There was blessed silence for all of two minutes before Maggie started up again.

"Are we there yet?"

Harry barely kept himself from slamming his head into the wheel, repeatedly, and only managed because he was driving on the highway in a Volkswagon Beetle in heavy traffic in the dark with his wife and two young daughters in the car. Not a good idea.

"No, Maggie," he said, in what struck him as a commendably even tone. "We were not there two minutes ago, and we are not there now."

"Are we in Missouri yet?" she persisted, fiddling with her hair.

"No." Hopefully that tone was forbidding enough that she wouldn't ask again.

At least Julia was asleep, so soundly that he didn't think she'd be waking up any time soon, and Murphy was, if not asleep, zoned out so thoroughly that she wouldn't be irritating him anytime soon. Not that she ever really did, unintentionally, anyway.

He moved to shift as traffic sped up a little, and gave Murphy's hand an absent caress on the way to the stick as an apology of sorts for thinking ill of her. Even if he was cranky.

Maggie sensed his drifting attention and changed tactics. "Why aren't we there yet?"

"Because traffic is awful," he replied, tersely.

"Why is traffic awful?"

He shrugged. "Because there's an accident? I don't know."

"Why don't you know?"

Harry glanced sharply in the rearview mirror and caught the tail end of a vanishing grin on his older child's face. "Margaret Anne Dresden…"

"Sorry, Daddy," she said, seeming at least half contrite, and he returned his attention to the road, hoping she was finished.

This time the silence lasted, and he really thought all his girls had fallen asleep. Until…

"Daddy!" Maggie cried suddenly, startling him enough that he nearly hit the car in front of him. Beside him, in the passenger's seat, Murphy jerked back to the world in a flurry of confused words and movements that trailed off into an irritated mumbling, and in the back, Julia flailed into waking, but thankfully did not start crying.

"What, Maggie?" he half-snarled, furious with her and the traffic and everything and just wanting this damned drive over with.

Maggie was not unaware of his mood, but it seemed she didn't care. "Daddy," she repeated, in a strange sort of awe. "Daddy, it's snowing."

"It's…" he started, and stopped, not just because Murphy had put a hand on his arm. "Huh."

"It's snowing," Maggie said, gleefully, and pressed her nose against the window to watch in silence.

Julia giggled sleepily. "Snow," she said, distinctly, then wriggled around in her car seat and to all appearances went back to sleep.

Murphy smiled; he wasn't looking at her, but he could hear it in her voice. "Merry Christmas," she said, her voice half-slurred with sleep.

"Merry Christmas," he said, caught her hand and kissed it.

"Try not to get us all killed, dear," she added.

"I'll do my best."