Twenty Minutes Until Christmas

Brooklyn, New York

Uncle Eddie wouldn’t be there, but there was only one place to celebrate Christmas. Kat stood on the dark stoop, looking out over the quiet street while Hale worked on the lock and Angus threw snowballs at Hamish.

“I wish Gabrielle were here,” Simon said, but Kat just shook her head.

“She wanted to spend some time with her mother and the earl,” Kat said as she did the mental math. The sun would soon be up in England, and Kat hoped that Gabrielle was having the kind of Christmas morning of which she’d always dreamed.

“Got it,” Hale said, and the door swung open. “We’re home,” he said—even though his family probably owned a half dozen houses and chateaus and mansions around the world, this was where W. W. Hale V wanted to be on Christmas morning.

She totally couldn’t blame him.

She eased into the dark brownstone, and the first thing Kat noticed was the smell. And the music.

An old fashioned record player was turning somewhere, and scratchy Christmas songs filled the air. Someone had set up a tree, and there were voices in the kitchen.

“I thought you said he was in Italy?” Simon asked.

“He is,” Kat said, not expecting to find Uncle Eddie in his kitchen.

She certainly wasn’t expecting to find two of him, and for a moment Kat froze on the threshold, staring at the two men who stood at the old stove, fighting over a wooden spoon.

“Uncle Charlie?” she asked when Eddie’s twin turned from the stove. She ran to hug him.

“I see where I rank, Katarina,” Eddie huffed, but Kat hugged him as well.

“But what about Italy?” she asked.

“It’s still there. Too hot, though. And full of bugs. Big ones.”

He pushed his brother from the stove, and it took Kat a moment to process what she was seeing. Charlie was the best forger in the world, but he was also a hermit who lived on a mountain in the Alps.

“What are you doing here, Uncle Charlie?”

“I brought him.”

At the sound of Bobby’s voice, Kat turned toward the door. Her father looked younger than he had when he was pretending to be the Director of UK Operations for Interpol. And yet she had the feeling that “Director Hoyt” might make another appearance at some point in the future, much to Amelia Bennett’s dismay. But Kat would worry about that when the time came.

She just kept looking at the uncle who shared Eddie’s face but, to Kat, was almost a stranger. “It must have been hard to get down the mountain this time of year,” she told him. “Thank you for coming, Uncle Charlie. It’s good to see you.”

She knew what it cost him to leave his home, to give up his isolation.

“Your father told me about the egg, Katarina,” he said, his accent thicker than his brother’s. “I’m sorry to hear it shattered.”

Kat couldn’t help but glance briefly at Hale, then at the case that held the egg that she had loved and lost and found again.

“It’s okay, Uncle Charlie. It was…” She found Hale’s eyes, shared his smile.

But Uncle Charlie filled in.

“It was one of the most beautiful forgeries I ever made.”

It seemed to take a moment for Kat to process the words, for her to remember the virtual mountain of eggs that the earl had acquired through the years.

“No, Uncle Charlie,” Kat said with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry. The earl has a ton of forgeries, but it was the real egg. It…shattered.”

Kat’s voice cracked, and a moment of silence seemed to fill the kitchen as they all mourned the fact that one of the most beautiful things in the world could never be stolen again.

Only Charlie dared to break it. “No, Katarina.” His eyes twinkled. He walked to an ancient, old fashioned suitcase. Not a soul spoke as Charlie clicked it open and pulled from it an egg nearly identical to the one she’d loved her whole life.

“This is the real egg.”

“But…how?” Kat couldn’t keep the wonder from her voice as she inched toward it, but Charlie merely shrugged.

“It must have been twenty years ago now…before I went up the mountain. The earl found me somehow, asked me to make some duplicates.” Charlie shrugged but looked like a little boy who’d just been caught waiting up and spying on Santa. “I might have made a few extras. And I might have forgotten to send the original back with the fakes.”

“Charlie had it the whole time,” Hale said, and Kat might have doubted the story except that the egg in Charlie’s hands could never be confused with a fake, not when sharing the same space with one of its mates.

Hale took Kat’s Frankincense egg from Marcus’s case and set it on Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table. A moment later, Charlie placed the original Gold beside it. They stood, glistening, together for the first time in decades, and not for the first time in her life, Kat believed in miracles.

As, somewhere, a clock struck midnight, Kat looked at the eggs and thought about the Magi. They followed a star and brought presents to a king, but never before had Kat felt less like having a normal Christmas with normal presents.

Eddie began setting the table and ladling out soup as Hale’s hand slipped into hers. Bobby’s arm went around her shoulders. It was Christmas Eve, and all was right in Kat’s world.

Right up until the point when Bobby said, “You know, the Myrrh egg is in a not-very-secure private residence in Budapest…”

The End