Title: REINDEER JUSTICE
Author: J.B. Dane
Genre: fantasy comedy mystery short story
Book Blurb:
Summer at the geographical North Pole is rocky with the ice sheet breaking up beneath the Santa Corp headquarters, so Nick packs elves and flying stock up for a brief relocation in Norway while repairs are done. But the choice of location isn’t as ideal as once thought.
Excerpt:
The guy holding the clipboard was big. I’m six-two and he stood a good foot taller. Even though his feet had sunk up to the ankles in cold water.
Which was the problem. This is the North Pole. We needed frozen water to keep the buildings that made up the small village-cum-workplace of Santa Corp kosher for health and safety.
Not that we had written regulations on health and safety. The elves thought them superfluous considering common sense covered the same items.
Like that it wasn’t comfortable, much less healthy or safe, to sit at a computer terminal and have your feet splash water if you swung them back and forth. Few of the elves’ feet touched the floor when seated although we’d downsized the height of the desks, so electrocution was sure to follow. Or, at least, one heck of a lot of bad hair days after a shot of voltage acted as hairdresser.
Still, as head of security at Santa Corp, health and safety fell under my auspices.
Name’s Nick Claus, future Santa but quite content to let Dad have a long-term job as the guy in the red suit with the one night a year delivery route.
The big guy standing next to me wasn’t among the many races on that delivery route. He was from Jotunheim, one of the other Norse worlds. Not a Midgardian. His feet might be underwater, but he wasn’t feeling the cold, be it lapping water or a breeze off the ice sheet. His hair was shaggy, but his beard beat it out for top prize in the Most Hirsute contest. He was also wearing cargo pants cut off at his knees just below the lowest pocket and a tee-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Oh, did I mention he was wearing sandals? He was.
I, on the other hand, wore tall, insulated rubber boots, jeans, a flannel shirt beneath a wool sweater and a windbreaker to discourage the wind from making inroads on my comfort zone. It might be summer, but this was the North Pole, so it was still darn chilly.
“I see your problem, Mr. Claus,” the big guy said. He was an ice giant, by the way. Might not have mentioned that before. I was a bit distracted by the water attempting to lap at my own ankles. “Ya’ve got a building sinking.”
We did. The oldest igloo in the colony. My ancestors’ lodge.
“It’s a lost cause,” I said. “We emptied all the rubbish out, but it hasn’t been used as housing or business property for a couple centuries. I don’t want it saved. I want the rest of the place saved.”
“Gotcha.” He nodded then consulted the papers on his clipboard. They rustled in the wind. “I gotta warn ya though. The estimate we gave ya previously was just that, an estimate. And it was a low one.”
Yep. If I had any doubts about it before, those few words proved what he was.
A contractor.
Buy Link:
Just at Amazon Kindle getbook.at/REINDEER
Author Biography:
Usually, J.B. Dane shows up here at N.N. Light’s Book Heaven as the author of The Raven Tales, an urban fantasy PI mystery comedy novel series but she also writes shorter fantasy fiction, many tales of which have appeared in anthologies, particularly her Nick Claus, North Pole Security stories. While the first story took place in December, the anthology this particular story appeared in wanted stories set in the Summer. But they also wanted Nick back. Considering the global warming news was about the ice sheet at the North Pole not only melting but breaking up, it sounded like Nick had quite a problem on his hands. And a good reason to shift the Pole population away while repairs were made. Norway had just the perfect place…or it did until the story unrolled!
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