Jake & The Gingerbread Wars (A Gryphon Chronicles Christmas Novella) (The Gryphon Chronicles) by E.G. Foley

than you can possibly imagine, but he gets all the credit—while we do all the work! Elves do everything for Santa. From the secretaries, who keep the Nice and Naughty lists, to the poor fools who muck out the awful, smelly reindeer stalls.
    “ It’s true that scores of my kind work in Santa’s sweatshops, building toys. Me, I worked in Mrs. Claus’s Christmas kitchens. Baking treats for all the good little boys and girls,” he mimicked with a sneer.
    “Is that why you were in Mademoiselle Marie’s bakery? Don’t even try to tell me you were only there to help her.”
    “ Please,” Humbug said with a sarcastic snort. “No, you runt—”
    “Don’t call me that!” Jake snapped.
    “Well, I don’t know what else to call you!” Humbug snapped. “You never mentioned your name when you were abducting me !”
    “I am Jake, the Earl of Griffon , and that’s my cousin Archie.”
    “ Oh, really? Earl of Griffon, eh?” Humbug eyed him in suspicion, but he looked like he recognized the name.
    “Well? ” Jake persisted. “Why were you in that bakery?”
    Humbug looked away. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t want to work for the Clauses anymore. I want to work in Halloween Town! Oh, go on, laugh. I don’t care. I’m going to prove I’m perfect for the Halloween job by ruining Christmas for as many of these cheerful London idiots as possible. Like you! Ha, ha, you should’ve seen your face when I knocked over the Croquembouche and you got the blame for it! Ha, ha, ha!”
    Jake refused to rise to the bait of his taunting. “Why do you want to ruin Christmas?”
    “ I’m on a mission for Cap’n Jack,” the wizened little elf said with great self-importance.
    “Jack who?”
    “Jack O’Lantern, if you must know! Now there’s a proper ruler of a holiday for you. He goes by many names. The Great Scarecrow, Old Turnip Head. Lord Samhain himself!”
    “Turnip head?” Jake echo ed in a quizzical tone.
    Archie looked at him and shrugged.
    Jake knew that, for centuries, children throughout the British Isles had hollowed out turnips to use as jack-o-lanterns on Halloween night. He’d heard that in America they used some strange, native gourd called a pumpkin for this purpose, but everyone knew a proper jack-o-lantern was a hollowed-out turnip with a candle stub burning inside it, and had been, for time immemorial.
    Humbug was looking at him strangely.
    “What?” Jake prompted.
    “Oh, nothing. It’s just…Cap’n Jack is well aware of you, the boy with the Gryphon.”
    “Me?” Jake was rather alarmed by this revelation . He was not sure he wanted the lord of Halloween bothering about him.
    “Oh, yes,” Humbug murmured, eyeing him from head to toe i n scorn. “The famous Lightriders’ son.”
    “I can’t imagine why he sh ould be interested in me.”
    “Think about it. The Great Scarecrow has got whole brigades of ghosts at his bidding, and you’re one of the few people who can see ’em. He worries you could be a problem someday. Warns his ghosts to steer clear of you when they fly out at night to do their mischief, haunting old castles, causing nightmares, and such.”
    “I see,” Jake said warily.
    “The whole underworld knows who you are. I should know. I just came from there a week ago.”
    “What were you doing there?”
    “Looking for a new job, like I told you.” Humbug hesitated. “As you pointed out, nobody’s ever heard of a Halloween elf, so the Great Scarecrow wasn’t sure if he wanted to hire me or not.” Humbug shrugged. “But he said he’d give me a chance to prove myself. A test, to see if I was really cut out for good, honest, Halloween work.”
    “ And just what might that entail?” Jake drawled.
    “ You know, running amuck, pulling pranks, scaring people. That sort of thing.”
    “So that’s what you were doing in that bakery.”
    “Aye!” Humbug said. “The Great Scarecrow gave me a shaker of Spiteful Spice to sprinkle into the bakers’