Polterheist: An Esther Diamond Novel Read Free Page B

was that the third warning led to automatic termination of employment.
    “Oh, lay off her, Miles,” I said as I patted Satsy’s back soothingly. Twinkle and Satsy were both still semi-hysterical, and we could hear terrified children wailing and parents shouting all over the fourth floor in the wake of the stampede. “These are exceptional circumstances.”
    “There are
no
circumstances under which an elf can use that kind of language with impunity!” Miles said shrilly.
    “Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered.
    “You are dangerously close to receiving a warning yourself,” he said.
    “Hiring and training an elf takes at least two days, and Christmas Eve is only three days away, Miles,” I pointed out. Our holiday employment would end when the store closed on the evening of December 24th. “So it’s too late to replace any of us, and we’re already so understaffed that most of us are working overtime. Do you really want to lose more elves
now?”
    “Hmph.”
    I turned to my traumatized friend and asked, “Satsy? Are you all right? What going on?”
    “As for me, I
like
alpacas,” Twinkle was saying. “I guess. I mean, I don’t
dis
like them. Anyway, I meant no harm, and I tried to explain that . . . But you can’t really reason with an enraged farmer who’s waving around a cat-o’-nine-tails.”
    “Huh?” said Candycane.
    “Jonathan? Jonathan!” a mother was calling—and I realized whose mother it must be. The frightened little boy had fled the scene well ahead of his parent, and she evidently hadn’t found him yet.
    “Oh, my
God,
” panted Satsy. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!”
    “What happened?” I prodded.
    “I thought I would
die!”
Satsy wiped his sweating face with his sleeve—thus smearing his makeup even more and ruining his furry white cuff. “I thought I’d die in there!”
    “
I
thought I’d lose an eye,” said Twinkle. “Or a very valued appendage.”
    “Where?” I asked.
    “The field where we were jousting on the alpacas we’d liberated,” said Twinkle. “Well,
trying
to joust.”
    “You should stop talking,” I told him. “Satsy, where did this happen? And
what
happened?”
    “I was trapped in the freight elevator,” Satsy panted. “Esther, there is something evil in there!”
    “Evil?” I said alertly.
    “
Evil
,” he repeated significantly, his spookily smeared, long-lashed eyes meeting my gaze.
    “I see . . .”
    Satsy and I had a mutual friend who specialized in confronting Evil.
    “Jonathan!” I heard a worried mother calling out again from elsewhere on this floor. “Jonathan, where
are
you?”
    “Wait, why were you in the freight elevator?” Twinkle asked Satsy, finally distracted from his jousting-alpaca tale. “You’re not
that
fat.”
    “Really,” I said to him, “just stop talking.”
    “There was growling and laughing and
flames . . .”
Satsy shuddered and made a terrified sound. “I thought I’d die in there!”
    Since he started hyperventilating again, I decided not to press him for clarifying details at that moment.
    Miles looked at his watch. “We’ve got to get things back on track.”
    I looked away from Satsy long enough to realize that the manager was right. Despite what had just happened (and despite the fact that security guards
ought
to be flooding this floor now in response to the noise and chaos, but were nowhere in sight), I could already see many people lining up nearby to visit Santa—presumably not the exact same people who had just fled in panic.
    Miles said in exasperation to Satsy, “And
you
obviously can’t work until you’ve cleaned yourself up. Go to the break room and compose yourself.”
    It would clearly take more than a little composure to make Drag Queen Santa presentable again. He was a sweaty, smeared wreck, and his costume was badly damaged. But Satsy nodded and, with help from me and Candycane, rose shakily to his feet.
    “Where is Santa?” Miles demanded of Candycane.