Page 19 of Santa’s Lawyer

Louis raised his hands in front of him, framing Avery’s chart. He pushed his hands together to shrink her diagram. Zooming out.

“I thought I had it,” she said, deflated. “It’s a bit hard for me to swallow that I don’t really know what Christmas is all about.”

He let out a disbelieving scoff.

She turned to him. “Aren’t you supposed to be tutoring me or something?”

Louis faced Avery. He took off his paper hat and gestured helplessly toward her presentation. “Avery, be serious. You don’t need a tutor.”

“But there was no bell,” she insisted. “I didn’t pass. What am I missing?”

He took the pen from her hand. He drew yet another, larger circle around the whole of what she’d written.

“Just one thing. When you do find redemption, when you remember the meaning of Christmas,” he said, taking her hand and gently pressing the enchanted pen back into her palm, “what does it feel like?”

A warm, shimmering glow once again spread from where their hands met, up her arm, and across her whole body. It flooded her system. She warmed from the inside out, nearly catching fire as Louis trailed his thumb in a small circle on the back of her hand.

With renewed conviction, Avery grasped the pen and scrawled the word “LOVE” in a flowing arc along the top of the circle Louis had drawn. Glowing sparks flew from the end of her pen as she finished the last letter.

Somewhere on the other side of the enchanted windows, a dozen church bells began to chime. Avery exhaled, setting the pen down on the coffee table.

“Congratulations,” Louis said with warm amazement. “You passed.”

She looked back up at Louis and the collective of green leaves and white berries, tied with a red ribbon, now fully formed in the air above his head. He didn’t bat it away this time.

She at last recognized it: mistletoe.

She took a step closer. Louis didn’t flinch. He simply breathed in deeply through his nose.

“I have to ask you a serious question,” she said.

Louis stood a bit straighter.

“I’ve felt so...electrified since we met. Enchanted. And I have to be sure. Did you use Christmas Magic to make me fall for you?”

He grabbed her arm as if to steady himself. “Avery—you don’t mean—fall—”

“Answer the question, Louis,” she said softly, taking a small step to close the gap between them.

“No,” he insisted. “No. That’s not how Christmas Magic works. I can’t make—but—I would never dare try to interfere with someone’s free will. And you of all people—your strength, and—and your ferocity, that’s what makes you who you are, that’s why you’re just…astonishing. Bewitching. Bloody hell, Avery, I can hardly—”

Avery reached up and put a hand on his cheek.

He let out a quiet whimper.

She surged up on her toes, bringing her mouth even with his, their lips only molecules apart.

“Please kiss me,” she whispered.

The miniature grand piano on the coffee table played a sweeping glissando, accompanying the wind that suddenly swirled around them, dotted with snow, urging them together. The breeze ruffled her hair and fluttered through the pages of the dozens of books now floating around them.

She pulled back just far enough to look him in the eyes. The wind held its breath, the glittering snow frozen in the air around them, the last unresolved chord of the piano suspended between them.

Louis smiled serenely, his eyes barely open, cheeks flushed, a golden, shimmering glow pulsing off his skin, the same glow enveloping and inhabiting every inch of her.

“Avery, I can’t begin to tell you how much…oh, we should wait,” he whispered, brushing the tip of his nose against hers.

Avery kissed his cheek. She slid her hand to the back of his neck, running her fingers through his hair.