“I had no
idea Nick could be such a jerk,” I muttered.
“Hmm?”
Nikki said, all her concentration on her letter.
“Nothing.”
The awkward
silence stretched on for a moment. I really wanted to know what was in Nikki’s
letter, but it would be rude—potentially dangerous—to read over her shoulder,
so I didn’t.
“Want any
hot chocolate or something? I’m afraid I don’t carry any O+ to spike it with.”
“That will
be fine, Matthew.” She said absently.
I could bring her holy water and she
probably wouldn’t notice. Must be some letter.
I busied myself
in the kitchen making the hot chocolate according to Ma’s recipe as best I could,
but I didn’t have any peppermint candies or extract. Instead, I crushed up some
Wint-O-Green lifesavers and stirred a bit into one mug. I tasted it, didn’t
die, then smiled as it tasted really good.
Ma will hate that I improved on her recipe.
My stomach
rumbled, so I made some old-fashioned cinnamon toast to go with it. It was the
perfect Christmas morning repast for the lazy bachelor and his vampire guest. I
returned to the living room with the tray, putting a mug topped with whipped
cream in Nikki’s free hand.
She drank
reflexively, at first confused by the taste, then smiled slightly at the taste.
“This is
very good, Matthew. I expected coffee because of your obsession.”
I shrugged.
“It’s Christmas.”
“Yes,” her
voice became slow and thoughtful. “Yes, it is. Even when I was a girl, we were
expected to outgrow St. Nicholas and Kris Kringle. Life was too harsh to spend
our wishes on fancies that could never happen. I still got gifts, when my
parents could find the means, but I knew they were not from a supernatural
gift-giver, for such could not exist. I still remember the last gift I got from
my father, when I was nine, a wooden doll he had made by hand. It must have
taken him months to carve the face just so.
“And later,
it did not occur to me to believe that Nicholas might be real, just as I was a
vampire. I was firmly on the naughty list, as it were, and I just continued to
write it off as childhood fantasy. But now, now I have this.” She offered me
the letter.