Page 54 of Blood and Bells

Her head tilts. “So because Santa is doing monstrous things, you think it’s fine to do a slightly more tasteful version?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you said.”

“What I meant was that we are running out of time, and I chose the expedient option. To get you your gala, your tree, your impossible miracle of a Winter Wonderland.”

The words hang there like damp washing: unpleasant, undeniable, and very much mine.

For the first time since I arrived, she does not interrupt me immediately. She just looks at me, and in that silence, I can almost hear the final boards going over some interior window.

“I see,” she says quietly. “So this is my fault?”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, Nick. It isn’t.” She draws in a breath that trembles only once before she gets a grip on it. “Do you know what I have been doing since I got here? Trying to hold this whole thing together with ribbon, bluff, and a frankly unreasonable amount of battery-operated fairy lights. I have one chance to pull this off. One. I need this festival to work. I need that tree back, and I need this town not to fall apart while I’m standing in the middle of it. And through all of that, I still understood that there were lines.”

“If you’d just let me explain⁠—”

“No, you listen.” Her voice is no louder than before, but it reaches much further. “You promised Frank the vampires would not feed on people without their consent. You promised Willow Creek you weren’t here to make trouble. You promised me you were helping. Not that you were helping right up until it became inconvenient. Not that you’d be good until you found a technicality. Helping.”

Every word arrives exactly where it ought to, which is unfortunately all over me.

“I know what I promised.”

“Then why are you standing on my porch arguing definitions?”

I should tell her it’s because I’m losing her. That I am frightened. That there is something particularly humiliating about finding the one person whose opinion matters and then failing exactly where she can see it.

Instead, I say, “An elf is not a townsperson.”

The instant the sentence leaves my mouth, I despise it.

Holly stares at me as if she can hardly believe I’ve made myself worse voluntarily.

“That,” she says, “is exactly what I mean.”

I rake a hand through my hair. “I know how it sounds.”

“You should. You’re the one saying it.”

“I am not trying to make this smaller than it is.”

“You already have.”

That does it.

That.

I have been called a monster by people with torches, priests, kings, widows, magistrates, and one unforgettable opera singer with a knife. None of them has ever managed to make the word feel as possible as Holly Frost does without using it at all.

“I was trying to get something useful,” I say, and my voice sounds tired now, stripped of all the polish I usually keep on it. “Something that could help us.”

“Us?” she says, and there’s the bitter edge again. “When exactly did you decide there was an us?”

I do not have an answer that sounds sensible.

“A while ago,” I say.