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CHAPTER 5

The Winter Wonderlandsection sparkled and twinkled. Knee-high gnomes with murder grins all glared in our direction. Even the ones who were fishing looked as though they’d escaped a gnome asylum.

“The chance of that miniature army of ankle biters coming alive is one hundred fuckin’ percent. Right?” Zee said, clutching his spork while his tail swished.

“Can Santa do that? Make things come alive?” I asked Victor, who was standing to my left and glaring at the winter doom tunnel.

“I cannot say for certain either way. We should expect the worst.”

“At least they’re not frogs.” Zee shuddered.

Okay. We were here. And this needed to be done. “I’ll go in first⁠—”

“No, what?!” Zee blocked my path.

And of course Victor added, “I do not approve.”

“Look, I’m the most human out of the three of us—” They both gave me disbelieving looks, so I quickly rushed on. “I’m the one who looks like bait. Zee, you’re seven feet of demon badass. And Victor, honestly, your murder-daddy vibes are off the charts, which is great, but if we’re going to lure Santa out of his grotto, we need something cute—like me.” I shrugged. It was true. I’d made it true by being small and squishy and harmless looking. We all knew I wasn’t small, or squishy, or harmless, but that wasn’t the point.

Zee was shaking his head. “I think we should wait and call Agent L’Oréal.”

“You mean Agent Leomaris?” Victor corrected.

“That’s what I said.”

“No, Leomaris is just as likely to arrest us as help us. We’ve got this. We’re badasses, right?”

“I mean . . .” Zee shrugged a shoulder and begrudgingly mumbled, “I’m a badass. Lord Fang-Banger is okay if he stays awake.”

“It’s just some fake snow and weird chubby gnomes that can’t be any worse than gremlins, and we’ve dealt with lots of those. And that’s even if they come alive. Maybe they won’t?”

Zee snorted a laugh. “Have you met us, Kitten? This is classic SOS Hotel night-out happenings. It starts off fine, then wham, some fucker screws it all up, we get kidnapped, Fancy Daddy falls asleep, and I have to save everyone.”

“I was tranquilized during the incident you are referring to,” Victor quickly clarified.

“Still asleep.”

It didn’t always happen like that.

I pulled the table knife from my pocket and faced the glistening wintery tunnel mouth. “I’m going in.”

As they didn’t immediately stop me, I started forward, one foot in front of the other. Maybe they would stop me? I had argued for them not to stop me, but . . . A glance behind revealed Zee with his thumbs up and Victor looking grumpy. Okay. They’d listened and were hanging back, waiting for Santa to make an appearance.

And . . . why had I been so adamant I’d go first?

I flexed my grip on the table knife and entered gnome alley. Too many lights twinkled, shifting shadows around and distorting the gnomes’ smiles. Whoever had made this display clearly hadn’t considered what it would look like at night while being hunted by a child-eater.

“Do you hear what I hear . . .”

The creepy music was back.

But that was fine.

Music never hurt anyone.

I swallowed the sharp lump in my throat and pushed on.

Had the gnomes always faced toward me? I thought they’d been watching the entrance?