Read Chapter 13: La Panne

The power died at 3:17 a.m. Camille knew the exact time because the digital clock on the nightstand blinked out with a soft, final sigh, and she had been staring at its red numbers for the past hour, sleepless, listening to the wind scratch against the roof like an animal wanting in.

She lay in the sudden silence of the dark, the absence of the furnace's low hum a void she felt in her chest. The cold began to seep through the floorboards almost immediately, a creeping tide against her skin. She pulled the quilt up to her chin, heart hammering against her ribs for no reason she could name.

The wind found its voice again, a long, mournful howl that rattled the windowpanes. Then she heard it.

Footsteps. Cautious, crunching sounds in the snow directly outside her window. Not the gait of someone walking with purpose, but the slow, deliberate placement of someone trying not to be heard.

Camille's breath caught. She pushed herself upright, the quilt falling away, the cold biting through her thin nightshirt. Her eyes strained against the darkness, but she could see nothing beyond the window—just the black smear of the forest and the faint, pale glow of snow reflecting a hidden moon.

Another crunch, closer this time. To her door.

She was out of bed before she could think, her bare feet numbing against the cold floor. The door to her room was ajar. She pushed it shut, her fingers fumbling for a lock that didn't exist, and pressed her back against the wood. The footsteps stopped outside. She could hear breathing—raspy, labored, muffled by a scarf perhaps.

Then the knob turned.

It rattled once, twice, a sharp metallic click that shot through her like a live wire. Camille threw her weight against the door, her palms flat against the wood, her mind a white blur of panic. The knob turned again, harder, and the door shuddered against her.

"Antoine!" The scream tore from her throat, raw and desperate. "Antoine!"

The rattling stopped. A muffled curse, a man's voice, low and guttural—the words lost to the wind that suddenly slammed against the house. Footsteps retreated, fast, crunching away from the door.

Camille did not wait. She yanked the door open and ran down the dark hallway, her hands outstretched, grazing walls, knocking a picture frame askew. She collided with Antoine's door, pounding her fists against it.

"Antoine! Someone's here. There's someone—"

The door swung open. Antoine stood silhouetted against the dim glow of a single candle he held, his face a mask of alert tension. He was already dressed in heavy pants and a wool sweater, as if he hadn't been sleeping at all.

"I heard," he said, his voice low and steady. He reached out, his free hand capturing her wrist, pulling her inside his room. The door clicked shut behind her. "You're shaking."

"I'm not—" she started, but the chattering of her teeth betrayed her. She was in nothing but her thin nightshirt, her legs bare, her feet like ice.

Antoine let go of her wrist and grabbed a thick flannel blanket from the foot of his bed, wrapping it around her shoulders without ceremony. His hands lingered for a second, adjusting the fabric, and she found herself leaning into his warmth without meaning to.

"Stay here," he said.

"No." She grabbed his arm. "Don't leave me alone."

The words hung between them. He looked at her, his face half-lit by the candle, his eyes searching hers. A long, slow moment passed. Then he nodded, once.

They moved to the corner of the room, away from the window, and sank down against the wall. Antoine placed the candle on the floor between them, and its small flame guttered but held, casting their shadows in long, wavering forms. He sat close enough that she could feel the hard line of his shoulder against hers.

"Who was it?" she whispered.

"I don't know."

"You must have heard something. You're fully dressed."

He was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly, "I wasn't asleep either. Wanted to check the woodpile before dawn. Heard you scream."

"You were checking on me?"

"I was checking the house." But his voice lacked conviction, and she felt a small, funny flutter in her chest that had nothing to do with cold.

The wind howled again, and the candle flame bent sideways, nearly drowning. Camille instinctively pressed closer to him, and he didn't pull away.

"The locket," she said, the words bitter in her mouth. "It was real. Someone was here."

"I know." His voice was rough, apologetic. "I believed you."

"Then why did you—"

"I didn't know what to believe." He turned his head to look at her. In the candlelight, his eyes were dark pools of something she couldn't quite read. "You make it hard, Camille."

She should have been angry. But all she felt was a strange, aching exhaustion. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." He looked away, toward the window. "We'll find out who it is. When the storm breaks."

They waited in silence for the longest time, the candle burning down to a nub, the darkness pressing in from all sides. The footsteps did not return. The house settled and creaked around them, but no other presence announced itself. Eventually, Camille's eyelids grew heavy, and she let her head drop to rest against his shoulder. He stiffened, then slowly relaxed, his breath warm against her hair.

She woke to gray light filtering through the curtains. Antoine was no longer beside her. Panic seized her for a moment before she heard the scrape of the door.

He stood in the doorway, boots on, parka open, cold air billowing around him. His face was grim.

"Come see."

She followed him outside, the snow biting her bare ankles as he led her around the side of the house. The storm had calmed to a gentle, hissing fall of flakes. In the fresh snow, a line of tracks led from beneath Camille's window, away from the house, and vanished into the tree line.

Snowshoe tracks. Large, deliberate, and already filling with fresh snow.

"He got away," Antoine said, his voice flat. "You weren't dreaming."

Camille stared at the tracks, her breath clouding in the silent morning air. Someone had been there. Someone had touched her door. Someone had been inside her room, days before, and taken the only thing she had left of her grandmother.

And the storm was about to bury any chance of finding him.