I blinked and looked from Felix to the old man and back again.

“Um,” I said.

My brain felt like it had frozen, and I had to mentally play his words back over a few times before they could sink in.

Then reality crashed in on me.

“No,” I said.

“No?” Felix said.

“Under no circumstances,” I said. “No. Absolutely not. Do you think I’m insane?”

“I don’t really know you yet,” he said. “Anything’s possible.”

“No, anything is not,” I said.

My heart began beating so quickly it was like a hummingbird had gotten trapped in my chest. I looked around the room for an escape, but it was dark outside and impossible to tell how high up this room was, and the only door was behind my two captors.

The old man chuckled. His overweight belly jiggled—

Like a bowl full of jelly.

“No,” I said.

“We’re pleased to meet you, Holly,” he said. “Even if you’re less than pleased to meet us. Are you all right? Do you need a drink of water?”

Panic flooded me, and then the panic turned to a hostility that burned hot in the pit of my stomach. It was a relief. I couldn’t be terrified if I was angry enough.

“I need a drink of sanity, please, and then I need to go home.”

Had I been kidnapped?

Was I actually in a hospital and hallucinating that I’d been kidnapped?

Had I died, and this was hell?

I threw off my blankets and struggled to stand up. Felix tried to stop me, but I wrenched my arm away from him and kicked at him to make him keep his distance. Blankets tangled around me, trapping me against the bed.

The old man held out a hand, like he was trying to soothe a skittish horse.

“I know this is disorienting,” he said.

“That’s not the word,” I said, yanking the blankets off and slamming them onto the bed. It was hard to feel like I could intimidate anyone while wearing a pair of polka-dotted pajamas, but I did my best. “This is not disorienting. And I am not staying here. You have got to be out of your mind.”

I tried to stare him down, which was a challenge as he was at least a foot taller than me and twice as wide. Felix was still sitting, though, so I glared down at him instead.

“Why am I here?” I said. “Did you knock me out so you could drag me back here to—to whatever this is? Or is this some kind of Christmas prank? Because let me tell you, I am not about to sign some talent license so you can put this on some second-rate cable show. Who even has cable anymore? I’m trying to come up with a scenario where any of this would be okay.” I waved my hand around the room, with special emphasis at the absurdly large tree. “And I can’t do it. Give me my phone.”

“Fine,” Felix said mildly. He opened the drawer of the nightstand by the bed and pulled my phone out. I snatched it from him.

It was dead.

Of course it was.

“Someone around here will have a charger,” Felix said. “Not that it will help much.”

“Felix is right,” the old man said. “We don’t have much call for cell phones up here. Don’t really get service. Folks at the North Pole use our own systems of communication.”

“So which one of those ‘systems of communication’ can get me home?” I said. “Or, better yet, in touch with the police?”

I could have slapped myself. Why did I mention the police? I should have just played along and figured out how to escape. I froze and braced myself for whatever would happen next, but Felix just shrugged.

“You can talk to Law Enforcement if you want,” he said. “But they’ll just tell you the same thing.”

I eyed both of them. They seemed calm.

Too calm.

Quickly, I darted away from the bed and toward one of the windows that reflected only the lights of this room. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe it’d be on the ground floor.

The many-paned window was twice as tall as I was, but the latch was within reach. I grabbed it, my head throbbing, and flung the window open, prepared to jump out and run.

But there was nowhere to run to.

I was on the ground floor, all right. Just outside the window, no more than ten feet away, the snowy ground gave way to churning black waves and an endless starry sky.

“We’re on an iceberg,” Felix offered from behind me. I spun around, but he was still sitting next to the bed, which was much bigger and more elegant than I’d realized. “If you’re trying to escape you’ll want to go out the other side of the Workshop.”

Santa nodded his agreement.

I couldn’t think of him as anyone but Santa. The realization made my breath catch in my throat, and then my heart started pounding so loudly it drowned out the sounds of everything else in room.

The walls began spinning around me and I clung onto the windowsill and leaned out. Icy air bit my face. It should have calmed me, or at least brought me to my senses, but I still had to take a few long, slow breaths before I could open my eyes.

“This is the North Pole,” I said.

“Yes,” Santa said.

“You’re Santa Claus.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

I heard footsteps, and then a large, warm hand descended onto my back. Part of me wanted to shake it off, but I didn’t. I took more deep breaths as Santa patted me on the back.

“I hate Christmas,” I moaned.

“You give me that impression,” he said.

“Why am I here?”

“Bad luck,” he said. “Or bad driving. It really was an accident. They didn’t mean to hit you with the sleigh. I shouldn’t have sent two new drivers out on their own. I thought they could handle it.”

“Clearly not,” I managed, and then the world started whirling around me again and pain cracked through my head like lightning.

Felix jumped up and grabbed my arm before I fell. It took a few seconds for the world to steady, and then I nodded at him and he helped me across the room to a chair in front of the fireplace.

The flames jumped up and down in a glowing dance. Embers popped up into the air and spiraled around the flames. Of everything in this room, the fire seemed the most normal, so I stared at it while Felix moved around behind me.

Santa Claus was not real. I knew that as well as I knew anything. Reindeer did not fly, and no one lived at the North Pole except for maybe a handful of researchers. And yet he stood next to me, and I didn’t have to poke his belly or tug on his beard to know he was the real thing. His presence filled the room, bumping against the edges of my consciousness no matter how hard I tried to push it away.

Felix pushed a warm mug into my hand. I looked down.

Hot cocoa. Of course.

“Is it science?” I said. I poked a marshmallow, and its puffy overheated body collapsed into the cocoa.

“It’s a marshmallow,” Felix said slowly.

“That’s not what I mean.”

I glared at him, but he tilted his head and looked genuinely confused.

“Reindeer don’t fly and no one gets around the world in one night,” I said. “It’s not possible. But I’m here, and you’re here, and whatever’s going on outside is definitely real. So what? Is ‘Santa Claus’ a conspiracy theory some government came up with to hide something?”

Santa sat down in the other chair opposite the fire. He sighed deeply, crossed his legs, and rested his hands on his stomach.

“No, it’s all real,” he said. “Me and this place and magic, too.”

I snorted. He chuckled. I eyed the cocoa, then took a cautious sip. It was warm and delicious. Nothing happened after the first sip, so I took another.

“I don’t believe in magic,” I said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Santa said. He nodded and watched the fire. I waited for the rush of explanations, but he didn’t seem like he was in any hurry to convince me.

After a moment, he tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair and looked seriously at me.

“We can’t get you home,” he said.

I opened my mouth, ready with a wave of demands, but he held up a hand.

“I don’t mean we’re not willing to. I just mean we can’t.”

“I thought you had magic.”

“Well, the magic’s busted,” he said. He glanced at the door Crystal had left through. “Getting out of the North Pole isn’t easy, even for me. The only vehicle that can do it is the sleigh, and the sleigh barely made it home. They hit a lamppost before they ran into you and the techs told me most of the systems failed on the way home. It’s going to take a while to repair.”

“Can I at least call someone?”

He nodded. “We have a phone. Connection’s patchy sometimes, but it’ll do the job. It’s the middle of the night in Colorado, of course, but I’m sure your family will be looking for you.”

“Not to call my family,” I said, more to the cocoa than to Santa. “Just my boss. She’ll wonder why I’m not at work tomorrow.”

“Oh,” he said mildly. “In the morning, then.”

“Santa?” said Felix. The word burst out like he’d been holding it in for a while, and like it was killing him to have been out of the conversation for so long.

“Felix?”

“I’m on duty in five,” he said.

“Oh, of course,” Santa said. He shook his head and waved. “Yes, go. Can’t be late for your shift again or she’ll have your head.”

“I already owe her my head,” Felix said grimly. “I think she’s started eyeing other body parts.”

Santa laughed, a boisterous sound that caught me off guard. A laugh bubbled out of me, too, and I immediately choked it back.

Where had that come from? I was not happy.

I turned to see Felix leave, and then it was just me and the elf of my stupid childhood dreams, sitting in front of a fire in awkward silence.

“You’re welcome to explore the place,” he said after a while. “This will be your room, but there’s lots to see. Felix can show you around.”

“I’ll probably just chill in here,” I said. “No offense, but I’ve had enough Christmas cheer.”

He raised his bushy eyebrows, and I realized a second too late that it had probably been a rude thing to say.

“Sorry,” I said. “Nothing against your job or whatever. Just… not my thing.”

“It wasn’t always mine, either,” he said. He stood with the soft groan of an old man with creaky hinges. “Let me know if you change your mind. In the meantime, we all ought to try to get a good night’s sleep. Ring the bell on your nightstand if your head keeps bothering you and a nurse will come in.”

I forced a thin-lipped smile. “Thanks.”

He patted me on the shoulder, and then he left, too, and it was just me and the cocoa and the fire and the Christmas tree the size of a school bus.

I looked back at the window, half-hoping that the landscape outside had suddenly changed, but the sky outside was dark and all I could see was my own reflection in the glass.

I didn’t want Christmas cheer, and I had no interest in exploring the North Pole. I did want to escape, though, and he was right: Everything would be just outside the door. Maybe even a way out.