My mind churned and churned, trying to come up with a plan that would let me save everyone. I could use my Stone magic to harden my skin the way that my mom had been teaching me to. That would keep me safe from the gunman’s bullets, but Annabella and Bria hadn’t inherited our father’s Stone magic so they couldn’t protect themselves like I could.

   But my Stone magic wouldn’t let me actually hurt the man in return, so I looked around again, searching for some sort of weapon that I could use against him. Maybe if I could sneak up and hit him from behind, I could stop him long enough to scream, run off, and sound the alarm. After that, all I had to do was get my mom, and everything would be fine.

   I was sure of it.

   But the only things around me were the glass ornaments, silver tinsel, and snow globes we hadn’t gotten around to putting on the tree. Not exactly great weapons. Still, I picked up the biggest, heaviest globe and crept forward a few more feet, ready to leap up, reach for my magic, start screaming, and storm down the hallway after the intruder.

   But he didn’t open any of the doors, and he moved past the bedrooms where Annabella and Bria were sleeping. Instead, he turned the corner at the far end of the hallway and vanished. More stairs creaked, and I realized that he was heading down to the ground floor.

   I frowned. Why would he go back there? The only thing on that side of the house was my mom’s office—

   I sucked in a breath. He was here to kill my mom. I knew it, deep down in my bones, just like I knew that I had to stop him.

   I got to my feet and hurried to the end of the hallway. I looked around the corner there, searching for the gunman. Sure enough, he was already downstairs, moving faster now, and stepping into the hallway that would take him to my mom’s office. I ran down the stairs after him, my stockinged feet barely making a whisper on the floor.

   The intruder was now right outside my mom’s office, standing in the same spot where I’d been just a few hours ago, watching Mom talk to that vampire, Hugh, along with that Deirdre woman. I shivered, remembering the vampire’s dead, black eyes. I wondered if Tucker was the masked gunman. He certainly seemed like the type who would sneak into a house and murder someone in the middle of the night.

   The man reached into his pants pocket, drew out a silencer, and screwed it onto the end of his gun. While he was distracted, I tiptoed forward a few more steps and hunkered down behind a table set up against the wall.

   When he finished with his silencer, the man stretched out his free hand and gently tried the office door. The knob turned easily, and he opened the door a crack and stopped, waiting to see if my mom had noticed anything. But she hadn’t, and I could hear the steady, continued clickety-clack-clack of her typing as she worked on her computer.

   The man drew in a breath as if to steady himself, then threw open the door and burst into the office. Fear and panic rose up in my throat, choking me, but I pushed the feelings aside, got to my feet, and took off in a dead sprint, knowing that I had to get to him before he pulled the trigger.

   “What—what are you doing—” Mom sputtered in a shocked voice.

   “Greetings from the Circle,” the man spat out, although I barely registered his words, much less had time to think about what they meant.

   I careened to a stop in the doorway. In front of me, the man snapped up his weapon to fire. Mom pushed back from her desk and shot to her feet, sending her chair rolling across the floor, but she was going to be too slow to get out of the way of the bullets, much less call up her Ice magic to create a shield to protect herself.

   That anger filled me again, stronger than before, and I let out a loud yell and charged forward.

   The man was so surprised that he turned to one side, his weapon wavering, but I didn’t slow down. I drew back my hand and smashed the snow globe into the side of his head as hard as I could.

   The globe shattered on impact, spraying fake snow, glitter, and water everywhere, and a sharp, jagged, curved piece of glass cut into my right hand, leaving a deep, ugly mark in the center of my palm. I yelped in pain, and the man stepped forward and slapped his pistol across my face. Pain exploded in my cheek, and I flew across the room, bounced off the wall, and slid to the floor.

   “Stupid kid,” he growled, aiming his weapon at me. “You should have stayed in your room.”

   Dazed, I looked up into the black eye of his gun, knowing what was coming next and that there was no way that I could stop it. . . .

   “I told you, mister,” a low voice growled. “You need to quit calling this phone. She’s not any more awake than she was the last time you called exactly one minute ago.”

   My eyes snapped open. I knew that twangy, Western voice. That was Ira Morris, and unless I was still dreaming, the dwarf hadn’t killed me after all.

   So what did he want with me?

   * * *

   It took me a few seconds to clear the rest of the dreamy cobwebs out of my mind. I slowly sat up and realized that I was lying on a soft, comfortable bed in what looked like a rustic cabin. Dark wooden walls, colorful, braided throw rugs on the floor, gray stone fireplace flanked by a set of padded rocking chairs. The cheery space was made even more so by all the photos. They covered every available inch of the walls and showed the Bullet Pointe hotel, the theme park, and the surrounding lake. This was definitely Ira’s house.

   I vaguely remembered Finn’s telling me that the resort manager lived in a cabin on the property. Looked like Ira had at least held on to his home when Deirdre had demoted him, if not his office in the hotel, which Roxy had taken over. Good for him.

   I swung my legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the pounding in my head, as well as the dull aches that rippled through my chest, back, and legs. In horse terms, I felt like I’d been rode hard and put up wet. Weird. I hadn’t thought that Roxy had hurt me that badly, but just about every part of me felt bruised, beaten, and battered.

   But I shoved the pain away and took stock of my situation. My boots were sitting on a rug next to the bed, but I was still wearing my black jeans. My black fleece jacket had been removed and draped over one of the rocking chairs, and the left sleeve of my red sweater had also been sliced open.