Chapter Eight
Three Days Before Christmas
The car wasn’t a cherry red BMW. There were no Christmas songs on the radio. And absolutely no one was going to teach her
a made-up version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” or give her five golden Chandler Bings for a silly present.
This was a whole new Christmas adventure, so Maggie tried to focus on all the ways that it was different. Like the chauffeur’s
little tweed hat or the surreal sensation of riding on the wrong side of the road as they drove across the frosty hills.
Or, Maggie reluctantly admitted, the man on the other side of the car.
A ding pierced the silence.
Ethan hadn’t spoken since the airport. He hadn’t looked at her since the wink.
Ding.
She watched him tap his phone to check a text from Amber. Where are you, Mr. Hotstuff?
Oh please...
Ding.
This one was from Maya: WE MISS YOU.
Ding.
Brooklyn: You seriously aren’t coming?
Ding.
Kimmy: I refuse to have Christmas without you.
Ding.
Rachel: I can beg, you know? Do you want me to beg?
“Say whatever it is you’re thinking over there before your head explodes.”
Ding.
Maggie could have denied that she was snooping, but she was far too tired and too jet-lagged to try. “You’re... popular.”
“These are from the last eight hours. We must have just gotten service.”
“Oh.” She looked at her own phone. Twenty percent battery. Two bars. And not a single sound.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ethan barely glanced at a string of texts from “Do Not Resuscitate,” then sighed and powered off the phone. “Please tell
me they don’t have cell service wherever we’re going,” he called up to the driver.
“It comes and goes,” the older man said simply, and Ethan leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.
“Won’t your girlfriends worry if they don’t hear from you?” she couldn’t resist saying.
“Oh, they’re trained better than that.” He flashed a mischievous grin, practically daring her to start a fight, so Maggie
turned back to the window and the winding road.
They’d passed through a quaint little village as they left the airfield, but they hadn’t seen another town for almost an hour.
They were surrounded by rolling hills and sweeping vistas, grazing sheep and long stone walls that seemed to stretch forever,
but an odd sense of foreboding was starting to grow inside of Maggie.
“Excuse me, uh...” She leaned closer to the driver.
“James, ma’am.”
“James. Hello. Um... where are we? Is that a silly question?” It was probably a silly question.
But James merely laughed. “Not silly at all, ma’am. Let’s just say we’re closer to Scotland than London and if the wind at
the airport felt straight off the North Sea that’s because it was.”
“I see.” She didn’t really see, though, and the countryside was growing rougher.
When they reached a rushing river and a deep ravine, the only way to cross was an arching stone bridge that looked like something
straight out of a fairy tale—the kind that was incredibly dark before Walt Disney got ahold of it. And Maggie wanted to ask
a thousand questions. Like Did his employers have guests often? and Did those guests ever disappear without a trace?
“Uh... James? How far is it?”
“Oh, we’re here, ma’am.” Here? Where? Maggie saw a lake shimmering in the distance, but there wasn’t a town or a house in sight. “The estate is over twenty thousand
acres. And it abuts a national park.”
“Oh. That’s”— convenient if you need to dispose of a body — “lovely.”
“It certainly is,” James said as the car crested a hill and, suddenly, Maggie wasn’t in a Rolls beside her nemesis. She was
in a movie. Or a time machine. Or someone else’s life. Because there, in the valley below, stood the grandest home that Maggie
had ever seen.
It must have been some kind of castle. Or manor house. Or abbey? Maggie didn’t have a clue. She just knew that it was three
stories tall with probably hundreds of rooms and belonged in the kind of movie where hot guys with accents wear cravats.
It was a palace from another era—made of stone and glass and centuries. Kings and queens had probably slept there. Wars had
no doubt been fought there. Emily’s parents’ seaside estate would have looked like a McMansion in comparison and for one brief
moment, Maggie forgot to be afraid.
“Welcome to Mistletoe Manor,” James said when the car slowed and stopped in the driveway.
“Ten bucks says there’s an old guy here who wants to hunt us for sport,” Ethan whispered once James was out of the car.
“I hope not.” She looked across the back seat at Ethan. It was the first time they’d felt together in something—like they
were in on a secret. “I’m pretty sure there’s an Eleanor Ashley novel that starts that way.”
They both climbed out and Maggie braced against the cold.
“Oh yeah,” Ethan said over the top of the car. “I’ve heard of her.”
Surely it was the wind? Sleep deprivation? The world’s worst case of jet lag? Because there was no way that he meant...
“You’ve heard... ” Maggie tried to keep her voice down. “You’ve... Have you never read Eleanor Ashley? ”
He shrugged—an actual shrug! “Is she any good?”
“ Is she any good? Is she...” Maggie wanted to crawl over the car and strangle him. “Eleanor Ashley has written ninety-nine novels of perfection.
She’s the world’s greatest living author and the greatest crime writer of all time, and so help me if you mention Sir Arthur
Conan Whatshisface I’m going to disembowel you with an emery board. Eleanor Ashley came from nothing. She was born in a house
with no plumbing and only went to school through the sixth grade because her family needed her to work. She wrote her first
novel on scraps of paper she pulled out of the trash at the office building where she was a cleaning lady.
“Eleanor Ashley invented the modern crime novel. She revolutionized the genre and... Killhaven—you know the publisher that just paid you seven
figures for your next book? It wouldn’t exist without Eleanor Ashley. So yeah. She’s good. She’s amazing. She’s...” Maggie trailed off, confused and annoyed, as Ethan’s
gaze drifted over her shoulder. His lips quirked. His eyes twinkled. “She’s...”
And then there was a new voice flying on the wind. “She’s standing right behind you.”