“What do you mean?” Then, understanding him, she shakes her head. “Worker bee, remember?”

He surprises her by reaching out to wind a piece of her hair in his fingers. It’s an intimate gesture but also gentle. Affectionate. The way she herself might reach out to catch Talia’s hair, tuck it behind her ear.

Maeve thumbs the bear claw in her pocket; it’s possible, of course, that it wasn’t him at all. But then who? Justin, joking around? Sadie? Dan?

She stops. Dan. Of course.

Maybe not something she would have suspected before—he seemed so easygoing the first day or two. But the turn in him this morning, since the avalanche? It bothers her.

Dan, the local wildlife expert, whose job is managing the building—who must have a key to every room.

Sim catches her eye.

“Off you go, then,” he says. “Just be careful. Don’t get chased by wolves or you’ll have to call the woodcutter to save you.” He draws on his smoke, laughing a little.

In the outdoor light, she can see where the bruise on his cheek is already yellowing. She looks back at the snow and bites her lip.

Why is it that you can never go anywhere or do anything without some man fucking it up?

Maeve grips the claw in her pocket as though she could crack it in two. The lock on her door wasn’t broken, it was just open, and who else would have a key? She hadn’t pegged Dan for frat-house pranks, but maybe this is his army background coming to the surface. Maybe he thought it was funny.

Or he just thought he could get away with it. This morning, the way he clamped down, acting like he owned the place.

The snow is ridiculous. She’s wading in it, eventually pulling her hands out of her warm pockets and using her arms to pump through. It’s not a matter of snow getting down inside her boots: her jeans are soaked. There is snow inside her waistband.

At the studio, she finds the door blocked and jumps to pull the shovel down from where it sits in a rack over the transom—now she knows why it’s up there instead of leaning on a wall—and begins a rather violent shoveling-out. Her shoulder pings; she has to lift the snow above waist level and with almost no room to maneuver. She turns in circles as she goes, just trying to carve out a space wide enough for both her own body and the arc of the door.

She stops shoveling, breathing hard, and lets herself in with the key, kicking the last bricks of snow away from the entrance. The shovel comes inside with her for now. More snow is moving in and she wants to be sure she can get out later.