Slay

Insert Witty Chapter Title Here

"How the hell did you manage to get us lost?" Mrs Claus brought the sleigh to a stop, hovering in the air above the nighttime city lights. "We were barely five minutes away!"

"With all due respect, ma'am, it wasn't us, it was the GPS."

"GPS-s. Plural." said Ivy, staring ruefully at the screen in her hand. "Where do yours want us to go? Mine says the signal's lost." She put her phone down on the sleigh's dashboard. "I put in Shell Avenue, and - oh."

The screen read Shell Road, Cape Town.

Mrs Claus put her own screen down beside it. The search bar read Where is Robyn's house?

Eiden added his screen, which read Please take us to Shell Avenue thank you.

Ivy sighed. "Guys... guys, no offence, but I'm not sure that's how you use a GPS."

"Well, how do you use one, then?" demanded Mrs Claus. "And where actually are we?"

Ivy picked up her phone. Eiden peered over the edge of the sleigh. "I think," he said, "we're in Australia."

"Perth," confirmed Ivy. "Wrong city, wrong continent, wrong time zone. Okay, I've put in 6 Shell Avenue, Durban. This ought to work."

Mrs Claus's phone vibrated and begun playing Carol of the Bells. She answered the incoming call.

"What is it, Merry?"

Her forehead creased into frown lines at his response.

"Well. Gather the elves. I'm sure Kevin has come up with sufficient defenses. Whatever you do, don't let them mess with the actual Pole. That magic is volatile. With Nick - gone - No, don't you even try!" Her tone became sharper. "You're not a Claus. It'll escape, you know that. Just hold them off - I'll be there as soon as I can. As soon as I've caught Robyn."

She turned off the call and slipped the phone into her apron pocket.

"In 500 metres," intoned the robotic voice of Ivy's GPS, "make a U turn."

Mrs Claus turned the sleigh around, and within seconds they were speeding towards Ava's home.

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Noel glanced around the pristine hotel room. The bed was made; the balcony door was open; there was a suitcase on the floor, labelled 'Alisha Collins'; and no-one was in sight.

"There aren't any elves on the shelves," remarked Ava. "There's one on the floor, though..." She snorted with laughter.

"Oh, ha ha, very funny," said Noel. He bent down to examine the suitcase.

"Okay. We need to look." said Ava. "We need to search this entire room for any single little scrap of evidence! I once read this book, right, where this detective solved a mystery because of a hair scrunchie. Anything, even the smallest little clue, could tell us where Robyn's exacting her dastardly evil plans!" She ran over and peered behind the headboard of the bed.

"Oh, yes," said Noel, "because there's totally going to be a book labelled Top Secret Guide to Robyn's Dastardly Evil Plans lying around."

Ava yanked open the drawers in the bedside table, one by one. "Yeah! That's exactly what we're looking for! Something like... something like this!"

She waved a notebook triumphantly in the air.

"It doesn't say Top Secret," she confessed, "but I reckon that's on purpose, so we don't guess just how top-secret it actually is." Leaving muddy, crumpled sheets in her wake, she scrambled across the bed and sat down next to Noel.