A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

unfettered access to all parts of the North Pole South warehouses so we can find and rescue the young man.”
    The first golem guard took the sheet of paper and studied it intently, while Robin shot me a questioning glance. She craned her neck to see what the guards were looking at. McGoo could barely keep the smile off his face.
    The other golem took the sheet from his partner; they both had frowns on their clay faces. “All right then. We’re security guards, sworn to uphold the law.” They opened the chain-link gate for us. “Go on inside. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
    Robin was perplexed, but she glanced down at the blinking light on her Track Werewolf app. Buddy was definitely close, inside the big factory building ahead of us. With his best I’m-an-authority-figure gait, McGoo marched away from the guard golems. Robin hurried alongside me. When we were out of earshot, she asked, “What was that all about? When did you get a search warrant?”
    “It wasn’t a search warrant,” I said. “It’s the fine-print listing of Elfis Originals I took from Just Dug Up Collectibles.”
    McGoo worked at the warehouse door; it was unlocked. “Golems can’t read,” he said. “At least most of them can’t. That’s why they couldn’t pass their UQ Police Department exams. Good work, Shamble.”
    Robin was astonished. “Then we got in here under false pretenses, and I have real ethical problems with that. We’re trespassing.”
    “We’re rescuing a missing child,” I said. My boundaries were a little more blurred than Robin’s, but I did manage to get things done.
    Robin was about to continue her objections when McGoo opened the loading dock door. The dark, noisy factory hangar was worse than the worst New Year’s Day hangover. It was a true holiday of horrors.
    9
    I doubted children opening their gifts on the morning of Christmas Eve Eve (if Elfis and his minions delivered on time, as promised) would want to know where their presents really came from.
    We were seeing the ugly side of holiday cheer: appalling labor conditions, thick smoke, clanging hammers, grinding gears, and jets of steam venting from pressure valves. Foul water trickled out of rusty pipes overhead. A labyrinth of rattling conveyor belts rolled toys along to packaging lines. Sparks flew and blazing fires roared out of open furnaces fed with black coal that poured from supply hoppers in the ceiling. A separate set of conveyors dumped defective metal toys into a smoldering furnace. It was as if the Island of Misfit Toys had an active volcano.
    Robin looked around in horror, shocked by what she saw. McGoo’s face was stormy with anger.
    Most appalling of all, though, were the kids shackled to the assembly line, hunched over the conveyor belts, red-eyed, dirt-smeared, waifish. They toiled at assembling dolls, painting action figures, stuffing collectibles into boxes. There were werewolves, zombies, ghouls, even human children, all looking dejected and haggard.
    As I scanned the faces, I recognized many of the kids featured on the Have You Seen Me? pictures from the Talbot & Knowles blood bars. I saw one gray-furred werewolf boy, mangy and yet somehow still cute, chained to a station where he was applying black button eyes onto Raggedy Ann dolls. Either he was confused by the instructions, or the dolls catered to an entirely different type of unnatural, because he sewed three eyes on each doll.
    “That’s Buddy Tannenbaum!” I said.
    The boy heard me even over the factory din. He turned, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, and his eyes lit up upon seeing us. He dropped the doll onto the dirty factory floor and leaped toward us, but was brought up short by silver shackles that bound his wrist and ankle.
    “I’ll be good! I promise!” he yelped. “I won’t be naughty anymore. I don’t want to be on the list!”
    Robin was ahead of us, grim and determined. “We’ll get you out of here, Buddy. Your parents hired us to find