A Christmas Cora
Events in this story take place about 4 years after the epilogue of Haunted Love.
—
“Cora, no!”
Cora’s mommy grabbed at her hand just as the girl’s pudgy fingers made contact with the icing in the large tub at the end of the table.
Being told no did not necessarily bother Cora. She was used to ‘no.’ She was also used to ‘stop that’ and ‘don’t’ and ‘knock it off.’ So the no did not bother her.
But when Mommy reached across the table for a paper towel, Cora was very bothered.
“No, Mommy!”
Too late. Mommy squeezed Cora’s hand so she couldn’t pull away before the paper towel scraped the icing off of her fingers.
“You don’t need to be eating all of that sugar, Little Miss,” said Mommy, and her lips pressed into a fine line, which told Cora that Mommy was frustrated. “Look at this! Cora, your fingers are all sticky now!”
Mommy dabbed the paper towel in her water glass and tried wiping Cora’s fingers again.
“At least no one can say that she isn’t your kid.” That was Aunt Ellie, and as sharp as her voice was, Cora was pretty sure that Aunt Ellie was amused.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Daniella?” Mommy’s voice was high and pinchy as she asked. “You’re the one who was always in trouble for touching stuff.”
“Yeah, but you were always the one in trouble for eating it.” Aunt Ellie winked at Cora as Mommy said something boring.
“No more touching the icing, Cora,” Mommy said again, which was also boring, but she let go of Cora’s hand.
Cora sighed. “Ooookay,” she rubbed her hands on her dress and stood on her toes to look at the arrayment of gingerbread house pieces that had yet to be put together. “Why’s it broke?”
“Because Auntie Ivy baked all the pieces separately and brought them over so that we can put them together as a Christmas decoration,” Mommy explained. “You were supposed to have one all your own, but you ate the roof instead of eating lunch, remember?”
“She ate the people who lived in the house, too,” Aunt Ivy snickered.
Cora did remember. She remembered that the cookie had been delicious, even without the icing on it. “I can eat this one now, too, right?”
“Absolutely not.”
She jutted her jaw forward. “But it’s cookie.”
“Right now it’s decoration. When Christmas Day comes, you can eat the cookie as a snack.”
Cora thought about this. She tried to remember what day it was and how many days there actually were to Christmas. The problem was that days were often long and boring, and Cora had a hard time keeping track of which days were what days.
“How long is that?”
“Three days, Cora-Chaos.” Aunt Ellie patted her leg. “Come here, kiddo, you can help Aunt Ellie make her house.”
Something told Cora that if she helped make the house, she would at least be able to steal some more of the icing. So Cora made the executive decision to climb up on her Aunt’s lap to look at the gingerbread cookies that were scattered on the table.
Mommy’s pieces looked like they were decorated with the usual house things of windows and doors. The lines of the icing were kind of globby and lopsided, but Cora that they were very pretty with all the edible glitter on top. Across the table from Aunt Ellie, her Aunt Ivy was making little loop-de-loops on two pieces that had already been stuck together to make a roof. Her lines were much better than Mommy’s, but that didn’t surprise Cora, because Aunt Ivy made cookies as her job, so she should at least be able to put icing on cookies better than the average person.
Aunt Ellie had four sheets of cookie stacked in front of her, and only one of them had icing.
“That’s for no fire,” Cora poked a the sigil that Aunt Ellie drew in her icing.
“Yep. Because we don’t want the gingerbread house to go up in flames.” Aunt Ellie braced her arms on either side of Cora, and she pointed at the other sigils with her very long nails. “Do you remember what that one is?”
“Daniella Lanoue, you are not hexing the stuffing out of our gingerbread village!” Aunt Ivy’s voice did the same pinchy thing that Mommy’s voice did as she looked up from her roof pieces. “Oh, come on, Elle, you’re supposed to be drawing windows! Literally, that’s your one job!”
“I did! On the other side. Then I let the icing harden and now I’m making sure that the house doesn’t burn down, fall down, get robbed or go stale!”
Mommy rolled her eyes. “It’s a frickin’ gingerbread house, Daniella, it’s not like we’re applying for home owner’s insurance.”
And Aunt Ivy said, “Which preservation spell are you using?”
“The one that I use on craft ingredients.”
Cora wanted to know which sigil was the one they were talking about, but Aunt Ellie was holding her wall out to Aunt Ivy, and Cora couldn’t see any of the sigils now as the three adults made more boring conversation.
Cora sighed, scooted further forward on Aunt Ellie’s knee, and reached for the icing at Mommy’s elbow again.
“Cora! No!”
Frustrated with all of this No-Nonsense, Cora became boneless and dripped out of Aunt Ellie’s lap. “You’re. No. Fun. Mommy!”
“And you have clearly been dipping into the crazy sauce, Miss Cora! Come out from under the table and go find something else to do for a bit, okay? Let mommy and your aunties finish up here.”
Cora puffed her cheeks as she looked between Mommy’s jeans and bare feet, Aunt Ivy’s thick leggings and reindeer socks, and Aunt Ellie’s sheer stocking feet. But since no one at the table was actually looking at Cora, no one could see her pouting.
Feeling very put out and borderline ignored, she crawled out from under the table. “Mommy, you’re no fun and I’m going to play with Daddy and Uncles now. So there.”
“Okay, Cora, You go play with Daddy.”
“Hey, not that I’m complaining about family together time while sober, but didn’t you promise us all wine, Thalia? Wasn’t that the deal? Wine for help decorating? I’m calling in the debt. Who else wants wine?”
Aunt Ellie was pushing herself away from the dining room table and heading toward the kitchen.
Cora followed her, tottering through the door that Aunt Ellie left open, behind the breakfast bar while Aunt Ellie paused at the cupboards for glasses, and Cora left through the other kitchen door to the foyer.
Daddy, she knew, was beyond the open front door, where he and Uncle Robin were trying to hang Christmas lights on the front of the house. Uncle Nic was also out there, but as far as Cora could tell, Uncle Nic was doing the Smart Thing of standing back and offering Helpful Commentary about what Daddy and Uncle Robin were doing wrong.
She stood in the doorway for a very long time, hoping that Daddy or Uncle Nic or even Uncle Robin would notice that she was there. But they didn’t, and that made them boring. So Cora didn’t join her Daddy and her uncles. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode with definitive purpose toward the library door.
The thing with the library door was that it was closed and locked. Cora was almost positive that this was a direct result of her trying to steal candy canes from the tree that morning, but she couldn’t be certain because that morning was a very long time ago.
It was so long ago, in fact, that Cora was almost positive no one would mind if she went into the library now.
The fact that the door was still locked just indicated that the adults had forgotten the matter all together. So Cora took a deep breath and pretended the door was not locked.
As usually happened when Cora pretended things, she found that the door had, in fact, not been locked at all, and it was very easy for Cora to hang onto the latch handle and to totter into the library where the very tall Christmas tree filled up the center of the room.
Cora liked the tree. It was full of shiny rainbow lights and bits of silvery tinsel and a popcorn garland, and at the end of each branch hung a full sized candy cane.
More than the tree, Cora liked the candy canes. She liked that they were hot and cold at the same time, and that they were shaped funny and had stripes. She remembered that last year, she was allowed to eat the candy canes, but then they all went away after Christmas. Mommy and Daddy said that it was because candy canes were only available around Christmas time, and that meant that Cora needed to eat as many as possible before Christmas and before everyone else ate them all up.
Still, Cora wasn’t greedy. She tottered over to the tree, plucked a cane from one of the lower branches, and then sat down on the rug to pick at the plastic that she remembered it was wrapped in.
She was very proud of herself for remembering the plastic, because last time, she didn’t, and she shoved the candy cane into her mouth and it got all sticky and melty, but she hadn’t been able to eat any of it because it was still wrapped up.
She was less proud of herself when she realized her little fingers were not coordinated enough to unwrap the cane.
Frustration rising, Cora took a deep breath, looked up at the rest of the tree, and had a hard think.
If she asked Aunt Ellie or Aunt Ivy for help, then Mommy would hear, and Mommy would undoubtedly say no. Mommy was what Aunt Ellie called “a stickler” for rules, and one of the rules was no candy before dinner.
Daddy on the other hand could be persuaded.
More importantly, Uncle Nic was her go-to adult for fun, and Cora decided that Uncle Nic would absolutely understand that the candy cane was fun.
Decision made, Cora abandoned the library and the tree, clutching her candy cane in her fist and heading outside to where Daddy was asking Uncle Robin to give him feedback on the placement of the lights over the porch stairs.
“Is it central or not?”
“That depends on what you mean by central.” Uncle Robin tilted his head one way and then the other, kind of like a big puppy as he looked up at the lights Daddy was holding up.
“Central, Robin. As in: in the center of the stairs.”
“Yeah but which part do you want to be centered? The big swooshy part, or the space between the swooshy parts?”
“I don’t care which way it’s centered as long as it’s centered somehow,” Daddy puffed in frustration and used the hand that wasn’t holding up the lights to push his hair out of his face.
“But are the girls going to have a preference?” Uncle Nic asked. He stood further back than Uncle Robin, his hands in his pockets, and the smile on his face telling Cora that he was having fun, even though Cora couldn’t fathom why.
“Well now there’s a wrench in the engine,” Daddy muttered from above Cora as she sat on her butt and scooted down the stairs toward Uncle Nic.
“Uncle Nic, please open this.” She thrust her candy cane at the vampire and shuffled her feet to show the urgency of her request. For good measure, she gave him her most best of smiles and said again, “Please?”
Uncle Nic glanced down at her and his smile widened. “Wotcher, Trouble.”
“I’m not Trouble, I’m Cora,” she insisted, shaking her hand. “Cora Babbette Martin, thank you. Please can you open this?”
“—I think Thalia wants the drop in the center of the stairs. I hope so anyway, it’ll be easier to do with the cord the way it is. Nic?”
“I dunno why you’re askin’ me, mate, I pay people to do this shit.”
“I think it’s fine,” Uncle Robin said.
“Uncle Nic.” Cora hung on her uncle’s forearm. “Please can you open this???”
Uncle Nic turned his full attention onto her. “Are you allowed to have the candy cane?” he asked.
Cora blinked. She hated lying, because it meant making up things that you had to remember later. So to buy herself time she asked, “What? Pardon me?”
Uncle Nic was no fool, however, and Cora knew she had been made when he narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you meant to have the candy cane before dinner?”
She shrugged. “Maybe?”
Daddy said, “What’s she asking for?” and he turned on the ladder to glance at Cora and Uncle Nic.
Cora showed her Daddy the candy cane. “Please help me open it,” she said, hoping he would assume her asking for help meant someone else said she could eat it.
But Daddy frowned. “Cora, you had six of those yesterday. Maybe hold off until after dinner today, okay, choupinette?”
Cora made her pout as big as she could manage. “Mais papa, I waited forever for this one.”
“Cora, no. Go put it back on the tree.”
Daddy was no fun.
The worst part was that now that Daddy was being no fun, Uncle Nic had no choice but to be no fun.
“Please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE, just one!” Cora marched on the spot a few times before marching up to the ladder. “Daddy, if I have one now, and none later, then I can have one, right?”
“Cora, get out from under the ladder.” Uncle Robin swooped in just as Cora crouched down to sit in the space between the A-frame. “Come on, Core, it’s dangerous to be around the ladder while people are on it. You’ll hurt your dad.”
“I won’t,” she frowned up at Uncle Robin. “Can you open the candy cane?”
“Sorry, squirt, I literally just heard your dad say no. Do you want to help us put the lights up?”
Cora thought about it as she shoved her treasure in the pocket of her dress. “No.”
“Well, I tried.” Uncle Robin set Cora down on the solid ground away from the ladder, and once again, Cora’s disappointment made her boneless.
She flopped to the ground and rolled like a pencil once, twice, three times, before coming to lay across the bundle of lights that had yet to go up on the roof.
She grabbed at a cord and held it over her head. She moved her grip from hand to hand over the lights, counting each bulb on the string. “One. Two. Three. Quatre. Cinq. Six. Seven…” She got all the way to ten before she had to stop and think. Then she carried on with “Once. Douze. And more…”
“What’s next?” she lifted her chin so she could look up and over her head at where Uncle Nic stood. “Uncle Nic? What’s after Douze?”
Uncle Nic glanced down at her. “Ah, c’mon, Core, it took us two hours just to untangle those. Get off them before you do my head in.”
“You do my head in!” She declared, pointing sharply at her Uncle.
From beyond her view, her Daddy said, “For the love of God, Cora—” and then he said something French.
Daddy only spoke French to Cora for two reasons: the first was to tell Cora that she was his sweetest and most precious girl; the second was when he wanted to use some of Mommy’s un-favourite words, but didn’t want to get in trouble.
Cora knew that her Daddy was not calling her his sweet and most precious girl. She knew that because he was speaking in the same tone as Uncle Nic did when he was frustrated with Cora, and unlike Daddy, Uncle Nic did not speak French.
“Nic, can you bring her inside, please?” her Daddy instructed.
Dropping the lights and rolling onto her stomach, Cora reached up for her Uncle Nic. He sighed, picked her up, and set her down on her feet.
“You’re a mess girl,” he muttered, brushing the grass and dirt off of her dress. “You’re getting yourself all dirty.”
“If I had a candy cane, I wouldn’t,” she grinned and leaned in to give her uncle a big kiss on the cheek. “Can you open the candy cane, please?”
“Look here, mite, you’re not sweet talking me into something that’ll get us both in trouble.” He hauled her up and plucked the candy cane from her. “Come on, let’s go put this back on the tree, okay?”
Cora perked up, deciding this was some secret code for: let’s go away from your father so I can open the candy cane for you. “Okay!”
Uncle Nic took her hand and walked her up the stairs back inside.
“Pass the candy cane over, kiddo,” he held his hand out to Cora as they stood in front of the tree, and Cora bounced in place as she passed the slightly broken candy cane to her uncle.
Her excitement dissipated immediately when Uncle Nic crouched in front of the tree to find the branch she’d taken it from.
“No!” she gasped and tugged at Uncle Nic’s arm. “No, no, no! Uncle Nic! You’re ’posta help me open it!”
“I said we were putting it back, Co—ouch! Cora, get off me.”
She had used his thigh as a step up and draped herself over his back. “Uncle Nic, please open the candy cane!”
“No, Cora, for the last time.”
Cora was hanging upside down and staring at her lost prize as Uncle Nic pulled her away from the tree.
She flailed her legs until he used his free arm to catch those up as well, and then she resorted to wiggling furiously from side to side to try to weasel her way out of his grasp and back to the floor.
“Betrayer!” she hissed the word at Uncle Nic through her teeth. “Meanie face!”
“Hey!”
Suddenly the world was upright, and the library floor was under Cora’s feet, and Uncle Nic was frowning sharply at her. “That’s enough,” he said sternly. “If you don’t settle down and start behaving, you’re going to end up on Santa’s Naughty List, hear me? And you know what Santa does to kids on the naughty list?”
Cora didn’t care about any sort of lists until her Uncle Nic followed up with, “He eats them.”
This brought her up short. “No.”
She eyed her Uncle Nic, looking for some sort of evidence that he was teasing her, or that he had his information wrong, but he was staring at her very seriously, and suddenly Cora was wondering if Uncle Nic knew something she didn’t.
“Uncle Nic, Santa doesn’t eat people.”
“Sure he does,” her uncle’s smile was full of fangs as he said, “What do you think Santa is, huh? Coming out only at night, every year on Christmas for decades and decades? Santa’s a vampire, Cora, and he’ll eat you if you don’t start behaving.”
Cora frowned her hardest and most disapproving frown. “No he’s not,” she insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Is so.” Uncle Nic braced his forearms on his knees as he squatted eye-level with Cora. “You know how I have a big fancy car, right?”
Cora nodded. She liked Uncle Nic’s big fancy car because it drove very fast.
Uncle Nic continued, “And that old swamp lizard, Mr. DuPoint, he’s got a really big fancy car, too, doesn’t he? That’s because Mr. DuPoint and I are vampires who are in charge of vampire business. And what do you think Santa’s sleigh is, Cora? It’s his big fancy car that he gets to drive around because he’s a vampire in charge of the business of Christmas. And he eats all of the naughty kids.”
Cora was starting to believe that maybe there was something to this. After all, Santa’s sleigh did seem like it was a very fancy kind of car, since it could go around the world in the speed of a single night and all.
She thought very hard about why Santa couldn’t be a vampire. “But Mommy says he leaves coal for naughty children.”
Uncle Nic shook his head. “Well your Mummy is mistaken, because the coal isn’t for the children. It’s for the Mummies to tell them that their children have been eaten and not to go looking for them.”
Cora’s tummy felt funny as she looked at her Uncle Nic. “But the songs say he’s fat and full of jelly.”
“Metaphor.” Uncle Nic shrugged, and even though Cora didn’t know the word, she was pretty sure that it meant something like, ‘that’s a lie.’ Especially when Uncle Nic said, “Jelly is easier to rhyme than ‘the blood of naughty children.’”
Now Cora’s heart felt funny too, and she found herself very, very worried that she was now on Santa’s naughty list.
“But… but….” She sniffed sharply and even though she was trying very hard to hold her breath so she didn’t cry, her next exhale came out as a shuddering wail, “But I don’t WANT to be EATEN!”
Big, hot tears rolled down her cheeks and it felt like breathing was an impossibility as she tipped her head back and cried again, “I DON’T WANT SANTA TO EAT ME!”
Somewhere behind all of her great convulsing cries, Cora heard people rushing from the room next door into this room.
“What on earth is going on?” Mommy’s voice was raised and pinchy again, but there was a deep worry there, too, and Cora opened her arms and flung herself at her mother in desperation.
“UnCle NIC said SANta WoulD… WOulD EAT ME!” Cora grabbed at her mother’s jeans and gasped the words through her sobs. “He SaiD SANta as a VAMPIRE and he EATS bad CHiLdREN.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake, Nic! Come on!” Mommy squeezed Cora hard to her chest, and snuggled her, making it at least possible for Cora to breathe again.
Uncle Nic was saying, “What?! That’s what my nan told me!”
“Your nan would tell you that,” Aunt Ellie said in her cold, dry voice. “Because she’s psycho. And like a total psycho, you’ve just repeated it to our niece.”
Uncle Nic said something, and Aunt Ellie replied, but Cora wasn’t listening, because she was too busy rubbing her face against Mommy’s sweater and trying to stop crying.
“Honey, Santa isn’t going to eat you,” Mommy said, smoothing Cora’s hair. The action felt soft and safe, and Cora gave a little sigh.
“But Uncle Nic said—”
“I said naughty children, Cora,” Uncle Nic’s voice drifted over Cora’s shoulder. “If you stop messin’ about with the tree and trying to eat all of the candy canes, I’m sure that Santa will make sure you’re on the Nice list.”
Cora sniffled more as she peered over her shoulder at her Uncle Nic, who was currently not her favourite Uncle any more because he was very mean to frighten her the way he had. “Do you promise?”
Uncle Nic crossed his heart with a finger. “Promise. You be on your best behaviour and quit mucking about with the tree and there’s no way that Santa will eat you.”
Mommy let go of Cora, pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped at Cora’s face. Then she held the tissue over her nose and told her to blow.
Now de-teared and de-snotted, Cora felt much better and much more like herself. She pushed her hair back from her face, took a deep breath and said. “Okay.” To her mother, she said, “Mommy, puis-je avoir du jus?”
“Sure, we can get you juice.” Mommy kissed her forehead and they led the procession out of the library.
“I could have sworn I locked that door,” Mommy muttered.
Aunt Ellie said, “I’ve got it, Thal.” And she tapped the handle of the door with a nail so that instead of the door locking with a key, it locked with magic instead.
If Cora was honest, she wasn’t sure she believed that Santa wasn’t going to eat her after all, but she was doing her best to trust Uncle Nic. Especially when Uncle Nic very sneakily plucked a tiny gumdrop from a bowl in the kitchen and passed it to Cora while her Mommy put her juice in a sippy cup.
“She doesn’t drink that, does she?” Uncle Nic’s voice lifted, and Cora wasn’t sure what to call the sound of it as he raised an eyebrow at the box of juice that Mommy had on the counter.
“Pomegranate? God, she can’t get enough of it. We tried to get her the actual fruit once, but she chewed around the seeds and spit them everywhere. The juice though? I think she’s made from it...”
The conversation was boring, so Cora took her sippy cup, uttering a passing, “Merci, Mommy,” and then trundled out of the kitchen toward the TV room.
The TV room was much smaller than the library, and it had a collection of Cora’s most favourite toys in a basket next to the couch. But most importantly, it was where she had found the Elf on the Shelf that morning.
The elf perched on the edge of the shelf over the fireplace, and his little glass eyes stared down at Cora in a way that Cora was certain was full of judgment.
She squinted up at him as he squinted at her, and Cora gave herself the length of several long sips of juice so she could think about what she wanted to say.
“I’m not naughty,” she told the Elf. “Uncle Nic said if I am good and leave the tree alone, I get to be on the nice list. So you don’t tell Santa any fibs. Okay?”
She waited for the Elf to respond.
It did not.
Cora pouted.
“Please can you tell Santa to give me a sign that he isn’t going to eat me?”
Again, Cora waited for a response.
When none came, she heaved a heavy sigh and decided she was tired.
Usually, if she was tired, she could lay on the sofa and go to sleep, and then maybe Mommy and Daddy would find her and tuck her in with the blanket that was draped over the back of the sofa, and that was one of Cora’s favourite things, because they always gave her the best snuggles before they left her to go back to sleep.
But the Elf’s face was pointed right at the couch, and Cora didn’t like the idea of the Elf watching her. So she went to her second favourite spot to nap: the cabinet in the far corner of the room.
The cabinet was very special to Mommy and Daddy, and it was the sort of piece of furniture that felt special. Cora liked it because the shelves were deep and she could shut the doors and hide inside and pretend to be one of the movies that Mommy and Daddy kept on the higher shelves.
Usually, she called the movie: Cora’s Adventure in the Big House, but today she was thinking that actually, her movie should be called Cora Takes a Nap Where the Stupid Elf Couldn’t See Her.
Besides, she thought, it wasn’t just the doors being closed that Santa’s elf would have to see through. It was all of the special magic that Cora felt humming from the wood.
In her box of toys, she had a tiny flashlight that lit up when you held down the button. She clutched it in one hand, and her juice sippy in the other, and then helped herself to the bottom shelf of the cabinet.
There used to be movies on this shelf, too, but Mommy and Daddy stopped putting movies in it because they got tired of Cora moving the movies out of it for a place to sit. Now, there was just a long, spacious area where Cora could curl up with her knees to her chest, with her flashlight and her juice.
With the doors of the cabinet still open, she could see into the rest of the room. The Elf kept his vigil on the mantle, and beyond the sheer curtains of the window, Daddy’s ladder had moved so more lights could be hung along the porch.
She slurped at her juice until there was no more in her cup, and then she sighed in lamentation of her lack of snack.
“I just wanted a little candy cane,” she said to no one, feeling particularly sorry for herself as she rubbed at one eye. “I don’t think Santa would have minded just a little candy cane.”
In the space by her head, something clicked and became pokey. She frowned and shuffled herself out of the cabinet to look.
Tucked just in the corner of the shelf was a little slat that had popped open like a lid.
Cora squinted at it. “Mysterious,” she whispered to herself. “A Christmas Mystery…”
Cora and the Christmas Mystery seemed like it would be a very good movie, so she set her empty juice cup aside and used both hands to pick and pry at the edge of the slat.
It revealed a narrow hole and inside of that hole, Cora found a piece of fragile paper.
She gasped, because it seemed like an appropriate place in her movie to gasp, and then wondered if the paper was a map to a treasure.
It was not.
Cora frowned in disappointment at the blank piece of paper.
“You could have at least been the map to a candy cane or something,” she said to the paper, holding it out beyond the shelf and dropping it to the floor.
Cora thought that would be the end of it. Her movie was what Mommy called a Total Flop and there would be no Christmas Mystery or treasure.
But when the paper fell, it clattered. And as far as Cora knew, paper didn’t usually clatter.
Cora leaned over the edge of the cabinet and her heart leapt in excitement as she found herself looking at a half-sized, unwrapped candy cane instead of a piece of paper.
“It is a Christmas Mystery!” She reached for the candy cane, bringing it to her nose and sniffing thoroughly.
Hot and cold and sweet all at once, just like a candy cane should be.
Cora’s brain buzzed as excitement warred with precaution.
Part of her reminded herself that everyone had told Cora not to eat any candy canes before dinner.
The other part of Cora replied to herself that what they had said was to leave the candy canes on the tree alone.
This candy cane had not come from the tree. This candy cane had come as a Christmas Mystery for her Cora Movie, and that was obviously different from getting a candy cane from the tree.
AND she had asked the Elf on the Shelf to tell Santa to send her a sign for whether she was good. And if a Christmas Mystery of a candy cane wasn’t a sign, then Cora didn’t know what was…
Unless it was temptation.
Temptation was something that adults talked about. It was something wanted you to do something you shouldn’t do and then you would do it and get in trouble. And Mommy and her aunties usually talked about it with specific reference to cake.
But a candy cane was not a cake. Therefore, this could not be temptation.
Cora moved to put the candy cane in her mouth.
She stopped when she noticed the gleam of the elf’s beady glass eyes still watching her.
With a huff and a sigh, Cora closed one side of the cabinet doors, then the other.
If the Elf on the Shelf couldn’t see her eat the candy cane, then it couldn’t tell Santa she had eaten it. And then Santa wouldn’t think she was naughty and eat her instead of leaving presents.
Considering her plan fool-proof, Cora crunched her candy cane happily and hummed out a song that she thought would be a good theme tune for Cora’s Christmas Mystery.
The candy cane was especially delicious, and it tasted extra cool on her lips, a little bit like the way the cabinet around her felt extra cool compared to the rest of the room.
It did, however, leave her hand sticky, and Cora spent a lot of time licking her fingers to make sure she didn’t leave evidence of her Christmas Mystery for Mommy or Daddy to find before dinner.
Then she used the flashlight to see into the dark corner of her cubby and fit the lid back onto the slot.
After a moment of thought, she poked her head out of the cabinet and eyed the Elf. “Thanks, vampire Santa,” she whispered, just in case it was Santa who had sent her the candy cane after all. “et Joyeux Noël.”
