Page 6 of The Aura Answer
Gracie wished she’d brought her reindeer antlers...But there was a mob burning down the courthouse.Was this playing while Rome burned?
She had to hold Aster back while she scanned faces for Loretta. Her adopted niece found her first.
“Aunt Gracie! Do you think it will snow? We want to do a snow dance!” Garbed in festive red and green to clash with her purple glasses, Loretta waved a candy cane, happy in her own protected world, for the moment.
Gracie knew she should be grateful that the children were shielded from the ugliness uptown, but her cautious nature could see ten thousand opportunities for disaster.
“Where did all this come from?” she asked, preventing Aster from reaching for the candy. Pied pipers and trickster tales flashed alarms in her mind.
Loretta waved vaguely. “Everywhere. My music teacher carried the school’s snowmen over. Some of the moms brought lights. I think Evie broke into the hardware store. She said Henry should pay for his treachery. I don’t know what she meant, but Mr. Gladwell is trying to blow-up a reindeer.”
Gladwell—Nick. He was behind this? He’d been the only person she could reach earlier. He was a stranger here. How had he—
She watched with incredulity as a twelve-foot Rudolph slowly unfolded above the barricade while a tall, Nick-tall elf wearing a red hat over his dark hair pumped his fists in triumph.
More sirens—this time from outside of town, coming up the highway but too far away to be seen. Emergency vehicles wouldn’t be going slow.
Oh dear.
She handed Aster over to Loretta. “Hop in the car, please. We have to clear the road.”
Her niece looked disappointed, but the kid was smart and caught on quickly. She grabbed Aster and started shouting at her friends to move back to the gravel edge.
Gracie dived into the crowd, yelling over the boom box at the teachers and mothers she knew, working her way toward the candy cane cart and the towering Rudolph.
“Police!” she shouted over the kiddies singing “Up on the Housetop.”
Mr. Patel heard and hurriedly shoved his cart toward the edge of the road. The Nick-sized mad elf working on the inflatable decoration apparently couldn’t hear her. He jumped up and down like a little boy as Rudolph reached full height, just missing a string of lights that might have decapitated the enormous balloon. All around, children cheered and clapped and the boom box rang louder.
Gracie ripped plugs out of extension cords, bumping aside ornamental snowmen. “Police!” she kept shouting—until she pulled the cord on the boom box and silence descended.
Uptown, howls, sirens, and smashing windows filled the once cheery party atmosphere. She felt like Scrooge as she cleared a path through the barricade.
Flashing strobe lights in the distance broke the early twilight. Even the demented elf caught on. In seconds, Nick had grabbed the centerpiece of his roadblock and shooed the rest of the children out of the road.
By the time the state cops screamed by, the party had dissolved. Snowmen and Christmas trees melted into the darkness, leaving candy wrappers blowing in the breeze.
Gracie’s phone rang. She didn’t have to look to know who it was. She could see Evie on the other side of the road.
“Buzz killer,” Evie said without rancor. “Good thinking, though. The Brit is our kind of nuts.”
“Yeah, because we need more nuts. You broke into Hank’s hardware?”
Evie waited for the last police car to scream by before crossing the street. “If you’d seen what his cronies did to the courthouse, you’d have set fire to Hank. Mom almost did. I did him a favor by helping her steal Rudy and a few elf hats instead.”
Wearing her hair tucked up inside one of the elf hats, Evie stopped to help Nick fold up the big balloon. Gracie shoved her phone into her pocket. She’d long ago quit arguing with her insane family.
Nick dissolved into the crowd hauling snowmen back to the school. Evie dumped the folded reindeer into Gracie’s arms and handed the box of elf hats to Loretta. “Leave them in the alley behind Hank’s and then it’s just vandalism, not theft. He can call his insurance company. I have to go back to the courthouse. Jax is still in there.”
She vanished into the crowd, leaving Gracie holding her stolen goods.
Nick arrived with a collection of orange extension cords. “Have a vehicle? We can decorate the hardware store!”
She almost bashed him over his pointy elf head.
Three
Still wearingthe elf hat to conceal her conspicuous, fiery hair, Evie cased the courthouse from the safety of the fire engine parking lot.
