Karo is sitting up when Maeve comes back downstairs, but she’s wrapped tight in the bedclothes, a new dullness in her eyes.

“Good morning,” Maeve says. She’s left the camera upstairs. It doesn’t matter to her now if Karo notices it’s missing: she’d like to drop-kick it into the woods, bury it in snow, destroy it. She wonders if Karo has watched it all herself, if that’s what she meant by causing too much trouble.

Maeve wonders if she always knew. If this is something Sim paid for, Sadie with a side hustle, she thinks. Or if it was merely Sadie doing favors. Sadie in love. Or Sadie, ambitious and eager to align herself with the most powerful man in the room.

Maeve shoves a foil tray of food into the hot ash at the edge of the fire.

“You should have some breakfast,” she says.

Karo gives an odd smile.

“Imagine, this is what we’ve come to. The ballerina is going to make me eat.”

Maeve bristles but doesn’t respond. She turns the tray on the hearth, moving it with a careful hand.

“So, no rescue crew in the night, huh? Only more new snow.” Karo shakes the blankets off her shoulders but stays where she is, slumped against the back of the couch. “And then there were two.”

Her voice is low and cracks at the edges. A symptom of the dry air, but also something else.

Or is it? Maeve catches herself. Maybe it’s just lack of sleep, or stress. How can you know if someone is behaving oddly when you’ve known her only a few days?

“I should melt some snow,” she says, using the task as a cushion against Karolina’s mood and her own. “We need water.”

She gets to her feet and grabs the pot from its perch at one end of the hearth. Karo rocks a little in her seat.

“Any minute now,” she says. “We should hear the purr of the plow engine. Isn’t that right?” She leans her head against the back of the couch and laughs.

Maeve pauses, watching her, then throws on her coat and goes to the back entrance with the pot to scoop snow. She’s careful to wedge herself firmly against the door, never breaking contact with it; there’s no telling if the lock will jam should the door fall closed, leaving Maeve stranded outside.

She straightens up, squinting at the trees. It’s the same view as the night before, although she’s peering into daylight this time. There are no shadows now, no moonlight. No hint of a bear’s huff or rough grunt.

She feels watched all the same.

Maeve sees the dusky room from Sadie’s video form again in her mind, another kind of dreamscape. The camera over Maeve’s bare shoulder. The light comes up, bleaching her skin. Sim crosses the room to meet her.