To her profound disappointment, Kate Bucker did not sleep until January second as she’d been hoping. Groaning from her place under the blankets, she reached a single hand out and shooed whoever thought it smart to intrude this morning. No doubt word of her story and failure with Clark made its way around town by now—Miss Carolyn was many things, but discreet could not be counted among them—and she did not want to spend her new least favorite day of the year listening to her friends try to comfort and console her. For the first time in her life, Christmas Day would be hers to do with exactly as she liked. With no festival to plan and run, she could stay in bed until well past noon and listen to heavy metal or whatever it was anti-Christmas people listened to on December 25.

“Go away.”

The security in her apartment didn’t exactly rival Fort Knox. On most nights, since she didn’t have a working lock on her front door, she usually kept a can with a bunch of coins in it directly in front of the door as a kind of makeshift alarm system. Apparently, she’d forgotten to put the can out.

Some mumbling voices, dampened by the comforter pulled over her head, didn’t make enough sense for her to understand their words, but she did recognize the voices. Emily and Michael. Those two. The best friends a girl could have…except for when she didn’t want any friendship. Petty though she knew it was, she wanted to wallow in her own self-pity, not accept it from anyone else. She’d always been the reliably cheerful, good ship lollipop kind of gal, but for once she had a real reason to disappear into her mattress. The mumbling stopped, only to be followed by the clicking of heels against hardwood and the sound of a closing door.

Wish granted. She was alone once more. Moments passed with no noise.

“Emily?” she called. No response. “Michael?” Again, no response.

The covers flew away from her body as she sat up and faced the day, but when Kate opened her eyes, something strange happened. Her little apartment didn’t look as she’d left it. Decorations that had been shoved into the bowels of her trashcan—now crumpled—were placed back on her walls. Light shone through her windows though she could have sworn she closed the curtains before she fell asleep. Everything was almost exactly as it was when she woke up on Christmas Eve.

Why was her apartment back to normal? She shot up to sit in bed, giving herself a head rush. Spots appeared in her vision. She never slept well, so the sensation could almost certainly be caused by oversleep. The clock on the wall read 9:30. When had she ever slept that late?