Page 1 of Christmas Eve with Krampus

PROLOGUE

Blackmoor is a myth.

A legend.

A place on the other side of the world from where I lived by myself in middle-of-nowhere Alabama, rumors run that it’s the same forest spoken of in every single fairytale ever told… and after spending the last three years obsessed with the idea that it might be real, I’ve found it.

I’m here.

Because it is real. It exists. And if the forest does—and the council can be believed—so do the monsters they make it their home. The ones in those very same stories… and the ones I’ll have to survive if I want to win.

I’m here, and after two weeks of interviews, of tests, of my blood being drawn and every part of my body—the good and the bad—being poked and prodded while I held my breath… after two weeks of knowing I could be sent packing if the council doesn’t approve my application to test myself against the infamous forest, I’m going to sacrifice three days to the woods—and, if I make it out of them alive at the stroke of midnight on the 26th, I’ll earn the one thing I want in this world.

The odds aren’t in my favor, but I’m going to go through with this anyway. I’ll bet on myself to get that prize, and even if no one else has ever had faith in me, I always will.

Watch out, monsters?—

You better not pout. You better not cry.

Because this Christmas?

Josie is coming for you.

CHAPTER 1

DECEMBER 23

When one of the council members handed me a bright purple pill bigger than my Omega-3 supplement and told me it was for birth control, I should have thanked the Blackmoor council for their time, given it back, and high-tailed it out of there.—

I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. After everything I went through to be in the secluded small town on the edge of the forest in the first place, it was going to take a lot more than a monster-sized birth control pill to keep me from going in there. Even if the unsaid implication that it was possible to be impregnated during my three days had me side-eying the pill before I choked it down, I took the damn thing because—if I didn’t—my offer to enter the woods would’ve been revoked.

It was in the contract I signed. To prove I was worthy of such an adventure, I needed to do a pee test to make sure I wasn’t already knocked-up, let them dig into my past to see if I was ducking a spouse as I wrote a check equal to my life savings to even be considered for this opportunity, and when I was the lucky woman who would be allowed to visit the dark forest of Blackmoor this Christmas, I had to willingly swallow the pills they gave me.

The purple one was the last after a cup full of at least eight more; all different than what I was used to, and apart from the birth control pill, the council member didn’t tell me what a single one did. Considering I’ve spent the last seven years trying everything I could for my hip—short of a replacement I’ll never be able to afford—I’m pretty good at recognizing pills: vitamins, prescriptions, and those you definitely can’t get over the counter—or behind it, either. Here’s hoping at least one of them will help my hip before I can do something about it myself.

That’s why I’m here, after all. In a gated-in village that shouldn’t exist, positioned on the outskirts of a dark forest that shouldn’t be real, I flew halfway across the world because using my life savings for this Christmas vacation seemed a better idea than heading into another year without doing something to change my current life around.

It’s the holidays. It’s the season of hope. And if I’m hoping for something that might be impossible, that’s okay.

This whole situation is seemingly impossible.

Magic. Not just Christmas magic, either, where little kids think of a plus-sized bearded man breaking into their homes as an event to look forward to instead of a reason to call the cops. Real magic.

I’m here for my wish.

That’s what they offer you. If you pledge three days to the dark woods and walk out of them again when the seventy-two hours are up, the magic blesses you with a single wish. You can ask for anything you want and it’ll be yours.

I’m not asking for much. To be able to live life again without the constant ache in my hip as my companion… that’s all I want. If I was being greedy, I’d wish to go back to when I was nineteen, my parents were still together and happy, and some rich kid with too much money and no goddamn sense hadn’t decided to choose answering a text over watching where the hell he was driving, but hindsight is a bitch. Even if the magic gave me a do-over, I’d never be able to forget how getting in that car accident didn’t just leave me with a rod in my hip and a slight limp.

My parents argued constantly during my recovery. Following the crash, I spent weeks in the hospital. Even longer in physical therapy. They told me I was lucky to have kept my hip at all. I didn’t feel so lucky when I had a front-row seat to my parents’ marriage falling apart.

They didn’t make it a year before they were divorced. Dad remarried within six months, Mom became even more of a helicopter parent, and seven years later, the only thing that’s changed is my dad having two more kids I’ve never met, and my mother treating me like I’m still a kid instead of a twenty-six-year old woman.

The fact that my high school sweetheart—and boyfriend from when I was fourteen until the accident—dumped me when things got too hard made it worse. My mom saw us both losing our partners and decided we needed to stick together.

And I did. For a while. But as soon as I could walk out of the family home in California, getting as far away from my old life by accepting an old camp friend’s offer to check out life in Alabama, I did.

Then, even after Val moved two states over for her husband’s job, I was stuck in my new, empty life with a tiny apartment, no nearby support, a dead-end job I still had up until three weeks ago, and an overdrawn bank account.

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