The woman Fiona had turned away twice was climbing the porch again, and this time she had brought a dead fox in her arms. Fiona stood inside the front hall of the lodge and watched through the small square window in the door. The woman was maybe forty, dressed for the cold, boots crusted with old snow. The fox draped over her forearms had a white coat and one dark stripe down its back. It was not bleeding. It was not stiff. Fiona could not tell if it was dead at all. The symbol on the back of Fiona's neck began to itch. It always did when someone wrong stood on the other side of the door. She had inked it herself, three years ago, the night she promised she would never let another of them in. She did not know what the symbol meant. She only knew it warmed when she needed to refuse. The owner of the lodge paid her to sit in this hall every night and decide. He had never asked her how she decided. He had never asked about the mark. Fiona opened the door six inches. Cold air pushed against her knees. "Third time," she said. "You know the answer." "I brought you a reason," the woman said. She lifted the fox. "He found it on the track past the stone arch. The one with the sled marks. He said if I showed you this, you would understand what your mark is for." She looked past Fiona into the hall, toward the stone fire ring at the center of the room. "He said the ring would tell you." Fiona's neck burned now, hot enough to hurt. She had never told anyone about the mark. Not the owner. Not the two she had turned away before. She looked at the fox's open eye, and the eye moved, and tracked her. Behind the woman, at the edge of the porch light, a second figure stepped up into view. A warden's coat. Tara Ashveil, whose name Fiona knew only because the wardens controlled the roads, and every driver who came to the lodge complained about her. Tara did not speak. She only watched, arms folded, giving the woman two minutes or ten. Fiona shut the door. She threw the bolt. Then she carried a chair to the fire ring, sat down, and pressed the back of her neck against the warm iron grate until the burn eased. The fox was a message. The warden was a clock. Someone outside knew what her mark meant, and they had sent proof to the porch to make her ask. She had spent three years refusing. Tomorrow she would have to start finding out why.

Fiona did not sleep. She sat by the fire ring until the wood turned to ash, then watched the front door until gray light showed under it. The woman on the porch was gone. The warden was gone. Her neck no longer burned. But the promise she had made three years ago pulled at her the way a leash pulls a dog. She had to go past the stone arch and find the track with the sled marks. She had to know what her mark was for. The trouble was simple. She had not stepped off the porch in three years. If she left the hall empty, the wrong person could walk in behind her back. She found the cleaner mopping the floor near the door. Blonde ponytail, gray shirt, name tag. Kira Weld worked the halls at odd hours and never asked questions. Fiona had watched her walk past guests who did not see her. Kira saw them, though. Kira saw everyone. "I need the door watched today," Fiona said. "One shift. Maybe two." Kira wrung the mop out. "You never leave." "I know." "Who do I turn away?" Fiona had prepared for every question but that one. She thought of the woman with the fox. She thought of the two before her. "Anyone who asks about me," she said. "Anyone who asks about the mark on my neck. Anyone carrying an animal. A warden in a blue coat. If your neck feels hot at the door, that is them. Bolt it and wait." Kira did not blink. "My neck doesn't do that." "Then watch their hands. Watch their boots. If the boots have old snow crusted above the ankle, they came from past the arch. Do not open the door." Fiona pulled a folded paper from her pocket. She had written the names of every guest expected that week, room by room, the way the peeling directory in the lobby used to list them before the labels curled off. "These are allowed. No one else." Kira read the list once. She put it in her shirt pocket. "The lonely woman in room four stopped picking up her mail last Tuesday," she said. "Nobody noticed. I did. I can watch a door." Fiona believed her. She pulled her coat from the hook. Her hand shook on the bolt. She had turned this bolt a thousand times to keep people out, never once to let herself go. She slid it back. The cold hit her face and her boots crossed the threshold for the first time in three years. Behind her, Kira set the mop against the wall and took Fiona's chair by the fire ring. The door shut. The bolt slid home from the inside. Fiona stood on the porch with the whole track ahead of her. The lodge was covered. She was not.