The interior of the Jag was warm, perhaps a little too warm given the settings of the defrost that blasted the interior of the windshield. The rushing air had relegated the frost to the corners of the glass.
Outside that glass the streets of downtown Toronto lay captive under a December cold snap. The night was dark and bitterly cold and Avenue Road was a solid stream of red taillights and as the temperature fell, the roads became slick and then icy.
The vampire maneuvered the Jag skillfully, maintaining control even when the vehicle slipped sideways on the icy patches. Part of his attention was focused on the flashing lights and the roar of the engines outside the enclosed cabin of the car, but the majority of his attention was taken by the two passengers that accompanied him. Their warmth and anticipation charged the air around him.
Vicki sat in the passenger seat, her body turned towards the back where Coreen was perched, leaning forward onto the back of Henry's seat. It violated all of his instincts to have another being directly behind him, especially when a portion of his attention was directed to controlling the car, and he continually drew in her scent to calm his jangling nerves. It is only Coreen. Only Coreen, he told himself as he listened to their conversation.
"You're sure it's down here?" Vicki asked.
"Uh-huh, maybe four blocks and then take a…right," Coreen mumbled around the candy cane that she held in her mouth.
Henry could see Vicky in his peripheral vision as she waved the sticky end of her own half eaten candy cane in his direction. "Go straight for four blocks and then turn…" she repeated as he interrupted.
"I'm right here Vicki, I heard her. 'Then take a right,'" he said, leaning slightly away to the left to avoid the sticky sweet.
"Don't be such a humbug Henry," Vicki said as she leaned towards him, placing her palm flat on his thigh and pressing her sticky lips against his cheek. Her words emerged in a warm puff of peppermint scented breath. "This is supposed to be fun."
"Oh shit!" Coreen yelped from the back seat and Henry's eyes flashed forwards to see a car that had braked in the approaching lane begin to slide on the ice towards the Jag. He resisted the urge to hit the brakes and instead smoothly turned the car towards the edge of his lane, watching as the other driver fought for control. Henry felt rather than saw Vicky brace her hands on the dash and heard her muttered, "No…no…Noooo…ahhh," as the other car eventually came to rest just a few inches shy of the Jag.
As he edged the Jag straight and back into traffic, the vampire was doubly conscious of the real frailty of the lives that accompanied him, the lives that he loved. He would heal from virtually any injury that did not sever his head or pierce his heart; his human companions would not.
"Jeez, that was close!" Coreen said behind his ear, her chin resting almost on the back of his seat. She was peering out the windshield. Suddenly she tapped him excitedly on the shoulder. "Here, turn right here, Henry!" her voice rising in pitch.
The back end of the car slid wide as Henry responded to her tone, taking the turn with a sudden twist of the wheel, Coreen's fingers digging into his shoulder to steady herself.
"Coreen, please," Henry said resignedly once he had the car under control, "It's just a Christmas tree lot. If I'd overshot it we could have come around the block again. Five minutes more won't make any difference."
"Sure it does, Henry," Vicki said. "Someone could be walking off with the perfect tree for the office even as we speak. Straight down here then left into the IGA parking lot. Right Coreen?"
"Yes, it's the Boy Scout lot; they have the best trees every year."
Henry pulled into the crowded parking lot of the IGA store; the lot was full of shoppers pushing carts full of Christmas grocery supplies through the slush to their cars, the aisles between the parked cars a virtual obstacle course of abandoned carts.
"It's no use looking for parking here, drive around to the side of the store. That's where the tree lot is," Coreen instructed.
Henry was more than slightly out of his element, it wasn't like he spent a great deal of time frequenting the grocers, being that he hadn't eaten in, well, centuries. When he turned the corner of the building he was relieved to see the chain link enclosure of the tree lot, and three empty parking spots directly in front of the open gate. Before he had completely pulled the car to a stop, Vicki had the door open and she was climbing out.
When Coreen emerged she took Vicki's arm and the two of them pulled ahead while he brought up the rear of the little cavalcade.
Henry thought as he watched them, What has happened to my hardened and cynical PI? Something has changed her into an excited and enthusiastic participant in the season.
Where ever did Coreen get that down coat? he thought. She has assumed dimensions roughly equivalent to the Michelin tire man—and that patterned Sherpa woolen hat with the ear flaps pulled down and the tassel hanging in the back. I am pretty sure that it is not approved Goth attire, he thought with a smile as he watched her pull away from Vicki like an excited child.
"Let's find the really big ones," he heard her say, as she passed through the gate into the lot.
"Go ahead and start looking Coreen, check out what they have. I'm just going to wait for Mr. Christmas here, and then we'll see what we can find as well. Just remember, it has to fit in the front office," Vicki said over her shoulder as she paused to wait for Henry.
Henry had to admit that he liked this new holiday version of Vicki. There was a widening crack in the cool and reserved façade that she presented to the world, allowing for a glimpse of the passion that she normally kept hidden.
As Henry drew even with Vicki, she crooked her arm, inviting him to place his arm through hers, with a comical attempt to raise an eyebrow, which produced an expression more akin to what Henry was feeling—astonishment.
The perimeter of the tree lot was defined by temporary poles and chain link fencing. Between the poles hung bowed lines of light bulbs, yellow and incandescent and blessedly unobtrusive to the vampire's night–adapted vision. All was anchored at one corner by a ramshackle trailer in which huddled the lot attendant like the proverbial troll under the bridge.
There, piled against the chain link so that it sagged outward, or leaning against rough wooden walls inside the lot, were hundreds of Christmas trees. For the most part bound around with twine and ignominiously trussed like prisoners, they lay in stacks on the ground. A few were standing upright, fluffed out in their solitary glory, nailed to a plywood stand.
Further down the aisle Henry could see Coreen talking animatedly to the sales person and was just slightly dismayed to note that she stood on tip–toe to reach far above her head and then extended her arms fully side to side to indicate the dimensions of the tree she was seeking. It was even more perturbing that the man nodded his head in agreement and then raised a gloved hand to indicate that she should follow and they both disappeared into the back of the lot.
Despite the fact that the evening was cold and dark, and the air chilled, there were many people in the lot. The artist in Henry fell to studying those around him as he strolled about arm–in–arm with Vicki around the edges of the lot.
There was an abundance of smiling faces with chilled cheeks reddened with the cold, and noses that were chapped and red. Their breath hung in the air in a steamy cloud of warmth, and above the scent of peppermint emanating from Vicki, Henry could trace the distinctive sent of woolen coats and clothing. Underlying all was the sharp and fresh scent of the pine and spruce trees which surrounded them
The living scent of the pine boughs rose up around him. He was proud, proud that his nurse thought he was big enough to carry them. He buried his face in the soft green needles and drew in a big breath. His cheeks were cold and red and the tips of his ears beneath his red gold curls were aching with the cold.
"Harry," she had said, "little angel, you may help to carry the boughs from the sleigh to the stable, but you must understand that Martin will have to carry them up to the hall."
Henry nodded; he understood even then that what Nurse allowed him to do in the company of the servants and what he was permitted to do in the "hall" were two different things.
Martin was his friend; Martin was Nurse's friend as well. Martin was a groom and he was the one who drove the sleigh. Nurse called him Harry or "little angel," but Martin called him Master Henry, and when they had come down to the stable, it was Martin who carried him about on his shoulders.
It was Martin who laughed and jostled the toddler about, calling out to him as his curls brushed the low beams, "Duck down, little Master, neighhhh, neighhhh. Duck down Curly Top."
It was Martin who had placed the woven ivy wreath on his curls, Martin who had tucked the blanket around them in the sleigh and put hot stones wrapped in cloths at their feet.
It was Martin who had whistled up the horses and set off at a thrilling clip across the snow towards the trees, the harnesses jingling and the trilling laughter of the bastard taking to the crisp air.
Henry knew that if it was anyone but Nurse, he would not be allowed to leave the sleigh. But it was Nurse, and as she watched, Henry tramped through the snow in Martin's wake and as Martin cut the boughs from the pines Henry would dash in and drag them back to the sleigh.
Soon enough his sturdy little legs grew tired and Nurse bid him come and climb back up beside her on the seat of the sleigh. She brushed away the snow and cuddled him up next to her, warmed by her own body and the tanned fur rugs of the sleigh.
When the boughs were loaded and the horses turned for home, Henry was warm and tired and he began to doze, the thin lids drooping over his huge blue eyes, and the tiny thumb crept up between the rosebud lips.
Martin held the reins loosely in one hand and leaned back. Nurse leaned forward and Henry opened his eyes in time to see their lips meet.
He knew why people kissed; Nurse kissed him because she loved him and because he was her "little angel." Mama kissed him, when he was presented to her in her morning room, or sometimes at night when she came to his cradle and she told him that she loved him, that he was the joy of her heart. And sometimes his father, the King, kissed him, when he held him aloft, laughing and proclaiming in a loud voice his joy in his beloved son.
So Henry knew that Nurse loved Martin, and he thought that this was good, because he loved Martin too and at somewhat more than four years of age he knew, that this was one more secret to be kept from the big house.
"I'm not asleep," Henry said.
"Are you not, Master Woodsman?" Martin laughed. "Well no need to go so slow then, if you're not sleeping like a babe. Why, they're terribly anxious to get these boughs back to deck the hall for Christmastide. Do you think we should go a little faster then?"
So it was they arrived back to the stable with the horses lathered, and the scent of fresh cut pine all around them.
When the branches were all unloaded to a pile, Nurse took his hand in hers and said, "It is time for your lessons Harry, you must come up to see your tutor now."
"Surely not before Master Curly Top stops by to see Cook. She told me that she was baking up something special today," Martin said with a broad wink. "Why a man who has been working so hard surely deserves a…
"Henry!" Vicki's voice brought him back to himself with a start. "Where in hell were you?" she asked and then continued without waiting for a reply, "I was saying, what do you think of this one?"
Vicki held up a tree bound in a tight column with twine. "Hold it up while I cut the string," Vicki said. As Henry grasped the top of the tree, Vicki dug in her pocket to retrieve her Swiss Army knife, a favorite Christmas gift from Mike two years ago. She pulled it open with a snap and cut the twine.
"You need to bang the stump end on the ground a couple of times," she instructed, "so that the boughs fall down and we can see how full it is. Haven't you ever shopped for a Christmas tree before?"
"Upon occasion, Victoria," Henry replied as he grasped the tree by the trunk and shook it out, rapping the butt end sharply on the concrete and eliciting a flurry of needles, which lodged on the sleeves and front of his coat. He wished that he had thought to bring the leather gloves he had left in the car; he could feel the stickiness of the pine sap on his fingers already.
"This one has a bend in the trunk, it won't stand straight," Vicki declared critically. "What about that one?"
Henry obligingly hauled the tree in question upright, while Vicki once again plied her blade to the twine. Once again came the fluffing of the branches, the rain of pine needles and the scent of the forest in the dark.
"Too tall and thin" was the verdict on the second tree, and then the next three in short order, "Too short," or "Too full," or "Too lopsided."
They had been looking for fifteen minutes, and Henry was beginning to despair that the lot contained a tree that would come close to meeting Victoria's exacting standards.
He was covered in needles and dust and pine tar and his fingers were freezing. Nothing destroyed Henry's good humor as quickly as having cold hands.
"Jeez, maybe they don't have one," Vicki paused as she caught sight of the expression on Henry's face. "You probably didn't think that you were going to grow up to be a woodsman, did you?" she asked with a smile.
"I have to admit, that a princely education was sadly lacking in that area," Henry replied a little stiffly. He ran a hand through his hair without thought and managed to transfer both stickiness and needles to his curls.
Vicki tried her best not to laugh as she looked down to her feet for a few seconds. When she looked up Henry was chafing his hands together in a rather vain effort to generate some frictional warmth.
"Blow on them, Henry," she instructed.
"It won't help," he replied. He moved closer and confided in a whisper, "I haven't fed since night before last; until I feed my body temperature will stay low. After I hunt, I will be warmer."
Vicki looked closely at the vampire. Now that he had said it she realized that compared to the rosy cold–reddened cheeks of the humans, the vampire's face was completely pale. His words didn't drift away into the night air on the same dense moist puff of steam as did her own.
Does the cold bother him, she wondered. I mean...will he freeze, get frostbite the way we will, and would that kill him? Vicki shook her head. Not exactly the kinds of things you can just out and out ask. Instead she reached for Henry's hands and, cupping them between her own, she brought them to her lips and blew her warm breath softly over the cold flesh.
Henry felt her warm breath pass over his hands and he clamped down unmercifully on the vampire that roared to life in that instant. His eyes were calm blue when she looked up into his face and he lifted a single finger to run it gently under her lower lip as he smiled at her.
That smile always melted her heart. "You should have said you were hungry Henry. Maybe we could…"
"No Vicki, though I appreciate the offer, that is a habit that would be too easy for me to acquire, and dangerous for us both. As long as I hunt before dawn, I will be fine," he said with a regretful smile.
"Uh, did you guys find anything?" Coreen's voice interrupted the moment, "Because there is a great one at the back down there."
"Lead the way, please Coreen," Henry said and he took Vicki's arm. She clasped his hand in hers and buried both inside her jacket pocket.
As Coreen led the way back down the lot and Vicky walked beside him, he was painfully aware of her. The sweetness of her scent, the creaking of the cold leather of her jacket and the soft woolen scent of the scarf, mercifully swathed around and around her enticing throat. Peeking from beneath her hair he could see the tips of her ears, colored pink with the cold. She hunched her shoulders inside her jacket; her heart thumped out a seductive beat. Henry could feel his eyes begin to darken.
"Oh Coreen," Vicki said, "I think that that might be it. What do you think Henry?"
He glanced at the sales attendant who was holding up a tree far taller than himself. The man blinked once as he glimpsed the predator moving in Henry's eyes.
"I think this is the one," Henry said smoothly, dragging forward his most disarming smile.
"Oh good," Coreen said as she pulled her bag around to the front of her body. "So that's forty-five for the tree and how much for the delivery charges?" she asked.
"No delivery this year," the attendant said, his eyes narrowing as he considered the young man before him. "We lost our shirt on that last year."
"No delivery," Henry echoed, a sudden sinking feeling spreading through him.
"Uhh-uh," the attendant took in the expensive clothes and the pale youthful face, "I can give you some rope though and you can tie it to the roof of your car."
Henry could feel both Coreen's and Vicki's eyes on him. They know how careful I am about that… His shoulder slumped in defeat before they could even begin their arguments.
"Fine," he said shortly, "We'll tie it to the car."
If the ride to the tree lot had been hair-raising, the return trip to the office was a nightmare.
The satisfaction that Henry felt as the self-satisfied look on the attendant's face disappeared when he had lifted the tree effortlessly to the roof of the car, evaporated quickly, as the drive began.
Henry could hear the scratching of the tree on the roof of the car, clearly, even past the chill of the wind rushing in the open windows. Henry was well aware of how comical the picture of the sports car with the ostentatiously large tree tied precariously to the top was. Unfortunately he failed to see the same level of humor in the situation that Vicki did.
Coreen and Vicki were laughing and joking, each of them with an arm out the window to hold onto a branch and steady the massive tree, as Henry made his slow progress back to the office.
By the time they finally pulled to the curb, thank the merciful saints that there was a parking spot in front of the office, Vicki and Coreen were engaged in a giggling wager whether Henry had actually known Charles Dickens in person or not and given the current state of his temper, that perhaps Dickens had modeled Scrooge after a certain vampire.
When asked directly, Henry had refused to answer other than a terse, "I have always enjoyed Dickens work, though it is perhaps a tad over-sentimental."
Henry was treated to repeated falsetto impersonations of Tiny Tim's famous line, "God Bless us every-one," first by Vicki and then Coreen, as they cut the rope that held the tree to the Jag and he levered the tree upright in the street.
"If you would be so kind as to unlock the door, Victoria," he said tightly, "perhaps we could all get in out of the cold."
As Vicki unlocked the door she turned to Henry and said, "bring the butt end of the tree here and you and I will drag it up the stairs. Coreen, you be on the bottom and maneuver the tree top while we pull it up."
Once they had managed to pull the tree through the door, they got it as far as the stairs, Vicki and Henry side by side on each tread, hauling the tree backwards up the steps.
They were making good progress until a branch that had been bowed by the railing suddenly sprang back, catching Vicki across the face, causing her to lose her grip and land on her bottom on the stair tread. Henry caught the weight of the tree before it could slip down onto Coreen, hovering uselessly below, but managed to somehow step on the end of Vicki's scarf, effectively choking her when she struggled to rise.
"Will it help if I push from down here?" Coreen inquired as she heard Vicki cursing aloud.
"No!" both Henry and Vicki shouted simultaneously as they grappled with the lower branches for a better grip.
The last hurdle was the door to the office and after Vicki had unlocked it, she and Henry, shoulder to shoulder, attempted to ease the wide base of the tree through the narrow width of the doorway.
"Look, we'll pull and you push, Coreen, on the count of three. Ready? One, two, three!" Vicki called and pulled as hard as she could on the branch she was holding. The tree cleared the door in a sudden whoosh that overbalanced both Vicki and the vampire, leaving them lying side by side on the floor beneath the tree.
Vicki turned to look at Henry through watery eyes and burst out laughing at the affronted expression on his face. "If you could see your face Henry," she began and then paused as he turned towards her. She captured his lips with hers and managed to free an arm to grab a handful of his jacket and pull him towards her. She felt the tension melt out of him as he responded to her kiss.
She could hear Coreen's anxious voice, "Are you guys okay?"
Then from the bottom of the stairs came Celluci's voice. "Hey Vic! The door is wide open down here, and there is a giant trail of pine needles on the carpet. Oh, and would you tell Santa Vamp that he left his headlights on?"