Page 42 of Run, Run Rudolph
“A game?”
“Reindeer games,” he said bleakly.
A series of swears rolled through my head. Reindeer games? On the road? At night? Of course, one of them had been hit! I hadn’t stood a chance, had I? Those stupid, risk-taking, testosterone-fuelled deer thinking they were invincible!
“Well, I don’t care about the naughty list,” I said definitively, holding my temper. “We need to save Christmas.”
“I won’t go on the list,” Snarky said primly.
“Because you’re her little narc.” I heard a muffled thump, like a hoof striking the seat, followed by a squeak.
“Boys!” I snapped. “Fighting won’t get us anywhere. We’re in this together, remember?”
“I’m going to tell Mrs. Claus,” the elf said, a waver in his smug tone.
Rudolph gave a cough, while saying, “Narc.”
Rolling my eyes, I slowed Benjamin to a crawl to turn down my winding driveway, Haden following behind.
“And you’re going on it, too, lady!” Snarky sounded as if I’d deeply and intentionally insulted him. “You’ve been interacting with the magical world without proper permission!”
“You guys didn’t really give me a choice,” I muttered.
“You don’t have proper clearance.”
“Yeah? Funny, because I didn’t see an application form or request booth on the side of the road.”
Rudolph let out a guffaw.
“And anyway, my friend Char interacts with your world all the time. Or she did, anyway. So did I. How is this different?”
“That was a business arrangement between you and Estelle,” Snarky stated. “And it wasn’t an intentional, unauthorized breach of the wall separating the two worlds. Her shroud breach was agreed upon by both parties. It’s covered under an inter-world treaty.”
He sounded as if he was reading a clause from a book of rules. You’d think he and Prancer would get along, seeing as he’d been quoting similar rules earlier.
“If I don’t have proper clearance, how do I see you as well as the reindeer? Just because you chose it? This wasn’t a business arrangement or an intentional breach. And I don’t think it was agreed-upon by both parties, either.”
“We’re drunk,” Rudolph stated.
“It weakens the walls between them and other worlds,” the elf said, starting to sound bored.
Rudolph muttered something to the elf that sounded like, “But she also still believes.”
“Does that make it so I can see more?” A bubbly feeling of excitement rose within me, along with the knowledge that I might be special in some way.
“Rules are rules,” the elf snapped at Rudolph. “And you broke them! You’ll both have to go before the magical courts.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll see I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and am trying to amend the situation.”
“She won’t listen,” Rudolph said.
“Who?” I asked tiredly. “The judge or something?”
“Or something.”
I shivered, my imagination running wild. Maybe I didn’t want to go there to plead my innocence after all. Then again, the other option seemed to be fairy godmother debt. Unless I got Rudolph up into the air in the next few hours.
“You’ve injured one of Santa’s reindeer,” Snarky was saying, his tone prim and bossy, “and detained one of Santa’s elves within twenty-four hours of Christmas Eve. That’s very bad.”
