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I smiled, like I really was a good boy. Good enough for Santa, anyway.

Zee, Victor, and I had stood under the store’s entrance canopy in the early morning hours as the multiple black-bagged bodies were wheeled out. The police sirens and flashing lights were a little disconcerting, but there was one person whose face was potentially more unnerving than all that—Agent Leomaris.

Leomaris’s arrival was inevitable. We watched their tall frame topped by glossy green hair weave through the EMTs and police cordon, and duck under the crime-scene tape.

They didn’t smile, just regarded us with that cool, professional expression of mild disdain, and withdrew an electronic tablet from inside their long coat. “You three,” they said, as a greeting.

“Us again.” I beamed, then winced. I’d maybe read the room wrong. “We were shopping and got stuck inside, and wow, some crazy stuff happened which was nothing to do with us.”

“Nothing,” Zee echoed. “We spent most the night in the cafeteria. They sell great donuts. You should try ’em, unless you don’t like donuts since you’re probably on a strict fae diet. That’s how you get such great hair, amiright? Your coat is the best. Family heirloom, ordid you get it from Amazon? Do they give all SSD agents awesome coats? It’s a shame dusters went out of fashion, right? Have you tried a cloak? Fuck, you’d look the rizz in a cloak.”

The SSD agent waited a beat. “Are you done?”

Zee pinched his lips and wings together. “Yup.”

Leomaris’s keen gaze skipped over me to Victor. “Lord Reynard, I suppose your version of events runs something similar to Zodiac’s?”

“Indeed. But more concise, and without the fashion critique.”

“Of course.”

We were going to get arrested, I could tell. Victor would have to summon a vampire lawyer, which would get him into all sorts of trouble with his fanged family, and one problem would spiral into another, Daisy would get involved, there would be fingers on cushions! Ugh.

“We really didn’t do anything,” I said. “We’re innocent bystanders in all this.” If I could appeal to their softer side—if they had one—we might get away with a warning?

A coroner wheeled a gurney and bagged body toward their waiting van.

Yikes. “We just wanted baubles.”

“I came for dick.”

“He means the phallic cactus,” Victor said, then gestured at the tiny cactus in the woefully half-empty shopping basket next to us.

Leomaris’s eyebrows lifted. They studied us one at a time, then slotted the tablet back inside their coat and lifted their chin. “I have read the statements you gave to my colleague. Your version of events is highly improbable and rather fantastical, not to mention the inaccuracies. Two claim to have been attacked by gnomes, but one of you says it was . . . children?”

A growl simmered from Victor. “Demon, there were no children.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Zee explained. “Human spawn are vicious and they’re the same size as gnomes.”

I was pretty sure we did know that. “Zee, it was just gnomes.” And a reindeer. But as Leomaris hadn’t mentioned it, I wasn’t going to either. Hopefully it was off living its best reindeer life and not murdering innocent people.

Zee ruffled his wings. “Whatever. I have fuckin’ trauma, okay? I just want to go home with my spiky dick, order a Tom Collins special, and forget this night ever happened.”

“Stop!” Leomaris snapped, then rubbed the bridge of their nose. “Thankfully—or not, depending on your perspective—there was CCTV footage of the night’s improbable and alarming events.”

“Footage?” I squeaked, while my heart fell through the ground.

“There were cameras?” Victor asked, his voice just a little bit higher than normal.

Zee grinned. “Can we watch?”

“No. I have watched the entire event from multiple angles and it is not something I’d wish on anyone, not even my worst enemy.” Leomaris’s penetrating gaze drilled into me.

Oh mercy, the striptease to “Santa Baby.” I gazed back, slowly dying inside . . . And the eating Santa part, which I’m not saying I did, but could have . . . Maybe there hadn’t been cameras right there . . . ? And the improvised rough sex in the cafeteria . . . Had they seen that? They couldn’t have, or we would surely have been arrested and tossed in the back of a police van.

“That frog plushie was like that when I got there,” Zee said, feet shuffling.

Leomaris closed their eyes, took a breath, and slowly sighed it out. “You are free to go.”