Free The Saint by Melanie Jackson Page B

now,
Adora vowed.
It’s time for the interviews to begin.
    But first she had to decide where to sit. The sofa looked inviting, but she already knew it was too soft. She couldn’t stay perched on the edge, and that was the only place she liked. It was silly, her requirement, but she always felt smothered and vulnerable on sofas because there was a chance that someone might join her. She liked chairs. Chairs were solitary. And while they weren’t always comfortable, they were usually solid and you could get up from them quickly.
    So sit in a chair already. Or walk around. Just get on with it.
    â€œOkay, enough shilly-shallying. Let’s get to it,” she said aloud. “What about the whole going-down-chimneys thing?” she asked. Kris blinked slowly as she demanded: “Can you really do that? Or was it just another exaggeration?”
    Kris set his coffee aside and answered readily enough. “In Saint Nicholas’s day, many homes didn’t have chimneys per se. There were simply smoke holes in the roof. But where there’s smoke—”
    â€œThere’s fire?” she guessed.
    He smiled. “Yes. But there is also a path. I learned the trick of traveling on smoke from my days with Freya. I can be very, very quiet.”
    â€œUh-huh. That would be the Norwegian goddess Freya?” Adora asked. She congratulated herself on getting very good at keeping her tone even. In her notebook she wrote
Freya
, and underlined it. She wasn’t sure why. There was no way she was bringing this subject up in her book.
    â€œYes. Though ‘goddess’ is not really the word for her. She was an aspect of divinity, a being who carried an usually large slice of Gaia’s power.” Kris studied Adora. He was smiling slightly, as though aware of and amused by her skepticism.
    â€œAnd Gaia is
The Goddess?
” Adora asked, unearthing her limited store of pagan mythology.
    â€œGaia is everything—God, Goddess, Allfather, Allmother. Everything that is life and light and love.”
    New Age religion. Swell. For half the U.S. population that meant devil worship. There went all the royalties from sales in the Bible Belt. She probably wouldn’t be talking about this part, either.
    â€œOooookay,” she said. “Maybe we can go over this part later. Though I am curious about whether you’re a Christian or not. Being a saint would rather suggest leanings in that direction.”
    She tried to smile, but Kris made a
tsk
ing noise and wagged a finger at her. “You’re jumping to conclusions again. I followed Christ, but I am not a Christian in the modern sense of the word—and the whole saint thing was never my idea.”
    â€œHm.” Adora made a note and followed it up with three question marks. They’d have to do something about that. There was no way that anyone was going to want to hear that Saint Nicholas wasn’t a Christian and hadn’t wanted the job. That dog just wouldn’t hunt, even among New-Agers. She could help Kris construct a fantasy, but it had to be consistent and logical and not offend potential readers.
    â€œYou know, the legend I can’t believe people fell for was that I moved my operations north because I loved the snow. Sheesh! If I loved the cold so much, why were my first American headquarters outside of New Orleans?” Kris added: “The only reason I was ever at the North Pole was because the goblins drugged me and left me there to feed the polar bears. Santa’s toy factory at the Pole—ha! That’ll be the day.”
    â€œYou had headquarters near New Orleans?” Adora asked, somehow finding it more diverting than Kris’s comment about being drugged by the goblins. The file had several references to goblin leaders that Adora had never heard of. She was probably going to need a crash course in goblin history if she was going to fit this stuff into the book. Of course, the question