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was a roundish opening in the snow drift, and footprints in the snow that came from the yard somewhere.
    This time, Marshall couldn’t blame it on tiredness or on not having food or on his imagination. This time, he knew he was seeing something odd, and he knew it for two reasons:
    One, other people in the Burger King had seen Julka. (And besides, he’d been struggling with ketchup-flavored burps ever since he left, so he had clearly been to Burger King.)
    And two, if they had seen Julka, and she had come here (and she had, he knew it, because he could still conjure the sensation of her hand in his), then she was talking to the half-Santa shape, and that meant she saw it too.
    In fact, that meant that she knew what it was.
    “Someone want to tell me what’s going on here?” Marshall asked.
    “No,” the male voice said.
    “ Delbert! ” Julka clearly reprimanded the voice, but Marshall couldn’t tell what for. For talking? For standing there? For being rude?
    “Just…just…just fix it,” she was saying as if that thought broke her heart.
    “I can’t,” the voice (Delbert?) said. “I had most of my S-Elf privileges removed.”
    Julka rolled her eyes. “Okay, then,” she said, grabbing the air in front of her and pulling.
    As she did, the air waved, like a tablecloth in the breeze. Marshall wasn’t sure what caused that effect. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. But his mind didn’t linger on it long, because as she tugged, a round man appeared.
    He had a white beard and white hair, and he was wearing sweats that clearly needed washing, and a too-small T-shirt that said, Lobstermen do it with nets . He looked like Santa but not really.
    “You’re not supposed to see me,” this Delbert guy said to Marshall.
    “Well, I think the reindeer missed that sleigh,” Julka said, rolling her eyes.
    She clearly wasn’t making the comment to Marshall, who was still having a bit of trouble comprehending all of this.
    “It’s not my fault, really,” Delbert said. “I’m supposed to have the power to make you not remember seeing me, but they took my privileges away from me, and now I can’t do that. I mean, how can you blame me?”
    “I can blame you,” Julka said softly.
    Marshall wanted to ask who “they” were, and what the “privileges” were, but he wasn’t sure he would like the answer. The last time he heard the words “they” and “privileges” in an incoherent context, “they” referred to the mental health hospital staff and “privileges” meant walking the hospital grounds.
    Which he didn’t want to think about. Because if Delbert was off the hospital grounds, did that mean Julka was too? And how come Delbert had looked invisible? No one could become invisible. Marshall firmly believed that. If he didn’t, he would need to be led along a sidewalk on the grounds, heading toward the hospital proper.
    “So,” Delbert was saying to Marshall, “can you just like pretend that you didn’t see me? Because if an unauthorized someone ever sees me again, then I’m going to be sent home and never be allowed out again.”
    There it was. Hospital grounds, couched in the vague terms. Marshall closed his eyes and sighed. No wonder people emphasized the power of “nice” where Julka lived. “Nice” meant that folks with mental health issues had to learn how to get along.
    It explained why she had looked so happy when she had come into Burger King. Freedom did that for folks.
    It also explained why she was here. She had nowhere else to go, except back.
    And somehow, he was going to have to be the one to get her there. How on Earth was he supposed to find out where she had come from without tipping his hand? The only clue she had given him was that she was from up north, but he wasn’t even sure he could trust that. Did folks with mental health issues have a good sense of direction?
    He had no idea.
    He held up his hands as if he was being robbed. Maybe he was. Robbed of his