Page 90 of Blood and Bells

Santa scrubs at his eyes with a shaking hand, then looks up, his face twisting into a snarl of pure hate.

“This isn’t over.” He spits. “I won’t forget this, Frost. When I come back, your little town—your precious tree, everything you’ve built here—I’ll grind it down to slush.”

“Get out of here, Santa,” Marcy shouts, appearing at Ronan’s side before she launches miniature mince pies with a surprisingly accurate aim. “Hit the road, you hoary old sprite.”

“Away, vile demon of questionable origin,” Ronan adds, hurling an ornament that cracks squarely against Santa’s forehead.

That seems to open the floodgates.

The entire town joins in—snowballs, candy canes, ornaments, and one deeply suspicious fruitcake all arc through the air like festive missiles. Laughter and shouting collide with half-sung carols as the square descends into coordinated nonsense.

The bakers escalate to flour bombs, which burst in soft white clouds and turn Santa’s beard into a damp, collapsing meringue. Meribel rings a handbell in time while the choir leans into a refrain that makes his magic wobble like a loose bauble. Mrs. Dapplewhite, guardian of the town archives, produces a roll of red ticket tape and efficiently trusses two elves, reciting infractions as she works: disorderly jingling, unlicensed wreathing, glitter spill, late fees already accruing.

The last of Santa’s storm gutters and fails, magic flickering out in uneven bursts like a dying string of bargain-bin lights: one bulb pops, then another, then the whole strand goes out. He staggers, hat slipping, bravado leaking out of him like air from a punctured balloon, while Willow Creek closes in and keeps him there.

“We can make a deal, Draven,” he snarls.

I let one eyebrow arch.

The barrage falters, if only out of curiosity.

“You may have knocked me down,” he says, voice tight, “but I still hold Christmas. The spirit, the current, the whole infernal system. And I will keep it from your kind—unless you hand over the tree.”

A murmur runs through the crowd—uncertain at first, then hardening from uncertainty to resolve.

I hesitate.

The coven has been shut out of Christmas for so long. Longer than most of them can even remember properly. I see it in Ronan’s face, in Wes, in Ranu—the brief flicker of want they’d never admit to out loud.

And I nearly⁠—

“No deal, Santa.”

Mr. Patel steps forward, jaw set like he’s about to argue over parking permits and win.

Mrs. Lee joins him without hesitation. “These are our vampires.”

Marcy elbows her way to the front. “Leave, and take your Crapmas with you.”

A hand lands on my shoulder.

Mrs. Christie.

Her rolling pin trembles—not with fear, but with the kind of fury usually reserved for overworked dough and underbaked opinions.

“You’ve got it wrong,” she tells Santa. “They’re already part of this town. We don’t need your permission, and we certainly don’t need your magic.” She glances up at me, and the look she gives is warm, certain, entirely unshakeable. “They’ve got us.”

We came to Willow Creek after I’d run out of better ideas. Another town, another stretch of time to fill—something to keep the coven from turning in on itself.

It was never meant to be permanent.

Not the eternal kind of permanent.

Now, people are standing between us and the thing coming for us. Not because they owe us something. Not because we asked. Just because we’re theirs now—and they’ve decided that means something.

I don’t know what to do with that.

I don’t think I’ve ever had to.