Chapter 1
The silence in the SUV had reached that dangerous level where even the GPS was afraid to speak.
Endless pines blurred past as we drove deeper into Northspyre, Minnesota—a nowhere town tucked so far up near the Canadian border it might as well have dual citizenship.
The road cut straight through dense forest, mile after mile of dark-green spires, so uniform it felt intentional.
Behind me, in the third row, I could feel Jake.
Not literally, but the way you can sense a storm rolling in before the clouds show up.
He chewed his gum with pointed hostility, each snap deliberate, like punctuation.
If I turned my head, I’d see his reflection in the window: rumpled black T-shirt, wiry muscles stretched and coiled with tension, jaw ticking as he worked through whatever resentment he’d packed with him.
Between us hung the thick, suffocating weight of two people who had broken up a mere two weeks ago and, like morons, still decided to go on the college winter-break trip they’d booked with their friends months earlier.
“You know what’s wild?” Jake said, breaking the silence. “That someone thought five hours in a car together after a breakup was a good idea.”
I didn’t turn around, didn’t even blink. “You were that someone,” I said. “I sent you an entire paragraph telling you not to come.”
“And I ignored it,” he replied cheerfully. “Because being told no sometimes builds character. Or at least gives you something to argue about.”
I closed my eyes for half a second and reminded myself why I’d ended things in the first place.
Jake and I hadn’t broken up because we hated each other.
I mean, he probably hated me now—but there was no single thing that ended us.
No betrayal, no cheating, no dramatic implosion that would make it easier to point the blame somewhere specific.
It was smaller than that, quieter. A slow erosion I hadn’t noticed until there was nothing solid left to stand on.
The jokes that weren’t really jokes. The way my goals became inconveniences. The way every disagreement somehow ended with me apologizing. When I finally stopped trying to fix it—stopped caring—he noticed immediately. And when he confronted me, I chose myself.
Up front, Noah drove with both hands locked at ten and two.
He was tall and suntanned in an artificial way that came from weekly visits to a tanning bed—a ritual he refused to abandon despite every article, doctor, friend, and family member warning him it would turn him into a cancer-riddled leather handbag by forty.
“Let’s not forget the goal here,” Noah said, voice tight but determined. “Rest. Relaxation. And an irresponsible amount of alcohol.”
Beside him, Maddie, his girlfriend and the group’s perpetual peacekeeper, laughed weakly. “That’s right, guys. No fighting and no drama. We’re all mature adults, right?” She sounded like a cheerleader whose team was losing by fifty points.
“Define adult,” Jake said.
“Define mature,” I mocked.
Jake leaned forward between the seats, resting his forearms on the headrest like he used to on long drives. “Okay,” he said, amused. “That one’s on me.”
The admission softened something in my chest. He used to do that, concede just enough to keep things from tipping over completely. I hated that my body still remembered. He leaned back again, the moment passing as quickly as it came.
Ricky bumped his shoulder into mine. He was long limbed and copper haired, built like someone who’d accidentally grown six inches overnight and never quite adjusted. “I give this group twenty minutes before someone snaps and not all of us make it to the cabin.”
“Twenty minutes?” Noah said. “You’re being generous.”
We’d been driving north for hours. The city faded into suburbs, then towns, then long stretches of nothing at all.
Gas stations appeared less frequently, the highway thinning to two lanes before narrowing into something that barely deserved the name road.
My phone had lost service over an hour ago, but the GPS insisted it still knew exactly where we were.
The blue dot no longer moved smoothly. It jumped, corrected itself, then jumped again, like it was guessing.
This was the kind of landscape that made you think of unsolved murders.
The car pinged a warning, signaling low fuel.
Noah groaned. “We’ll pull over at the next—”
“Serial-killer trap?” I offered.
“Gas station,” he finished.
I saw the sign before I saw the building.
ONE STOP SHOP
The words were hand-painted in thick, practical letters that had cracked and curled with age. It leaned slightly on its posts, not enough to warrant fixing, just enough to notice.
Beneath the name of the shop, smaller words had been added over time, in different styles, none of them matching.
GROCERIES
Antiques
COLD BEER
GAS-->
The arrow pointed loosely toward a single pump. The building itself looked like it had retired from being a shed and was now trying out being a convenience store. There was no movement inside and no other cars around.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires as we rolled to a stop next to the pump.
“All right,” Noah said, killing the engine. “Fuel and snacks. And remember, kids, stay where I can see you.”
“How did you manage to find the creepiest gas station in the world?” Maddie groaned.
Ricky peered out the window. “As long as it has beer, I will happily ignore every red flag.”
“That checks out.” Jake smirked. “You’ve ignored far worse.”
Jake reached the door first. For a second, I thought he might let it swing shut behind him out of spite—but instead he caught it with his foot and held it open. He didn’t look at me right away, just kept his hand on the handle.
“After you, B,” he said.
The nickname hit harder than it should have.
“Thanks,” I muttered, brushing past him.
The bell over the door clanged when I stepped inside, emitting a sound somewhere between a chime and a death rattle. The air smelled of cedar, rust, and something faintly sweet I couldn’t place.
Half the store was cluttered with antiques: cracked porcelain dolls missing limbs or eyes, rusted tools, warped wood carvings, taxidermied animals frozen mid-snarl, religious artifacts stacked without reverence.
The other half looked like a convenience store someone had abandoned mid-restock.
There were two narrow aisles of snacks, warm soda, liquor, and a fridge buzzing with light beer.
Behind the counter sat an elderly woman in a thick shawl, knitting something red. She didn’t look up.
Above her head hung a wooden sign painted in uneven white letters:
all items cursed.
curse lifted at time of sale.
I stared at it longer than I meant to.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Maddie asked.
“Or a threat,” Ricky said.
“Maybe both.” Jake grinned.
We scattered through the store. Maddie scanned labels like she might find something organic hiding among the preservatives. Ricky made a beeline for the beer fridge. Noah grabbed chips and beef jerky after fueling up.
I drifted toward the antiques. The dolls were worse up close, each one damaged in a different way—missing limbs and eyes, faces half shattered.
The taxidermized animals looked terrified.
One was a fox whose head was tilted just enough that I couldn’t tell if it had been posed that way or if it had moved.
I felt too aware of everything, of Jake’s movement behind me, of the way the lights hummed, of the faint pressure building at the base of my skull. I glanced up at the security mirror in the corner. The old woman was still knitting, her needles never missing a stitch.
By the time we checked out and stepped back outside, the world felt heavier. The trees had gone completely still and snow flurries floated in the air, not quite falling, but waiting.
“I hated everything about that place,” I muttered.
Jake slid into the third row. “Too bad you can’t break up with a gas station.”
Ricky chuckled. It was the same timing Jake had always had, just sharp enough to get a laugh, just off enough to grate.
“I checked the map while I was fueling up,” Noah said, starting the engine. “Turns out we’re only six miles from the cabin.”
The headlights cut onto a narrow road barely wide enough for one car. Pines pressed in on either side, branches scratching the windows as the asphalt pulled us forward.
I reached into my tote bag, fingers skimming the familiar clutter—wallet, charger, lip gloss—before my hand closed around something that didn’t belong. It wasn’t my phone, and it wasn’t my keys. It was too narrow, too smooth, and too long.
I pulled it out slowly. It was just a pen, sort of. Cheap souvenir plastic molded into the shape of a hockey stick, complete with a tiny blade at the bottom. stay wild was stamped along the side in peeling white letters. It felt colder than it should have.
My stomach tightened. It wasn’t mine, and it hadn’t been in my bag before I got into this car.
I twisted in my seat and held it up, pinched between two fingers. “Okay,” I said. “Which one of you did this?”
No one answered right away.
Jake leaned forward. “Did what?”
“Put this in my bag,” I said.
“Are you sure it wasn’t in there before?” Maddie asked lightly. “You carry a lot of stuff.”
“I know what’s in my bag,” I said. “So—who did it?”
“Maybe it slipped in,” Jake said with a shrug.
“Or maybe it jumped in.” Ricky laughed. “That place had . . . character.”
“We need to go back,” I said to the car. “I’ll pay for it. Or return it. Just—turn around.”
Maddie snorted. “Blair, relax. No one’s going to arrest you over a pen.”
“It’s not about that,” I said, my voice coming out shriller than I meant. I looked down at it again. “What about the curse?”
“Oh, come on,” Ricky said, bumping my shoulder. “That was obviously a joke, you don’t actually think—”
“—that some old woman is running a cursed-pen operation?” Jake finished, smiling.
Noah shook his head, eyes still on the road. “It’s a scare tactic. Tourist nonsense. Something to frighten shoplifters.”
“Yeah,” Ricky added. “There’s no cops way out here. How else would they stop crime?”
“Curses,” Jake said.
“Curses,” Ricky echoed.
Maddie turned in her seat. “Blair,” she said gently, like she was calming a child who thought there were monsters under the bed. “There’s no such thing as curses. It’s fine. Lighten up.”
They laughed, easy and overlapping.
I forced myself to laugh too, but a chill slid down my spine. I told myself it was nothing. I had told myself that before.