“I was leaving anyway. You didn’t need to come out here and—”

He spins back to face her.

“I want the whole group together. What part of that do you not understand? I’m the one in charge here. I’m the one who’s responsible for your ass. So I will go door to door if I have to and make sure you All. Stay. In. One. Place. Get it?”

Maeve just stares.

He steps out of the cabin and gestures for her to do the same, then he locks her door himself and follows behind her as she struggles back through the white.

It’s a strange way to collect someone you’re worried about. His stride is longer than hers, and she can feel him on her heels as she tries to break her own path, plunging and sliding with every step. Yet more snow coming down.

When she sinks her hands into her pockets to warm them, she finds the claw still there, curved and sharp, and she tries to walk faster.

A bear would leave a trail, and she scans back and forth for signs of it—signs that it’s long gone—but once they’re out of the clearing and back in the trees, there are too many shadows. Everything looks suspicious, every dip in the snowbank a potential hiding place, every hollow, every tree trunk another dark shape rising to meet her.

“The good news,” Justin says, “is that there’s no shortage of ice.” He drops what looks like a chunk of icicle into a glass and adds a few splashes of bourbon on top.

The fire is still going in the lobby, tended by the others all day. A kettle sits at one edge of the stone hearth, a pot with a lid on it at the other. Anna hands Maeve a steaming cup of tea.

“The good news is they found a radio,” she says, glaring at Justin.

“Yes, and if the radio doesn’t work, we can drink ourselves to death before we freeze.” Justin is wearing last night’s heavy robe, now over his clothes, tied at the waist with a belt. Also what appears to be many pairs of socks. Layers. He raises his mug to Maeve, cheerful. “Win-win,” he says.

Maeve, cross-legged by the fire, doesn’t raise her own cup in return. She arrived back at the center cold and soaking wet and tired of the feeling of Dan’s eyes on her. She still has her hat on, although she’s stripped off her jeans again in the hopes that they’ll dry, the bear claw from her pocket now tight in her fist. She squeezes at it, a compulsive motion. When she opens her hand, she can see the mark it’s left there.