Page 8 of Winter’s Teeth

He turned and stopped abruptly, his black hair flopping over his forehead with the sudden loss of momentum. Dark eyeliner circled both eyes, giving him the look of an adorable racoon. He said very sweetly, “Oh—sorry, you’re early.”

“Actually, I’m late.”

“Right...” he drawled, then pointed up to the ceiling. “Everyone’s upstairs settling in. We’ll call you when dinner is served.”

I nodded, about to thank him, but my eyes snagged on a plate of hot rolls that another server just brought out. “Could I maybe steal one of those?”

The young man who left them headed straight back into the kitchen with headphones nestled deep in his ears, deaf to the world around him.

The man with black eyeliner twisted his face up with uncertainty. “I’m not supposed to...” My stomach let out a loud rumble, and his resolve crumbled. “Okay. Just one.” He handed me the roll off the top of the basket along with a foil-wrapped butter square. “Now get out of here before I get in trouble.”

“You’re a hero,” I gushed, resisting the urge to hug him. “See you later!”

With that, I raced up the wooden stairs, gripping the roughhewn railing, my suitcase and backpack in tow. On the top landing, staring down the long, antique runner rug the length of the hall, I stuffed the roll into my mouth like a starved creature before any of the others caught me with it.

Trying the first set of double doors on the left, I walked into a room full of my sister’s wedding party in what appeared to be a sauna. Women in white robes with towels on their sweat-beaded heads erupted into squeals of delight.

“Rae!”

“You made it!”

“We thought you got lost in the dark or slipped off the road. We were about to send out a search party!”

Clearly. Because sauna robes were the perfect attire for search parties.

I couldn’t blame them. With the delicious smell of dinner filtering up the stairs, I wouldn’t have gone out for anyone either before I had a taste.

The shortest woman barreled into me in a flurry of honey brown hair. “I’m so glad you got here safe,” my sister, Everly, breathed. Just like that, the world righted itself. My axis that had been slightly off tilted back into place, pulled in by the familiar, homey scent of Everly’s vanilla lotion she never left home without. She claimed she had dry skin, but I never saw the girl apply anything less than a palm-full of lotion in the morning and evening before bed. Still clutching me in a bear hug that was deceptively strong coming from someone of her height and stature, she added in a hushed tone, “I thought I was going to go crazy listening to Kelsey for one more minute without you to confuse her until she shuts up.”

I chuckled, knowing full well her cousin was a handful. The last time I saw her was three years ago at a Christmas party when she’d willfully gotten drunk and thrown herself onto the laps of several relatives, plus Everly’s boyfriend at the time.

Of course, I had tried taking matters into my own hands back then, dragging Kelsey out into the cold to sober her up and give her a talking to. It ended in a small cat fight where I took a beating first from Kelsey, then from her boyfriend, who thought I started the fight. Subsequently, I wasn’t invited to the Bennett Family Christmas Party ever again, and I had no clue what Kelsey got up to these days.

Cousin Kelsey exclaimed in an overly loud voice for the small space, “Let me braid your hair, Rae! You have to let me! Come here!” Whatever fight we had in the past must have been water under the bridge for her. That, or she planned to scalp me.

I barely batted an eye as I deadpanned, “Oh, my doctor said I can’t braid my hair anymore if I don’t want to go bald by the time I’m thirty.”

Kelsey gaped, confused sounds stuttering out of her throat. “Well, what about a pedicure?”

As if I’d let her touch my bare feet. “I have a raging case of Athlete’s Foot. You can touch my feet at your own risk.”

Kelsey’s look of confusion wavered toward irritation, her cheeks growing red, but Everly intervened swiftly. “Alright, ladies! Let’s get dressed for dinner. I think it’s almost ready.” The chuckle limning her words was hard to miss, and I knew she was over the moon that I had arrived to keep Kelsey in check.

She pinched my arm on the way out of the sauna, leading us to the rooms further down the hall. “You want to know how I know dinner is almost ready?”

“Uh...the haunting smell of meat coming up the stairs?” I guessed.

“No. You have crumbs on your collar.” She brushed them off my sweater, laughing daintily in typical Evie fashion. Soft, pixielike, but sporting thorns just beneath the surface. “You stole something on your way in, didn’t you?”

“Hey! There was no theft,” I argued as we turned into her room. I took half a second to admire the poster bed made out of roughhewn logs and the vaulted ceiling with a view out the front of the A-frame windows. “I got one of the hosts to take pity on me.”

“Of course you did.” Everly took my bags, tossed them in a corner, then threw herself down on her massive bed with a smile warming her cheeks.

I used the break in the bantering to look around a bit more. “Wow. Nice rack.” I referred to the massive deer head mounted to the wall and looming over my sister’s bed. “Not creepy at all.”

“There’s a bear in your room.” She winked. “You’ll love it.”

Before I could give her a quippy comeback, Kelsey burst in without knocking. “One of the cute serving boys just said dinner is ready. Come on!”