Page 23 of Enter if you Dare: Part Two

By lunchtime my feet hurt. By two I’ve fielded a vendor dispute, found a lost child, and took a phone call from a woman who wanted to book “whatever made her sister scream like that” for her husband’s birthday.

By three, I hit my first wall. Nixie asks me for the vendor contact sheet, and I bring her the wrong year’s information.

She looks at it and then at me. “Wrong.”

At first, I want to recoil into myself, hit with reminders of George and his insults. But Nixie simply waits with a raised brow while I find the right sheet, and when I hand it to her, she says, “Faster next time. Don’t go into your head—I’m not them.”

I freeze for a second. How the hell did she know? She saves the big thing I have heard her mention a few times for the end of the day. Unlocking the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulling out a thick binder, she drops it on my desk with a thud that rattles my corn-husk star.

The cover says HARVEST MOON in her handwriting.

“One night a year, the island runs from sundown to sunup for invitation only. Every hunter is active in every zone. Eleven months ago, we sold out. There is a waitlist with over four hundred names on it and multiple marriage proposals with my name on them if I let them in,” she says, sitting on the edge of my desk. “It’s the biggest day we run and I have not slept properly in weeks. It’s the actual reason you have a job; I cannot build that day alone. The last three who tried to help me no longer have a job.”

I open the binder to find guest profiles, medical forms, hunter assignments, and a fold-out map of the island covered in writing, the timings down to the minute.

“Every single guest on the list gets matched by hand. Every limit and trigger is read and cross-checked. Nothing on my island happens to anyone that they did not sign up for.”

She taps the map, and her nails land on the cornfield. “And this is the centerpiece—it always is. Which brings me to my last item of business.” She looks at me and my stomach falls. If she tells me my Cave is to be involved with someone else, I will lose my mind. “I need my scarecrow back, Valli. Benched hunters don’t headline. Whatever he has going on in his head, it needs to be fixed for this event.”

“What does Cave’s involvement look like?” I grit out.

Nixie laughs. “He is not one of the fuckers,” she says. “As my hunters couple up, I outsource, and trust me, I have a long list. But I need to know his head is in the game. People want to be chased through there, roughed up a little, but with no broken bones or cause to call the authorities.”

“He is fine,” I say, knowing it’s not one hundred percent true, but that he is getting there.

“I have known him for a long time, and I wasn’t sure he knew what he was outside that field. So believe me, nobody wants him cleared more than I do. Which is why you’re going to help me run his evaluation. You’re the only person alive he’ll behave for. Now go home.”

I’m at the door, dead on my feet and weirdly happy about today when she calls my name.

“Valli.” She doesn’t look up from her desk. “You did well today. This is the only time I’ll say it out loud, so enjoy it.”

By the time I reach the shed, the smell hits me—garlic, butter, and something roasting. When I walk through the doors, I see candles lit in jars and string lights hanging above the table.

Noa is wearing an apron and smiles when he spots me. “Before you say anything, Cipher has warned me that the number of candles I used was, quote, a fire code violation, and I want you to know I listened and then added six more.”

“Noa.”

“Rue helped me with the chicken, but the love is all mine.”

I cross the shed and take his face in both of my hands and kiss him. He makes a small sound into my mouth, and when I pull back, his eyes are still shut. “It’s perfect.”

“Thank god! I thought it may have been too much.”

I laugh. This is what he thinks is too much—a nice dinner—yet spending so much money on my sister isn’t enough? I really do not understand these men sometimes, but I’m glad I get to try.

Dinner is all four of us. Noa retells my first day back to me, having gathered intelligence, as he calls it, from Khodi and Vesper, who reported to him I didn’t cry. When I tell them about Harvest Moon, Noa lights up like a kid at Christmas, Cipher nods, and Cave goes still.

“Nixie wants you back for it,” I tell him straight. “She asked me to help run your evaluation. The cornfield is the headliner, and I know you’ll be ready not to murder anyone.”

“I don’t understand why people would even want to run through there, but it happens every time we do a Harvest Moon. One person out of all of them becomes the target, and last time he strapped them to his post and threw corn at them. How is that a good time?” Noa snickers.

When our plates are empty, Cipher stands and starts stacking them, and then the least subtle thing I have ever witnessed happens.

“So, Cave, that thing we discussed needs doing now. At another place.”

Cave rises and takes one lingering look at me, then claps Noa’s shoulder on his way past, leaving Noa and me alone under the string lights surrounded by candles.

“They think they’re smooth,” he says.