Carlton Lassiter closed his eyes and rubbed his temples wearily. How did he end up in situations like this? "We're going to have to stop here," he said, pulling the key out of the ignition. He checked the back seat. The baby -- thank God -- was still asleep. Unfortunately, so was Shawn. "Spencer," he said. "Wake up. We're stopping."

Shawn's eyes opened, but he stayed slouched down as low as the seat belt would let him, arms crossed over his chest. Carlton watched him take in his surroundings -- snow already coating the windshield, Carlton's own no-doubt-frazzled expression after hours of fighting his way over icy roads, and of course, the baby asleep in the carrier next to him. "Okay," Shawn said.

Carlton raised his eyebrows. A simple one-word agreement? No witty retort or snappy comeback?

Shawn turned towards the baby. "Hey kiddo," he said softly. "Good thing you like cats, huh?" He scooped the sleeping infant out of her car seat and tucked her hat down over her ears. Cats? While Carlton was still pondering the comment, Shawn squirmed out of his leather jacket and wrapped it around the baby. He looked back to the front of the car. "Well?" Shawn asked, one hand on the door handle.

The snow whirled into the car as soon as they opened the doors. It stung his eyes and he shivered, squinting through the swirling flakes in the direction of the building he was sure he'd been able to see just moments before. They were in a parking lot, at least.

He found himself in the unusual position of hovering around Shawn Spencer -- who astonishingly didn't say a word until they reached the door, which Carlton held open for him. Then Shawn fluttered his eyelashes and affected a southern drawl. "Why, Mister Lassiter," he said lightly. Carlton just rolled his eyes.

Walking inside was like walking into a wall of warmth. They were in a small foyer -- benches, coat hooks, a variety of winter boots, and a completely vacant front desk. No, not completely vacant. He watched in surprise as a giant Siamese cat leapt up on the desk and looked at them curiously. "Mrow?"

A cat. How did Shawn do that?

The baby woke up and started fussing. Next to him, Shawn shivered, and he suddenly realized that his feet were freezing. Carlton quickly shrugged off his coat and gloves, and reached for the baby. "Here," he said. "Let me take her." He soothed the baby's fretting and watched Shawn shake snow out of his hair.

"Okay, so this is what's called a 'not-fun trip'," Shawn said, pulling off his shoes. His socks were printed with images of brightly colored frogs. "Next time you decide to piss off the Chief, send me an email first, so I can not show up that day."

Carlton rolled his eyes again. "For the last time, I wasn't trying to --"

There was a loud crash from somewhere in the building, and Shawn interrupted him. "Sure you weren't. You just keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, this little lady and I will go get warmed up." He plucked the baby back and headed for a door to their left.

The door opened into chaos. There was furniture scattered all over the room -- most of it looked disarranged, and one of the sofas was overturned. "It's back in the woodpile!" someone shouted.

Carlton instinctively stepped in front of Shawn -- and the baby -- and reached for his holster. Something streaked past him and he drew his gun.

"Don't shoot!" he heard someone say, and the voice sounded familiar.

"McNabb?" he asked in disbelief. That was when the woodpile collapsed, sending logs rolling out into the room. There was an angry hiss, and a high-pitched chittering, and then someone started laughing.

Carlton looked around and saw a man crouched on the floor next to a large, upside-down pot. "I got it," the man managed to get out between laughs. "Now what?"

"Yes!" A teenage girl across the room picked up a chair and collapsed into it.

And Buzz McNabb -- what was he doing there? -- stared at the pot. "Uh… Put it outside?" he offered.

The laughing man looked somewhat dubious at this suggestion, but gamely began pushing the pot towards yet another door, which presumably led outside. The chattering got louder. "What is it?" Carlton asked, still holding his gun.

"Detective Lassiter," McNabb said. "Hi." He looked around nervously. "It's, ah, it's a chipmunk, actually."

Once the chipmunk was back outside, there was a scramble to get furniture back in place and logs restacked. Somehow McNabb volunteered himself to go get the baby's things from the car, and Carlton found himself moving tables with the laughing man. Shawn, as usual, had found a way out of doing any work at all; he was sitting on a sofa with the baby, where he was quickly joined by the teenage girl and the cat from the foyer.

"So, you're a detective?" the man asked him.

"Head Detective, actually, Santa Barbara PD," Carlton told him. In the background, he heard the girl cooing over the baby.

"I'm Richard White," the man said, holding out his hand. There was a slight pause after he introduced himself that told Carlton people usually recognized his name, but he didn't elaborate. "Do you get storms like this often? I told my family I'd be home for Christmas."

Carlton hesitated. He really had no idea -- he was a police officer, not a weatherman. Still, he'd been listening to the radio in the car. "I don't think this is supposed to last too long," he said. "I'd say you should be able to leave sometime tomorrow." He felt like he should add something else, but he couldn't think what.

McNabb arrived back with another man, who introduced himself as Roran, and was apparently the owner of the inn at which they'd become impromptu guests. While everyone exchanged stories, Carlton moved towards the back door to try calling the Chief. She would be expecting them soon. He heard someone else talking outside the building.

"Yeah, it's snowing pretty hard here," the voice said. "It looks like there's some extra people here tonight because of the roads." There was a pause. "Pete, it's California -- who's going to recognize me?" Another pause, and a laugh. "Yeah, you too. I'll talk to you soon. We're still on for Christmas, right?" Carlton looked down at his own phone, which had zero service, just as the door opened and whoever had been speaking stepped inside.

"Harry!" Roran called out happily. "I was worried about you. Come in and meet everyone!" More introductions -- White was apparently some kind of reporter, and the girl's name was Jubilation -- who named their kid Jubilation? -- and then Harry disappeared into the kitchen with Roran to make dinner. Carlton found himself in a very comfortable recliner with a very furry cat on his lap. In fact, there were at least three cats at the inn -- the one in his lap, the siamese from the foyer, and McNabb's. The junior officer had been scouting out locations for an anniversary celebration and had brought his cat along to assess the "pet-friendliness" of various destinations. It seemed ridiculous to Carlton, but he'd never been a cat person.

He was just starting to think cats might not be so bad when the lights flickered, and then went out. The cat leapt out of his lap with an irritated yowl. "Don't worry!" Roran called from the kitchen. "We have generators!" Within moments, the lights were back, and everyone was pushing tables together and setting out plates and silverware. Shawn managed to draw everyone's attention with a long and involved story about how he -- self-appointed "chief psychic" -- and Detective Lassiter -- "Head Detective," Carlton had interrupted -- had come to be driving around the mountains with the station chief's baby in the week before Christmas. Perhaps most amazingly, the story didn't make anyone sound completely insane.

During dinner, he was struck again by the oddness of the group they'd found themselves in. He kept trying to sort them out in his mind, to categorize them in some way. With his luck, Roran-the-rustic-inkeeper, no-last-name-Harry, and really-who-names-their-kid-Jubilation would all turn out to be working together in some kind of bizarre illegal pyramid scheme involving snowplows or something. On the other hand, maybe everything would be fine. When the baby started crying, he gave up his mental sorting and just prayed for a Christmas miracle.

"I've got it," Carlton said, pushing away from the table. She'd been sleeping most of the afternoon, and was probably wide awake and ready to be entertained for a while. After a quick diaper change, he grabbed a fuzzy monkey from her bag and sat down with her in front of the windows. Behind him, he could hear silverware clinking as plates were cleared and dishes were carried back to the kitchen. He watched Richard White's reflection in the window as the man approached in a carefully casual manner.

White stared out the window and shoved his hands in his pockets. "So… " he said. "Sounds like you have an interesting group of people over there at the SBPD." Carlton gave a short laugh and dangled the monkey where the baby could grab at it.

There was a long pause. "Is Spencer really psychic?" White finally asked.

Carlton looked up sharply. White was still staring out the window, but his reflection looked anxious. "So he claims," Carlton said, not sure exactly how to answer. If White was really a reporter, as he claimed, he might be looking for a story, or maybe he just wanted to protect his sources. If he was a criminal, he might be trying to figure out if the snowplow pyramid scheme was likely to be uncovered. Either way, Carlton found himself reluctant to share any kind of information about SBPD's resident "psychic."

White looked like he was about to say something else when there was a loud buzzing from his pocket. He pulled out a phone and flipped it open. "Excuse me," White said. "I've got to take this." Carlton just nodded. Once White had walked away -- all the way into the front foyer, closing the door behind him -- he checked his own phone again, but there was still no service. Huh.

The inn didn't have television, but Roran's weather radio said the storm would likely last all night, with clearing the next day. Shawn took over on baby duty, and Carlton turned in early. They hadn't exactly been planning on an overnight trip, but he took off his shoes, his belt, and his holster, and figured that was as good as it was going to get.

He couldn't sleep, though, and eventually he got tired of staring at the ceiling and wandered back towards the common room. It took a while -- he'd ended up in a room that had to be the in the absolute farthest corner of the inn. He slipped through the dark hallways as quietly as possible, and startled a yelp out of McNabb when he turned a corner and ran into the other officer talking to his cat.

"I'm telling you, you didn't miss anything," McNabb said to the cat, who actually did look sort of affronted. "You can meet them all in the morning."

"Meet who?" Carlton asked.

"Sir!" McNabb spun around, and the cat lashed its tail. "I -- there's more guests, sir. A Captain Lennox, and his wife Sarah, and their baby girl -- they just arrived a few minutes ago."

"In the snow? What were they driving?" He would have sworn the roads were impassable.

McNabb looked confused. "I -- I don't know, sir. I could ask?"

He shook his head. "No, that's not necessary." There was an awkward pause.

"Well -- good night, sir." McNabb knelt to pick up the cat, and Carlton moved past him.

"Good night."

There was a flickering light coming from the common room -- probably from the fireplace. Pausing in the doorway, he could hear Shawn talking to somone.

"Jubes, you should go back to school," he was saying.

"Why?" the girl answered. "You never finished."

"Yeah, well -- if you were going to Santa Barbara High, I might give you different advice," Shawn said. "But you're not. Just call them, okay?"

There was a loud sigh. "Fine."

"Well?"

"Right now? It's the middle of the night in New York."

"So? Just pick someone who'll still be up. Or someone you want to wake up." He could practically hear the smirk that accompanied Shawn's words. When he looked in, he could see the girl moving across the room as she dialed her cell phone. Did everyone's phone work except for his?

Shawn spoke again, quietly, and he jumped. "You might as well come in." Carlton told himself not to feel guilty as he crossed the room and sat down. He kept expecting Shawn to say something else -- the other man certainly wasn't known for keeping his mouth shut -- but they just sat there, looking out at the falling snow and listening to the crackle of the fire.

Carlton thought he might have dozed off, because there was a crick in his neck when he heard voices in the hallway and turned his head to look. It was the reporter, White, and Harry-with-no-last-name-who-thought-no-one-would-recognize-him, heading towards the kitchen. Harry was barefoot, which seemed odd, given how cold it was. White was wearing giant fuzzy slippers shaped like bear paws. He wondered for a minute if he was actually still asleep, and dreaming, but then he rolled his head to the other side and saw Shawn, and the snow, and the baby, and he knew he was awake.

"Does your phone work here?" Carlton asked, out of the blue.

Shawn was having a staring contest with the baby. "Yes," he said, sounding distracted.

Carlton stared at the fireplace. That seemed unfair, somehow. But his nap must have disconnected his brain from his mouth, because his next question was, "When you were a kid, did you believe in Santa Claus?"

There was a hesitation, and he almost turned to look at Shawn again. "No," Shawn said finally.

"I did," Carlton said.

The baby made a soft chirpy noise, the one that meant she was either about to fall asleep or about to start screaming for her mother. He hoped for option one, but held his breath while he waited. She was quiet, and he gave a sigh of relief.

"I'm glad," Shawn said, and at first Carlton thought he was talking about the baby. He'd almost drifted off to sleep again when Shawn added, "Everyone should get the chance to believe in something."