Chapter 17
We stood in the living room long after the door slammed behind Jake, the echo still vibrating through the walls.
Ricky was the first to move. He dragged a hand down his face and exhaled hard. “So,” he said. “What do we do? Go after him—”
I shook my head before he finished. “No. We go to One Stop Shop.”
He blinked. “Now?”
“Yes.” My fingers curled around the pen, the plastic warm from the heat of my hand. “Curse lifted at time of sale.”
“What?”
“We pay for it,” I said quietly. “That’s the only way to stop all of this, to break the curse.”
Ricky paced once, then again, boots scuffing the floor. “This is insane. Three people are dead. Three. And you’re telling me it’s because of a fucking pen?”
“It could’ve been a thumbtack or a piece of gum,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what it was. It matters that we took something that wasn’t ours.”
Silence stretched between us.
“Six miles,” Ricky said finally. “That’s what Noah said, right?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced out the window. The world outside was brutal. Snow piled knee-high, the wind carving it into sharp ridges.
Ricky looked toward the door Jake had gone through. “And him? Do we go get him?”
“No.” My chest tightened. “If we go after him, we lose time. And if I’m right, if this is real, the longer it goes on, the worse it’ll get.”
Ricky swallowed. “So we just . . . leave him?”
“He left; he made his choice,” I said, and hated how much it sounded like justification. “Ending this is the only way we bring him back.”
Ricky didn’t like it. I could see that. But after a beat, he nodded.
“All this,” he muttered, grabbing his coat, “over a stupid joke.”
The icy wind punished us the moment we stepped outside. It wasn’t just cold. It was hostile. It tore through our layers, clawed at exposed skin, stole breath before we could even brace for it. Snow swallowed our boots, every step a struggle that drained more from us than it should have.
Six miles on foot in normal conditions was manageable. A ninety-minute jaunt at a brisk pace. Out here, it felt impossible. An excruciating slog that would take well over three hours, and that’s if we didn’t stop.
The cabin vanished behind us faster than I expected, reduced to a smudge between trees.
Branches heavy with ice creaked overhead.
The road was just a subtle dip between snowbanks.
Without footprints or tire tracks, we were guessing at our route.
Every sound felt amplified, and every silence felt intentional.
I kept thinking I heard footsteps behind us, but I didn’t look back.
“Still think this is the right call?” Ricky shouted over the wind.
“No,” I yelled back. “But I think it’s the only one.”
We fell into silence, saving our breath. My lungs burned. My fingers were numb despite the gloves. Every few minutes, my knees protested hard enough to blur my vision. The pen felt heavier in my pocket than it had any right to.
Somewhere past the halfway point, my knee gave out entirely. I went down hard, the impact knocking the air from my chest. Snow poured down my collar, melting against my skin in a freezing sear that confused my brain.
“Blair! Shit, are you okay?” Ricky was at my side instantly, hauling me up before I could protest. My knee screamed when I put weight on it.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said through clenched teeth. “But I have no choice.”
He didn’t hesitate. He slung my arm over his shoulder. “Lean into me.”
We moved slower after that, bodies pressed together for warmth, for balance. It was awkward and clumsy but necessary. The wind whipped and howled loudly, annoyed by our persistence. Still, we pushed on.
“You know,” he said after a while, voice strained but lighter than before, “this is not how I pictured this weekend.”
A weak laugh tore out of me. “I thought it’d end with me breaking Jake’s nose.”
“Same,” he said with a smile.
For the first time since everything had gone wrong, something settled between us—not relief, not safety, but trust. If we were going to get out of this, it would be together. We’d bring Jake back. We’d fix what had been broken.
The trees thinned eventually, and the store appeared.
One Stop Shop. It was small and dumpy, familiar in the way nightmares sometimes borrow real places.
Its faded sign jutted out over the parking lot, half buried in snow, letters worn thin by years of weather and neglect.
Solace hit me so hard my legs nearly buckled.
But I kept moving. My heart hammered with the promise that this was where this hellish vacation would finally end.
“There it is,” Ricky said, breathless.
Every step across the parking lot felt lighter, and I could almost feel the warmth inside. I reached the door first and stopped. Disbelief bloomed into pure panic.
out to lunch—back in an hour
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, sagging against the glass.
I yanked the handle as hard as I could. It was locked and dark inside.
Ricky tried after me, pounding on the door.
“Open up! We need—”
“So, you just left me.”
I froze.
Jake stood several yards back, snow clinging to his coat, hair matted and damp. His face was pale to the point of looking sick, and his eyes were rimmed red and wild. When he smiled, my stomach dropped.
“Jake,” Ricky said carefully, stepping in front of me without realizing it.
Jake laughed, but the sound splintered halfway through. “You really think this fixes everything? That this’ll all end with a fucking receipt?” His gaze flicked to the store, then back to me. “Slap some money on the counter, and everything goes back to normal?”
“It has to,” I whispered.
His fingers kept flexing, clenching and unclenching, like something else was testing them. His hand drifted to his temple, nails digging in until his knuckles went white.
“You have no idea how loud it gets,” he muttered.
“Jake . . .”
His hand slid inside his coat.
“No,” I breathed.
The knife slipped into view, inch by inch, as if it were being drawn by something stronger than him. His grip tightened around the handle, tendons screaming beneath the skin.
Jake staggered forward, his body jerking violently, head snapping to the side with a wet crack that made my stomach sick. He let out a sound that was half sob, half growl. His neck rolled once, severe and unnatural.
“I—I don’t want,” he choked. “I don’t—want.”
His head jerked back, then to the side, jaw clenching so hard I thought his teeth might shatter.
Ricky took a cautious step toward him. “Don’t want what, man? Jake—talk to us.”
For one brief second, Jake sagged. His arms dropped. His breath shuddered. I almost believed he had fought back whatever was driving him.
Then his spine straightened with a sickening snap. Veins darkened beneath his skin, turning black. His grip tightened around the knife until his knuckles went purple. It was like he was trying to crush the handle before it could be used.
“To kill you,” he whispered.
The words seemed to cost him everything. His face smoothed into something inhuman, his eyes glassy and distant, as though he’d stepped aside and let someone or something else take the wheel.
A slow smile spread. “But I have to,” he said.
He lunged forward, fast and violent. There was no hesitation left in him, just momentum and hunger. Ricky shoved me aside as the knife sliced the air where my chest had been.
I screamed, and I understood it then. The curse hadn’t turned Jake into something else. It had simply decided that once he’d sinned—there was no reason to stop.