Page 1 of The Krampus' Queen
CHAPTER 1
AFTER FIFTEEN MINUTES I wanted to murder this kid—a new record.
“Damien,” I cry out, my voice as pleasing as I can muster after the last two hours of torment that would break a Marine. “We don’t pour hot sauce on toilet paper.”
The medieval torturer in the guise of a ten-year-old boy tries to dodge as I leap for him. He thinks he’s got the upper hand by rebounding off of the gigantic walk-in rain shower, but he’s used to tiny nannies hunched from age and exhaustion. With my longer arms, I can’t quite snag him, but I manage to tip the hot sauce bottle out of his hand.
I don’t think anything of it and turn for a second go at Damien, but when it kisses the tile the bottle explodes into a million glass chips. With a demonic giggle, the hell beast vanishes out of the guest bathroom to continue his reign of terror. Of course rich people would keep their hot sauces in a crystal vial. They probably have a diamond-encrusted ketchup bottle too.
Cursing in spirit but not sound, I hunch over and try to gather up the shards without stepping on any. The toilet paper, mercifully not gold leaf, is a lost cause. Wadding the red-soaked paper around my hand, I breathe slowly and try to ignore the laugh followed by another sharp shatter somewhere in the mansion.
When I got this job, I almost didn’t take it. An app request for a babysitter at six PM on Christmas Eve—who does that? I got my answer on the ten-minute ride up their driveway. This wasn’t just any mansion. It was the kind of fancy Victorian home that housed columns, buttresses, gargoyles, maids, a butler, a dozen ghosts, Revolutionary gold buried in the garden, a hedge maze, and a cursed beast prowling in the west wing…probably. I’m pretty sure their salt and pepper shakers are worth more than my rent.
That damn need to have somewhere to sleep is why I’m in this mess. Also electricity, phone, being too bougie to starve in the gutter. Typical selfish reasons, really. When I took this job the app gave me an address and time. Usually, there’d be a picture of the moppets I’d be taking on and a list of rules. All I got for this job was a blank silhouette and a request to be discreet. My damn curiosity really fucked me over tonight.
With shards of glass wadded in quickly dissolving toilet paper, I stand. Just another half hour. He said he’d be back from the party before nine. I can do this.
A bullet whizzes just past my face. I jerk back far too late to have dodged. Lucky for me the little shit is a terrible shot. The monster lifts his BB gun for another go at me. “Damien DeVere!”
“The third,” he says petulantly and pulls the trigger. The thing jams, thank God. He starts to shake it, but I stomp forward and grab the end. As I wrench it out of his hands, he doesn’t scream or whine. One dead black eye stares at me.
“You do not shoot people!” I’m in near hysterics at this child casually aiming a gun at me and pulling the fucking trigger.
He blinks slowly as if taking in this information is a challenging process. Then he shakes his head and gives a little laugh. “You forgot to use the third,” he says.
I’ve had some doozies in my tour as a babysitter. There was the firecracker down the garbage disposal incident. The hiding in the trunk of their mother’s car debacle. And, of course, the always fun writing on the walls in their own feces. But nothing compares to the past one hundred and twenty-three minutes I’ve suffered from Damien DeVere the third.
Snarling, I reach to take him by the scruff. Just before I grab his skin, I realize my hand is covered in hot sauce and glass. “Go to bed!” I shout.
“Make me,” he challenges.
My hand clenches tighter around the gun. Gritting my teeth, I lean down to his level. “Go. To. Bed!” As a last resort, I wave my deadly hand at him. It’s probably the soggy toilet paper instead of the threat of glass, but Damien gives a quick yelp and skitters off down the hall.
Then there’s the giggle, always the fucking giggle.
A door slams down the hall and I breathe a sigh of relief. Twenty-six minutes until he’s back. And if his father is one second late, I’m charging him triple. No, quintuple. Exhausted, but seeing dawn at last, I try to smear the toilet paper and glass off of my hand into one of their trash cans. The outside shines like an opalescent pearl. It’s not until soggy hot sauce drips down it that I realize it’s probably covered in actual pearls. Rich people are so fucking weird.
I scrape the last of it off and wash my hands. The movement catches my eye and I frown at the eye bags and furrowed brow on the creature in the mirror. This kid’s taken a good decade from my life. At least he’s in his room and…
Another door slams shut.
Without thinking, I cock his BB gun and sling it around in my arms. “Damien!” I scream and go after him.
The clock strikes nine as I collapse into an armchair by the fire. It took me five tries to wrangle him into bed. The final straw was when he snuck into my purse, stole my birth control, and flushed them while calling me a whore. Demons could learn a thing or two from that charming young man. In the end, I barricaded him in his room. If his father cares enough to get him out, he can move the chair. Or wait until morning.
“God, I can’t imagine that monster on Christmas morning.” In the old days, Damien would be the kind of kid who’d have had his servants put to death because his porridge was too cold.
I fall back into both the stuffy chair and myself. The hypnotic flames climb into my skull, writhing and fading into smoke while my mind churns with them. Christmas…again. There’s no tree at home. No tinsel. No ham. No one waving a sprig of mistletoe above his head. Another year come and gone, and what do I have to show for it other than the mental scars? Some physical ones too.
Back in grade school, they’d do these ‘What do you wanna be when you’re an adult’ worksheets. Kids would sculpt their hopes and dreams not in clay but crayons and stickers only to reach that coveted age and realize there is no promised land. Adult life isn’t becoming someone, it’s surviving the someone you always were. Doing whatever you can to make it to the next day, then getting up and doing it again. People aren’t happy. They get snippets of happiness from time to time, sure. But deep down, most of us are on standby, waiting for the next crisis to destroy our pathetic little world.
Except for people like the DeVeres. This house is the kind of old money where there’s a safari’s worth of stuffed animals tucked away in an old parlor. They don’t have problems beyond the ones they invent to keep themselves busy.
A little clock on the mantle tolls. Two small men in undertaker suits jerk through tiny doors and bang on a bell nine times. Then they bow and race back inside. I cross my legs and laugh at the fancy clock that’s two minutes late. Selling that thing could probably feed a village, but it can’t keep the time. There’s a joke in there, but I can’t find it beyond enjoying a little bit of patina on the gold.
“Hello? Miss Amaya?”
Here we go. Groaning, I pry myself out of the chair to my feet. My body sways, aching to toss me onto that fluffy rug by the fire, but I can’t. Sheer willpower forces a smile on, and I stand with so-so posture to greet Mr. DeVere.
