Page 140 of Just One Little Bargain

“If I do this,” she says slowly, “you both stay within arm’s reach the entire time.”

“Deal.” Maddie nods immediately. “We go in, we walk through, we come out. If it’s terrible, we leave early, and I buy you those cinnamon almonds you pretend you don’t want but eat half the bag of anyway.”

“The second I want out, we leave. No arguing.”

“Agreed.”

Evie catches my sleeve before I can move. “You promise you’ll stay close?”

“I’ll stay closer than close. I’ve already mapped the exits. If anything happens, I know the fastest route to each one.”

“You did what?” She blinks.

“I looked at the festival map and safety plans this morning. You had them lying around the breakfast table, and it was an interesting read.”

Maddie laughs. “You’re so weird. I love it!”

Evie’s grip on my sleeve loosens, and she nods once. “Fine. But I’m holding your hand, and if something jumps out, you’re my human shield.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

The maze starts easy, almost boring, to be honest. Corn walls rise on either side of the narrow path, their dry leaves whispering against one another overhead while pockets of red light smolder between the stalks. The bulbs sit so far apart that darkness keeps swallowing the trail ahead, then releasing it again a few yards at a time.

Evie walks between Maddie and me with her arms folded tightly across her chest. A kid in a rubber werewolf mask launches from behind a hay bale, and Evie and Maddie shriek loud enough to rattle the stalks.

The kid breaks character, doubling over. “Got you!”

Evie’s hand clamps around my wrist.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Fine.”

“You’re cutting off my circulation.”

She looks down at her hand, but doesn’t let go. “Sorry.”

The second scare is better. A trapdoor slams open, and a girl in a tattered dress plunges from the darkness. The rope catches with a brutal snap, stopping her inches above the path before the momentum swings her straight toward us. Her hair whips across her face, bare feet slicing through the fog as the frayed hem skims Maddie’s shoulder. Then she screams.

Evie and Maddie answer in unison, their shrieks ricocheting through the maze. I’m certain I’ll lose some of my hearing by the time we get out.

The fog thickens until it blankets the path in dense, rolling banks, swallowing Maddie from the knees upward until only the pale blur of her hair remains ahead of us. Evie’s moved even closer now, her shoulder brushing my arm every few steps. Somewhere to our left, a chainsaw coughs once, falls silent, then erupts into a full-throated snarl close enough to vibrate through the ground beneath my boots.

“Is that real?” Evie’s hand tightens in mine until I feel every bone in her grip.

“The chain is off,” Maddie says. “It’s just noise.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they’re not allowed to actually dismember guests. Insurance purposes.”

“That’s not comforting.”

The chainsaw revs again. A figure in coveralls and a burlap mask crashes through the corn in front of us. Evie shrieks and slams into my side so hard that I have to brace to keep us both upright. Her face presses into my shoulder. She’s not watching the guy at all, just pressing into me like I’m a shield capable of stopping power tools. I wrap both arms around her automatically.

“I’ve got you,” I murmur into her hair.

She makes a sound that might be acknowledgment or terror, and her fingers twist tighter in my jacket as the chainsaw guy retreats into the corn with a final rev and a maniacal laugh.