Before I even start this story, let me just say that I know I made some dumb choices. You don’t need to tell me. This is your disclaimer that I know they were stupid and I’m going to write about them anyway, so just know what you’re walking into.

Now that the PSA is out of the way, let’s dig in.

It had been nearing a month since I’d been farther from the bar than the patio out back. I was going stir crazy. Like, seriously, between Henri’s continued attempts to shield me from the details of the murders (still ongoing), the increased crowds filling the bar due to said murders, and some old favorites like Eira and Pax showing up over the holidays, I needed to get some space.

I begged Henri to let me run an errand or two, just the simple ones. I promised I’d bring Sgrios and drag Milo along. I swore up and down that I’d be extra, extra careful.

Unfortunately, Henri saw right through all these promises, and he only kept a closer eye on me than usual. And I remained confined to Griffin’s Edge.

Enter the stupid choices I mentioned.

It was two days ago. The last murder had been a few days prior; things had been quiet in the world of supernatural crime since. In contrast, things had not been quiet at the bar. Fear was good for business, enough that Henri had hired a few extra part-time workers to keep up with the constantly-full bar. So many selkies, fairies, werewolves, and elves were packed into the space from open to close that it felt like a One Direction concert in 2012. (Yeah, I know some pop culture).

It was driving me mad. Even when I escaped to my room, I could hear the crowds. It was impossible not to. Groups of dwarves and pixies aren’t chill on their best days, and this sure as hell wasn’t anyone’s best day. So even when I wasn’t working, the shouting and clinking of glasses was unavoidable.

And that’s why, after what felt like the hundredth attempt to convince Henri to let me leave—just as much a failure as the first ninety-nine—I made up my mind to do it anyway.

Hold your comments. Like I said, in hindsight, it was stupid. I know that. Actually, not even in hindsight. I knew it was stupid at the time, too. I just didn’t care.

You probably remember how I talked about some of our holiday visitors. Eira and Pax sure aren’t easy to forget. Luckily, after New Year’s, most of them return to hibernation for another eleven months.

Not all of them, though. Some are winter creatures, not holiday creatures. And of course, plenty of them aren’t particularly nice. I probably should have thought about the fact that it’s still January when I decided to venture out.

As it was, I didn’t. Or at least, not as much as I should’ve. Instead, when a cluster of goblins in the corner mentioned how much they’d kill for some deep-dish pizza, I looked around to make sure that Henri wasn’t within earshot, and then I quickly volunteered to go.

Back in half an hour, I promised. Just don’t tell anyone where I’ve gone. If Henri asks, say I went into the storage room to get more crackers.

Goblins, unfortunately, aren’t the most morally conscious. So they made zero effort to tell me this was a bad idea. They cackled and said they’d tip well if I got extra cheese on the pizza.

I snuck out easily; the crowds were so dense that you could barely see the closest table, let alone across the room. Only the goblins knew where I was going. I didn’t even tell Milo, who was one of our extra part-time hires, because he’s been nervous enough that I knew he’d try to keep me from going. He might even be worried enough to tell Henri, and I couldn’t risk that. Then his piercing lilac eyes would really never leave me be.

I made it to Chicago with no issues. Sure, there were some sketchy dudes in the alley I popped up in, but I sprinted away from there quickly enough that they barely realized I’d appeared at all.

I even got the pizza with no issues. But the fact that I’m writing about my bad choices probably cues you in to the fact that something went wrong. And yeah, you’d be right. Because my atoms can’t get their shit together, and so right as I left the restaurant, pizza in one hand, I jumped.

Honestly, I don’t even know what did it this time. Which was pretty obnoxious. I didn’t sneeze or cough or anything. Maybe it was just a shiver in the breeze. No clue. Either way, more sensitive than it used to be. Not my favorite sign.

In good news, for the first time in what feels like forever, I didn’t jump to the dark forests of Neverland. I mean, it was still *close—*I jumped to a snowy plain just north of those lovely forests. But still better than usual.

In fact, as cold wind blew a flurry of snowflakes into my face, I squinted at the blur of dark, twisted trees in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief. I was only wearing my long-sleeved Griffin’s Edge shirt, so I was freezing. Only my left hand, spread against the hot pizza box, was warm. “Still better than being over there,” I told myself with another glance at the nearby forest.

Another gust of biting wind made me shiver violently. “Only a little better,” I corrected with gritted teeth. “Screw this.”

I began to feel for a gap to pass through, barely able to see my hand reaching out through the blustery snowflakes. But I didn’t have time to find anything before mischievous laughter filled the air around me. My heart sank and I tried to focus harder. I was pretty sure I knew who was here, and I didn’t want to stick around for a heart-to-heart.

The wind worsened, whistling around me so that I could barely hear the echoing laughter over its noise. My hair whipped my cheeks—guess that was a sign I needed a haircut—and my fingers were beginning to grow numb. And still, I couldn’t find a gap.

I cursed under my breath. I was pretty sure he was blocking any nearby tears in reality. And of course, when it would actually be helpful to jump, my body has no interest.

Which is how I ended up still standing there like an idiot, holding a rapidly-cooling pizza, as the wind and snow became a swirling blizzard around me. I squeezed my eyes shut and grabbed my knife from my belt with my free hand, because I had a sneaking suspicion I wasn’t going to like where I ended up.

Sure enough, the blizzard cleared after thirty seconds or so, and I suddenly realized that I was no longer cold, and that it had become completely silent. I cursed at myself mentally and opened my eyes.

I was in a large, round room with a domed roof. The walls seemed to be made of thick ice blocks, like an igloo, though several torches and a fireplace burned warmly with no melting. A sort of living room area was arranged by the fireplace, with couches and a plush pastel blue rug.

From behind me came a voice—a child’s voice. “I found you out in the snow. I saved you.”

My heart sank all over again as I turned around. The other side of the igloo consisted of a small kitchen and a bedroom area, complete with a set of bunk beds carved from ice. And on the top bunk, legs dangling over the side, was a kid: a kid about ten years old, with shaggy white hair and steely blue eyes.

Only it wasn’t just a kid. They were the reason I’d been nervous as soon as the laughter began. I’d never met them, but I’d heard plenty from Henri and from the legends they’d inspired. I knew that they always appeared as a child, sometimes a little boy, sometimes a girl, sometimes in-between. But always about ten years old with white hair. And despite their innocent appearance, they were anything but; no, Jacian was an immortal, winter spirit who was, at best, mischievous, and at worst, murderous.

And yeah, you guessed it: the inspiration for the many, many versions of Jack Frost.

I should have known as soon as I found myself in an icy plain. It was still January, for God’s sake. Jacian would be awake and all too happy to take advantage of a dumbass who showed up in their territory.

Still, as with all beings—especially potentially dangerous ones—best to start off being polite. So I swallowed my fear and gave Jacian a tentative smile. “That was very kind of you. Thank you for bringing me into your home.” I made a big show of spinning around and taking in the room. “It’s lovely.”

Jacian giggled. “I know. Everyone likes it.”

I gave a nervous laugh, tightening my grip on Sgrios. “They’d be idiots not to.”

Jacian jumped down off the bunk bed, landing lightly with no sound. I realized as they crossed the icy floor that they were barefoot, each step as silent and muffled as if they’d been walking on carpet. They approached me, looking curious. “You’re not combusting.”

Best to play dumb. “What?”

Jacian slunk around me in a circle. They were short with pointy ears, a little pixie of a kid. And yet, I could sense the power they wielded: an aura of immortality and strength beyond their age. Spending a lot of time around powerful beings kind of cues you into the energy they give off. It’s hard to explain, but trust me, it’s a distinct vibe. Growing up around Henri and Griffin’s Edge has made me good at recognizing it.

“You look human,” they mused. “But you’re very stable here. That’s interesting.” They were looking me up and down, examining me in a hungry way that I didn’t particularly enjoy. “I haven’t seen that before.”

My skin crawled at the look in their eyes, and I hoped my discomfort wasn’t apparent as I tried to nonchalantly shrug. “Really? Huh.”

Suddenly Jacian was in my face, pale blue eyes burning with anger. “Don’t you lie to me,” they spit out. The air around me seemed to drop twenty degrees; immediately, my teeth began to chatter. “Don’t you dare disrespect me like that.”

They backed off as quickly as they’d riled up, standing a few feet away from me. They tilted their head like a curious puppy as my heart continued to pound in my chest. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

Well, playing dumb wasn’t working. Time for Plan B: flattery. “I do,” I said carefully. “I’ve heard incredible things about you. I’ve also heard how much you like to play games. So maybe…we could play Go Fish or something, and then I could be on my way?”

Jacian didn’t move. “I do like games.”

“I’m sure you must be lonely here,” I pressed.

Well, that was a mistake. Jacian giggled and took a step closer, their expression changing into something unreadable but also highly, highly concerning. A chill ran down my spine. “I’m quite lonely,” they said innocently. “But with loneliness also comes…hunger.”

Oh no. Damn it. This is what I’d been afraid of. I smiled tentatively and held up the now-cold pizza in my non-knife hand. “Luckily, I have a pizza,” I said helpfully. “You like extra cheese?”

Another step closer. I took a step back, feeling my heels brush the edge of the rug. Jacian smiled, revealing that their teeth had sharpened to points. Shit. “You and I both know that’s not what I eat.”

Oh, I did know. I was completely aware that Jacian liked to eat people. Supposedly, their favorite was to lure unsuspecting victims into rigged games, and then eat them when they inevitably lost. In this case, I guess they were hungry enough that they wanted to skip ahead to the eating part.

I cursed the mysterious murderer in my head. Probably Jacian had experienced an even hungrier winter than usual, since half of Neverland’s population had taken up part-time residency in our bar. And now I’d wandered right into their open arms.

I looked around frantically for an escape route. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that this igloo had no doors. I guess when your guests enter via blizzard and exit via death, you don’t need one.

My thoughts had turned into a continuous string of curse words intermixed with increasingly-desperate ideas for getting away. I only had my knife and a pizza, and Jacian was immortal; Sgrios wouldn’t help, and I’d already offered the pizza. No doors. Jacian was blocking escape via traveling through a gap in reality—I’d felt the heaviness, the stiffness of the fabric when I’d tried to find an opening again. And there were definitely no other beings nearby to save me.

Which left only one option, something only I could do that might just save me for once: jumping.

Jacian was still advancing, and I was still backing up across the rug, though my back was almost to the fireplace, and I’d have nowhere else to go. I kept my eyes on Jacian, knuckles white around Sgrios, as I discretely tried to look around for anything that would help me sneeze or cough.

My back was against the wall when my gaze came to rest on the fluffy rug beneath my feet. Jacian saw me glance down, and their pointed smile widened. “You like my décor? Don’t worry. Blood washes out of it easily.”

“What a relief,” I said. And then, before I could doubt the stupidness of this idea, I dropped to my knees, shoved my face into the rug, and inhaled as hard as I could.

Nothing. Jacian was only a few steps away; I saw their bare feet on the rug, starkly pale against the blue. They giggled maniacally. “You’re funny,” they said, sounding amused. “If I wasn’t so hungry, maybe I’d keep you around.”

“I’m flattered,” I said, voice muffled by the rug. My heart was threatening to leap out of my chest. If Jacian got close enough to grab me, it’d be over. I’d die on my knees sniffing some immortal being’s rug. What a ridiculous way to go. I’d never live this down in whatever afterlife I went to.

Come on, come on. All those unintentional jumps, and now my atoms couldn’t do it once when I wanted them to! Atoms, if you don’t do your thing right now, you’re going to exist in an immortal kid’s stomach instead and you’ll never get to take us to the dark forests again! Come on, come on—

Jacian was reaching out, wind was beginning to whip around us, and my blood was running cold as ice as I inhaled again, so deeply that I swear I swallowed rug fibers and also apparently breathed some into my nose, because suddenly I sneezed violently.

And promptly found myself on my knees in a church.

Yeah, that’s right, a human church. I can appreciate the humor in me jumping from an otherworldly dimension straight into a place of human worship. At the time, though, I just felt relief. Warmth and so much relief. I was sure Jacian was fuming back in their igloo, and I’d never been happier to picture a child crying.

Luckily, it was a Thursday afternoon, so the church was empty. I feel like sitting in a church service immediately after almost being eaten wouldn’t have been super comforting.

I slowly got to my feet in the aisle between pews. I was still holding the pizza; I realized I’d never dropped it, even in the face of death. If anyone deserves a five-star rating and a good tip, I think it’s me.

I was about to leave the church and look for a gap somewhere outside—I don’t know, it just felt weird to do it in the church itself, like it was kind of disrespectful somehow—when a strong coppery smell caught my attention. For like the fifth time in the last hour, my heart sank. I knew that smell. I’d served it to vampires at the bar; I’d smelled it when Milo and I had found the dwarf’s corpse. Blood. A lot of blood.

I set the pizza down on one of the pews and looked around for the source. There. Behind the altar, I saw a glint of red as a pool of blood spread across the wood. This couldn’t be good.

“How do I always get unlucky enough to find the bodies,” I muttered to myself as I reluctantly moved towards the altar. “Why is it always me? Human world, Neverland, doesn’t matter. Just let Ian find all the bodies. That won’t lead to lasting emotional trauma or anything.”

I rounded the corner and gasped. Sure, I’ve seen more death than most people probably have, but it never gets easier. Especially because this was just a poor human priest, still wearing his robes, who by the looks of it had been murdered on his own altar. I counted three bullet holes in his forehead and chest, as well as several long cuts across his torso. Someone had really had it out for this priest.

I crouched at his side, being careful to keep my shoes out of the growing pool of blood. “Murderers are just everywhere lately, huh?” I whispered to the corpse. “The world’s really going to hell.”

My plan was to call 911 anonymously and then bail. I’m no expert in human law enforcement or anything, but I know the basics. And the good thing about crimes in the human dimension is, they’re more equipped to respond to them. Of course, that’s a product of them being more common than in Neverland, but hey, at least there’s a silver lining.

Calling 911 with the church phone was, I figured, the most I could do to help. Then the cops could handle it from there and find whatever asshole had done this. That was my plan, at least—but that’s when I noticed something sticking out of his closed fist: something black and oddly familiar.

“Sorry for this,” I whispered to the priest as I leaned over and gently tugged it out of his hand. It was a napkin, a neat black square, and as I let it fall open in my hands, I felt my blood run even colder than it had in Jacian’s igloo. It was a Griffin’s Edge napkin, complete with the lilac embroidery of our logo. And as I looked between it and the priest’s face, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he hadn’t been to visit us in the last month. I mean, I’ve been there 24/7 that entire time, and I’m good with faces. This priest hadn’t been to the bar recently…so why did he have one of our napkins?

Now, I know you’re probably thinking, couldn’t he have it had from earlier? Sure, I guess. But like I said, I’m good with faces, and I didn’t recognize him at all. Priests also tend to get noticed when they visit us and cause significant drama—I mean, vampires and the like aren’t their biggest fans. Kind of a historical grudge at this point. And I didn’t remember any recent discussions involving priests. So I was pretty sure he’d never been to Griffin's Edge.

Long story short, I still called 911 and told them about the body. But when I left after, cold pizza in one hand, I took the napkin too, stuffed in my pocket. The police didn’t need to find that. I still wasn’t sure what it meant myself, but the last thing we needed was cops figuring out how to visit us and investigating the bar, especially with it being so crowded already.

All in all, I hadn’t actually been gone very long—about an hour. Somehow, I managed to sneak in unnoticed, though when I dropped off the pizza at the goblins’ table, they opened it to find a thin layer of ice covering all that extra cheese. Needless to say, I didn’t get a tip, even after trying to explain how impressive it was that I’d held onto the pizza at all through multiple dimension jumps and almost getting eaten. They weren’t appropriately impressed.

Henri had been occupied with the latest swarms of guests, although I felt his piercing eyes on me as I worked the rest of the night with less enthusiasm than usual. The napkin was still in my pocket, and I’ll be honest: it was still there even when I took off my jeans and went to bed that night. Hell, it’s still there now. It’s been two days and I just keep thinking about that damn napkin.

It might mean nothing. Maybe my memory just isn’t as good as I think it is. Or maybe I lost too many brain cells from rug-sniffing to see something obvious. But I can’t shake the feeling that I should tell Henri, or the fear that this might mean that the priest’s murderer has been here, even if the priest hasn’t. I’ve been replaying the faces of patrons in my head like a highlight reel, desperately trying to recall anyone who acted like a murderer. But there’s not really any standouts when half our guests literally drink blood or eat flesh to survive.

I don’t know. I think I’ve got to tell Uncle Henri about it, though. If anyone will have better ideas than me, it’s him.

Unfortunately, that also means telling him about my latest unauthorized venture and near-death experience, which is going to earn me one hell of a disappointed stare. Ah, well. I guess it’s still better than being eaten by a creepy immortal kid in an igloo.