Jaspar, however, had not. “Here you go,” he said to Liza, handing her a bag of peppermints that he’d apparently purchased at the hotel. Then he blew Liza a kiss and walked into the bed and breakfast.
“Man, he thinks of everything,” Liza said, shaking her head in amazement. Before she could open the bag and take out a few candies, La La grabbed the whole bag and ran for her life.
Liza chased her for a few minutes, but La La ran and hid behind a crowd of children, then leaned out and stuck out her tongue at her.
“I know where you sleep!” Liza yelled at La La.
Marjan, who was at the candy booth selling peppermint candy to customers, waved her over. “Scaly Satan didn’t try anything inappropriate, did he?” she asked in a low voice so the customers wouldn’t hear. She scowled fiercely as she said it, and her claws sliced out of her fingertips.
“You’re a good friend. No, he didn’t…er…try,” Liza said, turning away quickly so Marjan wouldn’t see her blush. Scaly Satan hadn’ttriedanything inappropriate, he had succeeded. “I’d better go help with the Santabot line,” she added, and hurried off.
* * * * *
The next few days were a blur of work, as Liza helped her family serve a steady stream of customers.
Liza slept in the bed and breakfast at night…in her own room. She regretfully told Jaspar that she couldn’t spend the night with him while her family was around, and Jaspar had agreed with her. He spent his days with his family, doing recon missions to keep an eye on the Harbingers, and at night he ate dinner with her family and charmed the daylights out of them.
Marjan remained suspicious and unconvinced, no matter how nice Jaspar was to her, but it only seemed to amuse him.
At the end of the week, her family invited Jaspar and his family to go into town to watch the Christmas carolers.
Everybody was crowded around the town square under the clear night sky. The carolers were there every night in December.
The cobbled town square was festooned with lights. Far North’s mechanical moon was drifting slowly across the sky, the Santabot’s sleigh with its eight robot reindeer silhouetted against the silvery orb. The air was full of happy laughter and the excited squeals of little children. Tourists and colonists alike warmed their mittened hands on cups of mulled wine or hot chocolate with cinnamon sticks. The biggest tree from the last untainted stand – a gorgeous Douglas fir – stood in the center of the square, hung with delicate glass ornaments that sparkled in the light. Beneath it were dozens and dozens of gaily wrapped presents, which would be distributed to needy off-world children by Barbara’s postal drones.
There were hundreds of people there, both alien and humanoid. The carolers stood up on a stage, dressed in garb from Victorian England. The women wore lace-trimmed bonnets, capelets and enormous bell-shaped plaid skirts. The men wore black top hats and tails, and plaid waistcoats that matched the women’s skirts. They sang from their song books in voices of clear, ringing sweetness.
“Your brother is standing too close to my human friend, and furthermore, I don’t like the way he is looking at her,” Marjan said to Korl. “I know what that look means.”
“Oh? And what does it mean?” Korl asked.
“It is the exact look that my kind give to their prey, immediately before we pounce on them and eat them,” Marjan said.
Korl looked at her, and his lips twitched as if he were struggling not to laugh. Finally he hid it by coughing into his hand. “You are not wrong,” he said.
“You find me amusing?” Marjan hissed.
“Truthfully, yes,” Korl said.
“You would not find me amusing if you met me on the field of battle,” Marjan assured him.
“I am sure that you are correct,” Korl said. “I would admire your form and skill, right before I was regretfully forced to reduce you to cinders.”
Marjan snorted. “You assume that I would be foolish enough to let you get that close. I would not have been that stupid even as a kit. But I assure you that I would take at least a full nanosecond to contemplate your glorious overconfidence and the beauty of your scaly hide before I ambushed and killed you, skinned you, and made you into a pair of thigh-high boots.”
“Thigh high?” Korl’s eyebrows shot up, and he flushed an odd shade of red. Almost as if he were…blushing? “I have not seen this type of boots that you describe. They would reach your…thighs?”
Marjan let out a low, threatening hiss. Before she could say anything else, Liza hurried over to her, linked her arm through hers, and drew her away.
“Stop toying with your prey,” Liza said. “Come sing some carols.”
“That puny creature is not worthy of being called prey,” Marjan scoffed.
Liza glanced at him. Nobody but Marjan would call him puny.
“But I am telling you, I sense that he is dangerous. My race has developed a psychic ability to know when an enemy is nearby. Please be careful.” She glanced at Jaspar, who was standing with several other clan members, watching the carolers with fascination.
And then she joined Liza in singingGood King Wenceslas.
