MAGGIE
Maggie hadlast seen Fated Mountain Lodge in late spring, when flowers glimmered on the lawn and a soft flush of green graced the hillside above the lodge. This was her first time seeing it in the winter, and as the shuttle bus slithered through the snowy conditions into the lodge’s parking area, she could only think that this was when the lodge truly shone.
It was a rambling building with huge front windows and a roof capped with snow. To either side, snow-covered pines spread out as if to embrace it. With the blue sky and the high peaks of the mountains behind it, the lodge presented a picture that ought to grace a Christmas card—or a dozen social media posts, as Maggie guessed from the phones raised all around her to take pictures.
The shuttle ground to a stop in front of the lodge. Everyone rose, collecting their belongings and luggage items from the shuttle’s racks. Maggie shouldered her small bag, the only item she had brought with her. She helped an elderly lady with her bag and got a sweet smile in return.
“Are you here alone for the holidays, dear? Is anyone meeting you?”
“I’m here to work,” Maggie said, with a return smile that she hoped didn’t look too stilted.
It was true. It also wasn’t the whole story.
Not the whole story at all.
She stepped down from the shuttle and immediately found out that her low-topped town boots were unsuited to the mountain’s depths of snow. Trying not to get her legs too wet, she picked her way through, around, and over piles of snow and navigated a walkway that had been shoveled and salted, but was still treacherous. Hotel employees were helping unload the luggage and get the guests checked in. Unnoticed by anyone, Maggie walked into the lobby. Here she had to stop and let out an audible gasp.
The lobby of Fated Mountain Lodge was impressive at any time, a great open space with enormous windows looking out on the pine trees and mountains. Stairs went up to the second-floor guest rooms, and the high ceiling was large enough to accommodate a vintage biplane hanging above the check-in desk, just below the roof. But Maggie had never seen it decked for the holidays.
Dazzling lights glimmered everywhere. Huge fake snowflakes and glittering ornaments dangled from the ceiling. Fake snow and garlands draped anywhere they would stay, and a huge Christmas tree was set up in one corner. A fire flickered on the hearth. Some folding tables had been set up along the far wall to accommodate a variety of items, including gift baskets, books, jewelry, and boxes of candy. Maggie recalled that the lodge was holding a charity auction over the holidays and hastily wrenched her eyes away from all of that before she could linger on it. But there was nowhere to rest her eyes that wasn’t full of glittering temptation.
Maggie’s inner magpie sighed longingly.So many shinies. So beautiful. Just one ....
We are not here for shinies,Maggie replied firmly.
She marched over to the desk and took her place in the line of guests checking in—last in line, due to her gawking. A harried-looking Hester, the lodge owner, was staffing the desk herself, making notes in the old-fashioned ledger and handing out keys. Her curly mop of brown hair looked frizzier than usual, not really helped by a pair of reindeer antlers perched at a precarious angle atop it.
When Maggie finally made her way to the front of the line, Hester looked up, sighed a little, and said, “So you did come.”
“I did,” Maggie said. “I promised I would. I want to make amends.”
And part of those amends involved working off her debt to the lodge for having stolen from their guests.
She had been working hard over the past year to fix her involuntary theft problem. She was in therapy to deal with her kleptomaniac magpie, and it seemed to be working. Together, she and her magpie coveted, but they did not nab, and for the first time in her life, she had begun to feel at least a little in control.
The idea of working to make up to those she’d wronged was her therapist’s suggestion, which she had jumped on wholeheartedly, and she was both surprised and gratified that Hester had agreed.
She knew that she was lucky. She ought to be in prison. But she wasn’t, through the good graces of ...
“Are Fawkes and Leah here?” Maggie asked.
The detective duo who had unmasked her last spring had been serving as her informal parole officers—Fawkes and his mate Leah.
Maggie knew she should be grateful that they hadn’t turned her in. And she was, but the lack of freedom, the lack oftrust,also chafed. She just wanted to prove that she was more than ascrew-up who couldn’t handle her magpie side. More than the criminal they all thought she was.
More than the criminal’s daughter she had once been, trained in the family profession. She had left her family behind, or at least she hoped she had. She had gone to business school and then acting school; she was equally capable of walking into a boardroom or onto a stage with grace.
At least, that had once been true.
Now, after a lifetime of steadily losing control over her magpie side, being fired from job after job because she couldn’t stop committing petty theft, she was here at rock bottom, on her last chance. If she messed this up, she didn’t think she could stay out of prison this time.
“They couldn’t make it,” Hester said. “Apparently they have other plans for the holidays. Fawkes’s business partner Sam will be coming up to keep an eye on you instead. You know Sam?”
“Yes,” Maggie said, which was sort of true. She had only dealt with Fawkes and Leah, but she knew that they worked with another person at the detective agency.
“All right. So we’ve got a small problem, which is that we’ve had to move a bunch of people around because of a situation involving a burst pipe and heating issues.” No wonder Hester looked so frazzled. She was flipping through the ledger. “I’m going to try to find somewhere to put you, but you might end up sleeping on a cot in my and Mauro’s lodgings for a few days.”
Mauro was Hester’s mate, the lodge’s co-owner.
