Chapter 2: The First Morning
The back door swung inward with a groan that was more than just old hinges. Ivy stepped through first, her arms wrapped around a bundle of split logs that had been stacked under the porch overhang, the wood dry and cold against her chest. Mary followed a breath behind her, carrying her own armful, and the wind pushed in around them both, a sharp gust that carried snow and the smell of frozen earth and something else, something faintly sweet, like pine resin left too long in a closed room.
The door slammed shut behind them. The latch caught with a sound that was too final for such a simple mechanism.
Cold air lingered in the small mudroom, curling around their ankles, refusing to dissipate into the warmth of the cottage proper. Ivy stood still for a moment, logs pressed against her worn jacket, and watched her own breath plume in front of her face. The cold was stubborn in here. It clung to the walls, to the floorboards, to the thin layer of frost that had formed on the window glass despite the fire roaring in the great room just beyond.
Mary set her logs down first. They landed on the hearth with a clatter that echoed through the empty space, and a few pieces of bark scattered near the grate, dark against the dust that had settled there. She brushed the snow from her sleeves, the motion slow and deliberate, like she was trying to occupy her hands so they wouldn’t do something else.
Ivy was still standing in the doorway between the mudroom and the great room. Her eyes had found something on the floor.
A single page of music, pale and thin, lay on the hardwood near the base of the hearth, as if it had been dropped there. Or placed there. The edges were curled, the paper yellowed and brittle. The ink was brown, faded with age, and the staff lines seemed to waver, like they’d been drawn by a hand that wasn’t entirely steady.
Ivy didn’t remember dropping it. She didn’t remember seeing it before. And yet her body moved toward it without her having to think, the logs in her arms forgotten, landing in a heap on the cold stone with a sound she barely registered.
Mary watched her. Across the room, through the dim light, her dark eyes were fixed on Ivy’s face, reading something Ivy couldn’t name. She didn’t say anything. She just stood there, hands still, watching.
Ivy bent down slow.
The paper was cold to the touch. Colder than the air around it, colder than the wood she’d carried, colder than it had any right to be. The fibers felt wrong under her fingertips, too dry, too fragile, like it would crumble to dust if she pressed too hard. She picked it up anyway, lifting it carefully, turning it toward the light from the fire.
The music was familiar.
The melody was something she couldn’t quite place, a carol she should have known, something that hovered on the edge of recognition like a word on the tip of her tongue. But the notes had been rearranged, twisted, turned back on themselves in ways that made her chest tighten. The key signature didn’t look right. Time signature. Tempo marking. All slightly off, like someone had rewritten a Christmas hymn from memory but gotten every second detail wrong.
She could hear it in her head. The way she heard all music, the way she’d always read scores, ink translating into sound without conscious effort. Wrong notes. Wrong intervals. A harmony that slid against the melody like a blade against a whetstone.
And at the bottom of the page, in the corner, scrawled in a hand that was too familiar, too childish, too much like her own:
I know what they’re singing.
Ivy’s breath caught.
Mary’s voice cut through the silence, low and careful. “What is it?”
Ivy didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t. Her eyes were locked on the handwriting, on those seven words that she had never written, not that she could remember, but that she recognized anyway, recoated the way you recognize a voice from a dream you can’t quite recall when you wake.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. The lie was paper-thin.
Mary took a step toward her. The floor creaked under her weight, a long, low sound that seemed to travel through the walls. “Ivy. You’re white. What’s on the paper?”
Ivy straightened. Her knees cracked. She folded the page carefully, once, twice, and slid it into the pocket of her jeans. The contact of paper against fabric felt like something settling into place, like a lock clicking shut.
“Just music,” she said. “Old sheet music. Probably left here by the owners. “Mary studied her. Those dark eyes, so patient, so watchful. She knew Ivy well enough to know when she was being lied to. But she also knew Ivy well enough to know when pushing wouldn’t get her anywhere. She let it go. Her shoulders dropped, just slightly, and she turned toward the pile of logs Ivy had abandoned on the hearth.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked, and the question was generous, an open door Ivy could walk through or close.
“Not right now.” Ivy tucked her hands into her jacket pockets. The paper crinkled against her knuckles. “We should get the fire going. It’s cold in here.”
Mary didn’t argue. She set the logs on the grate with careful precision, arranging them in a pattern that spoke to years of practice, of building fires in fireplaces and camp pits and all the other places the group had gathered over the years. Ivy watched her work, watched the flex of her shoulders under her sweater, the way her fingers moved with deft efficiency, and felt something twist in her chest that she didn’t want to name.
Mary Ashcroft had been her steady presence through so many things. Through late nights studying, through fights with her parents, through the dark days after her grandmother died and the world had felt like it was ending. Mary was the one who knew about the songs in Ivy’s head, the humming, the way she couldn’t sit still when something was wrong. Mary was the one who held her hand and didn’t ask questions.
And Ivy was betraying her.
The thought surfaced before she could stop it, ugly and sharp, and she shoved it back down where it lived, in that dark place she’d been carefully ignoring for weeks now. Noelle’s face flashed through her mind, golden and reckless and so goddamn alive, and Ivy bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste copper.
Mary knelt by the hearth, striking a match. The flame caught, spread, climbed up the kindling and the dry wood, and the fire crackled to life with a sound that was warm and wrong at once, like the cottage itself was responding to something.
“Talk to me,” Mary said, still facing the fire. Her voice was quiet. Even. “You’ve been off since we got here. More than the cottage is making everyone else off.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Mary turned. The firelight caught her face, cast shadows across her features, made her look older somehow. “You found something in that paper. Something you didn’t expect. I know you, Ivy. I know when you’re hiding something.”
“And I know you,” Ivy said, the words sharper than she meant them to be. “I know you took down the stockings.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.
Mary’s face went pale. Her hands, still resting on her knees, tightened into fists. She stared at Ivy for a long moment, and Ivy could see the battle playing out behind her eyes, the calculation, the weighing of how much to admit.
“I didn’t,” Mary said finally. “I didn’t take them down.”
“You were the last one at the mantel last night. I watched you touch your stocking. I watched you look at the others.” Ivy’s voice was flat, careful. “And this morning, they were gone.”
“I didn’t take them down, Ivy.” Mary’s voice cracked on the words. “I swear to God. I was going to. I thought about it. I thought about taking them all down, burning them, pretending they were never there. “She swallowed hard. “But I didn’t. “Ivy watched her. The firelight flickered between them. The paper in her pocket felt heavier than it should have, like it was pressing against her hip with more than just its physical weight. “Who did, then?”
“I don’t know.” Mary’s hands were shaking. She clasped them together, knuckles white. “I don’t know. I woke up this morning and they were gone. All of them. Like they’d never been there at all.”
The silence settled over the room like a blanket. Heavy. Suffocating. The fire crackled and popped, shadows dancing across the walls, and neither of them spoke.
Ivy moved first. She crossed the room slowly, her footsteps loud in the quiet, and she knelt down on the hearth beside Mary. Close enough to feel the warmth of the flames, close enough to see the tears that had gathered in Mary’s eyes without spilling over.
“I believe you,” Ivy said. The words came out softer than she’d intended.
Mary looked at her. Those dark eyes seemed to search Ivy’s face, looking for something, and whatever she found there must have been enough, because she let out a long, shaky breath and sagged forward.
“I’m scared,” Mary whispered. “I’m really scared, Ivy. Things are wrong here. More wrong than we’re pretending they are.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to be the one who jokes it off. I don’t want to be Gabriel, acting like everything’s fine when it’s clearly not.” Mary looked down at her lap. “But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”
Ivy reached out and took Mary’s hand. The contact was warm, familiar, and something in her chest loosened, even as guilt coiled beneath it.
“We stay together,” Ivy said. “We don’t go anywhere alone. We stick close, and we watch each other, and we figure out what this place wants.”
Mary let out a sound that might have been a laugh, though there was no humor in it. “What it wants. You say that like it’s a person.”
“It’s something,” Ivy said. “That paper I found. It wasn’t written for us. It was written for me.”
Mary’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?”
Ivy should have kept her mouth shut. She knew it even as the words left her. But Mary was looking at her with those wide, trusting eyes, and the weight of the secret she’d carried for so long, the childhood, the grandmother, the groundskeeper’s face pressed against a window, singing to her in a voice that was warm and wrong at once, it was pressing up against the back of her throat, demanding release.
“It’s a song. A carol. But it’s wrong.” Ivy pulled the paper from her pocket, unfolded it, held it out between them. “The notes are twisted. They follow a different logic than music should. And at the bottom, there’s handwriting. My handwriting. From when I was a kid.”
Mary stared at the page. Her lips parted slightly, and her eyes moved over the spidery brown ink, the wavering staff lines, the scrawl in the corner.
“I wrote something,” Ivy continued, her voice barely above a whisper. “When I was little. I was staying here. With my grandmother, at a place called Yule Lodge. It was a Christmas resort, a big old building out in the woods. “She paused. “She used to bring me here in the winter. And there was a groundskeeper. I remember his face pressed against a window. I remember him singing to me.”
“Singing what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember the words. But I remember the feeling.” Ivy’s hand trembled slightly. “Like the song was reaching for me. Trying to pull me into it.”
Mary was very still. Her grip on Ivy’s hand had tightened, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.
“I think I’m the reason he disappeared,” Ivy said quietly. “I think I wrote something that night, something I don’t remember, and it’s connected to whatever’s happening here. The disappearances. The music. The stockings with our names.”
The fire popped. A log shifted, sending up a shower of sparks that died before they reached the stone.
“You don’t know that,” Mary said finally. “You were a kid. You don’t even remember what you wrote.”
“But it’s my handwriting.” Ivy looked down at the page, at those seven words scrawled in a hand that was younger than hers but unmistakably the same. “I know what they’re singing. I wrote it. That means I knew what was singing. That means I knew what was here, and I forgot.”
The words hung in the air between them, heavy and cold.
Wood smoke curled behind them, weaving through the dim light, gray tendrils that seemed to move with a purpose of their own. The fire crackled, but the sound felt distant now, muffled, like the cottage was drawing a curtain around them.
Mary reached out and touched the page. Her fingers hovered over the ink, not quite making contact, like she was afraid of what she’d feel.
“It’s warm,” she said softly.
Ivy looked down. She hadn’t noticed. The paper was cold when she’d picked it up, freezing to the touch, but now it seemed warmer, like it had absorbed heat from her body, or from something else.
The words at the bottom of the page seemed clearer now. Sharper. As if they were still drying, still being written in real time.
I know what they’re singing.
“Mary,” Ivy said, and her voice came out thin. “We need to leave. We need to get everyone and leave.”
“We can’t,” Mary said. “There’s a blizzard coming. The roads are already impassable. Grace said the forecast called for two more feet before morning.”
“There has to be something. A snowmobile, a truck, anything.”
“Ivy.” Mary’s voice was gentle but firm. “There’s nothing. We’re stuck here. We’re stuck here with whatever this place is, and the only thing we can do is stay together and wait it out.”
Ivy looked at the fire. The flames danced and flickered, casting shadows that moved wrong, that lingered too long before fading. She could feel it pressing against the edges of her consciousness, the melody she’d seen in the paper, the twisted carol, threading through her thoughts like a needle through cloth.
“Then we find it,” she said. “Whatever it is. We find it and we stop it before it takes anyone else.”
Mary nodded slowly. “I’m with you.”
Ivy looked at her, at the firelight on her face, and felt something hot and desperate surge through her chest. Fear and guilt and love and longing, all tangled together in a knot she couldn’t untie.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For staying.”
“Where else would I go?”
The question hung between them, and for a moment, Ivy could feel the weight of everything they hadn’t said to each other. The things they’d done, the secrets they’d kept, the distance that had grown between them without either of them acknowledging it.
Mary was still looking at her, and there was something raw in her eyes, something that made Ivy’s heart skip.
“Mary,” she started.
“Don’t.” Mary shook her head. “Just. Don’t. “Ivy closed her mouth. She looked away, at the fire, at the shadows, at the empty hooks on the mantel where the stockings had been. The silence stretched between them, heavy and unbroken.
The door swung shut on the cold. It had been open this whole time, just a crack, the back door they’d come through, and now it closed with a soft, decisive click, like the cottage itself was sealing them in.
Neither of them moved. They sat together on the hearth, watching the fire burn, listening to the wind pick up outside, feeling the weight of the house settle around them.
Ivy put the page in her pocket.
Neither of them said anything.
But the paper was warm against her thigh, warmer than it should have been, and Ivy could have sworn she could hear it singing.
The wind picked up outside, a low howl that rattled the windows and sent snow spiraling across the yard. The fire in the hearth flickered, dimmed, flared again, and the shadows leaping across the walls grew longer, darker, more ambitious.
Ivy watched the flames, feeling the weight of Mary beside her, the warmth of her body, the solid reality of her presence. It grounded her. Steadied her. Made her feel like she could face whatever was coming. And that terrified her more than anything the cottage might hold.
Mary’s hand was still wrapped around hers. She didn’t pull away. Ivy flexed her fingers, gently, tentatively, tracing the lines of Mary’s palm.
“Mary,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Mary’s voice was barely audible. “It’s been a long day. We’re all tired, and scared, and this place is pulling everything out of us that we’ve been trying to keep buried. You don’t have to apologize for surviving.”
“That’s not what I’m apologizing for.”
Mary looked at her then, those dark, fathomless eyes filled with something complicated and unreadable. “I know.”
The silence settled again, thicker this time. The fire crackled. The wind howled. And somewhere in the house, in a direction Ivy couldn’t place, a floorboard creaked.
Neither of them moved to investigate.
Time stretched and condensed in that warmth. The fire rebuilt itself in little under an hour, Mary feeding logs with a quiet rhythm, and Ivy watching her, struggling. The fear eased its grip, or maybe it just changed shape. Something else pushed in behind it.
Mary’s hands, black with soot and splinters, rested on her knees. She was staring at the fire, cheeks flushed, breathing slow, and something about the curve of her neck, the way her jaw tightened when she swallowed, caught Ivy somewhere between the lungs. “Mary.” The name came out softer than she intended, threadbare. “If we’re really stuck here tonight, I don’t want to spend it across the room from you.”
Mary’s breathing hitched. She still didn’t look at her. “Ivy, we’re not. We.”
“I’m not asking for anything else.” Ivy leaned forward, an inch at a time. “Just. You’re the only thing that feels solid in this whole place. I just want to be close to you.”
This was partially true. The other part was a need to feel something other than the dread, to remind herself she was alive. And beneath that, guilt, skulking. Mary turned. The firelight flickered in her eyes. “You’re so fucking confusing,” she said softly, but she didn’t pull away when Ivy leaned in.
“We don’t have to.” Ivy’s mouth was dry. “I just, I just want to touch you. With my hands. Maybe with my mouth. No. I shouldn’t. “Shouldn’t?” Mary’s voice had gone lower, rougher. “Why not?”
“Because if we start, I’m not going to be able to stop.” The confession left her ragged.
The silence that followed was a fragile, living thing. Mary reached down, slowly, and pressed her hand flat against Ivy’s chest, over her heart. It was hammering hard enough to bruise itself against her ribs.
“Then don’t stop,” Mary whispered.
The words hit Ivy like a physical blow. Before she could talk herself out of it, she leaned forward and kissed her.
It wasn’t the gentle, careful kiss of fear and grief. It was desperate, searching, raw. Ivy’s hands came up and tangled in Mary’s hair, pulling her closer, and Mary made a sound like she’d been burned, pressing into her with equal fervor.
The world narrowed to this, to the warmth of Mary’s body, the taste of her, the way she shivered when Ivy’s lips found the sensitive spot on her neck. It was too much, and not enough, and Ivy wanted to drown in it.
“Fuck,” Mary breathed against her mouth. “I’ve been wanting to do that for hours. Days. Every time you look at me like I matter.”
“I don’t know how to handle this place without you,” Ivy admitted. “I don’t.”
Mary touched Ivy’s shoulders with soot-stained fingers, gripped the fabric, pulled her down roughly onto the old rug before the hearth. The texture was scratchy beneath them. The logs shifted, spilling orange sparks against the grate. Ivy landed half on top of her, the shock of it vibrating through her and making her bite down on a moan.
Mary was all over her, mouth at her jaw, her throat, the hollow behind her ear, open-mouthed and wet and filthy in the best way. Her hands slid down Ivy’s sides, gripped her hips, pulled her flush, and Ivy felt herself press down against her, grinding instinctually.
“You’re sure?” Ivy gasped, pulling back just far enough to see Mary’s face. “Are we absolutely sure? Because this changes things, Mary.”
“Stop talking,” Mary pulled her back down by the collar. “Stop trying to plan and rationalize. Just be here with me.”
Ivy didn’t need to be told twice. She captured Mary’s mouth again, less hesitant this time, more demanding. Her tongue pushed past Mary’s lips, and Mary opened for her eagerly, a strangled sound of approval vibrating through her chest.
They writhed together on the rug, a tangle of limbs and heat and desperate urgency, the fire painting their skins gold. Ivy’s hands found the hem of Mary’s sweater, pushed it up, slid underneath, fingers splaying across the warm, bare skin of her stomach.
Mary gasped, arching into her touch. “Yes. God. Yes.”
Ivy explored her with slowly escalating hunger. Her palms slid upward, skating over the curve of her ribs, the underside of her breasts. Mary’s back arched off the rug, pressing into her hands, a shameless request.
“Fuck, Mary. You’re so beautiful.” Ivy’s voice was low, wrecked. She bent down and took one nipple into her mouth, through the thin fabric of the bra, wetting it, tasting her through the barrier.
Mary whimpered. Her fingers tangled in Ivy’s hair, gripping, pulling her closer. “Don’t tease. Please. I need, I need.”
“I know what you need.” Ivy reached around and unclasped the bra in one practiced motion. The garment slid away, and Mary’s chest was bare in the firelight, her breasts flushed and hard-tipped.
Ivy was mesmerized. She dipped her head again, this time with nothing between them, her tongue flat against the straining nipple, circling, laving, her fingers in the same dance on the other side. Mary groaned, a raw, animal sound that shot straight between Ivy’s legs.
“Look at you,” Ivy breathed, pulling back just enough to admire her handiwork. Mary’s skin was blotchy with arousal, her lips swollen, her eyes half-lidded and dark. Dried leaves from the firewood had stuck to her hair, and she didn’t care. “Fucking gorgeous.”
“Shut up and take my pants off.”
Ivy laughed, a breathless, desperate sound, and obeyed. She fumbled with the button of Mary’s jeans, her fingers clumsy with want. Mary helped her, lifting her hips as the denim slid down her legs, kicking it away.
The underwear went with them. Ivy sat up, staring openly at Mary, sprawled across the rug, a mess of pale skin, flushed cheeks, and her spread thighs still trembled.
“You going to just look at me?” Mary asked, voice tapering into a gasp as Ivy leaned forward and traced a single finger down her slick center.
“No,” Ivy said darkly. “Not just look.”
The interruption came not as a sound, but as a displacement of air. A draft that shouldn’t have been there, sliding across the fire-warmed room like a blade between ribs. Gabriel’s voice followed a half-second later, thick with the kind of forced cheer that had been fraying at the edges since sunrise.
“Hope we’re not interrupting anything.”
Ivy jerked back from Mary as if she’d been burned. The space between them filled with cold air and the sharp smell of ash. Mary’s hands were already tugging at her sweater, pulling it down, smoothing it over her hips, and the flush on her cheeks was half shame, half something else entirely.
Ivy scrambled to her feet. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again, but no sound came out. The paper in her pocket pressed against her thigh like a brand.
“Shit,” she managed. The word came out watery, unconvincing. “We were just, we were warming up by the fire, and.”
“Didn’t look like you were warming up.” Gabriel’s voice had an edge to it, but it was hollow, automatic, like he was reading lines from a script he’d already memorized. His eyes didn’t land on them. They darted around the room, landing on the empty mantel, the bare hooks, the piano in the corner, the windows. Everywhere but on the two women scrambling to collect themselves.
Mary stood, brushing dust from her jeans. Her face was composed now, the mask sliding back into place with practiced ease. “We should go check on the others,” she said, and her voice was steadier than Ivy felt. “Make sure everyone’s awake. Figure out what we’re doing today.”
She didn’t look at Ivy as she crossed the room toward the stairs. Ivy watched her go, feeling something cold settle in her chest that had nothing to do with the draft.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” she said to no one in particular.
The four of them stood in a loose cluster near the entrance, watching her. Gabriel was still gripping the doorframe like it was the only thing keeping him upright. Joseph had a piece of paper in his hands, unfolding it, smoothing the creases with careful, methodical fingers. Angel stood slightly apart, her sketchbook tucked under one arm, her eyes fixed on the mantel. Chester had drifted toward the window.
Ivy followed their gazes. The stockings were gone. She’d known that, had seen it this morning, but seeing the empty hooks again sent a fresh spike of cold through her veins. Twelve hooks. Twelve names. Now nothing.
“We should all stay together,” she said, and her voice sounded like someone else’s. “Today. We should stay together.”
Ivy turned and went up the stairs without waiting for a response. She could feel their eyes on her back, and she hated it, hated how exposed she felt, how raw. The paper in her pocket rustled with each step, whispering against her thigh, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was listening to her heartbeat.
“What the fuck was that?” Gabriel said when she was out of earshot. He was still gripping the doorframe, his knuckles white. The wood groaned under the pressure. “Leave it.” Joseph’s voice was low, measured. He smoothed the paper against his chest, reading it again, his dark eyes moving over the cramped script. “Whatever’s going on between them, it’s not our business.”
“Not our business? Two who were in here last night are sneaking around and lying about it, and you’re telling me it’s not our business?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Gabriel, everyone’s on edge.” Joseph’s tone was patient, the kind of patience that came from years of talking people down, of being the steady voice in chaos. “Ivy and Mary are scared. They’re not the enemy.”
“Then who is?” Gabriel’s voice cracked on the word. He looked away, jaw tight. It was the first time any of them had heard him sound genuinely frightened, and the silence that followed was heavy with it.
Angel moved first. She crossed the room slowly, her bare feet silent on the cold floor, and stopped in front of the mantel. She reached up and touched one of the empty hooks, her fingers trailing over the brass curve. Her face was unreadable, but her hand was shaking, just slightly.
“Joseph,” she said, and her voice was distant, dreamy. “What else is on the paper?”
Joseph unfolded it again, though he’d already memorized every word. He read it aloud, his voice flat and even:
“Twelve came singing, one by one. Only the last will see the sun. Sing along, little children, while you still can.”
The words hung in the air like something solid. Gabriel stopped pacing. Chester turned from the window. Even the fire seemed to dim, the flames pulling back as if the words themselves had pushed them away.
“That’s not all,” Joseph said. His eyes moved down the page. “There’s something else. Smaller. At the bottom.”
“What does it say?” Angel asked.
“It’s hard to read.” Joseph tilted the paper toward the light. “It’s. It’s a name. A single name.” He paused. The silence stretched.
“Whose name?” Gabriel’s voice was barely a whisper.
Joseph looked up. His face was pale. He opened his mouth to speak, but the word that came out wasn’t a name at all. It was a question.
“Where’s Grace?”
Chester went very still. He had been half-turned toward the window, his hand pressed flat against the cold glass, and now he was motionless, his reflection staring back at him like a stranger.
“She said she was going to get more firewood,” he said, his voice too measured, too reasonable. “About twenty minutes ago. She said she’d be right back.”
Gabriel moved toward him, his earlier panic hardening into something sharper, more dangerous. “She’s been gone twenty minutes? For firewood?”
“She said the pile by the porch was low. She wanted to check the shed.” Chester was still looking at the window, at the treeline, at the snow falling in thick, silent curtains. “She said she’d be right back.”
“But she’s not back.” Gabriel’s voice was flat.
No one moved. The fire crackled and popped, casting long shadows that shifted and writhed across the walls. Angel’s gaze was still fixed on the empty hooks, her pencil hovering over her sketchbook, though she hadn’t drawn anything in hours. She was frozen in that in-between state, half-present, half-somewhere else, and the silence around her seemed to hum with something unspoken.
“Maybe she got lost,” Joseph offered, but the words sounded hollow even to him. “Maybe she took the wrong path. It’s snowing hard out there. Easy to lose your bearings.”
“Maybe,” Chester repeated. He pressed his palm harder against the glass, as if he could see through the falling snow, as if he could bring her back by force of will alone. The glass fogged around his hand. “Maybe.”
The minutes crawled by. Gabriel paced near the exit door, his footsteps a steady, anxious rhythm on the worn floorboards. He gripped the doorframe, checked it, looked out, ducked back in. Over and over. The motion was compulsive, almost mechanical, his body moving through the ritual even though his mind was elsewhere. He muttered under his breath, words that didn’t quite cohere, fragments of sentences left unfinished.
“She had a jacket,” Chester said suddenly. “She had a jacket and boots. She knows how to dress for this weather. She’s been coming up here her whole life.”
“Doesn’t matter. “Gabriel stopped pacing. He was glaring at the door, at the snow, at the treeline. “If she’s out there, she’s in danger. We need to go looking for her.”
“Gabriel, we don’t even know where to start.” Joseph folded the note and tucked it into his pocket. “The snow would have covered any tracks by now.”
“Then we make tracks. We search the perimeter. We call her name. We don’t just stand here.”
“We can’t all go.” Angel’s voice was so quiet that at first they didn’t register she’d spoken. She was still standing at the mantel, still staring at the empty hooks, her pencil held loosely in her fingers. “We need to stay together. But we also need to stay here. If she comes back, someone needs to be here.”
“She’s not coming back.” Gabriel’s words were blunt, brutal. “She’s not coming back, because something in this godforsaken place took her, just like it took the stockings, just like it’s been taking everything since we got here.”
“Gabriel.” Joseph’s voice was a warning.
“Don’t Gabriel me. You know I’m right. You can feel it. That note, the names, the way this place hums at night like it’s singing to itself.” Gabriel’s voice was rising now, cracking at the edges. “We’re not guests here. We’re. We’re part of the song.”
He stopped. The words hung in the air, ugly and final. The fire popped. A log shifted, sending up a shower of sparks that died before they reached the stone.
Angel turned from the mantel. Her sketchbook was in her hands now, and she was staring at the page she’d been drawing, her face unreadable. “Gabriel’s right.”
Joseph looked at her, surprised. “You believe him?”
“I don’t want to.” Angel’s voice was quiet, careful. “But look at this.”
She held out the sketchbook. The page was covered in half-finished sketches, dark pencil lines and smudges of charcoal, the kind of automatic drawing she did when her mind was elsewhere. There were trees and snow and the outline of the cottage, shapes that had emerged from her hand without conscious thought. In the margins, though, denser forms crowded together, figures half-emerged from the paper, thin arms and hollow eyes and mouths open in silent song.
And in the center of the page, drawn with more care than anything else, was a single figure. A tall figure, broad-shouldered, wearing a long coat and carrying something over its shoulder. A body. A limp, human-shaped body, hanging over its shoulder like a sack of grain.
The pencil hovered, frozen mid-stroke, and Angel stared at the empty hooks on the mantel as if she’d only just remembered they existed. The sketchbook lay open in her lap, the page filled with her automatic scrawl, and her hand trembled slightly from the tension of holding still for so long. The firelight caught the graphite, made it gleam, and the figure at the center of the page seemed to shift in the flickering light, its burden slung over one shoulder, its face a hollow smudge.
Her stomach tightened.
She closed the sketchbook slowly, pressing the covers together like she could trap the image inside, keep it from escaping into the room. The leather was warm from her lap, familiar under her fingers, but the weight of it felt different now. Heavier. Like the paper had absorbed something it shouldn’t have. “What?” Joseph asked. He’d been watching her, the note still in his hand, his dark eyes tracking her every movement. “What did you draw, Angel?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Just. Shapes. The way the fire makes shadows.”
“You’ve been drawing more than shadows.” Joseph’s voice was gentle, but insistent. “You’ve been drawing figures. And that thing in the center, Angel. That’s not a shadow.”
“It’s nothing.” She said it too quickly. Her fingers tightened on the sketchbook’s spine. “I was just letting my hand wander. You know how I get.”
Joseph didn’t push. He folded the note and tucked it into his jacket pocket, then crossed the room to crouch beside her chair. He reached out, hesitant, and placed his hand over hers. His palm was warm, calloused from years of gripping books and pens and, more recently, the steering wheel of his car on long, sleepless drives.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Look at me.”
Angel raised her eyes to his. There was something fragile in them, something she usually kept buried beneath the calm surface she showed everyone else. Joseph saw it, and something in his expression softened.
“Whatever’s happening here,” he said, “we’re going to figure it out. Okay? We’re going to figure it out, and we’re going to leave, and we’re going to be fine.”
“You don’t know that. “No. I don’t.” He squeezed her hand. “But I know we’re better together than we are apart. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Angel’s breath hitched. She looked away, at the fire, at the shadows, at Chester still standing by the window with his palm pressed flat against the cold glass.
“She’s been gone too long,” Chester said. His voice was quiet, controlled, but there was a tremor underneath it, a crack in the facade he’d been maintaining since they’d arrived. “Grace is. She’s never gone this long without saying something.”
Gabriel’s pacing quickened. His boots struck the wooden floor in a rhythm that was almost frantic, a percussion that filled the silence Chester’s words had left behind. “We should go look for her. We should all go. Split up into pairs, search the perimeter.”
“We already said we can’t all go.” Joseph stood, letting go of Angel’s hand. “If she comes back and no one’s here, she’ll go looking for us, and then we’ll be even more scattered.”
“Then we go in pairs. Three pairs. Cover more ground.”
“And leave the cottage empty?” Chester turned from the window. His face was pale, his jaw tight. “No. No, we stay together. All of us. In this room. We wait.”
“Wait for what?” Gabriel’s voice cracked. “Wait for her body to show up in the snow? Wait for whatever’s out there to decide it’s hungry again?”
“She’s not dead.” Chester’s words were sharp, final. “She went to get firewood. That’s all. She went to get firewood, and she got turned around, and she’s going to walk through that door any minute with an armful of logs and a story about how she found a deer trail or a frozen stream or something. That’s what’s going to happen.”
The conviction in his voice was desperate, load-bearing. No one called him on it.
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. The sound was loud in the silence, almost violent, and everyone in the room jumped.
“She’s a smart girl,” Chester continued, softer now. “She knows how to handle herself. She’s been coming up here her whole life. She’s not going to get lost in the woods.”
Gabriel stopped pacing. He stood in the middle of the room, shoulders hunched, and stared at the front door with an intensity that bordered on desperate.
“Then where is she?”
The question hung in the air, unanswered.
And then, like an answer to a prayer no one had spoken, the front door swung open.
Cold air flooded the room, carrying with it a swirl of snow and the sharp, clean smell of winter. Grace Odell stepped through first, her arms full of firewood, her cheeks flushed with cold, snow dusting her shoulders and melting in her hair. She stomped her boots on the mat, sending clumps of white scattering across the floorboards.
“Got wood,” she said, and the words were so mundane, so utterly ordinary, that for a moment no one moved.
Carol Whitfield followed her inside, a second armful of logs balanced against her chest. She kicked the door shut behind her, the latch catching with a satisfying click, and stamped her feet, sending a cascade of snow onto the worn rug. Her dark hair was wet at the ends, her cheeks pink, but she was grinning, that sharp, polished grin she wore like armor.
“Don’t all rush to help at once,” she said dryly. “We managed to carry them all by ourselves, we’re fine.”
Grace crossed the room and deposited her armful of logs beside the hearth. The wood landed with a heavy thunk, sending a scattering of bark across the stone. She straightened, brushing snow from her sleeves, and looked around the room.
The tension was still thick in the air, a palpable weight, but it had shifted. Some of the sharpest edges had been blunted by her return, the fear replaced by a relief that was almost physical. Chester’s shoulders dropped. Gabriel’s pacing stopped. Even Joseph let out a breath he’d been holding for longer than he’d realized.
“Jesus,” Chester said, and his voice was shaky with relief. “Where the hell were you? You said you’d be right back.”
Grace blinked at him, confused. “I was getting firewood. The pile by the porch was low, so I went around to the shed. Carol came out to help. “She tilted her head. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“You were gone for twenty minutes.” Chester crossed the room to her, his steps quick. He stopped in front of her, close enough to touch, and his hand came up, briefly, as if he might reach for her face. He let it drop. “Twenty minutes, Grace. We thought.”
“You thought what?” Grace frowned. “It’s a big shed, Chester. And the snow’s coming down hard. We had to dig the wood out from under a tarp.” She glanced at Carol. “Didn’t we?”
Carol nodded, moving to the fireplace, where she set her own logs down with the same practiced efficiency. “We were maybe ten minutes total. Tops.” She straightened and brushed her hands together, dislodging flakes of bark. “What’s everyone so worked up about?”
Joseph stepped forward, the note in his hand again, half-crumpled from being handled so much. “We found something. A piece of paper. With a note about singing. And a name.”
Carol’s grin faltered. “A name? Whose name?”
“We don’t know. It was hard to read.” Joseph unfolded the paper and held it out, but Carol didn’t take it. She stared at it, her dark eyes scanning the cramped script, and her face went pale.
“It’s not a name,” she said slowly. “It’s. It’s a count. Twelve came singing. One by one.”
“I know,” Joseph said. “We read it.”
“But there’s more.” Carol’s voice was thin. She pointed at the bottom of the page, at the line that had been written smaller, fainter. “It says ‘The last will see the sun.’ The last.” She looked up, her eyes wide. “The last of what?”
The silence that followed was heavy.
Grace moved to the kitchen, her boots quiet on the worn floorboards. She filled the kettle, set it on the stove, and turned to face the room. Her face was composed, practical, the mask of the mom friend sliding into place, but her hands were slightly unsteady.
“I think,” she said carefully, “we need to talk about what happened last night. All of it.”
“What happened last night?” Gabriel’s voice was sharp. “Nothing happened last night. We all went to bed. We all woke up. That’s it.”
“No.” Ivy’s voice cut through the room. She was coming down the stairs, her hair loose, her face pale. Mary followed a few steps behind her, avoiding everyone’s eyes. “No, that’s not it. Not all of it.”
The room turned to look at her. “What do you mean?” Grace asked.
Ivy reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. Her hands were shoved deep into her jacket pockets, her shoulders hunched. “There was music last night. Before we went to bed. Someone was singing.”
“I heard it too,” Mary said quietly. “From outside. Like it was coming from the woods.”
“I thought it was the wind.” Gabriel’s voice was defensive. “I didn’t hear any singing.”
“It was a carol,” Ivy continued, ignoring him. “A Christmas carol. But it was wrong. The notes were twisted, like someone was singing it from memory but getting every second one wrong. I heard it through the walls, like it was coming from inside the house.” She pulled one hand from her pocket. In it was the folded sheet of music she’d found earlier. “And then I found this.”
She held it out. No one took it.
“It’s a song,” she said. “A carol. And at the bottom, there’s writing. My writing. From when I was a kid.”
“Your writing?” Grace’s frown deepened. “What do you mean?”
Ivy’s jaw tightened. She looked at Mary, who shook her head slightly, a silent warning. But Ivy ignored her.
“I used to stay here,” she said. “When I was a child. With my grandmother. There was a place up the road, a resort called Yule Lodge. She used to bring me here every winter.” She paused. “And there was a man. A groundskeeper. I remember his face pressed against a window, singing to me. And I remember. “She swallowed. “I remember writing something.”
The room was silent.
“That’s crazy,” Gabriel said finally. “That’s. That’s insane. You’re saying you’ve been here before? You never mentioned that.”
“I didn’t remember until we got here.” Ivy’s voice was flat. “I didn’t remember any of it until I saw that paper. But it’s my handwriting, Gabriel. I know it. I’ve been writing music since I was five years old, and that’s mine.”
Carol moved first. She crossed the room, took the paper from Ivy’s hand, and unfolded it carefully. Her eyes moved over the staff lines, the wavering notes, the scrawl at the bottom.
“It’s a song,” she said. “A Christmas carol. ‘Deck the Halls.’ But the melody’s wrong. The harmony is. Off. “I know.” Ivy’s voice was barely a whisper. “I can hear it. Every time I close my eyes, I can hear it.”
“So what does it mean?” Chester asked. “What does any of this mean?”
A gust of wind rattled the windows. The fire flickered, dimmed, and the shadows on the walls seemed to stretch, to lean in, as if the house itself was listening.
“I don’t know,” Ivy said. “But I think it means we’re not alone here. And I think whatever else is here.” She paused, her gaze sweeping the room. “It knows we’re here.”
“How do we stop it?” Gabriel’s voice was quieter than usual, stripped of its usual loudness. “How do we fight something we can’t see?”
“We don’t.” Angel’s voice cut through the room. Everyone turned to look at her. She was sitting in the chair by the fire, her sketchbook still closed in her lap, her eyes fixed on the flames. There was something strange in her expression, something distant that made her seem unreal, a story half-told.
“What?” Gabriel asked. “What do you mean, we don’t?”
“It’s a song, Gabriel.” Angel’s voice was soft, dreamy. “You don’t fight a song. You listen to it. You let it in. And when you let it in, it changes you.” She looked up, her eyes meeting his. “That’s what it wants. It wants us to listen.”
“Angel, that’s crazy.” Joseph moved toward her, crouching beside her chair. “You’re not making sense.”
“Am I?” She held out her sketchbook, open to the page she’d been drawing. The figure was there, the tall shape with the hollow face and the burden over its shoulder. The sketch was rougher now, the graphite smeared dark, but the figure was unmistakably there.
“That’s not a shadow,” she said. “That’s what’s been singing. That’s what’s been waiting.”
The fire popped and crackled, and the room was silent. The note was passed from hand to hand, a cold, fragile piece of paper that had already caused too much damage. Outside, the wind picked up, and the cottage settled around them like a held breath.
Grace stood by the stove, the kettle beginning to steam. She watched the room, her practical eyes moving from face to face. There was something in her expression that hadn’t been there before, a flicker of fear, just barely controlled.
“We should eat something,” she said finally, her voice steady. “We should have breakfast. Real food. And then we figure this out together.”
No one argued.
The great room shifted, people moving in different directions, the tension momentarily displaced by the mechanics of preparing a meal. It wasn’t relief, exactly, the current of fear still ran too close to the surface for that, but it was something to do, a way to be together without having to look each other in the eye.
Joseph had the iron grate open, feeding the fire with the logs Grace and Carol had brought in. The flames caught, flared, and the warmth spread outward, a welcome reprieve from the chill that had crept in with the door.
Gabriel stood in the center of the room, his arms wrapped around himself, watching the fire with an intensity that bordered on fixation. His shoulders were tight, his jaw clenched, and he kept shaking his head, small movements, like he was trying to dislodge something from his ears.
“I didn’t hear any singing,” he muttered. “There was no singing.” Gab.” Carol crossed to him, touched his arm. “We’re all shaken up. But we’re together, and we’re warm, and we have food. We’ll be okay.”
He looked at her, and his face softened, just slightly. His hand came up and covered hers. “Yeah. I know. I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” She said it gently, without judgment. “But you will be.”
He let out a breath, and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. “I don’t like this. “Nobody likes this.”
“Doesn’t make it better.”
“No.” Carol’s fingers tightened around his. “But we’re in it together.”
The words hung in the air, and for a moment, just a moment, the silence between them was something other than fear. Gabriel’s eyes searched hers, and she met them, unflinching, her polished surface cracking just enough to let him glimpse something raw underneath.
“We will be okay,” she repeated, and it was unclear whether she was trying to convince him or herself.
In the kitchen, Grace moved with a smoothness that was entirely rehearsed. She’d made breakfast in a dozen cottages like this one, in cabins on lakes, in Airbnbs, in every place the group had ever scattered to for a weekend. She knew the rhythm of it. Cast iron pan, butter, eggs, bread. The cheap drip coffee that they’d picked up at the last gas station before the roads became impassable. It was a routine that had sustained her through a lot of things, including, she realized with a start, a lot of feelings that she’d never had to have.
The eggs hit the pan with a sizzle that drew a small, unconscious smile from her. She poured the coffee from the old percolator into two mugs, one ceramic, one chipped at the rim, and steam rose, curling against the cold air of the cottage.
Chester drifted toward her, his hands jammed in his pockets. He stopped a few feet from the stove, his gaze straying back to the window, to the snow falling beyond the glass. He hadn’t blinked in a long time. “You okay?” Grace asked, her voice carrying over the sizzle of the pan.
“Fine.” He said it automatically, and the word sounded hollow even to him. He cleared his throat. “I’m fine. It’s just. This place is getting to me.”
“It’s getting to all of us.”
“I know.” He paused, and a breath escaped him, long and slow. “Grace. If something happened to you, if you’d been out there any longer, I don’t know what I’d do.”
She stopped moving, the spatula hovering over the pan. His words cut through the steam and the sizzle, landed somewhere deep in her chest, and she felt her throat tighten.
“Nothing happened,” she said, her voice soft. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Chester nodded. He didn’t look at her, but something in his shoulders loosened. He moved to the table and sat down heavily, his hands flat on the worn wood. The group filtered in, settling around the table, the click of mugs and clink of cutlery filling the space where words might have been.
Carol had leaned against the counter, watching them all, and something tugged at her mouth. She’d been sitting with Gabriel, but as the food started to spread across the table, she’d moved to the sink, rinsing her hands and watching the others through the steam rising from her coffee.
Ivy came down the stairs a few minutes later. She moved close to Mary, their shoulders brushing, a quiet acknowledgment.
“We got wood,” Grace announced, sliding the first plate of scrambled eggs onto the table. “And there are more logs in the shed. We’re stocked for the day.”
“Good,” Gabriel said, his voice too loud in the quiet. “We can wait out the storm. We’ll be fine.” He reached for a piece of toast and bit into it, telegraphing a confidence that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
The room worked through the motions of breakfast. The coffee was hot and bitter. The eggs were a little overdone. No one complained. The fire crackled. The wind pressed against the windows, a low, persistent groan. Sometimes the wind found a crack and whistled, and the whistle sounded, just barely, just on the edge of hearing, like a snatch of an old song.
“Ivy,” Angel said, setting down her fork. She hadn’t eaten much. “That music you found. Can you sing it?”
Ivy looked up, startled. “I. I mean. I can hum it. It’s not really a song you sing.” She paused. “It’s more like remembering a song you’ve only ever heard in a dream that’s fading.”
“Try.” The room went quiet. Ivy set her hands in her lap and closed her eyes, and for a moment, she just breathed. The fire crackled, the wind moaned, and the smell of woodsmoke filled her lungs. The music was there, somewhere in the back of her mind, plucking at her awareness like a cold finger.
She hummed.
The sound was low, a single note, hanging in the air. It wavered, uncertain, and then it resolved, found its footing, and wove into the next note, then the next. The melody was familiar, almost recognizable, the skeleton of a carol, but the intervals were wrong, the rhythm unsteady, and as she hummed, people pushed their plates away.
The notes rose and fell, tangled around one another, and the wind outside picked up, a low groan that threaded through the melody, bending it into something else. The fire flickered, blue at the base, and the shadows on the walls shifted like they were trying to keep time.
Angel’s sketchbook had fallen open in her lap, and her hand was moving, pencil skimming across the page. She was drawing the song, trying to capture it. Her face was pale, her eyes wide, but her hand hadn’t wavered.
Ivy hummed the last note, and it hung in the air for a long moment before fading.
The room was silent.
“That’s it,” Ivy said quietly. “That’s what I heard.”
“I’ve heard it too,” Carol whispered. She hadn’t touched her eggs. “Last night. From the kitchen. Just barely. Like someone singing under their breath.”
The words landed heavy in the room.
Grace pushed her chair back, standing abruptly. “I’m going to check the shed,” she said, her voice too bright, too casual. “Make sure we have enough wood for the night.”
“I’ll come with you.” Chester rose, following her toward the door.
Gabriel was watching the fire, his face unreadable. His hands were wrapped around his coffee mug, and his knuckles were white.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said finally. “I don’t believe in hauntings. I don’t believe that this cottage is alive, or that there’s something in the woods calling our names. I believe that we’re stressed, and we’re scared, and we’re letting our imaginations run away with us.”
“Then what was the note?” Joseph asked. “What was the music?”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know. A prank. A leftover from a previous guest. Something stupid that we’re blowing out of proportion.”
“And the stockings?” Angel’s voice was quiet. “They were there last night. Now they’re gone.”
“I. I don’t know.” Gabriel’s hands shook slightly, just barely visible. “Maybe one of us moved them. Maybe we did it without realizing.”
“Maybe.” Angel’s voice was soft with something that might have been pity. “Maybe that’s all it is.” She closed her sketchbook, slowly. “I hope you’re right, Gabriel. I really do.”
Gabriel looked at her, and for a moment, the mask slipped. There was something raw in his eyes, something frightened. It was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by the familiar bravado, but the crack had been visible, and everyone had seen it.
The wind picked up again, rattling the windows, and somewhere in the house, a door groaned on its hinges, a sound that wasn’t quite a voice, but was close enough.
The back stairs creaked under Star’s weight, each step groaning like the house itself was complaining about being disturbed. She emerged from the narrow hallway with a towel wrapped around her head, turban-style, a faded floral thing that looked like it had been hanging in that bathroom since the Nixon administration. Her face was scrubbed clean, bare of the careful makeup she usually wore, and it made her look younger, more vulnerable, more like the girl she’d been before she’d learned how to perform for a camera.
Noah followed a step behind her, his hair dripping onto his shoulders, leaving dark spots on his worn t-shirt. He’d clearly just gotten out of the shower too, but he’d skipped the towel, and the cold air of the cottage had already raised goosebumps along his arms. He shivered, despite the heat radiating from the woodstove in the great room, and wrapped his arms around himself.
The kitchen doorway framed them both, backlit by the weak afternoon light filtering through the frost-kissed windows. The smell of cooking food hit them like a wall, rich and savory, and for a moment, they both just stood there, taking it in.
“Smells amazing,” Noah said, his voice too loud in the quiet. He always talked too loud when he was nervous, a habit he’d never managed to break.
Grace looked up from the stove, where she was plating portions of something that might have been stew, might have been chili, the kind of hearty one-pot meal she’d thrown together from whatever was in the cottage’s sparse pantry. She’d found canned goods, dried beans, a bag of rice, and she’d made it work, because she always made things work.
“There’s coffee,” she said, nodding toward the percolator on the counter. The steam rose in soft curls, mingling with the warmth from the stove, and the smell of it cut through the heavier scent of the food. “Mugs are in the cupboard above the sink. Help yourself.”
Noah moved toward the coffee like it was a lifeline, his hands wrapping around the nearest mug with a grateful sort of desperation. He filled it to the brim, not bothering with cream or sugar, and took a long sip that burned his tongue but he didn’t care. The heat was grounding, a reminder that he was still here, still solid, still real.
Star drifted toward the table, her eyes scanning the room with the practiced ease of someone who was used to assessing a space for content opportunities. But her phone was in her pocket, and she didn’t pull it out. The light in here was wrong, too dim, too golden, and the shadows in the corners seemed to move in ways that didn’t match the flicker of the flames. “Where is everyone?” she asked, her voice carefully casual.
“Scattered,” Grace said. She set the last plate on the table, a heavy ceramic thing with a chip in the rim. “Ivy and Mary are in the great room. Gabriel’s by the hearth. I think Carol’s in the window, watching the snow. Joseph and Angel are wherever they’ve been all afternoon.”
“Chester?” Noah asked, taking another sip of his coffee.
“Went upstairs to grab a heavier sweater. Said he was cold.” Grace’s voice was carefully neutral, but her eyes flicked toward the stairs, and something in her expression tightened. She’d been watching the door since Chester had gone up, counting the seconds, measuring the distance.
The back door swung open, and David stomped in, a whirlwind of snow and cold air and too-loud laughter. His boots left muddy tracks across the floor, and his cheeks were flushed with cold, his hair dusted with white. He was carrying an armful of firewood, already split, and he dumped it in the bin by the stove with a heavy thunk.
“Motherfucker,” he said, shaking his head like a dog. “It’s coming down out there. Like, sideways. You can’t see three feet in front of your face.”
Gabriel looked up from the hearth, where he’d been poking at the fire with a long iron rod. “It’s a blizzard, Dave. That’s kind of what they do.”
“Yeah, but this one feels different.” David moved toward the stove, warming his hands over the heat. “The snow’s. I don’t know. It’s not falling right. Like it’s coming from all directions at once.”
“It’s called wind, dumbass.”
“Fuck you, I know what wind is. This isn’t wind.” David’s voice had a edge to it, something nervous that he was trying to cover with volume. “The trees are moving. All of them. Even the ones that shouldn’t bend that much.”
The room went quiet for a moment. Grace turned from the stove, a ladle still in her hand, and looked at him. “What do you mean, moving?” I mean. Fuck, I don’t know.” David ran a hand through his wet hair, frustrated. “They’re like. They’re leaning. There’s no wind down at ground level, and the trees are leaning. All in the same direction. Like they’re trying to get away from something.”
Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.