“Not at all.” Louis’s father returns his attention to me, his hand slipping off my fiancé’s shoulder. “As I said, it is a game. But I encourage you to take it seriously. In merely”—he steals a glance at the grandfather clock nearby—“a few minutes’ time, this year’s Krampusnacht will begin.”
I look around at the room, at all of their smirking faces. The sound of their laughter still rings in my ears. I bled, and they laughed. Louis won’t meet my eyes. This is getting seriously creepy, and we still haven’t started whatevergamethis is.
“I’m not so sure I’m in the mood to play anymore,” I say.
“It’s too late to back out now,” Louis’s father says with an unnerving smile. “You’ve already signed the book.”
I glance over my shoulder at the yellowed page, bearing my signature and no sign of the blood that dripped on it. My skin crawls. My gut screams that something iswronghere.
“As the newcomer to the game, you’ll play the first hour outside,” Louis’s father says, and my attention snaps back to him.
I laugh, entirely certain it’s a joke, until I realize no one else is smiling anymore. Instead they gaze at me with something cruel in their eyes. Again I get a glimpse of that strangehunger.
“Outside,” I repeat flatly. “In the snow.”
“Just for one hour,” Louis’s father says. “Then you may join the rest of us in the house to hide until sunrise.”
Even in the warmth of this cabin, my skin prickles at the memory of the biting chill outside. It’s the middle of the night, and it’s the kind of cold that can kill, out there.
Fast on the heels of that thought comes the memory of flipping through the book. All of those crossed-out names before Anna’s appeared. I glance at her; our eyes meet briefly, one of her eyebrows arching, and I recall her warning to run.
I look back at Louis’s father.
“No,” I say. “I’m not going out there.”
Louis’s father raises his eyebrows. “Nois not an option.”
I look at Louis, who avoids my gaze, and bark a mirthless laugh. “No to the whole thing,” I say. “I’m done with whatever hazing ritual or prank this is. I want to go home, Louis.”
Louis slowly raises his eyes to mine. “You heard him,” he says. “That’s not an option.”
“Because I signed a stupid book?” I scowl. “No. Come on. I get it, very funny to tease the new girl, ha-ha. But that’s enough.”
Louis turns to look at his father. “Um… what now?”
His father’s brow crinkles in disappointment. “Adrian,” he says.
Louis’s brother is on his feet in an instant, grinning in a vicious way that makes every hair on my body rise in alarm. “Yup.”
“Just give me five minutes to talk to her,” Louis says. But he doesn’t intervene as his father and brother move toward me.
“No time,” his father says. “It’s almost midnight, we need to get her outside.”
I step back, bumping into the desk that holds that awful book. “Louis?”
As Adrian steps closer, I’m struck by an urge to grab the pen; any weapon is better than no weapon at all. But that’d be aninsane thing to do. Wouldn’t it? He and his family would never forgive me if I turned violent in their house. It’d be so rude of me. Solow-class.
In the moment I hesitate, Adrian grabs me by the arm. I cry out, and Louis’s father grabs the other. I struggle, but I’m helpless against two men so much bigger than me as they haul me out of the room.
Chapter
Five
“Louis!” I scream, looking back at him.
My fiancé trails after us, but he doesn’t try to stop his family from manhandling me. His mother and sister-in-law bow their heads together on the couch, whispering behind their hands as they watch their husbands drag me from the room.
“Wait,” Louis says weakly, as I’m half carried, half dragged down the hallway in front of him. “She still doesn’t understand. I need to make sure she’s taking this seriously.”
