Naughty Elf: Mistletoe (Santa’s Naughty Elf Mates)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

MIZ

Santa wasn't mean, I tried to tell myself as I fought against the confines of the plastic shell around me. This was what I deserved for my poor job performance. I was in some stranger's house, stuck inside a plastic elf figurine.

I recognized the design well enough. It was the cute little mold Holly had been working on at Halloween. She'd made elf figurines to look like each of Santa 30's elves doing our favorite things. Mine was so sad. He was perched on a short stool, fixated on his phone. Was that what she thought I did for fun?

The fun was inside the phone: the games, movies, shows, and books I found there. Needless to say, I didn't have a phone now. Santa ripped it from my hands and tossed it into the wastebasket in the sleigh's center console. My plastic hands were cupped in front of my chest, like I should have been holding something phone-sized, but there was nothing there.

I had waited for him all night in the hangar, watching his progression on the tracker screen. I'd removed my coat and mittens when a reindeer's spouse brought me a cup of hot chocolate.

When Santa returned, he didn't even let me get dressed before he pulled me back to the sleigh and shoved me across the bench. It was a cold ride, though short. Without my phone to keep my hands warm, I'd wrapped my arms around my middle and shivered the whole way … wherever I was.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving. A spider roamed along the underside of a computer monitor. The alpha had left me sitting on his desk facing the monitor, and … well, it was the biggest spider I'd ever seen.

I had to keep in mind I wasn't as big as I used to be, either. I was 1:48 my size, the same as the action figures I'd molded.

The spider left me alone, so I took stock of the rest of my surroundings. A large whiteboard occupied most of the wall behind the desk. Pictures of a happy family of mostly white people with some indigenous folks hung on the other wall. From my awkward position, I couldn't see them well. I tried to turn my body but couldn't. I was stuck on this plastic stool.

I gave the spider another suspicious glance, but it had moved to the other side of the monitor stand. Relieved, I drifted into a light doze.

I'd been awake for over twenty-four hours, first making the disastrous action figure, and then pacing the runway until the reindeer's spouses pulled me inside. When Santa returned, he had been so angry!

Still, I took my first sleigh ride. I'd been too thrilled by the view to ask where we were going. I loved looking down on the snow-covered landscape.

"This isn't even my route," Santa 30 grumbled. "And I'll have to pay the reindeer overtime."

"I'm so sorry, Santa."

"You've been unhappy here for a long time," he said. "I've watched you trying to escape into stories. This will be one of those tales you'll tell your grandchildren if you're lucky enough to have any."

"I still don't understand why you needed me to make the delivery," I said.

"I'm sending you to your fated mate. If he can't get you to live in the present, no one can."

I had a fated mate? Since when? And why was my fated mate so far away from my job at Christmas Village? Before I could ask any questions, Santa circled over a snow-covered suburb and booted me out of the sleigh. While I fell, magic wrapped around me, turning me into the elf figurine.

Santa's voice followed me down. "You have one year to discover true happiness. If you don't, you'll be a plastic figurine forever."

I jerked awake to the sound of thundering footsteps.

"Just the batteries, Ellie. Don't touch anything else on my desk!"

"Okay!"

An angelic white child with bouncy brown curls and an overbite waltzed into the room in a velvet and tulle dress that fanned out behind her. The moment she saw me, everything around me shifted. I was no longer a plastic figurine on the corner of a desk. I was myself, all five-feet-nine inches of me, sitting on the desk's edge in my holiday garb, the stool nowhere in sight. I still held my hands in that awkward pose without a phone between them, so I dropped them to my lap.

"Who are you?" the little girl asked.

"My name's Mistletoe, but you can call me Miz."

She laughed. "That's a funny name. Mine's Ellie. Why are you sitting on my daddy's desk?"

"He … left me here?" I didn't have an answer beyond that. Of course he'd left me here. I'd been a statue.

"Do you know where the batteries are? We need them for a toy my grandma sent me."

I glanced behind me on the desk. Beneath the monitor, there was a plastic capsule full of AA batteries over which the spider still sat.

"Sorry, spider," I said as I reached beneath it to grab the batteries. It flinched away from me and scurried up the monitor.

"You talk to spiders?" She giggled some more.

"I spend a lot of time alone, so I talk to everything," I admitted.

"That's okay," she said. "I talk to things, too. My toys mostly. I have to be quiet when daddy's working, though."

Daddy had to be the hot guy who had put me here, the bigger of the two guys in the family photos on the wall. I had a chance to look at them more closely.

I hopped off the desk and handed her the container of batteries before I continued ogling.

"That's my papa in heaven." She pointed to the guy I didn't recognize. He vaguely looked like that other guy in heaven, the one people sometimes wanted us to mold into decorative figurines with a cropped beard and shoulder-length brown hair.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Yeah." She pursed her lips so hard her chin dimpled, and then she smiled. "Come on. Daddy's waiting for these."

Daddy was impatient. "Who are you talking to?"

"Miz!" she shouted.

The big guy pushed the door wider, knocking it into me. He was even hotter after I'd been drooling over the pictures. His dark hair, close-cropped in the photos, was long enough to hide the tops of his ears now, though it was still shaved close in the back. His day-old stubble sparkled with some blond, red, and white mixed in with the brown. His plaid shirt hid most of his body, but it stretched tight across his pecs and bunched around his biceps. I wanted to touch him to see if the implied muscles were real.

He had to angle his neck down to see me, and then his eyes widened. "Who the fu—who are you?"

"Mistletoe, but call me Miz," I said.

"What are you?" He looked behind me for the elf statue, which was gone. "No. Wait here. I'll be right back."

"But Daddy," Ellie whined as he grabbed her under her arms and hoisted her up to his hip, batteries and all.

"We'll get your toy working and you can play while Miz and I talk."

After they left, I studied the pictures on the wall again. They showed the progression of some kind of disease, by the look of it. First, the two men looked happy, but then the one with the amazing hair and great beard started to look tired, and then came the pictures of him with no hair, a vacation where his arms looked like sticks inside his t-shirt, and finally, a picture of Ellie and her daddy in all black standing among a stand of snow-covered evergreens.

The man returned.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," I said before he could raise his voice or hands.

He blinked. "Thank you." He blinked some more. "Who are you, again?"

"You'll never believe?—"

"Pretty sure you were a figurine on my desk a few hours ago. You're dressed like one of Santa's elves. And you have pointy ears!"

He reached for my ear, and I backed away, the backs of my thighs banging into his desktop as I used my glamour magic to make them appear more human. That was the only magic I'd ever mastered. I really was the worst elf.

"Our ears are very sensitive," I said.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me." He sniffed the air like he could smell me. I scented him, too. Cedar and chocolate. Beneath that was his alpha musk and something more, almost like Santa's reindeer. "Your name is Miz?"

"It is."

He held out his hand. "Ryan Marchand. Nice to meet you." He had a strong handshake, and an electric shock traveled up my arm when we touched. To distract myself from the strange sensation, I wondered what kind of business he was in with his giant whiteboard and two computer monitors on his desk.

"What is one of Santa's elves doing here on Christmas Day?" he asked.

I'd expected to fight over my existence, or at least my identity. "Most adults don't believe in us."

"I'm a moose shifter," Ryan said. "Our reindeer cousins have a hard time keeping their secrets, especially the flying ones."

How did I say this in a way that wouldn't end with me being kicked out again? "Well, I'm here because Santa turned me into that figurine and dropped me from the sleigh."

"Why?"

The tips of my sensitive ears burned from the blood rushing to my face. I wasn't about to tell this gorgeous man still grieving his late husband that I was a complete fuckup and his fated mate. "Well, that's not important," I stammered. "Maybe Santa sent me to help you around the house?"

Ellie had mentioned she needed to stay quiet while her daddy worked.

"We're doing just fine on our own." Ryan's pleasant voice turned cold and firm. "You can spend the night in the spare room." He pointed to the office wall, and I assumed the room was on the other side. "I won't kick you out on Christmas. But then you need to find somewhere to go." He sighed. "I don't mean to be an asshole, but I don't know you, and my little girl …"

My heart ached. What had I expected? Even my fated mate didn't want me. "I understand," I said. "I'll make some phone calls tomorrow—" Except how could I? Santa had taken my phone. "May I borrow your phone when I do?"

"You don't have a phone?"

"No."

"Wallet?"

I shook my head. I kept my wallet in the pocket of my giant parka, which Holly hadn't included in my lovely statue. I didn't have my mittens, either, which was a shame. By the miracle of plastic molding and Christmas magic, I had my festive green hat and Christmas scarf, at least.

"What do you do for a living?" Ryan asked.

"I molded plastic action figures in Christmas Village," I said. "I'm pretty sure Santa fired me, but maybe he expects me to commute?"

Ryan shook his head. "Doubt it. We're in Duluth, Minnesota. Close to Canada, but nowhere near the North Pole." He sighed. "Come downstairs. I'll set you up with Ellie's tablet, and you can do some job searches."

He turned toward the door and motioned for me to walk ahead of him into the hallway. His hand was warm on my shoulder as he steered me toward a set of beige-carpeted stairs.

"Thank you."

The stairway descended into a room with a vaulted ceiling and a blazing fireplace. The artificial Christmas tree was in the opposite corner from the fire, and Ellie sprawled beneath it, running a toy car over the bumps in the tree rug, sometimes jumping from hill to hill. The car made a lot of noise, and lights on the roof flashed.

"Next time, she can forget batteries," Ryan muttered under his breath.

Ellie talked over the commotion. "We're almost there, princess!"

Princess was a horse, from what I could tell. Or maybe a dinosaur. There were several toy dinosaurs under the tree surrounding the horse.

"Daddy, come play!"

"I can't, honey. Miz needs our help. He's going to borrow your tablet for a few minutes, okay?"

She frowned up at me, and then at him. "What if I want to use it?"

"You've been playing with your toys all day. You haven't touched the new building blocks your grandma Marchand sent you. Play with those first."

I kneeled beside her, picking up one of the toy dinosaurs with a large crescent shape coming out of its back. "Do you know what this dinosaur is?"

"Spinosaurus!" I couldn't tell if Ellie shouted everything, or if she was only trying to be heard over the car's loud siren.

I hoped she was right. I pointed to each one in turn, and she named them all.

"We have these toys at school," she said.

"What grade are you in?" I asked.

"Second." She nodded.

I'd liked dinosaurs when I was in school, too, but not enough to memorize their names. "Do dinosaurs eat horses?" I asked, placing the Spinosaurus down inside the circle.

"No, silly! Dinosaurs went extinct before there were horses."

I pointed at the ring of dinosaurs around the hapless horse. "What's going on here, then?"

She laughed and explained the dinosaurs were really dragons, and the horse was a unicorn. "Grandma and Grandpa Hall want me to learn science, but I want to tell my own stories!"

I hunkered down next to her and listened to her tale of woe about a stolen unicorn princess and her dragon suitors.

"Why do they want the princess?" I asked.

"They want to be part of the unicorn kingdom." She said it like I should have known.

"Don't sass Miz," Ryan said as he kneeled beside me and handed me the tablet. It was covered in unicorn and dragon stickers.

I tried to concentrate on the website Ryan had pulled up, but it didn't make any sense. I didn't have a degree, I didn't know what Microsoft Suite was, and the housecleaning jobs asked if I was bondable, whatever that meant. It sounded kinky, so I flipped away. Human jobs sure seemed different from what I'd watched on my streaming shows.

That, and I kept getting drawn back into Ellie's story at her insistence. "Miz! What did the dragon say?"

I did my best impersonation of a dragon roar, and she giggled. Her laugh was so infectious, I forgot my troubles. Every time I thought I could return to the tablet, Ellie needed another sound effect or idea for what to do when the unicorn princess escaped her dragon captors.

Three stories later, Ryan tapped Ellie on the shoulder. "It's time for unicorn princesses to go to bed."

"Aw. Miz and I were having so much fun!"

Ryan met my gaze with a warm smile. "You were. You can have even more fun with him tomorrow."

"Really?" Ellie asked. It took all my willpower not to repeat her question.

"He's spending the night in the guest room, and then you can play tomorrow while I catch up on some reading."

"Yay!" Ellie's high-pitched scream made Ryan flinch, but it was music to my ears. It wasn't forever, but I had something to look forward to, at least.