A Merry Little Christmas

"... its thin lips seemed to smile at me as we descended into the dark."

I closed the book – the final instalment of my account of Lockwood & Co.'s greatest adventure – and was met with loud applause. The first chapter had been received well, it seemed, and I felt my chest fill with warmth and pride, overriding the sickly anxiety that was trying to creep up on me as I stood before the room full of people. Phone cameras flashed as admirers rushed to take my picture. I still marvelled at how far and fast technology had advanced since the Problem had begun to die down.

"Does anybody have any questions before we call it a night?" I announced into the microphone atop the lectern.

Hands immediately shot up.

"Are Marissa and Penelope really the same person?" a girl, who looked to be in her early twenties, asked, excitedly. "Did she reverse her age somehow?"

I smiled knowingly. "You'll have to read the book to find out."

She lowered her hand a little disappointedly. I picked on the next person.

"Did you ever find out what the fetch was?" a man asked.

"Ah," I said. "Unfortunately, not; its Source was destroyed with all the others before we could investigate."

A woman from the back shouted, "Did you ever let the skull out? Is he still around?"

I glanced back to where Skully was slouched in a chair, fidgeting with a Rubix Cube I'd given him to keep him occupied, though, to my dismay, he seemed almost done. I'd brought him with me because my manager (AKA Holly) had told me I might need a bodyguard, what with my increasing success as an author, and Skully was the most formidable person I knew, even if he didn't look like much. But no one could know who he really was; we couldn't have the general public getting ideas about bringing back the dead. I didn't exactly want another Problem on our hands.

"I still see him from time to time," I said, vaguely.

A girl of about twelve was sat beside her father in the front row, hopping in her seat and waving her hand in the air excitedly.

I gave her a smile. "Yes?"

"Did you and Lockwood ever get together?"

I flushed. "That's – uh – not really relev–"

"Aw, look at you!"

Must to my dismay, Skully had finished the puzzle and had grown bored. So, of course, he was back to his favourite activity of annoying me.

"Married for five years and you still can't think of him without blushing!"

I tried to shove him away from the microphone and failed. Damn his supernatural strength.

"It was a beautiful ceremony," Skully informed the girl who was practically shaking in her seat with delight. "I gave her away–"

"You also shoved the best man into the cake," I grumbled.

"–Barnes officiated–"

"George couldn't return that suit."

"–the food was wonderful–"

"I didn't have wedding cake at my own wedding."

"Oh, when are you going to get over that?"

"When you pay for the damn cake!"

There was a cough from the audience and I realised we were squabbling like school-children in front of two hundred people. I may have cut my hair down to a pixie cut, and Skully may have grown his out a little and added tattoos and piercings and, recently, stubble, but I guess some things never change. Not even after ten years.