Happy Holidays

My gift to you this month is a brand new Cassie Scot holiday short story that I’m sharing exclusively with newsletter subscribers. In All I Want for Christmas is a Nap, Cassie gets pulled into the mystery of who stole all the presents from a local holiday drive while Evan plays Santa. But with a two-week-old baby at home, nothing is quite as easy as it should be. 

All I want for Christmas is a Nap takes place shortly after Stolen Dreams (Cassie Scot #4).  Scroll down to read!

Wide World of Fantasy Book Fair

Check out some great fantasy books on sale now at the Wide World of Fantasy Book Sale! This includes Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective and Secrets and Lies. 

This is a great way to discover new fantasy authors and series. 

All I Want for Christmas is a Nap

I don’t normally celebrate Christmas. That might seem like an odd way to start a Christmas story, but I figure it’s important to set the record straight. I’m a pagan. My family is pagan. Our big winter festival takes place just before Christmas, on the night of the Winter Solstice, when the kids are allowed to stay up late and drink hot cocoa around a large bonfire while the adults perform magical rituals usually designed to set intentions for the coming year.

It is a highly magical night.

But the year I married Evan, the year I became a mom, something strange happened.

It was Christmas Eve, and I was exhausted. Ana was only a couple of weeks old and still had her days and nights mixed up. All I wanted for Christmas was a nap, so when the sheriff came knocking on my door at the crack of dawn, I was pretty grumpy.

“What could you possibly want at this indecent hour?” I asked when I opened the front door to him. Actually, I might have said something worse. Lack of sleep effects memory, after all.

“I need your help.”

Normally, those were magic words to me. I love being needed more than just about anything in the world, but with a breastfeeding newborn going through a growth spurt, I pretty much had my fill of feeling needed.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Someone broke into St. Augustine's last night and stole all the gifts from their holiday drive.”

“Wow, that’s cold.” I glanced behind me at Evan, coming down the stairs with a fussy Ana in his arms. She’d need to nurse again soon.

“They had surveillance cameras in the room,” Sheriff Adams continued. “The gifts floated off the ground and walked out on their own.”

Which explained why he needed me. There were plenty of sorcerers in the area who could do such a thing, although I struggled to think who would.

“Will you help?” the sheriff asked.

I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to help, but because I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. Odds were good that in this state, I’d miss something obvious.

“Please,” Sheriff Adams said. “There are a hundred local families counting on those donations. A lot of it wasn’t even toys, but blankets, clothing, and food.”

“All right.” I nodded, mentally trying to work out what to do with Ana while I drove all over town. She was nursing every ninety minutes or so, and while I had some milk stockpiled, I was also prone to leaking every ninety minutes or so.

As soon as the sheriff left, I headed into the living room to sit, think, and nurse my baby. Evan joined me a few minutes later, bringing a cup of strong black tea.

“Thank you.” I took the cup, finding that it was already at the perfect temperature. Evan thought of everything.

“Can I help?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just in case I can’t find the presents right away, someone needs to play Santa.”

“Play Santa?” He sounded as tired as I felt, which didn’t explain his next words: “I’m not sure I can.”

“Why not?” I asked, feeling annoyed. He literally turned lead into gold for a living. We had the money. We gave a lot away to charity throughout the year, but we could still afford to make sure a hundred needy families had a nice holiday.

“I guess I never thought about it before, since I don’t celebrate Christmas.” Evan ran his fingers through his hair. “But yeah…I can do it. I might need some help, but I can do it.”

“Okay…whatever you need.” I shook my head. We had enough money to handle things on our own, but maybe he wanted to make it a community effort – the magical community sometimes got a bad rep, after all. It made sense that spreading Christmas cheer would improve our social capital.

I left Ana with Evan while I went downtown to the sheriff’s department, hoping this investigation wouldn’t take long. There honestly weren’t that many sorcerers, despite rumors, but again, which one would be so intentionally cruel? I had a few names in mind, but I didn’t want to say any of them aloud before I got a look at the evidence.

The surveillance footage showed exactly what the sheriff had described – hundreds of brightly wrapped gifts levitating into the air and floating from the church basement. Outside, another surveillance video showed them landing in the back of a large white van with the license plate covered.

“Do you recognize the van?” Sheriff Adams asked. “I’ve got an APB out for it, but without a plate, it’s not a lot to go on.”

“White vans aren’t that uncommon.”

“Don’t I know it.” The sheriff pulled his hat from his head and tapped it against his knee. “Got any ideas?”

“The Travises. The Clarks. The Mallorens.” I considered adding the McClellans, but while they were into dark magic and cursed artifacts, I couldn’t picture them stealing blankets from a charity drive. There were other criminals among the practitioners as well, including the Lees, cousins of mine by marriage, whose preferred loot was jewelry. Again, I couldn’t see them stealing food and clothing. For that matter, even the Mallorens, known car thieves, were a stretch. The most likely suspects really were the dregs of the magical world – the Clarks or the Travises.

“Let’s find out if either family has a white van,” Sheriff Adams said.

While a deputy ran a search with the department of motor vehicles, I used the sheriff’s private office to pump some milk before I exploded. Then I called Evan to see how Ana was doing.

It was my first time away from her, and I was feeling acute separation anxiety.

“Hi,” Evan said when he answered the phone. He sounded distracted, and I heard a lot of voices around him.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“Oh, a lot of people. I don’t have much time to talk. Do you need something?”

“Do you know if the Travises or Clarks own a white van?” I asked.

“No. Hang on.” Evan’s voice became more distant, but I heard him say, “Nicholas, did you get the sack?”

“My brother’s there?” I couldn’t believe it. Nicholas and Evan were civil to one another, for my sake, but they didn’t like one another. I couldn’t recall them ever being in the same room together if I wasn’t there to mediate.

“I gotta go,” Evan said. “Call if you need anything.”

I stared at my cell phone for a minute after he disconnected, wondering what on Earth was happening at our house. Then someone knocked on the office door.

“It’s Sheriff Adams,” he called from the other side. “One of the deputies just reported trying to pull over a white van by the Forest View Campground. It sped off, but his car stalled and he couldn’t give chase.”

Sounded like a big clue to me. I cleaned myself up as best I could given I’d shown up in loose-fitting maternity clothes, then I joined the sheriff for a drive out to one of several campgrounds in our area. At this time of year, it was winterized, which meant the ranger station was closed, along with the flush toilets. Few people braved the winter weather to stay out there, although there were a few pit toilets for those who did.

We found the deputy half a mile from the entrance to the campground, his car now miraculously functional. But I noticed he hadn’t made a move to track down the white van. Smart man.

“Stay here,” Sheriff Adams told him. “We’ll call if we need backup.”

I checked my own backup – a rune-powered shield bracelet, a necklace of invisibility, and if worse came to worst, a ring of fireballs. That last was a solstice gift from Nicholas.

We were silent as we drove into the campground, past the eerily quiet front office, and down one of two campsite loops. No one was there. Nor did we find anyone down the second loop.

“Wild goose chase,” the sheriff muttered as he headed back to the abandoned office.

“Hang on,” I said, fingering my necklace of invisibility. It wasn’t hard for a sorcerer to become invisible. It was also pretty easy to spot them, if you knew the tricks.

Pulling out my cell phone, I switched it to camera mode and panned it around the landscape. Invisibility was nothing more than a mind trick, really, and could be overcome through the use of a mindless camera. One of these days, I felt certain, sorcerers would improve their spells to work around that limitation, but so far if anyone had, I wasn’t aware of it.

The white van was parked right outside the abandoned front office, and I was pretty sure someone was moving inside.

“Pass the office,” I said. “Let them think we’ve given up.”

The sheriff wasn’t slow on the uptake. He rolled right past the office without stopping, then pulled over a quarter mile up the road so he and I could double back.

“Here.” I pulled off my necklace and handed it to him. “This might go better if whoever’s there thinks I’m alone. No one’s going to tick off Evan by messing with me.”

The sheriff hesitated, then took the necklace and pulled it over his head. “What now?”

“Tap it twice”

He did. And he vanished. I breathed a short sigh of relief, then double timed it back to the office, trusting him to follow.

I approached the office openly, hands upraised to show I wasn’t a threat. When I reached the front door I paused, listening. And could have sworn I heard the sound of a baby crying.

For a heart stopping moment, I thought I was imagining things. It would hardly be the first time my sleep-deprived mind had dreamed up Ana’s soft cries when she was actually sound asleep. But this cry didn’t sound like Ana.

“Hello?” I called.

Silence.

“I just want to talk. I’m not here to hurt you.” I’m not sure why I said that, except that this entire situation struck me as being fishy. A sorcerer holing up in a winterized campground, using magic to steal food and blankets rather than jewels or money?

Maybe I’d read the situation wrong from the start.

“Please don’t make me go back,” came a woman’s voice so quiet I barely heard it over the wind easing through the leafless trees.

“I’m just here to talk. My name is Cassie.”

“I know who you are.”

“That gives you the advantage. I don’t know your name.”

Silence.

“I think your baby’s hungry,” I added as my own breasts began to respond to the stimulus.

There was a soft sob from inside the office.

“Ma’am?” I said.

“I-I don’t know how to feed her. She won’t take my breast. And there wasn’t any formula in the food baskets.”

The last thing I’d expected to do today was play lactation consultant, but I didn’t seem to have another choice. There was a hungry baby crying, and helping her was the only way to get back to my own baby before I leaked straight through my shirt.

“Can I come in and help you? I watched my mom breastfeed eight babies after me, and I’ve got a two-week-old at home.” I didn’t mention that things weren’t perfect for me yet. We did, at least, have the latch down.

“Okay,” the woman said after what seemed like an eternity. “But the sheriff has to stay outside.”

So much for the invisibility necklace. I shrugged and pushed my way inside a small office, dominated by a single desk. A woman – more a girl, actually – sat leaning against it, cradling a fussy baby in her lap. She had a nasty black eye, and there was dried blood on her chin, likely from the nasty cut on her swollen bottom lip.

I didn’t know her, which I found worrisome. I was starting to get a picture in my head of exactly what she was, based on her injuries, her apparent youth – I swore she couldn’t be older than sixteen – and her fear.

“What’s your name?” I asked again, figuring I ought to at least be on a first name basis with her before I got friendly with her breasts.

“Carrie.”

“And the baby?”

“I haven’t named her yet.” She kept her eyes fixed on me, looking like she might bolt at the slightest provocation.

“How old is she?”

Carrie shivered. “A day, I think. What day is today?”

I fought back blinding rage; it wouldn’t help her right now. But I swear the fireball ring grew warm.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” I said, trying to keep things friendly. “Now, I’m going to have to get closer if I’m going to help you.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “You won’t send me back, will you?”

I shook my head, making it a promise. Wherever she came from, she would only go back over my dead body.

“Okay, then.”

I spent the next thirty minutes showing her how to help the baby latch on, then talked her through some of the fundamentals of nursing she might or might not know. Mostly, I was trying to put her at ease, to build a rapport. I was still afraid she’d bolt if I wasn’t careful.

Gradually, she relaxed. The baby fell asleep with a full belly, and it looked like Carrie might nod off too.

“Carrie, who’s your husband?” I asked.

She started awake. Luckily, the baby remained asleep. “You said you wouldn’t send me back.”

“I won’t. I’m going to make a call to someone who can make sure you don’t have to go back, but first I have to know who he is.”

Her puffy lower lip trembled. “I-I-he said if I left him, he’d kill me.”

“But you were still strong enough to run.”

She shook her head. “I was stupid. He’s going to kill me now.”

“Looks like he tried already.”

“He was just mad I had a girl.”

I bit off an angry retort, then pulled out my cell phone. “I’m going to make that call.”

She licked her cracked lip, wincing in pain. “Maybe if I go back…”

“Is this how you want to live?” I demanded. Then I gestured at the baby. “Is this how you want your daughter to live?”

Her mouth fell open, then slowly, she shook her head.

“What’s his name?”

“Brady Clark.”

I should have figured. Shaking my head, I phoned Matthew Blair, head of the White Guard. He’d make sure Brady couldn’t hurt her, and also make sure she found a safe place to stay.

#

I thought that would be the end of it, that I’d be able to get back to Ana before my breasts exploded, but Carrie didn’t trust men (or anyone else) and the sheriff wanted some explanations. I had to excuse myself to pump three more times during the day, all the while wishing I could get back to my baby – or my bed.

The sun was setting by the time I returned home. I wanted Ana, and I wanted sleep, in that order. But when I reached my house, I found the long driveway so full of cars I couldn’t get into the garage. Parking at the curb, I trudged up to the front door, entering to find utter chaos.

At least twenty people were inside – practitioners all – amid star charts and rune diagrams and potions and candles and toys. Lots and lots of toys.

“What’s going on?” I yelled over the din. I was simply too tired to ask nicely, and I had to yell in order to be heard.

Most of the chatter died away. Then a fat man in a Santa suit came in from the kitchen, a big red sack slung over one shoulder. He looked at me, and I recognized him instantly.

“Evan?”

“I’m just about ready to go,” Evan said. “We didn’t manage to find reindeer on short notice, but we have a flying sleigh and enough toys for every child in the county.” He paused. “I’d love to fly all over the world, but there’s a serious time dilation problem we can’t work out. It might require an entirely new branch of magical study – which means Scott’s excited to see what he can do between now and next Christmas.”

I spared a glance for Evan’s cousin, Scott, a werewolf who also liked to experiment with magic. Rumor had it that one such experiment was responsible for him turning into a werewolf in the first place, but I’d never confirmed that.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Evan added. “Ana’s hungry, and I need to leave if I want to get to all the houses tonight.”

My mouth opened, then closed. I was absolutely dumbfounded. When I’d asked him to play Santa, I’d only wanted him to replace the stolen items, but he seemed to have taken me literally. Now, with him looking so proud of his accomplishments – justifiably so – I couldn’t stand to correct him.

“You’re amazing,” I said instead.

He kissed me quickly on the cheek, then dashed out back through the sliding glass doors. There, in the yard, was a large red sleigh hovering bare inches from the ground. Evan jumped inside, and it zoomed up and off, quickly disappearing from sight.

“The bag is actually a portal to the gifts in this room,” Kevin Hastings said, the fifty-something man sounding as excited as a schoolboy. “It’s really very clever. And we’ve used runes to key each gift to its destination so that when Evan reaches inside, he’ll get the right gifts.”

“Wow, that’s fascinating. And self-sufficient, I presume?”

I looked around significantly, and everyone took the hint. Within fifteen minutes the living room was empty except for me and Ana, who nursed as if she’d been starved all day long. On a nearby end table, half a dozen empty bottles told a different story. But I fed her and took her upstairs to her crib, returning to the living room with a baby monitor to wait for Evan to return.

I must have dozed off as I lay there, watching the presents disappear a handful at a time. The next thing I knew, the presents had all gone and Evan was by the Yule Tree, setting a handful of packages beneath its boughs. I watched him fuss with a low branch for a moment, finally using magic to remove it and create room for a large box.

Silently rising to my feet, I came up behind him and slid my arms around his ample waist. What had he stuffed it with, though? It felt oddly real.

“Hey!” Evan’s voice came from behind me, and I suddenly let go of the man by the tree.

Santa turned around, smiling, and winked.

“Who are you?” Evan asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I said.

Evan, still in his Santa suit, frowned. “But how do you deal with the time dilation problem?”

Santa didn’t reply, he only tapped his nose and disappeared.

“Wait!” Evan cried.

I crossed the room to him and this time put my arms around my husband’s ample, pillow-stuffed waist. “Merry Christmas.”

For a moment, he was tense, like he wanted to go after the other Santa. The real one? But then he relaxed and nuzzled my cheek.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. “Do you think we’ll get any sleep this year?”

And through the baby monitor, Ana replied, her cries sounding oddly like No.

The End