Total pages in book: 41
Estimated words: 38048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 190(@200wpm)___ 152(@250wpm)___ 127(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 190(@200wpm)___ 152(@250wpm)___ 127(@300wpm)
Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the list vanished and everything went dark.
10
KELLI
“Oh my God!” Kelli gasped as all the lights in the cabin were extinguished at once.
They were plunged into pitch blackness, which was both unexpected and scary! What the hell was going on?
“Klaus?” She groped for her Protector in the dark and felt one long arm slide around her shoulders.
“It’s all right, sunshine—I’ve got you,” his deep voice rumbled.
“Okay, I just don’t understand what’s happening,” Kelli told him.
“Me either. I don’t think I should have touched that fucking list,” he growled. “I think something got fucked up.”
Just then they heard the voice of the cabin again.
“System recalibrating,” it said in the same soft, feminine voice. “Please remain still for a moment while Maximum Romance Mode is activated.”
“Maximum Romance Mode? What the fuck does that even mean?” Klaus growled, but the voice of the cabin didn’t answer.
Kelli pressed closer to her Protector and put her arms around his waist. She was no longer having quite so much fun. What if the cabin was deficient somehow, like the crazy massage therapist robot? What if they were trapped here now with no way to get out and get home?
“It’s okay, baby—I’ve got you,” Klaus rumbled, rubbing her back. “Not going to let anything happen to you, I promise.”
His reassurance and the way he was holding her did make Kelli feel somewhat better. She pressed her face to his side, rubbing her cheek against the warm furry material of the Santa outfit he was still wearing. Under it, she could feel the hard tone of his muscles and his warm, spicy scent which she had always loved seemed to calm her even further.
“I guess we’d better try to find the way out—” she was just beginning to say when the lights came back on. Not the glowing golden lamps that had lit the cabin when they first came in, however. They remained dark. But a fire suddenly appeared in the fireplace all at once, like someone had turned it on. Also, various candles that Kelli hadn’t noticed before suddenly lit all around them. The only artificial lights were the ones on the Christmas tree, which started glowing again as well.
“Okay…” Kelli gave a shaky laugh. “Well, I guess that ‘Maximum Romance’ means firelight and candlelight.”
“But wasn’t that just one of the entries on the list?” Klaus asked, frowning down at her. “Maximum Romance must mean something else, too.”
As he spoke, they heard a soft but very audible flump outside the cabin.
“Oh—what was that?” Kelli jumped and grabbed at Klaus’s Santa coat.
“Don’t know but it sounded like it came from outside. Let’s look out the windows.”
Together they walked over to the nearest window. Klaus didn’t take his arm from around her shoulders and Kelli didn’t ask him to. She was still feeling spooked by the lights-out incident.
What they saw out the pane of glass wasn’t what she expected, however. She had been thinking they would see the quiet, snowy night and the green and gold and red path that had lit their way to the cabin in the first place.
Instead, there was nothing but a solid wall of white on the other side of the glass. Well, not quite solid—there was maybe an inch of clear space above it but she couldn’t see anything out of it.
“What in the Seven Hells?” Klaus growled, frowning.
Kelli was confused as well.
“Open the door,” she suggested. “Let’s see what’s outside.”
“All right but stay behind me,” he cautioned.
The two of them walked to the door and Klaus swept open the door quickly.
A solid wall of white greeted them. But this time, Kelli understood.
“Snowed in!” she exclaimed, leaning around Klaus to scoop out a handful of snow. “We’re snowed in—stuck in the cabin!”
“What? But how can that be? There was barely an inch of snow on the ground when we came in here a few minutes ago,” Klaus growled. “There’s no fucking way this much came down in the past ten minutes we’ve been in here.”
“That sound we heard—it must have been the snow falling all around us at once,” Kelli guessed. She hoped uneasily that the roof of the cabin was really strong—it looked like it had snowed seven or eight feet in a single second—they were lucky it hadn’t collapsed under the strain. Then again, maybe the Questarions had built it to withstand the sudden weight and pressure of a huge amount of snow.
“This is fucking ridiculous, they can’t keep us in here!” Klaus started digging through the snow, which fell in piles around his black Santa boots and began melting on the hardwood floor immediately.
But the more he dug, the more hopeless the situation looked to Kelli. The snow on the porch was almost as high as his forehead and there was no way to tell how far it went on for. Was it just the cabin that was snowed in or was the entire Christmas Village covered? There was no way to know. Still, she did her best to help him with the digging, even though her hands and fingers quickly began to feel numb.