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She shows me how she does it, and it’s worrisome how good she is.

“Bachelorette, they’ll book a night package before they leave,” she says as she points out a group as we pass. “The tall one has already asked about wristbands, which she should only do in private. We do not advertise what we do here at night. We run as invite only, but we have a portal certain people can find.”

We stop past security, where Vesper is draped across a chair in front of a wall of screens, looking like a gothic princess. She and Nixie have a conversation that’s comprised of mostly insults, and results in three schedule changes.

“She likes you,” Vesper tells me on my way out. “You would have cried by now if she didn’t.”

I nod and quickly follow behind Nixie, and she leads us to Ares’s bar. There he walks her through a delivery problem, which she helps him solve in less than four minutes. Vero surfaces from a corner booth and asks if I have come to my senses yet and decided that I want a real man because the Scarecrow isn’t right in the head.

Nixie responds before me. “Vero, Valli and Kayla must be similar. When she finds that real man, I’ll tell her to let Valli know.”

Ares laughs, and Vero grumbles something, but must decide not to push his luck as we leave.

She then shows me the medic station and the three ways to reach it from any zone. Nixie stops at the corner of the haunted mazes and points out sight lines that I have never noticed; how there is no place on the main paths guests can stand without being visible from at least two camera angles.

“People think the scary thing about the island is my hunters,” she says. “But the scariest thing about the island is me. The hunters are the teeth. I’m the one who decides the target that gets bitten.”

By lunchtime my feet hurt. By two I’ve fielded a vendor dispute, found a lost child, and took a phone call from a woman who wanted to book “whatever made her sister scream like that” for her husband’s birthday.

By three, I hit my first wall. Nixie asks me for the vendor contact sheet, and I bring her the wrong year’s information.

She looks at it and then at me. “Wrong.”

At first, I want to recoil into myself, hit with reminders of George and his insults. But Nixie simply waits with a raised brow while I find the right sheet, and when I hand it to her, she says, “Faster next time. Don’t go into your head—I’m not them.”

I freeze for a second. How the hell did she know? She saves the big thing I have heard her mention a few times for the end of the day. Unlocking the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulling out a thick binder, she drops it on my desk with a thud that rattles my corn-husk star.

The cover says HARVEST MOON in her handwriting.

“One night a year, the island runs from sundown to sunup for invitation only. Every hunter is active in every zone. Eleven months ago, we sold out. There is a waitlist with over four hundred names on it and multiple marriage proposals with my name on them if I let them in,” she says, sitting on the edge of my desk. “It’s the biggest day we run and I have not slept properly in weeks. It’s the actual reason you have a job; I cannot build that day alone. The last three who tried to help me no longer have a job.”

I open the binder to find guest profiles, medical forms, hunter assignments, and a fold-out map of the island covered in writing, the timings down to the minute.

“Every single guest on the list gets matched by hand. Every limit and trigger is read and cross-checked. Nothing on my island happens to anyone that they did not sign up for.”

She taps the map, and her nails land on the cornfield. “And this is the centerpiece—it always is. Which brings me to my last item of business.” She looks at me and my stomach falls. If she tells me my Cave is to be involved with someone else, I will lose my mind. “I need my scarecrow back, Valli. Benched hunters don’t headline. Whatever he has going on in his head, it needs to be fixed for this event.”

“What does Cave’s involvement look like?” I grit out.

Nixie laughs. “He is not one of the fuckers,” she says. “As my hunters couple up, I outsource, and trust me, I have a long list. But I need to know his head is in the game. People want to be chased through there, roughed up a little, but with no broken bones or cause to call the authorities.”

“He is fine,” I say, knowing it’s not one hundred percent true, but that he is getting there.

“I have known him for a long time, and I wasn’t sure he knew what he was outside that field. So believe me, nobody wants him cleared more than I do. Which is why you’re going to help me run his evaluation. You’re the only person alive he’ll behave for. Now go home.”

I’m at the door, dead on my feet and weirdly happy about today when she calls my name.

“Valli.” She doesn’t look up from her desk. “You did well today. This is the only time I’ll say it out loud, so enjoy it.”

By the time I reach the shed, the smell hits me—garlic, butter, and something roasting. When I walk through the doors, I see candles lit in jars and string lights hanging above the table.

Noa is wearing an apron and smiles when he spots me. “Before you say anything, Cipher has warned me that the number of candles I used was, quote, a fire code violation, and I want you to know I listened and then added six more.”

“Noa.”

“Rue helped me with the chicken, but the love is all mine.”

I cross the shed and take his face in both of my hands and kiss him. He makes a small sound into my mouth, and when I pull back, his eyes are still shut. “It’s perfect.”