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Ali grabs the back of my sweater. “I changed my mind.”

“No refunds!”

“I DON’T CARE!”

The three of us stumble through the corn like drunk idiots while people scatter around us.

The Hunt started exactly thirty-seven seconds ago. I already regret every decision I’ve ever made but I’m having the best fucking time.

“MOVE!” a man barrels past us, and something crashes through the corn behind him making him scream, and not a cute scream either. A full grown man with a deep voice who is absolutely terrified.

I nearly run into Mariah because I’m laughing so hard.

“Why are you laughing?” Ali shrieks.

“I DON’T KNOW!”

A masked figure bursts through the corn behind us and we scream.

“RUN!”

We run… obviously.

The maze looks nothing like it did earlier. We walked through part of it around sunset, when it was still more cute than creepy. Hand-painted signs sent people toward dead ends, skeletons peeked out from between the stalks, and fake crows perched above painfully corny Halloween jokes.

Now?

Fog curls around our ankles, swallowing the path ahead. Somewhere deeper inside, red light bleeds between the rows of corn while low music pulses through hidden speakers, broken every so often by the distant scrape of metal against metal.

And then there’s the Reapers.

Masked men drift between the rows, appearing and disappearing through the fog. Some wear burlap hoods or skull masks, while others look like they crawled straight out of somebody’s nightmare. One guy has what looks like an entire deer skull strapped over his head.

Best part?

If you agreed to physical contact during registration, they’re allowed to touch you. Which I did because apparently, sober Sage made decisions for tonight that slightly drunk Sage is now expected to survive.

Mariah did too. Ali did not.

Smart bitch.

The Reaper behind us gains ground.

“FASTER!” Mariah screams.

“I AM!”

“HE’S COMING!”

“THAT’S GENERALLY HOW CHASING WORKS!”

We hit a fork.

Mariah goes left and I go right.

Our hands rip apart.

“SAGE!”