“I think the person gave up on knocking,” she stated, putting away her glasses. For now. He’d be asking her to wear those later, maybe with some heels and nothing else.
“Mustn’t have been important.” He waved a hand. “Tell me more about this new butler.”
“Well, he’s handsome for one.”
Before Lucifer could change that by adding a few barnacles and maybe another eye, a sudden whoosh of soot puffed from the hearth, causing a cloud in the room that had him closing his eyes for a second while he waved his hands to get rid of it. When Lucifer opened them, he discovered a visitor standing in his office.
An unwelcome one at that. His cousin.
The one and only Santa Claus.
2
“You know, most people use the door to visit me. Those people live,” Satan muttered with a scowl as the big man brushed off his red suit.
A suit Lucifer envied. He could have had his own made and worn it with panache. However, people would think he’d copied the do-gooder Santa Nikolas Claus.
Unacceptable. People copied him.
His cousin’s apparel was modeled after that of the Santa from the Netflix special, The Christmas Chronicles: red duster—using pleather because killing animals was cruel, blah blah blah—lined in fake fur. His boots shone so well they acted as a mirror. Lucifer truly envied Santa’s beard. He could do scruffy, but full-on bush from his chin? Patchy at best.
Cousin Nick had brought his famous bag with him. It acted as an inter-portal conduit to his workshop, which wasn’t actually in the North Pole as people thought but on another planet. Pluto to be exact. Cousin Nick was banished there a few decades ago because of his Krampus phase. He’d apparently earned back his visiting privileges.
“Hand them over,” his not-so-jolly cousin demanded.
Lucifer was never clear on which side of the family Nick fell. It had been a long time since their birth. They’d both changed a lot since then. Some of them for the better. Others—ahem, his cousin—got more annoying each year.
A good thing Lucifer was king when it came to being a dick. “A fine hello to you, too, my dear cousin. Judging by your increased girth, your flushed complexion, and that irregularity I detect in your heartbeat, your wife is still trying to kill you.”
Everyone joked about how Mrs. Claus kept feeding her husband sugar and fat in an attempt to get rid of him. Not a joke. She really did want him gone. Why she didn’t just use a sword and sever his head to save herself the trouble was something Lucifer had discussed at length with her over spiked eggnog. She grumbled about the promise she’d made during their wedding vows about not harming her husband. She also wouldn’t cheat.