Page 79 of Never Kiss a Krampus
The words were a punch to my stomach. Let him go? After everything? After we had found this? “What? No. There has to be another way. We just have to gather the joy, and then… we’ll figure it out. We’ll be a two-person army, remember?”
“The army is you now, little light,” he whispered, and he was so transparent I could see the pattern of the rug through his legs. “The ritual was a summons. A binding. It requires a release. My essence cannot remain tethered to this plane. It will… dissipate. If the transference works, it will return to its source, to the winter. Whole. If it doesn’t…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
Tears welled in my eyes, hot and sharp. “This isn’t fair.”
“Fair is a human construct. The universe runs on balance. On trade.” He lifted a shimmering, translucent hand and, for a moment, I thought he would touch my cheek. He didn’t. He let it fall back to his side. “You gave me a taste of your world. Your warmth. Your light. I will not forget it.”
The door to the shop rattled. Not with the force of a magical being, but with the frantic, insistent knocking of a panicked mortal.
“Noelle? Are you in there? We saw the lights!” Jenna’s voice, muffled but clear, cut through the heavy silence of the shop.
“Don’t answer,” Bastian said, his form wavering again like heat haze off summer asphalt. “They cannot see me like this.”
“She’ll break the door down if she has to, and you just fixed it,” I blurted out, a hysterical bubble of laughter and grief rising in my chest. I gave him a desperate, pleading look. “The corner. Please.”
With a weary nod, he moved, a phantom gliding into the deep shadows of the stockroom doorway, where the flickering candlelight couldn’t quite reach. He was almost gone.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped furiously at my eyes, and went to the door. I unlocked it and pulled it open to find Jenna and Mrs. Haversham, their faces pale and drawn with worry. Behind them, a small crowd of people was gathering on the street, drawn by the strange, silent light show that must have been visible from the square.
“Noelle, honey, are you alright?” Jenna pushed past me, her eyes wide as she took in the state of the shop. “What in the world happened? We saw this… this blue light. And the door, it just… exploded inwards, and then…”
“It exploded back inwards again,” I finished for her, my voice shaking. “It’s… a long story.”
“Was it him?” Jenna asked, her gaze darting towards the back of the shop, as if she could feel him there. “Was it Grinchly?”
I nodded, my throat too tight for words.
“I told you he was bad news,” Mrs. Haversham said, her hand going to her pearls. “Did he hurt you? Did he take anything?”
“He… he’s gone,” I managed. “He won’t be back.”
They both stared at me, then at the floor, where the patch of glittering frost still shimmered under the shop lights. “What is that?” Jenna breathed. “It’s beautiful, but… why is it there?”
“A… a side effect,” I said, my mind racing, searching for a plausible lie. “Of the… security system.”
Jenna looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Your security system is a magical snowflake-maker?”
“It’s a new model,” I said, the excuse sounding flimsier even as I said it. “Very advanced. Very… festive.”
I could feel Bastian’s amusement, a faint, ghostly presence in the back of my mind. A weak, but still-there, thread of connection.Tell them the truth, it seemed to say.You can’t do this alone.
He was right. I couldn’t. I needed their help. Their joy. Their hope.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath and deciding to trust. “It’s not a security system. It’s… complicated. And I need your help. All of your help.”
I explained everything. Or, almost everything. I didn’t talk about our night on the couch, or the counter, or the devastating way he kissed me. I talked about the binding, the blizzard, the parasite in the snow globe, the darkness. I told them Grinchly had been the source, but that he was gone, and that the immediate threat was over. I left out the part where the man who had saved us wasnow fading away in my stockroom, tethered to my life force, and that the only way to save him was to perform a ritual that would send him back to… wherever.
It sounded insane. I knew it did.
But they didn’t laugh. Jenna just stared at me, her expression unreadable. Mrs. Haversham, bless her, simply nodded, as if tales of parasitic snow globes and Krampuses were a normal, if regrettable, part of the holiday season.
“The Good Deeds Extravaganza,” Jenna said slowly, her gaze finding mine, sharp and understanding. “It’s not just about raising money for the shop anymore, is it?”
“No,” I whispered. “It’s about… gathering light.”
Mrs. Haversham looked from my face to the shimmering patch of frost on the floor. “A transference,” she said softly, and the word was so precise, so correct, that my breath caught. “An offering.”
“You believe me?”
