Snowed In

Chapter 1 Ella

My older sister Jane glared at me, her dark eyes menacing in the glow from the fire.

“Let me tell you a story. It starts like this,” she said.

“‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for the megalomaniac four-year-old whose irresponsible aunt fed her twelve candy canes before dropping her off.”

I grinned, hoping to lighten the mood. “I don’t think that’s how it goes.”

She shook her head, black hair brushing her shoulders. “It does in this hellish version.”

Behind her, Willow, the niece I was an irresponsible aunt to, roared in jolly incoherence.

I slanted my eyes toward her and nearly choked.

She’d somehow managed to strip naked in the three minutes since we walked through the door, the light brown skin with golden undertones she inherited from Jane now on full display.

What was it with kids her age being allergic to clothing?

Jane caught my expression and turned to follow my gaze.

Together, we watched Willow grab the end of the garland that adorned the staircase and take off at a dead sprint.

The festive decor pulled loose with surprising violence.

Twine snapped. Twigs splintered in half and scattered small, stabby pieces of bark all over the living room carpet.

“Sweet Jesus, no,” Jane said.

Willow’s long black hair whirled behind her as she raced toward us. The greenery she clutched in her tyrannical little fist left a mess of pine needles and winterberries in her wake that would be a pain in the ass to clean up.

I am never going to live this one down.

As she neared, I caught a familiar tune through the madness and realized that she wasn’t incoherent, but scream-singing a badly butchered version of a holiday classic.

“Jangly balls! Jangly balls!”

Oh, God.

Where had she even heard that?

Jane and I reached for her as she ran past, but she managed to evade us, twisting and ducking like a running back at the peak of their game. Sensing freedom, she dropped the garland and fled down the hallway, her singing replaced by a sinister cackle that was unsettling coming from a four-year-old.

I turned back to my sister. “In my defense, I didn’t know she could reach the jar I hid the candy canes in.”

Jane pointed at me and opened her mouth, but before she could launch into what I’m sure would have been an epic telling off, a distant thud came from the back of the house. It sounded like Willow had literally just bounced off a wall.

“I will get you back for this,” Jane told me before hurrying off to save her sugar-addled daughter from herself.

“I’m sorry!” I called after her.

She flipped me the bird and disappeared down the hall.

I sighed. What a disaster. I loved spending time with Willow and was usually pretty good with her. Today had been an off day. One I’d pay for. Knowing Jane, it would take me weeks to convince her to let me babysit again.

A pocket door slid open in my periphery. Cropped blond hair peeked out from it, followed, slowly, by the head of my brother-in-law.

“Hey, Dave,” I said.

He glanced around the room like he was searching for threats. The lights from the nearby Christmas tree sparkled in the reflection of his black-framed glasses. His gaze landed on me, expression flat. “Go now, Ella. While you still can.”

Another thud echoed through the house, followed by Jane’s raised voice. Dave gave me a meaningful look and slid his office door closed.

I muffled my laughter as I made my escape. Jane wouldn’t thank me for it right now.

Outside, the winter wind whipped the freshly fallen snow into a flurry.

It spiraled into the spill of fluorescent white shining from the rear floodlights and coalesced into the arctic version of a dust devil.

The direction of the breeze shifted, and the mini snow tornado split in two.

For a brief moment, it was like I walked past a pair of enchanted winter sprites twining around each other at an Antarctician ball.

I could almost hear Jack Frost playing the ice pipes in the distance as he urged them on.

A heartbeat later, the wind died down, and they fell back to the ground, inanimate once more.

I smiled as my boots crunched over the freshly shoveled walkway.

Evergreens crowded the driveway, their boughs weighed down by today’s snowfall.

The steam from my breath hung in front of my face before drifting up and away.

I tilted my head back to watch it dissipate.

Above me, stars ripped through the velvety expanse of the night sky like a shotgun blast.

I loved winter. It was my favorite season – a time to gather, to hunker down with friends and family while storms raged outside. Afterward, everything was so clean and bright. It made it easy to ignore, if only for a little while, all the troubles of the world.

The sound of muted whining brought me back to myself.

I’d left my truck idling in the driveway.

Two dark blobs were pressed against the driver’s side window.

I moved closer, and the snouts those blobs were attached to came into focus.

My rescue Huskies, Fred and Sam, stared at me from the other side of the glass.

I waved my arms at them. “Get your drooly noses off the window.”

Sam yipped in response, which taunted a bark out of Fred, which Sam had to answer. By the time I reached the vehicle, they were howling.

I wrenched open the door. “Would you two be quiet? You’re going to -”

A deep, keening bay rose to answer them from far too close.

I froze, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

Sam and Fred shared a panicked look before racing into the safety of the backseat, where they huddled down like a pair of rabbits in a thicket.

More howls joined the first, forming an unholy chorus.

Low growls punched through the cacophony.

A high-pitched yelp rang out like some sort of demonic soprano.

My skin prickled in goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold.

The surrounding woods were carpeted with deep snow, causing sound waves to diffract in a way that made it difficult to judge the distance of the noises.

I couldn’t tell if the animals making them were a mile away or about to burst through the nearest tree line and rush at me in a seething frenzy of fur and teeth.

The howls broke off, a low, mournful note lingering in the air long after the others fell away.

“It’s just coy dogs,” I told Fred and Sam.

They didn’t look convinced.

I climbed into the truck and shut the door. My thick gloves made it impossible to do much else, so I yanked one off with my teeth, dug my phone out of my heavy jacket, and dialed Dave’s number.

“Yo,” he said by way of greeting.

“Did you hear that?”

“Your dogs? Or the wolves?”

I sucked in a breath. “They’re back?”

“The wolves that the US Fish and Wildlife Service insists we don’t have in Maine? Yeah, they’re back. A friend of mine said they were sighted ranging down from Canada about a week ago.”

“Be careful if you come outside. They sounded close.”

“Eh. Sounds are tricky this time of year.”

“Still,” I said, thinking of Willow.

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell Jane. We’ll be careful.”

I put the truck into reverse after we hung up and backed out of their long driveway.

The clock on my dash read 6:15. It was a Friday night, and I was a single twenty-three-year-old.

If I lived anywhere else in the country, I might be getting ready to go out with friends or swiping right on dating apps.

There were fewer options for fun in the northern reaches of Maine, and the thought of eating another dinner alone with my pets sounded a little too depressing right now.

I pulled onto the road and hit the phone button on my steering wheel. “Call Jack Hundel.”

A gruff male voice came through the speakers after the third ring. “Y’ello there, Ella.”

“Hey, Jack.”

One of the dogs let out a low woof from behind me.

“You got the boys with you?” Jack’s tone changed into the higher register with a slightly hysterical edge that all canine lovers seem to favor when speaking to their four-legged friends.

“Who’s a good boy? Who’s the best boy? Is it you, Fred?

” In response, Fred leapt into the front seat and started jump-prancing as he barked.

“Or is it you, Sammy?” Sam, not to be upstaged, started howling again. Right behind my ear.

I ducked away from him. “Jack, cut it out. They’re not buckled in. If you rile them up any more, they’ll wreck the truck.”

He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Whatcha up to, kiddo?”

“I just dropped Willow off and was thinking of swinging by before I head home.”

“Sure, come on over. I got half a chicken in the oven and just cracked open a beer.”

“Homebrew?” I asked, thinking of the delicious dark ale I’d had the last time I dropped by.

“You betcha.”

“Any oatmeal stout left?”

“Two. I’ll save ‘em for ya.”

“Thanks, Jack. See you in a few,” I said before hanging up.

A four-way stop marked the end of Dave and Jane’s street.

I paused there and put the truck into park, then ushered Fred into the backseat and buckled both of the dogs in.

The roads were a little rough out by Jack’s, and I didn’t want to risk them getting hurt if I slid into a snowbank.

They whined at the constraints at first, but settled down once we got closer to town and they had more to look at out of the windows.

The one set of lights in what passed as the downtown area were red when I reached them. Because of course they were. Three cars sat ahead of me waiting for them to turn green.

I eased to a stop at the end of the line. “Can you believe this traffic?”

Fred and Sam yipped in response.