I woke to the dizzying sensation of someone shaking me by the shoulders, none too gently. The movement made my head throb, and I groaned and tried to shrug them off before I bolted upright with a gasp.

Lights filled the circular room. In the center, the platform stood empty.

I groaned and drew my knees up so I rest put my head on them. Mary was kneeling next to me, and Santa was crouching next to her trying to wake Felix.

“How could you be so stupid?” Mary shouted.

She had never shouted at me before. I winced away from her.

The air was back to normal, but my skin still felt cold, and my bones rested inside me like rods of ice. I shivered, and the shivering soon took over until it was all I could do.

Santa’s warm hands descended onto my shoulders. As he held them there, a dense feeling of heat spread from his hands and all through my body. It was better than sinking into a hot bath. My chattering teeth stilled as my limbs begin to thaw.

“How could you be so stupid?” Mary repeated, almost hissing this time. “You left the door unlocked.”

“I didn’t know we were supposed to lock ourselves in,” I said.

I was getting tired of Clauses yelling at me over things that weren’t my fault. I glared at Mary and leaned over to shake Felix. His eyes fluttered open, but he didn’t look like he could tell any of us were there, not yet.

“You knew Frost wanted in,” Santa said.

“A tiny bit of common sense,” Mary said. “That’s all it would have taken. How did he get in? What did he say?”

I ignored her. Felix groaned and rolled over, then curled into a ball. Santa thawed him out, too, but he stayed curled on the floor.

It was probably safer to groan and stay in the fetal position than to try to talk to Mary or Santa. I wished I’d thought of it first.

“Are you okay?” I asked, leaning over him and trying to shield him a little from the furious Clauses.

It seemed like years ago that Mary had been handing me hot cocoa and defending me from Santa’s irrational anger. Now, even she was glaring at me like I’d just murdered her favorite reindeer.

“Why didn’t you lock the door?” Mary said.

“He has the pole,” Santa said, like I didn’t understand that, like I hadn’t been standing there minutes ago while Frost made my blood freeze in my veins.

“I know that,” I snapped. I whirled on them both. “It’s not my job to protect the pole.”

Santa looked like I’d slapped him. I may as well have. His face drained of blood and he walked away and started pacing again, quickly, as though he couldn’t be in the same space as me without wanting to run.

Felix looked up at me. A small frown crossed his features.

“Yeah,” he said, a little too late.

He sat up, then swayed a little. I grabbed onto his elbow to steady him.

He looked at Mary, then yelled after Santa, “Yeah, you know what, it’s not our fault Frost got in.”

“You left the door unlocked!” Santa bellowed.

“Maybe Frost wouldn’t have gotten in the Workshop at all if you’d actually dealt with the problem instead of pretending like everything was fine,” Felix said.

“The last thing we needed was to send the North Pole into a panic,” Mary said.

“We’re not children just because we make toys for them,” Felix said.

The empty pedestal sat in the center of the room, and the presence of all that vacant air weighed on us.

Felix rubbed the back of his head and scowled at the vacant platform, and Mary watched Santa as he paced with her eyebrows drawn together.

“It’s too late to stop Frost getting in,” I said. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do now.”

Santa snorted. I scrambled to my feet and ran over to him.

He was angry, yes, and much bigger than me, and probably in possession of the kind of magic that could make me disappear in half a second.

He was also Santa Claus, and I had a feeling anyone who would try to soothe their existential boredom by making toys for kids probably wouldn’t kill me, even if he felt like it.

I grabbed his arm and gave it a hard shake.

“Santa,” I said. “You cannot give up now.”

“Of course I can’t,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we have a snowball’s chance in hell of fixing this. Hundreds of years I’ve guarded this pole, and then I was foolish enough to trust the keys to someone else.”

“That was seven decades ago,” Felix called.

Finally, one of the elves had hinted at their age. I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to see it, but any rational person would have assumed he was younger than me. I turned back to Santa.

“I think I can help you.”

He scoffed. I put my hands on my hips.

“Or not,” I said. “I guess I can just leave you to your own devices here and we can wait for the world to go into another ice age. Would that make you happier?”

Mary walked over to the platform and grasped the railing with both hands. She stared at where the pole should be. We all stared. The emptiness was palpable.

“How can you help?” Mary said.

I let out a deep breath.

“Frost trusts me. At least a little. He thinks I let him in on purpose. I didn’t,” I added, when I saw Santa’s eyebrows start to furrow. “He doesn’t realize that, though. He said he’s going to come back to take me home. Maybe—I don’t know, you can have a security team waiting for him?”

I waited to hear whether this was a great idea or the stupidest thing I’d come up with all week. It was definitely the most dangerous, and I felt a little sick just thinking about it.

Santa rubbed his bearded chin and scowled in thought. Mary pursed her lips, then tapped the railing with her manicured nails.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Felix said.

“Particularly as it’s the only one we’ve got,” Mary said grimly.

“Santa?”

I looked toward him, waiting for the deciding vote.

“We don’t have a choice,” he finally said. He ran a hand down his beard, and I could see the tension in his shoulders. “You’ll need to contact Frost.”