Face of a Traitor

PREVIOUSLY ON THE TWISTED CHRISTMAS TRILOGY     Twelve-year-old orphan Toby Carter escapes a brutal workhouse and dreams of a new life in London. He quickly learns that city life isn’t as easy as he expected – especially only a few days before Christmas. Without anywhere to go or any money, he ends up almost perishing in the snow. That’s when a mysterious troupe of travelling circus performers find him and nurse him back to health. They call themselves The Winter Freak Show. He lives with them for a while and befriends the performers, learning that they are not as they seem. Their ringmaster, Nicko, a portly man with a white beard and a red top hat, is the kindest person he has ever met. He’s also magic, just like his child-like performers who can disguise themselves as monsters for their freak show performances. In the short time Toby lives with them, he learns some of their basic tricks. Together, they have a peculiar mission: each night, during the visitor meet-and-greet, Nicko assesses all of the children and gets his assistant, Melvin, to write down in a book whether they are naughty or nice. At first Toby thinks nothing of this routine. Everything changes when the naughty children start disappearing. For weeks London has been terrorised by a serial kidnapper who steals children from their beds. Only now Toby thinks he knows the true identity of the predator. He suspects Nicko and alerts London’s police. Nicko is arrested and is set to be hanged in front of Newgate Gaol. Before this happens, though, Toby is determined to find out how Nicko could do such a thing. He visits him in his cell and discovers three troubling facts. Firstly, he made a mistake. Nicko is innocent. Secondly, Nicko’s true identity is Father Christmas and his performers are real elves. And thirdly, if he doesn’t track down the real kidnapper soon and clean up this whole mess, Christmas will disappear forever. He sets to work linking the evidence to find the true kidnapper, realising that all the victims had one thing in common: they were on the naughty list – and only two people have access to it. Since Nicko is innocent, that means the real monster must be his Head Elf, Melvin. Toby figures out that the best way to catch Melvin is to reach the next name on the Naughty List first. He follows the address to a townhouse in Chelsea where Melvin is already in the act of kidnapping his next victim. Too late to prevent this, Toby follows Melvin to an abandoned warehouse in Millbank where he discovers the missing children. Melvin has gone mad. He has the children locked in a cage and explains that naughty children are a waste of his time. They drain Christmas spirit – a form of human hope that fuels the elves’ magic and keeps them alive. As a result, he says they must be eliminated. To wipe them from reality properly, though, means waiting until Christmas spirit reaches its peak, which is rapidly approaching. Toby moves fast. Using a firework strapped to Melvin’s carriage, he sends out a flare to alert the elves of their location. He then sets to work fighting Melvin. They battle using magic, but Melvin is too strong. It’s obvious he’s going to win. Meanwhile, in his cell, Nicko plays a violin. Crowds have gathered outside Newgate Gaol to watch him hang. When he starts playing Silent Night, spectators join in without realising the source of the song. The music spreads and soon thousands of people are singing along. The music reaches Toby and fills him with Christmas spirit. As the city’s hero, he channels its hope, becoming powerful enough to overcome Melvin. He does so just as the rest of the elves arrive on the scene to help him free the children. Melvin is defeated and, starved of magic, he freezes solid, but they all know the work is not yet over. Nicko’s life is on the line and if they can’t save him, Christmas will be over, its spirit will disappear for good, and all the elves will die. It’s a race against time. They use The Winter Freak Show’s flying reindeer to reach the gaol in time, where Nicko is about to be hanged. There, they free him and announce that the missing children are alive. The thousands gathered in the street cheer. The children are returned to their families and the minds of everyone present are wiped so nobody remembers exactly what happened. All the children find their parents, except one. Toby offers to escort the last one home along with Nicko and Toby’s elven friend Stella. When they reach the boy’s home in Chelsea, it’s revealed that the Thorntons once offered a child to the workhouse when they were too poor to feed themselves. When they later returned to collect him, the child had been moved. They searched but never found him. A distinctive birthmark on Toby’s arm confirms their suspicions: the Thornton’s are Toby’s real parents. He is reunited with his family. Although he’ll miss Nicko, Stella, and the others, he knows he’s in the right place at last. As a parting gift, Nicko leaves Toby a snow globe. It’s accompanied by a letter that tells him that The Winter Freak Show is safe and able to protect the world’s children for as long as the snow in the globe keeps falling. Toby is sure it will never stop. Until now.