Chapter 1: Snowfall and a Silent Welcome
The snow swallowed the sound of the engine first, then the light, then the whole goddamn car. One moment they were cocooned in warmth and the dull hum of the Subaru’s heater, the next the world outside went dark and silent, a vacuum of white and black and gray. Ivy killed the ignition and the final vibration died under her palms. She sat there, knuckles still tight on the wheel, staring at the place where the headlights had been carving a tunnel through the falling snow just seconds before.
“Okay,” Noelle said, pulling her scarf down from her chin. Her breath came out in a puff, fogging the passenger window. “So we’re not staying at the Ritz. Good to know. I packed the wrong moisturizer.”
Ivy didn’t laugh. She was looking at the cottage.
It hunched at the end of the long driveway, a dark mass against a darker tree line. The photos online had made it look charming, lopsided and rustic, the kind of place you’d put on a Christmas card with a filter and a jaunty caption. But the photos had been taken in summer, when the light was kind and the trees kept their distance politely. Now, in the deep of December, with snow piling on its roof and the woods leaning in like eavesdroppers, the place looked less like a getaway and more like a mouth waiting for something warm to walk into it.
The porch light was on. That was the first thing that snagged in her chest. A single warm bulb glowing above the door, casting a butter-yellow cone onto the boards below.
“Did the listing say someone would leave the light on for us?” Noelle asked, her voice pitched light but with a seam of genuine curiosity running through it. She was already pulling her beanie down over her ears, reaching for the handle like this was all part of the adventure.
Ivy hummed. A low, single note. The same note she always hummed when her brain was snagging on something it couldn’t quite name. “The listing said the key would be under the mat.”
“So, then someone’s been here.”
“Or someone left it on for the next guests and never turned it off.”
Noelle opened her door and the cold hit her like a slap. She sucked in a sharp breath, the kind that tasted like frozen metal and pine. “Jesus. It’s like stepping into a walk-in freezer that smells like a Christmas tree farm.”
Ivy finally let go of the steering wheel. Her fingers ached from gripping it. She’d been holding on tighter than she realized. The car was quiet, the kind of quiet that makes you aware of your own heartbeat. She popped the trunk and stepped out, and the snow crunched under her boots with a sound that felt too loud, too crisp, like the whole forest had gone silent specifically to hear them.
The driveway had been plowed recently, the grooves in the snow were fresh, the lines sharp. Whoever had cleared it had done so within the last few hours. Not the kind of between-tenants sloppiness you’d expect from off-season rental. This was tendered. Attended to.
“Hey, you coming?” Noelle’s voice floated from somewhere near the trunk. She’d already pulled out her duffel, a pink monstrosity covered in faded band stickers from her actor days. “I’m not carrying all this myself. Some of us have fragile backs from years of bowing to an audience.”
Ivy grabbed her own bag, a scuffed canvas duffel with a broken zipper, and slung it over her shoulder. She walked toward the cottage, her boots leaving deep impressions in the snow. The path curved gently, lined with old wooden posts that might have held lanterns in a past life. Now they just stuck up from the drifts like frozen fingers.
She stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. The wood groaned under her weight as she tested the first step. Up close, the cottage was bigger than the photos implied. The timber had been weathered to the color of wet bark, dark and streaked with ice. The windows on the ground floor glowed warm and buttery, curtains drawn just enough to blur whatever was inside. Strings of lights sagged along the porch beams, most of the bulbs dead, but a few flickering with a slow, patient pulse that didn’t match any electrical rhythm she’d ever seen. The icicles hanging from the eaves caught the porch light and glittered like teeth.
The wreath on the door was fresh. That was the second thing that snagged in her chest.
Ivy stepped closer, ignoring the cold seeping through her boots. The wreath was made of pine, real pine, not the plastic stuff you’d expect on a rental property. The needles were still glossy, still supple. She reached out and touched one, and the scent of fresh evergreen bloomed in the cold air, sharp and almost too sweet. It smelled like it had been cut that morning.
It smelled like someone was expecting them.
“Ivy!” Noelle’s voice rang out, sharp enough to cut through her thoughts. She was standing by the trunk, holding two plastic grocery bags of snacks, a grin plastered on her face. “You planning on sleeping out here, or are you gonna open the door? My toes are starting to audition for a horror movie.”
Ivy turned, forcing a smile. “Sorry. Just taking it in.”
“Creepy cabin vibes, right?” Noelle bounded up the steps with more energy than the cold warranted, dropping the grocery bags at her feet and rubbing her hands together. “Honestly, I’m into it. Big ‘we’re all going to die but at least it’s aesthetic’ energy. That’s the vibe, right?”
Ivy reached under the mat. Her fingers brushed against something cold and metallic, a key. Old brass, worn smooth at the edges, like it had been used a thousand times. She picked it up, and for a moment, she just stood there, holding it, listening to the forest breathe around them.
“Are you going to do a dramatic pause, or?”
Ivy slid the key into the lock. The mechanism was old, and it took a few wiggling tries before something clicked inside the door, a heavy sound that echoed like it was much larger than the door itself. The door swung inward, and warm air rushed out to meet them. It smelled like wood smoke and something else, something faint underneath, something like burnt sugar and dust.
“After you,” Noelle said, nudging her.
Ivy stepped inside.
The living room was lit with a fire that was already roaring in the stone hearth. The flames danced behind a mesh screen, casting moving shadows across walls covered in peeling red velvet that had seen better decades. The room was crammed with mismatched furniture, overstuffed armchairs with yellowed doilies, a sofa with wooden armrests carved into reindeer heads, a coffee table that looked like it had been through a war. Warm light pooled from lamps with crooked shades, but it never quite reached the corners. Those stayed dark, bristling with shadows that seemed to shift when you weren’t looking at them.
Noelle let out a low whistle. “Okay, this is... something.”
Ivy walked deeper into the room, drawn toward the fireplace. Her boots left water marks on the hardwood floor. Above the mantel hung a string of tinsel that was more gray than silver, and beneath it, tacked crookedly to the wooden slats.
“Whoa,” Noelle said, stopping mid-stride.
Stockings. A row of them, hung along the mantel, each one hand-stitched in different patterns. Some were knitted with reindeer motifs, others felt with patchwork appliqué, others simple velvet with gold trim. Twelve of them. Ivy counted without meaning to.
Each stocking bore a name in thick, looping embroidery. The thread was red on some, green on others, one gold. The letters were crafted by hand, small and neat, as if a grandmother had taken her time over each loop.
Ivy’s breath caught in her throat. “Ivy.” She could hear her own voice as if from underwater. “Noelle.” Then, “Joseph. David. Chester. Noah. Carol.”
“Very funny,” Noelle said, her laugh thin and unconvincing. “Did you set this up as a surprise? Because I’m genuinely impressed. The embroidery alone must have taken you.”
“Angel. Grace. Mary. Star. Gabriel.” Ivy turned, meeting Noelle’s eyes. “I didn’t do this.”
The fire crackled loud in the silence that followed. Noelle’s face shifted through a few emotions too quickly to track, confusion, disbelief, amusement, unease. She laughed again, but it didn’t land. “Okay. Someone from your cousin’s list, then? Or the owner? They must do this for all their guests. Personal touch, you know? Very Hallmark.”
Ivy didn’t answer. She was looking at her own name, stitched in red thread that seemed darker than it should be, too perfect against the cream-colored felt. She reached out and touched the wool, her fingers trembling slightly. It was soft. Real. And as she brushed her thumb over the stitch, she felt a note vibrate in her temples. A single, clear note, like a tuning fork had been struck deep in her skull. She hummed without meaning to, the same note from outside, but this time it came out more like a question. Like the stocking was answering.
“I think I’m going to grab the snacks,” Noelle said, already backing toward the door. “And maybe check if there’s a landline so I can call someone and ask them what the actual fuck.”
Ivy pulled her hand away. The note faded. “Noelle, wait.”
A sound outside. The crunch of fresh snow. Both women froze.
The porch creaked, and then headlights cut through the front window, sweeping across the room in a white glare that made Ivy throw up an arm to shield her eyes. A car engine growled low in the driveway, then cut off. Silence again, heavier than before.
Noelle let out a shaky breath. “Okay,” she said, forcing cheer into her voice. “I guess the cavalry’s here.”
Ivy didn’t respond. She was still looking at the stockings, at her name and Noelle’s, at the others, some she didn’t recognize, some she’d never met. But they were all coming. Twelve friends for a holiday week in a cottage that shouldn’t have lights on, shouldn’t have a fire burning, shouldn’t have fresh greenery still releasing the scent of pine into a room that had been untouched until tonight.
And on the corner shelf, half-hidden behind a stack of old board games, something glinted. A small glass ornament, green and gold, reflecting the firelight in a way that made its surface ripple like liquid.
Ivy crossed the room without thinking. She picked it up. It was cold, impossibly cold, colder than the air outside, colder than it had any right to be. Inside its glass center, glitter swirled like snow in a blizzard, and as she watched, tiny particles settled into a shape. A silhouette of a man in a long coat and a hat. A figure with no face.
She dropped it. The ornament hit the hardwood with a dull thunk and rolled, spinning in a slow circle before stopping, unharmed, facing up.
The man in the glass seemed to be looking at her. Though he had no eyes.
“Shit,” Noelle said, standing in the doorway, bags of chips dangling from her fingers. “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
Ivy’s throat was dry. She swallowed, hummed a low note to steady herself, and said, “It’s nothing. It’s just a tree ornament.”
She was already lying, and she knew it. The car outside had stopped. The door hadn’t opened yet. But somewhere upstairs, a single light had come on in a corner window, glowing warm and patient, like the cottage was waiting for them all to arrive.
And in the silence between Noelle’s heartbeat and her own, Ivy could have sworn she heard a faint sound drifting down from the second floor. Soft, distant, almost melodic.
Someone was humming back.
“I’m telling you, it’s the next left.” Joseph leaned forward over the wheel, squinting at a road sign buried under six inches of snow. “Or it was the next left an hour ago, before your phone died and started actively lying to me.”
“My phone didn’t lie to you. My phone told you exactly where to turn, and you said, and I’m quoting, ‘that can’t be right, there’s nothing out here.’“ Angel didn’t look up from the window. She’d had her forehead against the cold glass for the last twenty minutes, watching the trees blur past in the dark, and she wasn’t in the mood to relitigate it. “There’s nothing out here, Joseph. That was kind of the point of the trip.”
“I like being right.”
“You’re not right. You’re lost.”
“I’m confidently lost.” He took the turn anyway, more out of stubbornness than certainty, and the headlights swept across a mailbox half-buried in a drift, then a long driveway disappearing into dark trees. “Oh, thank God.”
The cottage came up slow, framed by branches that hung low and heavy with snow, and Angel sat up straighter, some old habit of studying a scene taking over before her brain caught up to why. She’d been sketching the drive in her head for the last hour without meaning to, filing away the shapes of things. This one she filed away fast: two stories, black-timbered, a porch that wrapped around the side and vanished into shadow.
“That’s not what the listing photos looked like,” she said.
“It’s night. Everything looks like a murder house at night.”
“No, I mean it. The listing photos had flower boxes. Actual flowers.” She was already reaching for her canvas tote, the one with her sketchbook and pencils crammed in with the rest of her things. “This place looks like it’s been waiting a hundred years for someone to knock.”
Joseph cut the engine. For a second, neither of them moved, the car ticking as it cooled, and Angel watched her own breath start to fog the windshield.
“You good?” he asked.
“I’m cold and I don’t like the woods staring at me. Otherwise, thriving.” She pushed the door open before he could answer, and the night swallowed the interior light whole.
The cold outside was a different animal than the cold in the car, sharper, more personal. Angel stood ankle-deep in fresh powder and looked up at the porch, at a wreath hanging dead center on the door, pine needles catching the weak porch light like they’d been cut that afternoon.
“Someone’s already decorating,” she said.
Joseph came around from the trunk, a bag on each shoulder. “Property manager, probably. Gets it ready before renters show up.” He nudged her arm with his elbow, steering her toward the steps. “Come on, you’re going to give yourself frostbite standing there having opinions about wreaths.”
They started up the walk together. Joseph noticed the boot prints first, circling the base of the porch steps and simply stopping, mid-stride, like whatever made them had lifted off the ground. He almost said something. Decided not to. He was good at deciding not to say things.
Angel tried the door and it opened easily under her hand, too easily, the lock giving without resistance. Warm air rolled out to meet them, thick with woodsmoke, and underneath it something that made her nose wrinkle before she could name it.
“That’s a fire,” Joseph said, stepping past her into the great room. “A real one. Someone’s already got a fire going.”
“For a property that’s supposedly been empty since we booked it.” Angel followed him in, brushing snow from her sleeves, her eyes already moving, cataloguing. The furniture. The tree in the corner, lights pulsing slow and uneven. The mantel.
“Twelve,” Joseph said, before she could. He was already counting the stockings, his voice gone flat. “There’s twelve of them. Angel, come look at this.”
She crossed the room and read the names under her breath, and by the time she got to the end of the row her voice had dropped to almost nothing. “That’s everyone. Every single one of us.”
“Maybe the owner does it for every group.”
“With our actual names? Spelled right?” She reached out and touched the thread on her own stocking, and it was warm, and damp, like it had been stitched an hour ago and not a decade. “Joseph. This is fresh.”
The front door creaked behind them, and they both spun to find Ivy and Noelle stepping in from the cold, snow on their shoulders, Ivy still holding a brass key like she wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“Hey,” Ivy said. Her voice had a thin, careful quality to it. “You made it.”
“Apparently,” Joseph said, “we’re expected.”
The silence stretched like taffy. Noelle broke it with a laugh that was only a little forced, a little too bright. “Okay, who the hell hung the stockings? Because I know it wasn’t me, and I’ve been trying to figure out the logistics of someone breaking in to decorate a rental cottage, and I’m coming up empty.” She clapped her hands together and blew into them. “Also, it’s freezing and I want to know where the heat’s coming from because I’m not complaining, but I’m also not not complaining.”
Angel was still staring at the mantel. “The names. They’re all spelled correctly.”
“Isn’t that... normal?” Noelle asked.
“People misspell things,” Angel said. “Especially when they’re writing names they’ve only heard once or twice. But these are perfect. Every single one. Which means whoever made them knew exactly who we are. Every one of us.”
The fire popped and crackled, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Everyone jumped.
“Okay,” Joseph said, exhaling hard. “Who’s still coming? Gabriel and Carol should be here soon, right?”
Ivy nodded, her auburn hair escaping its bun in new directions. “They texted from the gas station about twenty minutes ago. Said they’d be here within the hour.”
“Noah and Star are behind us,” Angel added. “We passed them at a diner about an hour south. They were arguing about directions, so they’re probably close.” She paused, then added, quieter, “Chester and Grace haven’t answered anyone.”
Noelle pulled out her phone, frowned at the screen. “I’ve got no service here. Zero bars. Like, not even the ‘emergency calls only’ kind of no bars.”
“Me neither,” Joseph said, checking his own. “Completely dead. We’re off the grid.”
“Cozy,” Noelle said dryly.
The sound of an engine reached them from outside. But it was wrong. It was muffled, distant, like the car was still far down the road. And yet, as they all turned toward the window, headlights cut through the falling snow, two fuzzy beams of white that seemed to pulse and shift as they drew closer.
Ivy moved to the window. The snow was coming down harder now, thick and relentless, a curtain of white that obscured everything beyond a few feet. She pressed her face to the glass, cupping her hands around her eyes to block the reflection of the fire.
“I can’t see anything,” she said. “Just lights.”
“They’re close,” Joseph said, moving to stand behind her. “Maybe a hundred yards out.”
“More like fifty,” Angel said quietly. She was still by the mantel, one hand resting on her stocking, her eyes fixed on the window. “And they’re not slowing down.”
Noelle joined them at the window. All four of them stood in a row, watching the headlights grow brighter, larger, until they filled the entire frame with white glare.
Then they stopped. The engine cut. The lights died.
Silence. Total, complete silence. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
The front door was still open from when they’d come in, and through it, they could hear the soft crunch of footsteps approaching. Slow. Deliberate. Coming up the path.
But that wasn’t what made Ivy’s heart stop.
From somewhere upstairs, from that single corner window that had been lit when they arrived, the one that shouldn’t have had power, shouldn’t have been occupied, a voice drifted down. Thin and high and sweet, like a child singing a lullaby. The words were muffled, indistinct, but the melody was clear. A Christmas carol. The same one that had been playing in Ivy’s mother’s car on the way to the cottage.
Noelle grabbed her arm. “Ivy. That’s coming from upstairs.”
Ivy didn’t answer. She was listening to the footsteps on the porch, and the singing from the room above, and the hum that had started in her own chest without her permission.
The knock came at the door. Three sharp raps.
And from upstairs, the singing stopped.
The knock came again. Three sharp raps, harder this time, rattling the old wood in its frame like the door was thinner than it looked.
No one moved.
The fire crackled. The shadows leaned. Ivy could feel her own pulse in her throat, a drummer counting time for a song she didn’t know the words to. The singing upstairs had stopped the moment the knuckles met wood, and the silence it left behind felt heavier than the noise ever had.
Noelle pressed her face to the frosted glass beside the door, her breath fogging the pane in a quick, tight cloud. Her shoulders dropped. “It’s them,” she said, voice pitched somewhere between relief and embarrassment. “It’s just Gabriel and Carol. Looking like they just hiked through a blizzard.”
Ivy exhaled. The note she’d been humming died in her chest, replaced by something that felt almost like shame. Of course it was them. Who else would it be? A groundskeeper from a lodge that had been rotting in the snow for years? Someone who’d hung fresh stockings and lit a fire and somehow known all their names before they’d arrived?
Get a grip, she told herself. She pulled the door open before Joseph could reach for it.
The cold rushed in like a held breath finally released. It swirled around her ankles, bit at her cheeks, carried the sharp tang of pine and something metallic beneath it. Gabriel stood on the porch, arms spread wide like he’d been waiting for applause, snow caked on his shoulders and dusted through his dark hair like confetti. His grin was wide and red-cheeked, a furnace of a man in a too-thin jacket, and he looked exactly like the kind of person who’d laugh in the face of a haunted cottage.
“Merry Christmas, bitches,” he announced, stomping his boots on the mat with theatrical force. A clump of snow flew off and landed in a sad heap by the door. “You would not believe the drive. Carol made us stop at every single gas station because she refused to pee in the woods.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “News flash: there is no civilization out here. Just trees and more trees and the occasional.”
“Gabriel.” Carol stepped around him, her voice clipped. She wasn’t smiling. Her dark hair was pulled back in a sleek, precise ponytail, and even beneath the layers of snow-crusted wool and the scarf wound tight to her chin, she looked immaculate. Impossibly put-together. She brushed a fleck of ice off her shoulder as she crossed the threshold, and her eyes swept the great room in a single, quick pass.
Ivy watched her take it in. The fire. The mismatched furniture. The tinsel on the mantle. The stockings.
Carol’s gaze lingered there for exactly a beat too long.
Something cold slithered down Ivy’s spine. Carol didn’t comment. She just turned to Ivy, forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and said, “This place is... charming. In a ‘we’re all going to die here’ sort of way.”
“That’s what I said!” Noelle chimed in, clapping her hands together. “Great minds.”
Gabriel moved past them, shedding his jacket as he went, already gravitating toward the fireplace like a moth to a flame. He rubbed his hands together, palms out, and let out a satisfied groan. “God, that feels good. You guys already got the fire going? Place is nice and toasty.” He looked around, nodding approvingly. “Cosy. I was expecting cobwebs and dead rats.”
Angel was still standing by the mantel, her hand resting on the stocking that bore her name. She hadn’t moved when the door opened, hadn’t shifted, hadn’t acknowledged the new arrivals beyond a brief flicker of her dark eyes. She spoke now, her voice quiet, almost reluctant. “We didn’t light the fire.”
Gabriel turned, brow furrowing. “What?”
“The fire was already going,” Angel said. “When we got here, it was already burning. The place was already warm.”
Gabriel stared at her. Then he laughed. A genuine, full-bodied laugh that echoed through the rafters and made the shadows in the corners flinch. “Right. And I suppose the stockings hung themselves too?” He gestured at the mantel, eyes bright with amusement. “Come on, Angel. Calm down. It’s a rental cottage. They probably have someone who comes by before guests arrive, lights the fire, puts up some decorations, makes it feel like a Christmas postcard. You’re all acting like we just walked into a slasher film.” He turned to Ivy, clapping her on the shoulder. “You too, Voss. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Ivy’s smile was tight. “It’s just... everything’s very fresh.”
“Fresh?” Gabriel snorted. “It’s a cabin in the middle of nowhere in December. Half of it’s probably a set-dressing from that thousand-year-old tree they’ve got in the corner.” He nodded toward the crooked fir, its lights flickering in that slow, uneven pulse. “That tree’s been there since the seventies. Can’t kill a plastic tree.”
“It’s not plastic,” Angel said quietly.
Gabriel didn’t hear her. He was already moving toward the kitchen, peering into cupboards, running his hands along the old wooden counters. “Where’s everyone else? Carol and I were behind Noah and Star, but they should’ve beaten us here. And Chester hasn’t texted anyone?”
Noelle pulled out her phone, frowned at the blank screen. “Service is dead. We’re in a dead zone.”
“Fantastic,” Carol said dryly. She hadn’t moved from the doorway. She was still standing at the threshold, one hand resting on the frame, half-turned toward the porch. Her eyes were fixed on the treeline, on the dark spaces between the pines where the moonlight couldn’t reach.
Ivy noticed. “Carol? You okay?”
Carol didn’t answer right away. Her gaze stayed locked on the forest, her expression unreadable. The wind picked up outside, and the trees bent with it, their limbs creaking like old joints. Snow sifted from the eaves, a soft whisper against the windows.
“I thought I saw something,” Carol said finally. Her voice was calm, measured. The voice of someone who’d been trained to keep her feelings contained behind a neat, polished exterior. “In the trees. Something moving.”
Ivy stepped toward her, heart quickening. “What kind of something?”
“I don’t know.” Carol blinked, and her eyes refocused, and she turned to face the group with a small, practiced smile. “Probably a deer. Or my imagination. The snow does strange things out here.” She stepped away from the doorway, pulling the door closed behind her with a soft click. “Anyway. I’m freezing. Are there rooms upstairs?”
Angel was watching her with those dark, unreadable eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped.
Headlights swept through the window.
They all turned toward the glass. The beam came from the same direction Carol had been staring at, the narrow stretch of driveway between the cottage and the treeline, cutting through the falling snow like a knife. The light wobbled, dipped, straightened. A car engine rumbled, low and throaty, approaching at a slow, cautious crawl.
Snow too thick to see through. Whoever was driving had their brights on, and the whiteness turned blinding, a wall of brilliance that obscured everything behind it.
“That the third car?” Joseph moved to the window, peering out.
“I think that’s Chester’s Civic,” Angel said. She’d stepped forward, her hands clasped in front of her, her posture rigid. “I recognize the headlights.”
The car came to a stop in the driveway, its engine still idling. A puff of exhaust curled up into the cold air and dissipated. The headlights stayed on a moment longer, then died, and the world plunged back into relative darkness.
Nobody got out right away.
The five of them stood in a loose cluster by the window, watching the unmoving car, the seconds stretching, until finally two shapes emerged from either side of it, dark against the snow.
“Two of them,” Ivy said. “Chester brought Grace.”
Chester had been quiet for the last forty minutes, which was its own kind of loud, because Chester was never quiet. Grace noticed it around the time they passed the sign for Embersgate County, half-buried in snow, and she’d been waiting for him to say something ever since.
“You’re doing the thing,” she finally said.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you go quiet and I have to guess what’s wrong instead of you just telling me.”
Chester’s jaw worked. His hands stayed steady on the wheel, but his knuckles had gone pale a few miles back and hadn’t come down since. “I called Grace three times. Voicemail every time.” He caught himself. “I mean, I called Gabriel. Sorry. I’ve had you in the passenger seat this whole time and I still said your name like you weren’t sitting right there.”
“I noticed. I let it go the first two times.”
“I keep thinking about it,” he said, not really answering. “What if something happened to one of them already and we’re just driving toward it, completely oblivious, listening to Christmas music.”
Grace reached over and turned the radio down, though it hadn’t really been that loud. “Chester. Everyone’s phone is probably dead out here. That’s it. That’s the whole mystery.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Probably.”
The cottage rose up out of the trees a few minutes later, and Chester’s foot came off the gas before either of them said anything about it, the Civic slowing to a crawl like his body had made the decision without consulting him.
“That’s it?” Grace asked.
“That’s it.”
Neither of them moved to get out.
“Chester.”
“I saw a man,” he said. The words came out flat, unpracticed, like he hadn’t planned to say them and they’d fallen out anyway. “About a mile back. Walking along the tree line. Long coat. Old-fashioned hat.”
Grace turned to look at him fully. “In this? Nobody’s out walking in this.”
“I know.”
“Did you stop?”
“I should have stopped.” His hands tightened on the wheel again. “I didn’t stop. I just, I looked at him in the mirror, and he was still there, just standing, watching the car, and I put my foot down and kept driving and I don’t know why I didn’t stop.”
“Because it’s the middle of nowhere and a strange man on foot in a blizzard is not someone you stop for,” Grace said, gentler now, because she could see he needed someone to say it out loud and mean it. “You did the right thing.”
Chester nodded slowly, but his eyes kept drifting to the rearview mirror, checking, checking again.
“Come on,” Grace said, unbuckling. “Let’s get inside before we both talk ourselves into staying in this car all night.”
They climbed out together, and the cold hit them both at once, a shared, immediate thing that made conversation easier than it had any right to be. Chester grabbed both duffels from the trunk without being asked, an old habit, and Grace let him, because arguing about it would take more energy than she had left.
The porch groaned as they crossed it. Chester reached to knock, then stopped, staring at the wreath.
“That’s new,” he said. “That’s got to be new. Look at it.”
“Chester.”
The door swung open before either of them could touch it, and warm light spilled out to meet them, and Gabriel’s voice boomed from somewhere inside. “Finally! We thought you two eloped.”
Grace stepped in first, and the heat of the fire hit her like a held breath let go. She took in the room fast, the way she always did, cataloguing who was where, who looked fine, who didn’t. Her eyes landed on the mantel.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Who did the stockings?”
“That’s the question of the night,” Angel said from her spot by the fire.
Chester set the bags down and didn’t answer. He was still looking back through the open door, out at the dark tree line, like he expected to see something standing there, patient, waiting for the door to close.
“Chester.” Grace’s voice was quiet now, just for him. “You’re doing the thing again.”
He shut the door.
The grandfather clock in the corner of the room, which no one had noticed until now, because surely they would’ve remembered the way its glass face gleamed in the firelight, the way its pendulum swung with slow, deliberate confidence, struck the hour. Nine sharp chimes that echoed through the great room like the tolling of a distant church bell, too loud for a clock that had been silently tucked into the shadows moments before.
Everyone flinched.
“Fuck,” Gabriel muttered, hand over his heart. “That thing’s been here the whole time?”
Angel didn’t respond. She was staring at the clock, at the brass hands, at the way the shadows behind the glass seemed pressed against it from the inside, like something was trying to get out.
“I don’t like this,” she said quietly, almost to herself.
“Babe, come on.” Joseph stepped closer, brushing her arm, trying to pull her attention away. “It’s just a clock. Just a cottage. Just a.” He trailed off.
The clock’s pendulum stopped swinging.
The silence lasted for exactly three seconds. Then the clock’s gears ground together with a sound like teeth on teeth, and a long, low note emerged from somewhere in its ancient mechanism. A hum. A single, sustained tone.
Ivy’s blood went cold. She knew that note. She’d been humming it all evening, unconsciously, without meaning to.
The sound rose, filled the room, enveloped them all in its dissonant embrace. And from somewhere upstairs, the same voice from before began singing again. But this time, it wasn’t singing alone.
It was singing with the clock. A duet that had been practiced for years. A harmony that had been waiting to be completed.
Noelle dropped a whiskey bottle she’d just pulled from her bag. It hit the hardwood floor with a dull thunk but didn’t break. No one picked it up.
They were all listening to the song drifting down the stairs.
And Ivy knew, with a cold and certain dread, that this was only the first night.
“I’m just saying, if you’d let me drive.”
“You drove the last two hours and we ended up at a Cracker Barrel that was closed, Noah. Closed. At a time when Cracker Barrels are open. I don’t know how you managed that, but I’m not letting you navigate again.” Star had her phone propped against the dashboard, angled to catch both of their faces, the record light blinking a small, patient red in the dark car. “Say hi to the future documentary about our deaths.”
“We’re not going to die, we’re going to a cabin.”
“I know. It’s called foreshadowing. Wave.”
Noah waved without taking his eyes off the road, a tired, obliging little flick of the hand. “You’ve been filming for six hours.”
“Content doesn’t stop just because I’m cold and hate you a little bit right now.”
“You don’t hate me.”
“I hate you a normal, healthy amount.” She turned the phone toward the windshield as the trees thinned and a driveway appeared, swallowed almost immediately by snow on either side. “Ooh. Spooky. Very ‘nobody’s checked the mail in forty years’ energy.”
“It’s a rental cottage, Star.”
“It’s giving murder cottage. I stand by my assessment.” She kept filming as they crawled up the driveway, narrating under her breath in the low, theatrical voice she used for anything she thought might eventually end up online. “The final girls arrive at the site of their eventual, tragic demise, unaware that.”
“Can you not.”
“I absolutely can and will.”
The cottage swallowed the last of the headlights as Noah pulled to a stop, and for a second the only sound was the engine ticking down and Star’s phone still recording, the little red light blinking steady in the dark.
“That’s a lot of cars already here,” Noah said, nodding at the row of vehicles half-buried in fresh snow along the drive.
“Good. That means we’re not the last ones. I refuse to be the last ones. Do you know what people say about the last ones to show up?”
“What do they say?”
“Nothing good, Noah. Nothing good.” She finally put the phone down and looked at the cottage properly, and something in her easy performance dimmed a little, just at the edges. “It’s bigger than the pictures.”
“Everything’s bigger in person.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She was quiet for a second, watching the way the porch light flickered, off-rhythm, uneven. “Doesn’t it feel like it’s looking at us?”
“It’s a building, Star.”
“I know it’s a building. I’m just saying it feels like it’s looking at us.”
They climbed out together, grabbing bags from the trunk, and the cold cut through Star’s performance the rest of the way, leaving her quieter than Noah had heard her in months. He noticed it and didn’t comment, just bumped his shoulder against hers as they crossed toward the porch, a small, wordless thing that meant I’ve got you.
The door opened before they reached it, spilling noise and warm light out into the snow, and Gabriel’s voice carried clean across the yard.
“There they are! We were starting a search party.”
“You were not,” Star called back, already brightening, the performance sliding back into place like a mask she’d only taken off for a second. She stepped inside, scanning the room fast, and her eyes caught on the mantel immediately. “Okay, wow, very festive. Who did the stockings?”
“Nobody knows,” Angel said.
“That’s not comforting phrasing.”
Noah came in behind her, stomping snow off his boots, and something about the warmth of the room, the fire, the noise, loosened the tightness that had settled in his chest on the drive up. He looked around at the group, counting without meaning to. Ten, with him and Star.
“Wait, that’s everyone but David,” he said. “And where’d everyone else go?”
“Rooms,” Chester said. “Claiming rooms upstairs. Figured we’d let people pick before the good ones were gone.”
Star’s phone was already back up, capturing the room, the fire, the stockings, the tired, uneasy faces around her, narrating under her breath again like nothing had happened, like the cottage hadn’t looked at either of them the whole way up the drive.
The great room settled into something quieter after that, the kind of lull that comes after too much adrenaline with nowhere left to go. People drifted toward the stairs in twos and threes, claiming rooms, unpacking, and the sound of Grace’s footsteps on the old wooden banister carried further than she meant them to.
The hallway at the top of the stairs stretched out before her, narrow and dim. The doors were all closed, old oak with brass knobs that gleamed dully in the faint light filtering from somewhere at the end of the hall. A single lamp burned on a small table at the far end, casting a weak puddle of light across the faded wallpaper.
Grace walked forward. Each step felt heavier than the last. The air was colder up here, thinner, like the heat from the fire couldn’t quite reach the upper floor. She passed the first door. Closed. The second. Closed. She reached the lamp at the end of the hallway and stopped.
The floorboards creaked again. Behind her.
She turned.
Mary Ashcroft was standing in the doorway of the last room on the left, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her small gold cross catching the lamplight. She was grinning. Wide and mischievous and utterly unrepentant.
“Boo,” she said softly.
Grace’s heart slammed against her ribs. She let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a laugh, her hand flying to her chest. “Jesus Christ, Mary. You scared the actual shit out of me.”
Mary’s grin widened. She stepped out of the doorway, pulling the door mostly shut behind her. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.” She drifted toward Grace, quiet on her feet, barefoot on the cold floor. “I’ve been up here for like two hours. Hiding. Waiting for everyone to arrive so I could jump out and scare the hell out of all of you. You’re the first one who actually heard me.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Forever. Okay, no, like four hours. I got here right before the sun went down. The door was unlocked, no one was inside, so I just... picked a room and waited.” Mary shrugged. “I didn’t think it would take everyone this long.”
Grace looked at the door Mary had come out of. It was closed now, but she could see a sliver of warm light beneath it. “Which room did you pick?”
“The one at the end. It has a big bed and a window that looks out over the back woods.” Mary paused. “There’s a trail back there. Leads somewhere. I couldn’t tell where.”
Grace nodded slowly. “You’ve been up here alone this whole time?”
“For a while, yeah. I heard the others pull up. Heard them come inside.” Mary’s smile faded just slightly, just at the edges. “I was going to jump out and scare them, but they were already.” She hesitated. “They were already on edge. Sounded like it wasn’t the happy reunion scene I’d pictured.”
“There’s a fire down there that none of us lit. Stockings with everyone’s names, spelled right. A clock that sang a duet with something upstairs.”
Mary’s smile dropped completely. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
Mary was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “Someone else was here. Before all of us.”
The words hung in the cold air between them. Grace didn’t have an answer. She didn’t like the direction her thoughts were taking.
“Grace,” Mary said quietly. “The boot prints. Outside. Did you see them?”
Grace paused. “The ones that stop?”
“Yeah. Those.” Mary’s voice was low, almost whispering. “I saw them from the window when I first got here. I thought it was weird. But I told myself I was overthinking it.” She looked at Grace, and for the first time, Grace saw something flicker in her eyes, something young and uncertain, a crack in the carefully maintained façade of contentment. “I’m trying really hard not to overthink everything else.”
Grace reached out and squeezed her hand. It was cold. “Then don’t. We’re all here now. Twelve of us. Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out together.”
Mary squeezed back. “Twelve? Did everyone make it?”
“Everyone but David. He’s not answering texts, but knowing him, his phone’s just dead.” Grace grinned, forcing it. “Now let’s go scare the shit out of the rest of them before they have a chance to scare us.”
They walked down the stairs together, their footsteps overlapping in a rhythm that sounded almost like singing.
Mary waited a beat at the bottom, let the noise from the great room reach its peak, then stepped into the doorway and said, exactly as lightly as she could manage, “Did you miss me?”
Heads turned. Star’s face split into a grin. Noah let out a whoop. Gabriel was halfway across the room before anyone could stop him, wrapping Mary in a bear hug that lifted her off her feet.
“You absolute shithead!” Gabriel crowed. “You had us thinking you were dead in a ditch!”
“Nope. Just upstairs, taking a nap.” Mary laughed, letting herself be swung around, letting the warmth of the greeting wash over her. For a moment, she could almost forget the cold upstairs hallway, the boot prints, the fire that had lit itself.
For a moment.
The cottage settled around them like a blanket.
Night had fully fallen by the time everyone had unpacked, claimed rooms, and gathered back in the great room with mugs of hot chocolate and hands cupped around them for warmth. The fire crackled merrily in the hearth, casting dancing shadows across the walls. The Christmas tree lights pulsed their slow, uneven rhythm, on, off, on, off, in the corner, ignored by everyone who’d been in the room long enough to stop noticing it.
Star and Noah had brought board games and a bottle of spiced rum that was already half-empty. Gabriel was explaining the rules of some card game he’d invented in college, his words slurring only slightly. Carol sat in one of the deer-antler chairs, nursing a single glass of wine she’d been making last for the past hour, her eyes occasionally drifting to the window.
Angel sat on the floor by the fire, sketchbook open on her knees. She was drawing something, but she hadn’t shown it to anyone, and she angled her pencil strokes away from prying eyes. Joseph sat behind her, his legs stretched out on either side of her, an arm draped loosely around her shoulders. He was watching the fire with a distant, unreadable expression.
Ivy was in the armchair closest to the hearth, her knees pulled up to her chest, her mug cupped in both hands. She wasn’t drinking from it. She was just holding it, letting the warmth seep through the ceramic, watching the flames through half-lidded eyes.
Noelle had claimed the spot on the couch beside Mary, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. She was laughing at something Gabriel said, her head thrown back, her blonde hair catching the firelight. Her hand rested on the couch cushion between them, fingers splayed, inches from Mary’s thigh.
Mary didn’t look at it.
Grace was in the kitchen, puttering in a way that felt comfortable. She’d found a box of old board games and a deck of greasy playing cards, and she was sorting through them, giving herself something to do with her hands. Chester leaned against the counter beside her, watching her work.
“This was a good idea,” he said quietly. “Getting everyone together. It’s been too long.”
Grace glanced up. “You said that last year.”
“Did I? I meant it then, too.” He smiled, easy and warm. “You always pull everyone together, Grace. This group would’ve fallen apart without you.”
Something twisted in her chest. She forced a smile. “Thanks, Chester.”
He didn’t push. He was good at not pushing. He pushed the box of games a little closer to her and nodded toward the great room. “Let’s take these in. See if we can get a game going.”
They walked back into the great room together, and the noise wrapped around them again. Star was laughing. Noah was shouting something about cheating. Gabriel was in the middle of a story about a party in his freshman year, gesturing wildly with a glass of rum and coke.
Noelle leaned into Mary’s space, close enough that her breath tickled Mary’s ear. “Hey,” she said, her voice barely above a murmur. “You alone?”
Mary’s heart stuttered. She turned her head, and Noelle’s face was so close she could see the flecks of gold in her eyes, the tiny scar above her eyebrow she’d gotten as a kid in school. “What do you think?”
Noelle’s grin curved, slow and knowing. “I think I’m going to slip out for some air. And if someone happened to come with me...” She shrugged, standing, already beginning to drift toward the hallway that led to the back door. “I wouldn’t complain about the company.”
Mary’s mouth went dry. She glanced around the room, Grace in the kitchen, Ivy by the fire, everyone absorbed in the swell of conversation. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew it was risky. She knew there were a dozen reasons why this was a terrible idea, and all of them had names that she loved.
She stood up anyway.
She threaded through the crowd, casual and unhurried, grabbing her coat from the hook by the door as if she were just going out for air. No one seemed to notice. Ivy was too absorbed in the fire. Grace was too absorbed in the world she was leaving behind.
The back door closed behind her with a soft click.
The cold hit her like a slap. She sucked in a sharp breath, the air freezing in her lungs, and for a moment she could only stand on the small wooden deck, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The moon was half-full, hidden behind a veil of clouds, casting the clearing in a dim, milky light that turned the trees into soft-focus silhouettes.
Her eyes adjusted. The clearing was a small circle of open ground behind the cottage, ringed by a treeline that stood taller and darker than the woods in front. Snow covered everything, pristine and utterly unblemished. No tracks. No trails. No footprints.
Noelle was already there, leaning against a tree at the edge of the clearing. She’d pulled her jacket on without zipping it, the collar turned up against the cold, and she was smoking a cigarette. The tip glowed orange in the dimness, briefly illuminating her face.
“You smoke?” Mary asked, stepping into the clearing. Her boots crunched on the fresh snow.
Noelle shrugged, lifting the cigarette to her lips. “Only when I’m stressed.” She took a drag, held it, let the smoke curl from her mouth in a long, slow stream. “And this place is stressing me the fuck out.”
Mary moved closer. The snow was deep enough that she had to push through it, each step an effort. She stopped a few feet from Noelle, close enough to feel the chill radiating off her in waves. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Noelle laughed, but it was hollow. “Mary, the fire was lit when we got here. The stockings were hung. All twelve of them, with our names on them.” She took another drag, her eyes fixed on the treeline. “And someone was singing upstairs. In a room with no lights and no windows open and no goddamn reason to be occupied.”
“Maybe it was one of the others messing around,” Mary offered, but even she could hear how weak that sounded.
“I heard it. Ivy heard it.” Noelle dropped the cigarette, crushed it under her boot. “It wasn’t one of us.”
Mary moved closer. She reached out and took Noelle’s hand, the one that had been so close to her thigh on the couch. Noelle’s fingers were cold, colder than the air, and Mary wrapped both her hands around them, trying to thaw them. “Hey. We’re all here now. Twelve of us. Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out.”
Noelle looked at her. Her face was half-hidden in shadow, but Mary could see the fear in her eyes, the crack in the golden, laughing facade she wore like armor. “You believe in ghosts?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” Noelle’s laugh was shorter this time, sharper. “But I believe in something.”
The silence stretched between them. The trees seemed to lean in, closer than they had been a moment before. Snow began to fall again, soft and silent, catching in Noelle’s hair and glinting there like tiny stars.
Mary stepped forward. She moved into the space between them, her body close enough to Noelle that she could feel the girl’s warmth, the subtle tremble in her frame. She reached up slowly, giving Noelle time to pull away, but Noelle didn’t move. She just watched her with those unreadable eyes, the gold in them flickering like candlelight.
“Oh,” Noelle said softly. “So that’s how it’s going to be?”
“It’s how it has to be,” Mary whispered, and then she closed the distance.
The kiss lingered, unhurried despite the cold pressing in around them. Noelle’s hands found the front of Mary’s coat, gripping the fabric, and Mary let herself lean into it, into the warmth of another body after a night that had felt so wrong in every other way.
“How long?” Noelle breathed, pulling back just enough to speak. “How long are we going to hide this?”
“Does it matter?” Mary’s face was flushed, her breath uneven. “Ivy and Grace.”
“Fuck Ivy and Grace.” Noelle’s hands slid down to rest at Mary’s waist. “Fuck everyone who isn’t out here right now.”
“Someone could see.”
“Nobody’s watching.” Noelle leaned her forehead against Mary’s, voice dropping to barely a whisper. “Just us and the trees. And the trees don’t care, Mary.”
Mary closed her eyes and let herself have this, just for a minute. The cold at her back, the warmth in front of her, the guilt she’d deal with later because she always did. She thought of the night at Noah’s party, the bathroom stall, the bottle of cheap vodka between them, the first time this had started, and pushed the rest of the thoughts away. She didn’t want to think about Ivy’s trusting green eyes across the fire. Not tonight.
They stayed like that for a while, foreheads together, breath mingling in the cold, the confession of guilt and want tangled together in the quiet the way it always was between them.
“Holy shit,” Noelle finally said, voice softer now, almost sad. “You’d never guess it, looking at you. All pretty and proper for Ivy. And here you are.”
Mary’s face flushed, but she didn’t pull away. “Don’t. Don’t talk about her.”
“I’m not judging.” Noelle’s hand found hers again, squeezing once. “I just don’t get how you carry it. The two of us. Her not knowing.”
The cross at Mary’s collarbone felt suddenly heavy, a small, sharp reminder of everything she was betraying. “I don’t carry it well,” she admitted, voice barely audible. “I just don’t stop.”
Noelle was quiet for a moment. Then, gently: “Do you want to stop?”
Mary didn’t answer right away. The snow kept falling, hushing everything around them.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I feel so guilty.”
“I know.”
“I love Ivy. I do. I.”
“I know.” Noelle’s voice was gentle, softer than Mary had ever heard her. “I know you do. And I’m not going to tell her. We okay?”
Mary nodded. Her breath shuddered out of her. “Okay. Okay.”
They stood there for another moment, not quite looking at each other, the weight of what they’d admitted settling between them like a fallen branch. A log split in the fireplace inside, but the sound didn’t reach them through the walls.
“We should go inside,” Noelle said finally. “Before someone comes looking.”
Mary nodded. She didn’t want to go inside. She wanted to stay in the cold, in the dark, in the space where she didn’t have to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. But she couldn’t stay out here all night. They’d notice.
They walked back to the cottage together, steps careful on the snow, and Mary looked over her shoulder at the treeline before they reached the door. No movement. No dark shape between the pines. Just trees and shadow and falling snow.
But as she turned away, something caught her eye, a faint glint in the darkness, like moonlight reflecting off glass. Or off eyes.
She looked again. It was gone.
The back door swung open, spilling warm light across the snow, and she stepped into the cottage without looking back.
The great room had quieted in their absence. Most of the group had drifted to their rooms, the earlier energy flagging into something softer and more tired. Grace was asleep in one of the armchairs, a blanket draped over her lap, her head lolled to one side. Gabriel’s snores echoed from upstairs where he and Carol had claimed a room. Angel was still in the corner, her sketchbook closed on her knees now, her head resting on Joseph’s shoulder.
Ivy was still by the fire. She looked up when Mary walked in, her green eyes seeking Mary out across the room, and Mary felt the guilt hit her chest like a physical blow.
“Hey,” Ivy said softly. “I was getting worried.”
“I’m fine,” Mary said. “Just needed some air.” The lie tasted wrong in her mouth, but she swallowed it down. She crossed the room, sank onto the arm of Ivy’s chair, and let Ivy’s hand rest warm and possessive on her knee. A tiny, soiled part of her heart turned over. “This place is just so quiet. It spooks me a little.”
Ivy laughed, soft and fond. “Tell me about it. I almost jumped out of my skin when that clock struck nine.” She squeezed Mary’s knee gently, her thumb brushing small circles into the fabric. “We’re together now, though. All of us. It’s going to be good.”
Mary nodded. She looked at the fire, wishing she couldn’t see the shape in the shadows, something like a man in a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat, standing at the edge of the light. As she blinked it was gone.
“Yeah,” she said, hollow. “It’s going to be good.”
Ivy hummed a low note, quiet and unconscious, the same note she’d been humming all night. The fire stuttered, flaring briefly before settling back. In the tree line behind the cottage, unseen, a figure watched the glowing windows with eyes that were not quite human.
One by one, the cottage lights flickered out.
But the lamp upstairs, in the room at the end of the hallway, stayed burning until morning, burning in a room where no one slept. The bedspread on the big bed was smooth, untouched, with a single ornament resting in the center of the pillow: a small glass bauble, green and gold, with something dark and blurred inside it that might have been a face, looking out through the fogged glass at the shape stirring underneath what had once been a perfect, snow-sealed window.
The Jeep’s engine rolled into the clearing with all the grace of a dying animal, sputtering, coughing, the heater blowing cold air against the windshield no matter how high David cranked the dial. He’d been driving for six hours with one working headlight and a gas gauge that had been flirting with empty since the last town, which had been nothing but a gas station and a church and a sign that said SEE YOU NEXT YEAR in peeling red paint.
His fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard the knuckles had gone white an hour ago and just never bothered to change back.
The cottage appeared through the trees like something out of a fever dream. Windows glowing warm and orange against the dark. Smoke curling lazy from the chimney. Snow piled on the roof in thick, heavy drifts that looked like they could slide off and crush a person without a second thought.
David cut the engine. The silence rushed in like water through a broken hull.
His phone was dead. Had been since the highway exit, which was fine, because the last thing he needed was another notification from the group chat that nobody had replied to. He’d sent a text three hours ago, just a quick almost there, save me a beer, and watched it sit there, unread, while the signal bars flickered and died.
They’d see him when they saw him. That was the thing about being the guy who always texted first. You got used to being ignored.
He reached for the door handle. Stopped.
The snow was falling heavier now. Thick, fat flakes that caught in the porch light and swirled like they were dancing to music he couldn’t hear. The cottage sat there, patient and ancient, and David felt the weight of it pressing against his chest, a pressure that had nothing to do with the altitude.
He didn’t want to go inside.
He wanted to turn the key, put the Jeep in reverse, and drive until the gas ran out.
But that was stupid. That was just the exhaustion talking, the six-hour drive and the empty passenger seat and the fact that he’d been the last one invited to this trip, the afterthought, the oh yeah, David should come too that had come three days after everyone else had already RSVP’d. He’d heard the pause on the phone when Chester called. The little hesitation that said we didn’t plan for you, but sure, whatever, the more the merrier.
The more the merrier.
He’d been riding that phrase since middle school.
David pushed the door open. The cold hit him like a fist to the throat. He sucked in a breath, grabbed his duffel from the passenger seat, and dropped out of the Jeep into snow that swallowed his boots past the ankles.
Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.