“Shut it, Nicholas.” I snap at him, annoyed he is behaving so churlish in front of a child. A child I’m here to make happy, to shore up her belief in magic. And he’s being a red and white candy-cane shaped dick.
Lyla is looking between us, but I sense she is more annoyed with Milk Breath than moi.
“Go ahead. Show her the letter.” Nicholas waves his hand at me in a dismissive gesture and I have to remind myself I’m not allowed to roast the old elf with the flames of hell. Pity, that.
Turning to Lyla and Mandy, I carefully hold the letter and envelope out for her to take.
She looks at me for so long I start to wonder if she’s going to actually take it. After many seconds tick by, she lowers her shoe, which I now notice is black with a thin heel, and she takes the papers.
She looks at the letter, then the envelope.
I wait patiently as she glances back up at me with large eyes. Oddly the stench of fear does not overwhelm my senses again. She looks at the envelope once more, then her eyes dart to where Nicholas is sitting and then back to me.
“No.” She shakes her head as if that will change anything.
“Yes.” I hold my hand out for the letter, but she presses it to her chest.
“This is a joke.” She looks over to the other man.
“What is it going to take?” asks the Saint Asshat. “Snow in the living room? A ride in the sleigh? Maybe the winning lottery numbers?” The old man narrows his eyes. “I. Am. Santa Claus. And he is exactly who you think he is.”
“Why are you here?” Lyla looks back at me, her blue eyes wide, before suddenly narrowing. “You cannot take Mandy.”
Loyalty, devotion, rising rage. The scent of a mother’s love when her child is threatened. Milk and honey. A hint of cayenne pepper.
“What’s wrong?” Mandy looks at me in worry. “Are you a lawyer? You don’t look like Daddy’s lawyer. The judge already said Daddy couldn’t have me. Do you work for Santa?”
“I most certainly do not.”
“Hell no.”
We speak at the same time and exchange glares over their heads.
“Then why are you here?” Lyla’s voice is barely more than a whisper.
“To deliver a present for Mandy.” I motion to the letter she is clutching. “She wrote to me, so here I am.”
“But you don’t work for Santa?” Mandy frowns at me. “I thought he brought the presents.”
“Well, he does bring presents to some children, but you didn’t write to Santa this year. You wrote to me. So here I am.” I motion to my briefcase.
“I don’t understand.” Mandy’s eyes fill with tears. “I was good this year.”
“Now you’ve done it.”
I ignore the old bag of bricks and kneel down. “Yes, you were very good. So I brought you a present.”
“But you’re not Santa.”
“No, I’m not. I’m much cooler than that old… I mean, I’m much cooler than Santa Claus.”
“But I sent my letter to Santa.” She reaches out and grips her mother’s hand.
“No, you didn’t.” Lyla looks down at her daughter.
“I did! I wrote on the front of the envelope like you showed me!” Mandy’s eyes are dangerously close to overflowing.
“Not quite.” Lyla seems to shake herself out of whatever she’d been thinking and looks down at her daughter. “You misspelled his name and the letter went to this man.”
“Who is he?” Mandy looks from her mother to me and then back to her mother.
Lyla takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. When she opens them again I can see the resolve she has gathered.
“Satan.”
3
Lyla
“Can we move this along?” Nicholas--no, Santa Claus--stands up and brushes off his pants as if my house is dirty. “I have more than enough work without this idiot getting in my way.”
When he reaches for his bag, Lucifer lifts a hand and it fills with golden flames, so hot I can feel the heat from here.
Mandy’s eyes nearly pop out of her skull at the casual display of magic, and I don’t blame her one bit. I’m kinda freaking out myself.
“Stop right there, elf.” His voice is stern and brokers no room for argument. This is a man who is used to being obeyed without question.
“See? See how he is?” Santa asks in a petulant tone. “I’m just doing my job and he is in the way.” Santa throws his hands in the air before pointing at Satan, his voice filled with too much whining for my taste, especially from a grown-ass man. “You might be able to laze about, but time doesn’t stop for me.”
I’m not sure which surprises me more. The fact that Satan and Santa are actually real or the fact that Satan is currently threatening Santa because he wants to give Mandy a present. Am I dreaming? Had the wine been bad?
A high-pitched wailing shatters my thoughts and I look up at the ceiling before smacking Satan in the shoulder.
“Are you crazy? Put that out!” I drop the shoe I’ve been wielding as an entirely ineffective weapon--especially against a man who can conjure flames from his hands--and run over to our dinning table to grab a chair and drag it across the room. I climb up and just barely manage to get my fingers on the smoke alarm. The stupid battery case won’t slide open and in desperation I manage to hook my fingers between the plastic and the ceiling and yank it off, leaving little wires hanging in the air.
There goes my deposit.
At least the wailing has stopped. I throw the thing in the corner and climb down from the chair.
That’s when I realize what I have done. I left Mandy next to a stranger that broke into our home. Not just any stranger. But Lucifer, the Devil himself.
It’s difficult to explain why I accept their identities so readily.
A part of me recoils from the idea that either of these beings are real, let alone standing in my apartment arguing. I’m not exactly religious and my belief in Santa is long gone.
The logical explanation is these two men are robbing me. Maybe they’re partners who planned this together. Maybe these are their disguises to keep from being identified, though they’re about as effective as Superman’s glasses.
Maybe they’re part of a local theater group doing a strange—and invasive, not to mention dangerous during a pandemic—kind of performance art.
All of these possibilities scramble through my mind, but they are all rejected just as quickly and all for the same reason.
In my deepest of hearts I can feel the truth of who these men—if you can call them men—are. I know this sounds ludicrous. Like a crazy lady grasping at fantasy. But I have no better way of explaining it.
For anyone who has fallen in love, it’s similar in a way. The way you can go from being a complete stranger to someone to loving them so completely… it’s a strange kind of magic that binds your heart and soul to another. It’s an inner knowing. A surety of something that is impossible to prove or quantify or study objectively.
This is like that. Not love of course, but that inner knowing and surety. When you are in the presence of something so full of magic, it’s impossible to misidentify. To look at these men and think they are robbers or performers or crazy people would be to mistake a poorly drawn circle on a piece of paper for the moon itself. It’s a ridiculous comparison. You know when you are in the presence of true love, or when you are witnessing the moon and not a drawing of a circle. Just as anyone would know that these men are who they say they are.