His breath caught. She did know math. Not arithmetic.
Math
.
“I have a hunch, if you come back home with me, you’ll find some people who can explain the math and the science to you. It’s elegant.” She glanced at what looked like several old-fashioned TV sets, but through one of them, he could see the neighborhood. He could see his driveway.
Delbert was missing. Was that important?
“You’re telling me that it’s not magic. It’s science.” Marshall couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm from his voice.
“I seem to recall reading a book when I was a kid that said that all science looks like magic to those who don’t understand it,” Julka said.
She was quoting Arthur C. Clarke. A science-fiction writer. One of Marshall’s favorite writers when he was a kid. How long had it been since he had read something for fun?
How long had it been since he had fun?
Then he wondered if he was supposed to be wondering that. Was there something in this sleigh/RV/invisible thing that made him think thoughts he didn’t want? That magicked him?
He sank into a nearby chair. It was large and it smelled of peppermint. He popped out of it quickly.
“So you’re saying it’s all science,” Marshall repeated.
“I’m saying I don’t know.” Julka came closer to him. “But what if it is magic and not science? What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s not possible—”
“Most things aren’t possible,” she said. “
Bumblebees
aren’t possible, yet they exist. Soul mates aren’t possible, yet people always say they found theirs.”
She bit her bottom lip as if she had said something she hadn’t planned on saying.
Soul mates. His parents said they were each other’s soul mates and believed it too. He had done the math on that as well, and figured with billions of people on Earth that the odds of finding the one person who suited you were—well, billions to one. So he figured (but he never said to his parents) that everyone had a bunch of soul mates, and it was all chemical, and none of that explained the look in Julka’s eyes.
The anticipation, with a bit of fear. The fact that her pupils were slightly dilated which, he had learned in some long-ago biology class, was a sign of attraction.
And it didn’t explain how it bothered him to hurt her or to upset her or how he just wanted to take her hands in his and pull her forward and kiss her silly.
He’d never done anything that bold in his entire life.
“Why did you bring me here?” he asked softly.
She shrugged and looked away. “I was going to get in trouble anyway.”
“For what?”
She bowed her head. “Fraternizing.”
“With me?”
“With anyone who wasn’t, you know, someone I had to talk to, like one of the employees at Burger King.”
Marshall frowned. “You’d get in trouble for talking to me. Why?”
“We have illusions to keep up,” she said, head still down, voice almost a whisper. “The entire world thinks Santa does this alone.”
No,
Marshall wanted to say,
we’re taught that he has elves.
And then Marshall realized that they were taught about the elves in the
workshop
, not elves outside of the workshop. Not elves on the rooftops of Connecticut.
“You were scouting out chimneys,” he said, less as a question and more as a realization.
“No, not exactly,” she said. “I’m tasked with looking for the best entry locations on the proper houses.”
Corporate speak. She was actually using corporate speak.
“How big is this organization?” Marshall asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Are you asking money or personnel?”
“Both, I guess,” he said, suddenly unable to visualize paying for everything he knew about the fictional Santa.
“I’m not privy to the money side,” she said, “but it’s huge. And we have millions of employees worldwide, not all of them human.”
Not all of them human
. He tried not to let his brain turn to mush at that statement. “You mean reindeer, and stuff.”
“Elves,” she said. “They’re not human. Delbert’s not human.”
“He’s an elf?” Marshall asked.
“He’s an S-Elf,” Julka said. “From Santa’s line. Those are the most important elves of all.”
“Wow,” Marshall said, believing it, then wondering if he should believe it, and then wondering if the sleigh (this was a sleigh, right?) made him believe it, and then wondering if he should believe that the sleigh made him believe.
So he gave up wondering at all.
“But you’re human,” he said, and it was more of a hope than a question.
She nodded. “A lot of families got hired real early on to humanize the whole procedure and most of them stayed. My family goes back twenty-five generations at the North Pole.”
He did the arithmetic in his head: Twenty-five generations, at roughly twenty years per generation, was—
“Five hundred years?” he blurted.
“Give or take,” she said.
“So you grew up at the North Pole?” he asked. “I thought it’s desolate there.”
“It’s not the North Pole that you can travel to,” she said. “It’s like this sleigh. We have a different North Pole that you can access—or rather, I can access—through your North Pole.”
His North Pole. He’d never seen the North Pole. Either one, actually.
“And you now work as what—Santa’s advance team?” he asked.
“Kinda,” she said. “I’m probably going to get fired for this.”
“For bringing me here,” he said.
She nodded miserably.
“What happens when you get fired?” he asked.
She shrugged a shoulder. “I’ll probably have to go back to training school, and they’ll find me a job at the Pole. I really, really, really wanted to spend my time in the Greater World.”
“Which is—?”
“Your world,” she said. “I wanted to man one of the advance headquarters, you know, have a permanent place here.”
“And you risked all that to talk to me?” he asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” She raised her head. “You just seemed important somehow.”
“Important to…?”
“Me,” she said miserably. “Important to me.”
No one had thought him important for years. Not since his parents died. And then, he wasn’t their main priority. They were each other’s main priority. He was second on their list and had been from the beginning. He had known that almost as soon as he started breathing.
“Why would I be important to you?” he asked. “We just met.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s stupid, isn’t it?”
He took her hands. She was trembling.
“No,” he said. “No. It’s not stupid.”
He wanted to say it was an honor, but that actually sounded like he was dismissing it. And if he said
You’re important to me too,
it would sound like he was just trying to make her feel better, and he wasn’t.
“I’m standing here,” he said, “and you’re making me rethink everything I’ve ever known, and honestly, I’m not fleeing, which is what I usually do when I’m challenged. I turn away. And I don’t want to.”
Her gaze met his. Her eyes were big and blue and incredibly beautiful. “Why?”
“Because,” he whispered, “I found another place where the math doesn’t work.”
“What—?” she asked.
“Soul mates,” he said. “It’s mathematically ridiculous.”
She nodded, and tried to pull her hands from his.
“But I’ve never felt anything like this before,” he said. “So right, so perfect, as if we were made for each other.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but they didn’t fall. He leaned forward and kissed the corner of one eye, tasting salt, tasting her. Then he showered kisses down the side of her face until she tilted her head toward him.
Their mouths met, and tentatively, hesitantly, they kissed. Then the kiss got deeper, and he finally understood what his parents talked about: that rightness, that sense he had found his other half, that sense of perfection, of—
“Oh, no,” said a male voice. Delbert’s voice. “Now I really will have to report this.”
13
THE SLEIGH ROCKED as Delbert climbed inside. He put both hands on the side of the door as if he was blocking someone’s escape, but Julka didn’t know whose.
It certainly wouldn’t be her. She didn’t want to move. She hadn’t wanted to break the kiss, but Marshall had done so, looking startled—again.
She almost brought her fingers to her mouth in amazement. She had never been kissed like that. She had never felt anything like that before. Never.
And she wanted to feel it again.
“Report?” Marshall asked, sounding a bit unsettled. “To whom?”
“You’d think it’d be to the big guy,” Delbert said, “but he doesn’t handle small personnel matters. Still, this is one of those things. I don’t like reporting anyone for fraternization, Julka, especially since I know how it can go, but I’m on double-secret forever probation, and if I don’t and they find out, I’ll never be able to leave the North Pole again. I’m sorry.”
He sounded sorry. She had never seen him look so upset, actually. He reached over to that flat countertop area and touched a red button she’d never noticed before.
And then he vanished.
“What?” Marshall said. “What was that? Is he still here?”
“No,” Julka said. She felt heavy suddenly. Her legs wouldn’t support her, and she had to grope for one of the chairs before she sat down. She had known it was a risk bringing Marshall here, but somehow she hadn’t thought Delbert would report her. Maybe he wouldn’t have without the kiss. Or maybe he was just giving her a chance to come to her senses.
Which she hadn’t.
She still didn’t regret this, no matter what the consequences.
“Where did he go?” Marshall asked.
“Headquarters,” she said miserably. “They’re going to bring the goon squad here, and they’ll clean up after me.”
“How will they do that?” Marshall asked.
She didn’t want to tell him, although it really didn’t matter if she told him. None of this would matter to him in…oh, five minutes or so.
But she didn’t want to lie to him, not even now, not when she could leap back into his arms and kiss him senseless until the goon squad got here.
“They’ll wipe your memory,” she said. “Delbert should have done it, but they’ve limited his powers.”
She had asked Delbert to do it, but that was before the kiss. It had broken her heart then. It would destroy her now.
Oddly, it felt like she had known this man her entire life—or maybe, it felt like she
would
know this man her entire life. Better than anyone else.
But that was going away too.
Her hands were shaking.
“They’ll make me forget?” Marshall asked. “They can do that? With magic?”
“I don’t know how they do it,” she said tiredly. “I just know that they do. S-Elves can. Santa can. To protect the myth, you know. It’s all about protecting the myth.”
“From what?” Marshall asked.
She shook her head. “We’re supposed to control the message.”
“And the message is that pretty women can’t kiss men they’re interested in?”
“No,” she said. “We can’t fraternize. You’re not part of the community. You can’t know about us, and I told.”
She worse than told. She showed him everything that she could in the short time allowed.
He’d been inside the sleigh
. No one got inside the sleigh. No one except people with clearance.
She hadn’t even had clearance until a few months ago.
“I can’t forget this,” he said. “This is life-changing.”
“I know,” she said. And she did. That was why the secrets never got out. They made sensible men kiss women like her. They made sensible men deny their belief in science for a grasp at the hope of Christmas magic. They made—
“No,” Marshall said. “You don’t know. You think I’m talking about Santa. I’m talking about you.”
She froze, just for a moment. What had he said? Her? Really? He found her life-changing like she had found him life-changing?
“I can’t forget you,” he said. “You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I mean ever. Even if I never see you again, I can’t forget you.”
“They won’t let that happen,” she said, resisting the urge to look at her watch. She wanted to know how much time was left before the goon squad arrived, but she didn’t want to know at the same time. “You can’t remember me. Only insiders know this stuff. I should’ve thought it through.”
“Insiders,” he said, kneeling in front of her and taking her shoulders in his hands. His hands were warm, strong. She liked his hands. “You mean people who work at the North Pole—your North Pole.”