Chapter 30

Avery pulled down her hood, shook off the snow from her fur-lined coveralls, and gasped in the warm, humid, cinnamon-scented air of the hotel lobby. The drastic change made her cough. Gingerly, she peeled off her gloves. Her fingers were lifeless sausages of frozen flesh, pain creeping into the ends insidiously. She couldn’t even press the icons on her phone to call Jeremy to give the latest report.

Nose dripping, she sank into an armchair and broke open yet another packet of tissues. She scanned the lobby. Definitely no Star Wars fans here, only hardcore skiers in their multicolored ski jackets and pants, speaking in loud, lilting Nordic tones.

Tiny Finse, in Norway, was the location for the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, arguably her favorite movie of them all. The cast and crew had slept in this very hotel, Finse 1222. Like all Star Wars locations, there were several nods to the film to enjoy—in this case, a guestbook and a wall with behind-the-scenes pictures; also, a prop of a Rebel trooper hat used by one of the many local extras. But it all seemed so faded and dated, a quaint concession to nerdy folk who liked that sort of thing.

She wanted to change all that, to bring Star Wars tourism into the twenty-first century, to fill this lobby with Star Wars tour groups.

A mug of tea later, she had recovered enough to operate her phone again.

“Next time, you’re going to be the crazy fool coming here,” she grumbled the minute Jeremy answered. “I’m basically a sentient ice cube.”

“Now you know how Luke felt,” Jeremy answered.

“Except I don’t have a bacta tank to submerge myself in, do I?”

“Did you get all the locations?”

“I got one, two, and five so far. I got lucky—the wampa escape scene and the Ben scene were shot from the back door of the hotel because of a storm. And the location where Han cut up the tauntaun to keep Luke warm isn’t far away either. I’ve booked a guide for tomorrow for the farther-away places, but it’s so weather-dependent. I may be here a while until the storms clear.”

“Well, you have to admit you’ve had an easy run of it until now. But yeah, maybe it was a bad idea to do this in winter.”

“What Gordon wants, Gordon gets,” she said, remembering days spent in Swiss and Italian cities and mountain and lake resorts over the last four months. It sounded idyllic, but the constant racing from location to location, fixing the graphics, tweaking the app, and long-distance calls at 2 a.m. with Gordon—who didn’t respect time zones, or jetlag—had taken its toll. Even for her, who thrived on frenetic activity, it was tough. “At least this concludes the European Section.”

“Except for Skellig Michael.”

“Yeah. I might leave that one for you, Jeremy.”

“Sure, sure. Listen, Avery, is it okay if I’m offline for a few days?”

“Offline? Are you sick?”

“Well, it’s, um, the twenty-fourth. I do celebrate Christmas, you know.”

“Since when?” She could remember previous years with him—pizza evenings with marathon sessions of Dungeons & Dragons that extended over the holidays.

“Yes, but well, Tanya...”

“It’s fine.” That came out more irritably than she’d intended. She knew Jeremy and Tanya were a thing, but this was the first time it had affected his ability to be on call twenty-four seven.

“Then I’m going to wish you a Merry Christmas and call off until the twenty-seventh. I guess they’ll be doing something there in the hotel?” Jeremy seemed eager to get off the phone.

“Yeah, sure.”

Up in her bedroom, she dialed Gordon, because he’d asked her to keep him up to date. But his voicemail jauntily informed her that he was on vacation with his family—he’d taken a week’s vacation to the Bahamas. She took a moment to dwell on the irony of that.

It seemed she would be the only one working on Christmas. The only one sitting alone here in a hotel. Her mother and stepsisters would be unwrapping their presents by the tree, fire blazing in the corner, carols playing in the background, the air filled with mulled wine spices and roast turkey, the epitome of yuletide bliss.

It wasn’t that she wanted that—she didn’t—but something was wrong with her life if she didn’t have any meaningful connections with people outside of work. Her only friends were the fans of her blog. The only email messages were of the type that she used to dream of—venture capitalists and advertisers who were interested in her product and collaboration opportunities.

She needed to connect to humanity again.

Well, what were hotel bars for?

*

An hour later, through the haze of two swiftly consumed vodkas, she watched and laughed at the guys dressed as reindeers in the center of the bar, belting their way through “The Little Drummer Boy.”

The place was packed—an exuberant mix of foreign skiers, Norwegians, and staff stranded here for the time being. Not a whiff of sci-fi anywhere.

One of the reindeer left his herd and came over. He pulled off his red nose and put it beside her half-empty glass. He was big, blond, with Nordic good looks, and with a pang she realized he reminded her of someone.

“Rudolph, I presume?” she said cocking an eyebrow. She felt emboldened by that double vodka hit.

“Yes. Santa wants to know if you’ve been good,” he said in a Norwegian accent.

She smirked. “I wouldn’t know what bad entailed.”

He perused her again, this time more carefully, deciding whether it was worth his while. “I could show you.”

He could, too, she supposed. Good body. Relatively sober. But his smile was all wrong. So were his eyes. They wandered too much for one thing—currently on her drink, calculating how long it would take before he could lure her to his reindeer hideout.

The whole sequence was one she’d seen before, acted in before, and she knew how it ended. The clock was already ticking down to the point where she’d say goodbye to him, feeling slightly queasy and like a second-hand thing, on Christmas morning.

She couldn’t do this. “I’d love to learn some new reindeer tricks,” she said, “but this bad girl has to get home to wrap her presents.” She wished it were true.

His face creased into disappointed mode for a fraction of a second before his easy smile bounced back to his lips, which she now decided were too rubbery looking. “That’s okay. You have yourself a very merry Christmas, and try to be better next year.”

“Ha ha, good plan.”

By the time she’d drained her drink, she sensed a change in the atmosphere—the ratio of males to females had reached a critical point. It was time to go.

But as she rose, restlessness made her itch all over. She couldn’t sit alone upstairs in her room. She couldn’t look at a screen. She needed physical activity. Instead of taking the stairs up, she headed back over to the wardrobe area where she’d hung her snow suit and boots.

She left the hotel by the back door and followed the trail she’d trodden earlier in the day. Her feet soldiered on, determined not to stop until she felt tired, but the adrenalin refused to burn out. A breeze whipped her face and she felt alive again for the first time since... well, since Ireland. She’d actually missed this, the simple act of walking.

She lost track of time as she traipsed over snow, rocks, and ice until it was clear she needed to turn back if she was going to have enough energy to tackle the home stretch. The last time she’d walked to the point of exhaustion, she’d been with Cathal.

Something caught her ankle and she stumbled, falling heavily to the hard ice. She laughed at herself—she was so clumsy, and she’d only had two vodkas.

Oh wait. That was actually painful.

Shit. She couldn’t move her leg.

She frowned at it. Wiggled her toes. Well, that’s okay. Tried again to raise her foot from the ground. Pain seared up her shin bone, up to her knee. She gasped and hurriedly tried to find a position that didn’t hurt. Ouch, that’s not it. Oh crap, not that way either. Panting, she resigned herself to this new state of pain. Because she had bigger worries—worries that crowded her brain like a snowstorm.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Phone. Locate your phone. Call the hotel.

But… where was her phone? It was in her Rey jacket… which she’d taken off to put on the coveralls. How could she be so stupid?

Twisting her face away from the freezing wind, hyperventilating into the fur of her hood, she flew through her options but her brain was clouded with all this damn pain. The star-crammed sky twinkled above her, merciless in its vastness. She felt small and helpless, and so utterly tired all of a sudden. Was she in shock? Would even more pain flood her body when it wore off?

And shit, what now?