Mark taps me on the shoulder. “Dynamite warm?”
Plants rustle as I reach down amid the overgrowth and into my sock, fingering the explosive stick and the wooden blasting cap filled with gunpowder. It’s warm against my skin, safely cocooned from the frosty night air. I nod, even though he can’t see it.
“Everything can be monetized,” said the businessman at the corner table. “Christmas is a case in point.”
The waiter didn’t want conversation. Now that he’d gotten close to famed investor Eb Scrooge, he had plans. He shifted his feet and asked again, “Can I get you anything else? Top off your water?”
“What is the meaning of this?!” Grimwald’s breath puffed in the suddenly frigid air.
Edmund was his business partner once, before consumption claimed him. They built their fortune together, squeezing every farthing from desperate borrowers, foreclosing on widows, and turning away beggars who froze on their doorstep.
Ebenezer Scrooge was not fond of dragons.
For one thing, they reminded him too much of himself, though he wouldn’t have admitted so for the world—although he might have considered it given a sufficient sum of money. No, Scrooge was not fond of dragons, and he looked down at the boy on the other side of his narrow desk with distinct displeasure.
Ebenezer Scrooge sat by the fire—an actual fire, blazing merrily this Christmas Eve instead of the pathetic ember he used to permit—muttering cheerfully to himself while polishing his spectacles. Just then, the clock struck seven. The flames flickered ominously. A breeze as cold as the inside of a snowman’s trousers swept through the room,
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