Page 94 of A Very Addicted Christmas

“As do I,” Audrey says.

Nona gives me a hard look. “You’ve never even been in a fistfight with an actual person, let alone a boy.”She has, is what’s implied here.

“I’m proud this will be my first,” I say into a dry smile. “I’ve gone way too long without this experience.”

Audrey narrows her eyes at me. “I revoke my support. I shall not be party to Kinney’s villain era.”

I glare at her. “Am I not in that era yet?”

She tapes a picture of Uncle Ryke to her box. “Nay.”

“Let’s move away from Kinney’s hunger for violence,” Winona says, then frowns more at me. “You okay, babe?”

“You can’t leave,” I say strongly, from a place so deep within that my eyes burn and the room falls hushed. “Everyoneleaves, and…and I think I’m destined to be a witness to death, someone I know is going to die again, I know it.” My voice cracks. Oh my,ugh.This was not supposed to happen!

Audrey wraps an arm around me. “Kinney.”

“I’m fine,” I say to the scissors in my hand, glaring. “It's just...all my siblings and mom have nearly died."Xander...Moffy in a car crash...Mom attacked...Luna kidnapped..."And I’m cursed to stand by while it happens. That’s all.”

“You aren’t cursed,” Nona says sympathetically.

“She could’ve pissed off a spirit,” Vada teases.

Audrey considers this, “She has touched the Ouija board more than all of us combined.”

Nona tosses a tape-ball at me.

But I flick it off my lap. “I’m fine. Jeez.” I blush and pick up another magazine. When I look up, Nona is taping her eyelids to her forehead. She is such a goof. I shake my head, and when she starts chirping like an ant, I break into a laugh with my friends.

“We should play music,” Audrey proclaims and puts on a holiday shuffle. Mostly the true classics. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.

Winona never said she wouldn’t leave. Did she?

I look up at her.

But she’s busy cutting and asks, “What’d we think of the holiday task list?”

The holiday task list.It was created and distributed by Jane for our arrival to the lake house. Most items were decorating tasks. I try not to look at Audrey.Don’t be suspicious.

We were paired up, and our task…did not go as planned. (To put it mildly.) But we both agreed that no one needs to know what happened—other than my sister who was snooping and saw—but besides Luna, we’ll be taking our secret to the grave. I will die with this. My corpse will be covered in cobwebs, and my ethereal ghostly form will stillneverspill.

Winona and Vada don’t know what happened. They were paired and tasked with hanging garland and wreaths, so they missed it.

It’d hurt more leaving Winona and Vada out if they didn’t keep their own secrets from Audrey and me too.

“If no one’s going to say it, I will,” Audrey says.

I frown. Is she going to tell them? No. We pricked our fingers. It was a blood oath!

“Jane only tasked Thatcher with chopping wood so she could watch him do manual labor, and I think it’s positivelybrilliant.”

“Farrow was with him,” Vada reminds her. “I doubt she wanted to see Moffy’s husband slinging an axe too.”

“Which is why Moffy was also involved in doling out the tasks,” Audrey notes.

I can’t see my brother doing that on purpose. Farrow would rub it in his face…then again, I know my brother enjoys that too. It’s complicated.

Love usually is.

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