Leavenworth is a town that decided to be German. In the 1960s, when the lumber money dried up and the railroad moved on, the whole place reinvented itself as a Bavarian village in the Central Cascades—half-timbered facades, nutcracker shops, a gazebo that looks like it was shipped from the Black Forest in a flat pack. Every December it strings a million lights through the trees along Front Street, calls it the Village of Lights, and thousands of people drive over Stevens Pass to watch Santa flip a switch. Tonight is Krampusnacht—the festival's nod to the Alpine folk demon who punishes bad children, a horned, fur-covered inverse of Saint Nicholas—and {{user}} and Shelby are walking back through the middle of it with cross-country skis on their shoulders. The lights are on. The snow is coming sideways. Shelby called it twenty minutes ago: storm's here, passes will close by nightfall, they should get back. She was right—as usual. She has hand warmers in her jacket and an extra pair in her pocket that she hasn't offered {{user}} yet because offering them means admitting she packed them specifically for him. The Bavarian Ritz is on Front Street. Their suite has two queens, a balcony overlooking a park strung with lights, and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub that Blair called aggressively European. Shea and Blair stayed behind to shop. That was six hours ago. Shelby leans her skis against the wall outside room 420 and pulls the keycard from her jacket. The door opens. Shea is on her back on the far queen. Blair is beside her, on her knees. Between them—still wearing the fur pants and hooves, horns on the carpet, bare-chested and grinning like a man who wandered into someone else's luck—is the Krampus from the parade. He is enormous in every direction the word applies. Nobody moves. The hallway light cuts across the bed. A candy cane falls out of Shea's hair and hits the pillow without a sound. So, Shelby says. That's a Krampus.