Dan interrupts him sharply. “You wouldn’t know where to look.” He steps over to loom above Sadie, standing barefoot in her pajamas by the fire. “And, yeah, it’s my job. There’s a manual generator on-site in a shed by the western pass trail. It just needs someone to switch it on. If you keep calm and stay quiet, I’ll handle it.”

Maeve glances up, startled by his tone. But Karo just moves across the room to Sadie’s side, fluid and even.

“Once it’s light, we’ll tour the property and see where the damage is.” Karo’s voice is meant to reassure, but her cheeks are pink with tension. “Regardless, it won’t be more than a few hours before crews get up here and get us back to normal.”

The message is starting to stink of dogma: If you keep saying it, it must be true. Maeve feels more worried rather than less. On the couch, Justin recites a mantra of his own, cut with sarcasm but no less anxious:

“What are the chances? No one on-site? Staff all home for the weekend? What are the chances?”

It’s almost eight in the morning before the darkness lifts enough for Dan to declare them safe to leave. Back in her room, Maeve turns on her phone; it lights up in her hands, but there’s no service. Wi-Fi dead, cellular dead. The photo her mother sent the day before is still there, but there’s no way to reach her children now, no way to make up for being AWOL when Talia called. She switches it off again in frustration and goes to grab a few extra items of clothing out of her bag. It may be cold for a while, a day for layers. Better to have her boots and coat too.

But as she rifles through the zipper compartment of her suitcase for fresh panties, something sharp jabs her hand. She unfolds a bralette to find some kind of—what? a carving? a claw?—nestled in among her lacy things. It must be a claw—curving out from a pale stub of bone, the hook itself is a mottled brown-black and half as long as her own hand.

The thing is not hers; she’s never seen it before.

Her stomach flips. She remembers her dream, the bear’s long claw. She glances at the bandage on her arm, then moves slowly to the bed and sits down. No dream-creature hid this in her suitcase. A person did. Someone here at the retreat—someone who broke into her room.

She runs the pad of her thumb along the claw’s blade edge, then sets it on the bedside table where she can keep an eye on it while she dresses.

She’s downstairs and building up the fire again when Sim comes into the lobby. Maeve rises, pulls the claw from her jacket and holds it out.

“Yours?” she says.