“Young man!” The hotel employee shouts down the hallway. “Everyone has to leave the building.”

I bang the door again. “Claus, open up. Now.”

“Young man!” The man comes hurrying toward me. “Do you hear me?”

“Claus,” I say. “Please…”

Then something is slid under the door. I look at the gold envelope at my feet.

Without thinking about it, I snatch it off the floor and put it in my inside pocket.

The man from the hotel is standing beside me now.

“Outside. Now. This is not a drill.”

I look at the door. If I go, I’ll be leaving Linnea with that madman. But if I tell this man that someone’s being held captive in there, Claus could panic. What if it makes him do something to Linnea?

My only choice is to go with the man.

“I’ll be back,” I say quietly as I walk down the hallway. “I promise.”

When I get outside, there are hundreds of people on the sidewalk. Amid all the commotion, I hear someone call my name and I see Kate making her way over to me through the crowd.

“Fender! Where were you? I was so scared that you…”

“There is no fire,” I say. “It was me who set off the alarm.”

“Why?” Lucas comes over to join us.

“To force Claus out of his hiding place.” I look back at the Riverside. “He’s in Room 312.”

Kate’s eyes widen. “You’ve seen him?”

“Yes, he came out when the alarm went off, but he closed the door when he saw me.” I take the envelope out of my pocket.

“He pushed this under the door for me.”

I take a folded sheet of paper from the envelope. Kate gasps—she recognized it immediately too.

She used the same speckled paper last year for the invitations to her party. The invitation hung on my bulletin board for a week.

Later that week I pulled it down and tore it into a hundred pieces. I kept ripping away until tiny scraps were all that remained. It looked like it had been snowing in my bedroom.

“Read it,” stammers Kate.

INVITATION

Congratulations!

You have been invited to the party of the year.

Wear your finery and come to Room 312 at 11 p.m.

At midnight on the dot we’ll drink to a wonderful new year of life.

Claus

“Kate…” She has the same despair in her eyes as I feel inside.

Was this what Claus wanted all along? Is that why he took Linnea? So he could be certain we’d show up?

“Okay, people. Everyone back inside,” shouts a hotel employee. The rest of his words disappear inside my crowded head.

Around us, the sidewalk is slowly emptying, but we stay there.

I’ve found Linnea, but she feels more out of reach than ever.

All the messages from Room Service were nothing. They were just a warm-up for the grand finale: Kate’s birthday.

Linnea