He tried to pick up the box and give it a test shake, but it was so heavy he could only lift one corner. Something inside the box shifted with a m.u.f.fled tinkle, and the edge along the floor turned dark and glistening.

"It's leaking."

"Oopsh," Jangle said. "You broke it. Shanta'sh gonna be pished."

"I didn't break it. Whatever it is, it was already . . . ."

Jingle's words choked to a stop as a sour-sweet smell reached his nose. It was the scent of gingerbread and peppermint and magic, with an undertone of paint and glue and sweat.

Elf blood.

Since Jingle's reflexes hadn't been dulled by glogg, he was the one to start screaming first. Jangle quickly joined in, though. The two elves scrambled out from under the tree and dashed shrieking through the hallways of Santa's castle. Santa himself had been airborne nearly an hour, so there was only one person they could turn to.

"Mrs. Claus! Mrs. Claus!" they yelled in unison (though Jangle's cries sounded more like "Mishush Claush! Mishush Claush!").

They found Santa's wife in the kitchen stirring an enormous cauldron of borscht. It was the only thing her husband would eat for the next six or seven months, so gorged would he be on cookies and milk by night's end.

"Blood!" Jingle howled.

"Blllllloooooood!" Jangle added.

"Oh my, no," Mrs. Claus replied sweetly. "It's just borscht. Goodness, when you elves start nipping at the glogg there's no telling what you'll-"

Jingle grabbed one wrist, Jangle grabbed the other, and they pulled her away from the stove, out the door and through the halls until she was standing before the giant Christmas tree, a dripping ladle still clutched in her hand.

Jingle pointed at the mysterious package. "Blood!" he howled again.

"Blllloooood," Jangle added dutifully, though he was a too winded now to give it much oomph.

"Oh. I see," Mrs. Claus said. "Dear oh dear. Well, I suppose someone had best open it up."

A crowd had begun to gather, but no one made a move toward the box. Mrs. Claus sighed, whispered another "Dear oh dear," handed her ladle to Jingle and stooped down under the tree's lowest branches. The ribbon and paper slid off the package easily. When she lifted off the lid, a chorus of gasps shook the silver bells on the tree.

Inside the box was the crumpled form of an orange-haired, cherub-faced elf.

"Deary deary dear," muttered Mrs. Claus, employing the fiercest vulgarities in her vocabulary. "It's Gumdrop, Sugarplum's brother."

Another gasp echoed up into the rafters.

"Could he . . . could he have been . . . wrapped by mistake?" Jingle stammered.

Such things had been known to happen. Two years before, a pair of elves named Glitter and Sparkle had crawled into a box for a quick nap between shifts in Wrapping. Come Christmas morning, a horrified eight year old found their lifeless bodies crushed beneath her Charlie's Angels Beach House playset.

Mrs. Claus reached into the package and gingerly shifted little Gumdrop.

"Oh deary deary deary deary dear," she said, which told the elves that whatever she saw, it was bad indeed.

"Wh-what?" Jingle asked.

Mrs. Claus moved away from Gumdrop, giving the crowd a clear view of his blood-soaked back. Protruding from it was the red-and-white curl of a large candy cane. The deadly confection was smudged with sticky black fingerprints, just like the wrapping paper and ribbon on the box.

"I'm afraid this was no accident," Mrs. Claus announced. "Someone here has been very, very naughty."

The gasps turned to shrieks. A reindeer-handler named Holly fainted into the arms of her brother Jolly. Rumpity-Tump the Icicle Man became so frozen with fear he fell over and shattered, and his pieces had to be swept up and placed outside in the snow so he could pull himself together.

"A killer! A killer loose in the workshop!" Jingle wailed.

"And Shanta won't be back for hoursh!" cried Jangle, who'd been trying to steady his nerves with several long swigs from a flask he'd pulled from his vest pocket.

"Yes," said Mrs. Claus, nodding sadly. "It looks as though the borscht will have to wait." She stepped out from under the branches and cleared her throat with dainty dignity. "Could everyone hush now, please?"

Her voice never rose more than a half-step above a soothing whisper, ever, yet somehow her words carried further and penetrated deeper than if she'd screamed every word. The elves' lamentations and gnashing of teeth died away quickly, leaving only the sound of the wind outside and a quiet jingling somewhere high in the Christmas tree.

"Thank you. Now . . . is there anyone here who saw Gumdrop this evening?"

An elf toward the back of the room raised his hand.

"Yes, Snowflake?"

"Gumdrop was working with us in Nice Management this year. We finished the list a little early and went to get some . . . uhhh, eggnog at Carol's place."

Mrs. Claus picked Carol out of the throng. "Carol?"

"Yeah, Gumdrop was there for a while. But he and my sister Noel had a little too much eggnog, and they went off to . . . ummmm . . . make some mulled cider."

Mrs. Claus scanned the still-growing crowd for Noel's blushing face. "Noel?"

"Over here, Mrs. C. When we got to the bedro . . . I mean, the kitchen, Gumdrop realized he didn't have a...well...a...bag of mulling spices. There was one in his wallet, but he'd left it in his jacket at work. I might have had a bit too much 'eggnog,' but I'm not stupid-I told him no spice, no cider. So Gumdrop went back to work to get his jacket." Noel wiped away a tear. "He never came back."

"He went back to Nice Management?"

"Yes."

"And no one else saw him after that?"

The room was still.

"I see." Mrs. Claus folded her arms and shook her head. "'Eggnog' and 'cider-making' and 'mulling spices'? My oh my."

The a.s.sembled elves hung their heads in shame.

"Well, you've been working so hard this year . . . I don't think we need to mention any of that to Santa."

The elves peeked back up at her sheepishly.

"But this business with poor Gumdrop . . . ."

Something rustled high up in the tree, and a single ornament dropped from branch to branch to branch, finally shattering on the floor just a few yards from Mrs. Claus. Everyone looked up.

At the top of the tree, tinkering with the brightly glowing star perched there, was a single elf.

"h.e.l.lo," Mrs. Claus said to him.

The elf peered down at her. "Greetingz." Then he went back to working on the star.

"Aren't you interested in what's going on down here?"

"Oh, it iz a zertainty. But I am having verk to do here, yez?"

"I think that can wait. Why don't you come down and talk to me?"

Mrs. Claus's tone was as sweet and lilting as ever, yet it was clear this was no request. It was a command.

"No," the elf said, not bothering to even look at her this time. "I think I finish my verk firzt, yez?"

"Oh. Well, then."

Mrs. Claus took a deep breath and twiddled her thumbs for a moment. Disobedient elves were as rare at the North Pole as murders. There were no precedents for dealing with either one.

"Jingle, Jangle, everybody-stand back please," Mrs. Claus finally said.

She reached into the lowest branches of the Christmas tree and began pulling off a long strand of shimmering garland. Once she had about thirty feet of it, she tied one end into a hoop and began twirling it over her head. When she let it go, the makeshift la.s.so sailed to the top of the tree and landed around the obstinate elf's right foot. With one quick, hard pull, Mrs. Claus closed the loop tight and jerked the little man into the air.

"Blahhhhhhhh!" he squawked as he cartwheeled downward.

"Ooooooooooh!" the elves cooed as they watched him fall.

"I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Claus after she'd caught him by the fluffy white collar of his green tunic, s.n.a.t.c.hing him out of the air half a second before he could splatter at her feet. "But I really do think it's awfully important that we talk."

She loosened the garland and set her tiny prisoner down. He was chubbier than most of his kin, and a little taller too. He bent back and stared up at the top of the tree.

"Very imprezzive, Mrz. Clauz," he said.

"Why, thank you," Mrs. Claus replied humbly. "I've always been handy with decorations. Now tell me-what is your name?"

"I em Geeftrep."

"'Giftwrap,' you say?"

"Yez. Bruther of Scotchtape."

"Hmmm. I don't believe I've ever heard you or your brother mentioned before, Giftwrap."

The other elves shook their heads and squinted at Giftwrap with growing suspicion.

"Ve are new thiz year," he said. "Before this ve are . . . how do you say? Ve cobble the shoez, yez?"

"I see. But this year you decided to become toy-making elves?"

"Yez. The shoemaker ve verk for, he moved hiz factory to Indonezia."

"How terribly disappointing. Well, let me take this opportunity to welcome you to Santa's workshop."

Mrs. Claus held her hand out to Giftwrap. He hesitated just a fraction of a second, then grasped her hand and gave it a limp shake.

"Thank you, Mrz. Clauz."

Mrs. Claus smiled, then glanced down as she let go of his hand.

"Goodness-is that ink on your sleeve?"

Giftwrap didn't answer directly. Instead, he spat out a word no one had ever dared utter in the presence of Mrs. Claus.

"Oh, now surely that kind of language isn't going to help matters any," she began to say.

She didn't get a chance to finish. The "Oh" was still on her lips when Giftwrap pulled a candy cane from his tunic and lunged at her with it. She barely managed to dodge away in time, and the razor-sharp candy sliced off a corner of her white lace ap.r.o.n.

"Oh, Giftwrap," Mrs. Claus said. "My niece made that for me."

Giftwrap lunged again.

"Mrs. C!" Jingle called out, tossing her the ladle she'd handed him a minute before.

Mrs. Claus reached out and let the handle slap into her palm. Then she swung the ladle down just in time to parry Giftwrap's thrust. Giftwrap tried again and again, but each time Mrs. Claus turned the sugary blade aside.

"Really, Giftwrap, is this helpful?" Mrs. Claus asked, raising her voice just a bit to be heard above the clink-clank of their duel. "You can't escape. Why not stop fighting and tell me what you've been up to? I bet you'll feel a lot better if you do."

"Bah!" Giftwrap snarled. With a dramatic flourish, he hurled his candy cane into the floorboards, where it stuck with a loud, vibrating sp.r.o.nnnng. Then he reached into his tunic and pulled out something brown and log-like.

"Look out!" Jingle yelped. "He's got a fruitcake!"

"Yez! And I em not afraid to uze it!"

Giftwrap brought the fruitcake to his lips and took a savage bite.

"Daz vedanya, zuckerz!" he shouted, crumbs and bits of candied orange peel spraying from his furiously chewing mouth. He took a big, gulping swallow, and almost immediately his face turned blue. He collapsed, writhing and gurgling. After a few seconds, he stopped moving.

Jingle slowly approached and gave Giftwrap a poke with the curled toe of his elf shoe. There was no response.

"I think he's dead."

"Dead? Deary deary dear." Mrs. Claus moved to Jingle's side and kneeled down to examine the body. "Hmm. I thought so."

She reached out and plucked the pointy ears right off Giftwrap's head.

There was more gasping and fainting from the elves gathered around.

"Don't anyone fret now. They're not real ears," Mrs. Claus said. "Giftwrap-or whatever his name truly is-was no elf."