“Mil er’s Holiday Rental,” Jasper read. “49 Green Lane in . . .

merde, this is only two hours away!”

The relief that washed over me at that was almost tangible.

“Let’s go then. Seth, you can drive, right?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t have a car.”

“I can get us one,” Jasper said, suddenly getting to his feet. “I’ll meet you in the courtyard in ten.” He was out of the door before either of us could respond.

“Jesus,” Seth murmured, running a hand over his face. “This is a shit idea.”

Ten minutes later, Seth and I were standing in the same spot where we had said good-bye earlier that day. None of this felt real. Shivering in the night air, I desperately wanted to believe that any moment I was going to wake up from this nightmare and find Noelle sitting at the edge of the bed, surrounded by fairy lights and with a grin on her lips when I told her about the ridiculous dream I’d had.

A few feet away from me, Seth was pacing back and forth, glancing down at his watch every other second. I knew that, in his head, he was probably rattling off all the statistics on missing person cases he had ever read. I was glad I didn’t know them.

Both of us jumped when Jasper stormed out of the castle, triumphantly waving a set of keys.

“Where’d you get those from?” Seth asked.

“Gina,” Jasper curtly responded, already rushing towards the car park at the back of the building. Seth and I jogged after him, the freshly fallen snow crunching beneath our boots. I pulled my coat tighter around myself and clutched Noelle’s favorite sweater, which she had left in our room, closer to my chest.

Like most cars in the car park, Gina’s was sleek and shiny, dark enough to blend in with the night. Seth gulped when Jasper pressed the key into his hand but got into the driver’s seat without hesitation. Jasper’s shock of bright hair disappeared in the backseat, so I rounded the car and slid onto the passenger seat on the left.

“Better buckle up,” Seth said, his hands clutching tightly onto the steering wheel. “This might be one hell of a ride.”

Then, we were driving. The engine roared loudly, headlights cutting through the dark, but there was no sign that anyone in the castle noticed our departure and soon, Seven Hills was swallowed by the woods in the distance. Behind the windows, shadows and lights blurred together as we darted through the night like an arrow let loose.

Seth was driving at a hazardous speed. Under different circumstances, I probably would have asked him to slow down, but with Noelle’s strained voice still ringing in my ears, I was glad every time the number on the speedometer rose.

Once we made it out of the woods, Seth pushed his phone into my hands. I was glad for the distraction that navigating gave me and tried to focus only on the map on the display, not on the gruesome possibilities my brain supplied every time I thought about Noelle. Her sweater was bundled up in my lap, soft cotton that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and vanil a perfume.