined up a row of flashlights to keep the Chef Chéries and teddy bears under control, but I had nothing left to defend myself from the elves, Santa, and Mrs. Claus if I couldn’t get this torch lighted.

Max was fighting off demonic toys from every direction as best he could with his mystical power, but I recalled with a sinking heart that fire was his weakest element—and we hadn’t anticipated an attack like this. We had expected to face one big demon that would cower when we showered it with light. Not dozens—hundreds?—of attackers from all over Solsticeland who were replacing each other as fast as Max could strike them down with his Latin incantations, flaming spears of light, and powerful waves of invisible force knocking them back like a giant, unseen hand. They still came at us, in wave after wave.

“Turn on the lights!” Jeff was screaming, pounding on the main power switches. “The lights!”

The Solsticeland lights were on. They were just too dim to affect our attackers.

I’d always thought the dim light in here was a terrible idea, I thought furiously. Now it was going to get me killed!

I got a torch lighted—and then I did the only thing I could think of to forestall annihilation. I started setting things on fire—starting with the hideous gold lamé curtains in the Hanukkah display. If we could create our own massive bonfire, as the ancients had done for millennia, maybe we could hold off our attackers.

“It’s working, Esther!” Max shouted, realizing what I was attempting. “It’s working!”

The room was filling with bright, fiery light! As it did so, the demonically possessed toys, dolls, stuffed animals, and mannequins started keeling over, falling down onto the floor, inert and harmless.

“Stop!” Jeff shouted. “Stop, Esther!”

“What?” I set a Christmas tree on fire.

I heard Jeff coughing and turned around to look at him. A small mountain of dead toys and elf mannequins lay in front of him, but he was coughing hard as smoke billowed toward him from the hideous Hanukkah exhibit, which was now entirely in flames. I realized the whole room was filling with smoke as well as with light.

“Oops.”

The smoke alarms went off at that moment, screeching shrilly overhead. They were industrial strength, intended to alert the whole department store to the fire. We couldn’t even hear each other shouting over their high-pitched clamoring.

A moment later, the sprinkler system came on, drenching us in water. The sprinklers also started dousing the fire. We all picked up strobe lights, terrified the demonic toys would rise and renew their attacks . . . but nothing happened.

I heard yelling behind me and whirled in that direction, pointing my strobe light at what I thought was another attack.

Then I realized that powerful flashlights were pointing at me. I also realized that the voices were shouting, “Hands up! Hands UP!”

I dropped my strobe light and squinted against the lights shining in my eyes. I gradually made out the shape of several security guards. Three of them were pointing flashlights at me. One was pointing a gun.

“Oh . . . no,” I said.

They, of course, saw two elves and Diversity Santa, standing amidst a mountainous wreck of ruined toys and vandalized displays, in the smoldering wreckage of the fire we had started inside Fenster & Co.