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  For Sonja

  So there I stood, exhausted, in the snow, as the sound of violins drifted toward us from the ballroom. Around my neck was a thirty-five-carat diamond that didn’t belong to me, and in my arms was a sleeping child who didn’t belong to me, either.

  Somewhere along the way I’d lost a shoe.

  People always say that in an emergency you don’t feel pain or the cold because of all the adrenaline coursing through you, but it’s not true. The wound in my shoulder was throbbing like mad, the blood was running down my arm and dripping onto the snow, and the cold gnawed painfully at my foot. The muscles in my arms and shoulders were burning from carrying the child, but I didn’t dare put her down again in case she woke up and alerted our pursuers to where we were.

  People also say your brain works best in moments of great danger, arming you with razor-sharp insights. But that wasn’t true in my case, either. I couldn’t tell who was good and who was bad anymore. And the only razor-sharp insight I’d had recently was that silencers on guns really do what they say they will.

  And that there were definitely better moments for a kiss than this one.

  I had no idea whether the boy kissing me was one of the goodies or one of the baddies, but either way, I felt my strength returning.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that since the first time I saw you,” he whispered.

  BIENVENUE. WILLKOMMEN. BENVENUTO.

  WELCOME TO

  Enjoy your stay.

  1

  My first day as a hotel babysitter was shaping up to be a complete disaster.

  “You are without doubt the worst babysitter in the history of the world, Sophie Spark,” was Don’s verdict, as I dashed past him yelling, “Boys! This is not funny! Come back here, please!”

  “Yes, please, please, please!” said Don, mimicking me. “Or I’m going to get fired!”

  It was entirely possible. But I’d only taken my eyes off them for a minute. In my defense: It’s easier than you think to lose sight of children in the snow when they go sneaking off wearing white parkas, white ski pants, and white hats. It ought to be illegal to dress kids like that.

  They couldn’t have gotten far. Up the hill from where I was standing, the glistening blanket of snow was untouched. But here on the west side of the hotel, there were plenty of hiding places where a pair of very small and devious children could have gone to ground, decked out as they were in camouflage gear. There were lots of snowdrifts they could be crouching behind and various trees, woodpiles, and walls that also offered ideal cover.

  I squinted against the light. The weather forecast had said more snow was due to fall tonight and over Christmas, but for now the sky was still bright blue and the snow gleamed as if it were trying to out-sparkle the windows and the copper-clad turrets and dormer roofs. The valley below, on the other hand, had been shrouded in thick mist since yesterday morning. Weather conditions like this were what had given the hotel its nickname: Castle in the Clouds.

  “Strangely quiet, isn’t it?” said Don Burkhardt Jr., reminding me that now really wasn’t the time to be admiring the Swiss mountain scenery. “I just hope those sweet little boys haven’t already frozen to death.”

  Don was sitting on the big sled that was used to transport firewood to the basement door, swinging his legs and licking an ice-cream cone he must have sweet-talked out of someone in the kitchen. The firewood itself he’d simply tipped out into the snow beneath the WELCOME TO A CASTLE IN THE CLOUDS sign.

  The ice cream gave me an idea. “Hey, boys! How about a nice ice cream?” I called.

  But I was met with absolute silence.

  Don giggled gleefully. “You shouldn’t have let that handyman distract you from your duties, Sophie Spark.”

  “You’d better pick that wood up if you don’t want to get in trouble,” I said.

  Although Don was small and skinny and looked sweet and perfectly harmless with his little snub nose and soulful brown eyes, I was secretly afraid of him. He was always coming up with things you’d never expect to hear from a nine-year-old, and it was doubly disconcerting because of his high-pitched little voice, cute Swiss accent, and equally cute lisp. His odd habit of calling people by both their first and last names, sometimes accompanied by description and age—“You’ve got a hole in your tights, Sophie Spark, seventeen-year-old high-school dropout”—had something weirdly menacing about it, like in a mafia film when someone murmurs “I know where you live” and later deposits a horse’s head in your bed. If you’re lucky.

  Don and his parents were regular guests at the hotel, and Don knew the place like the back of his hand. He’d spend all day roaming around the building, eavesdropping on people’s conversations, and stirring up trouble, behaving as though the hotel and everyone in it belonged to him. He seemed to know everything about everyone, guests and staff alike. It was creepy the way he managed to remember everything, right down to the tiniest detail. Freight elevators, offices, the basement—Don’s favorite places to loiter were the ones guests weren’t supposed to have access to, but because he was so small and sweet he rarely got in trouble for it. Whenever he came across someone he couldn’t charm with his innocent doe eyes, he put the fear of God into them by reeling off their full name and mentioning, as if in passing, his fabulously rich father, Don Burkhardt Sr., and his father’s friendship with one of the Montfort brothers, who owned the hotel.

  That was what he did with me, anyway. And even if I tried not to show it, his mafia-style methods were pretty effective. Just two days ago, I’d caught him wiping his chocolatey hands quite coolly and deliberately on the embroidered velvet drapes in the little vestibule on the second floor. He met my outrage with a superior smile. “Oh, high-school-dropout Sophie Spark clearly has a penchant for hideous curtains!”

  That made me even more outraged: All the curtains and cushions on the second floor were made from the same fabric, a beautiful crimson material embroidered with birds and floral patterns in soft gold thread. You didn’t have to be an expert to realize how valuable they were, even if the red had faded slightly over the years. When you ran your fingers gently over the velvet, it felt almost as if it were stroking you back.

  “Anyway, isn’t it your job to keep things clean around here, temporary chambermaid Sophie Spark with the funny freckles?” Don had asked. Two days ago, I hadn’t yet started my babysitting duties; I’d still been assigned to the housekeeping team. “How much money d’you think my dad spends in this hotel every year? And who do you think they’d kick out first—you or me? If I were you, I’d be glad it’s only chocolate and try to get these stains out quickly before Fräulein Müller reads you the riot act again.” (Where on earth did he come up with these expressions? Not even my grandma talked like that.)

  “And if I were you, I’d get out of here quickly before I whack you with this duster!” I’d replied, but Don had sauntered away with a grin on his face
, knowing full well that he’d won. I was more afraid of Fräulein Müller, the head housekeeper, than I was of him. And as I scrubbed the chocolate stain out of the velvet curtain, I did actually feel a certain relief that it was only chocolate and nothing worse.

  “If anyone’s going to get in trouble around here, it’s you,” Don remarked now, licking his ice cream. “You were flirting with Jaromir Novak, thirty-eight, mustache-wearer, instead of looking after the children. I saw you.”

  “I wasn’t flirting,” I corrected him at once. “I was just quickly helping Jaromir untangle those Christmas lights. Which happens to be part of my job.” After all, I wasn’t just a babysitter; according to the job description, the hotel intern was supposed to turn their hand to “a variety of roles” and be “flexible and adaptable at all times.”

  Don shook his head. “You smiled, tucked your hair behind your ear, and exposed your throat—all key signals in the body language of female mating behavior.”

  “Rubbish!” I said indignantly. “Jaromir is far too old for me and has a wife and child in the Czech Republic who he loves very much.” And even if he’d been twenty years younger and single, I’d never have flirted with him. I didn’t flirt with anyone, out of principle. Even the word flirt made me cringe. “Anyw—” I broke off. It was obvious from the expression on Don’s face how much he was enjoying this, seeing me defending myself so vehemently. It was yet more proof that I took him seriously. And that was the last thing I wanted him to think. “Well? Have you seen the twins or not?” I asked tersely.

  Don immediately changed tack. “Yes. I even know where they’re hiding.” He fixed me with a butter-wouldn’t-melt look even Bambi would have been proud of. “I’ll tell you if you say ‘please, please’ very nicely.”

  “Please,” I said, against my better judgment.

  “Please, please!” Don demanded.

  “Please, please,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Don laughed delightedly. “I’ll tell you why you’re such a bad babysitter: You just don’t project any natural authority. Kids pick up on that kind of thing.”

  “And I’ll tell you why you don’t have any friends: You just don’t project any natural niceness.” I’d blurted it out before I realized how mean it actually was. I bit my lip in shame. I really must be the worst babysitter in the world, having managed to lose two small six-year-olds just by turning my back on them for a minute and then having felt the urge to hurl personal insults at Bambi himself. And I was pretty sure I’d only gotten the internship at the hotel in the first place because I’d mentioned my experience looking after my two little brothers and given the impression that I was particularly good with, and fond of, children.

  “Ouch!” Don had nearly tripped me from his sled, but somehow I made it past his outstretched leg without falling over. Fond of children, my arse. Children were little pests, as far as I was concerned. But that didn’t change the fact that I now had two of them to recapture. And the third I would simply ignore from now on.

  “Boys! Hello!” I tried to make my voice sound friendly and relaxed, as if we were just playing hide-and-seek. Not a peep. And to think that before this they hadn’t been able to keep their mouths shut for so much as a second and had chattered away constantly in rhyming gibberish. If only I could remember their stupid names! They had trendy, wannabe-American names like … “Josh? Ashley? Where are you? Don’t you want to finish your snowman? I’ve found an extra-special carrot for his nose!”

  Don giggled again. “You don’t even know their names, screw-up Sophie. You can stick your carrot where the sun don’t shine. Why don’t you just give up now?”

  I pretended not to hear him. There was no way I was giving up. In the last three months, I’d risen to plenty of other challenges. And this situation was actually nowhere near as bad as it looked. My job was to take the Bauer twins (Laramy? Jason?) out for some fresh air and keep them entertained, leaving their parents free to do their packing and check out of the hotel in peace. If you thought about it, that’s exactly what I was doing: These kids were having the time of their lives out here, now that they’d managed to hide from me. In the fresh air.

  “Ever heard of culpable negligence, soon-to-be-ex-intern Sophie Spark?” Don licked his ice cream again. “I hope you’ve got good insurance. If I were you, I’d be praying they don’t both fall into a crevasse. If it starts snowing again, soon even the tracker dogs won’t be able to pick up their scent.”

  I resisted the urge to put my fingers in my ears. This child really did have an evil streak. As far as I knew, there were no crevasses around here, but even I could hear how shrill and anxious my own voice sounded when I called to the twins again. “Do you want to pet a squirrel before you go?”

  “They’re not going to fall for that one.” Don flicked his half-eaten cone into the snow. “Oh, go on then, I’ll help you: They went that way.” He pointed to the new ice rink next to the antique children’s merry-go-round, which Old Stucky and Jaromir had conjured up over the past few days. “I think they were planning to hide in the ski cellar.”

  I wasn’t completely stupid. I didn’t follow the direction he was pointing but plodded resolutely the opposite way. And sure enough, I’d only gone a few feet when I heard muffled giggles and saw a branch jiggling about in the old half-moon fir tree. Jaromir and Old Stucky had decorated the tree with strings of Christmas lights during an intrepid climbing expedition that November; or rather, Jaromir had climbed the tree and Old Stucky had held the ladder. It had been nicknamed the half-moon fir tree because only the branches facing the hotel had lights in them. The same strings of lights had been in use for thirty years, I was told, but since trees grow over the course of thirty years and Christmas lights don’t, they were now only long enough to cover half the tree. This meant that one side of the fir tree twinkled in the darkness as if trying to go one better than the blazing windows of the hotel, while the side facing the valley stayed black and still, blending into the night sky—just like a half moon. The tree also marked the threshold between the hotel’s well-tended, well-lit grounds and the mountainside beyond, where nature was left to its own devices. There wasn’t much difference between them at the moment, though, because everything was buried deep under a thick blanket of snow.

  The tree really was the perfect hiding place if you were only four feet tall. The branches fanned out in thick, sweeping layers reaching almost to the ground. It was probably soft and dry under there, a bed of moss and fir needles untouched by the snow.

  Not wanting to scare the children off, I approached the tree in an unobtrusive, meandering way. “Those clever Bauer twins really are very good at hiding,” I said in a stage whisper. “It’s just such a shame I can’t find them and show them the big surprise I’ve got for them. And it’s not even anything to do with squirrels…”

  Whispers from beneath the fir tree. I couldn’t hold back a grin.

  But my joy didn’t last long.

  “Don’t be fooled, Jayden and Ash Bauer!” cried Don from right behind me. He’d jumped down off the big sled and followed me, clearly with the intention of making my life even more difficult. “She doesn’t have a surprise for you! And she certainly doesn’t have any squirrels! She just wants to catch you, and then you’ll have to go home with your parents and all the fun will be over! You should make a run for it!”

  “Jayden and Ash are too clever to listen to stupid old Don,” I said hopefully, but already the children were scrambling out from under the tree and racing across the parking lot, laughing and hooting as they went. Don clapped and cheered. I had no choice but to set off in pursuit. Unfortunately, my little charges were headed in the wrong direction—away from the hotel and toward the road. They leapt nimbly over the wall of dirty snow and ice formed by the snowplow, crossed the road, and climbed over another bank of snow on the other side.

  “No! That’s dangerous!” I called as I clambered after them. And it really was. Although the road ended here at the hotel and there wer
e never many cars on it, the asphalt wound its way down into the valley like a shiny black ribbon in a series of alarmingly steep hairpin bends. Steeper still was the slope they cut across, which was covered in fir trees and which the children now began to slither down, laughing as they went. They grabbed at the low-hanging branches like clever little monkeys, swinging themselves down the mountainside at lightning speed. Unlike the twins, I was too heavy for the thick snow that had thawed and frozen so many times: With every step, I sank into it at least up to my knees, to the sound of loud crunching. It was like trying to walk across the caramel crust of a giant, tilted crème brûlée.

  “Stop,” I cried despairingly. “Please!”

  “Please, sneeze, nibbleknees, nibblechitter, chotter, cheese!” the twins bellowed delightedly. Don was right. I projected absolutely zero authority.

  The children had already reached the next bend in the road and were soon scrambling across it.

  “You really need to stop now!” I hastily pulled my foot out of a particularly deep hole in the snow and tried taking bigger steps. “There are … there are bears around here!”

  “Bears, snares, nibblenares, nibblechitter, chotter—oops!” One of the twins had lost his footing—he slid down the hill a little way on his butt and collided with the nearest tree, laughing his head off. His brother thought it was so funny that he sat down and started sliding on his butt, too.

  “Don’t do that!” I cried in alarm, already having visions of them hurtling down the steep mountainside unchecked until they either crashed into a tree trunk and broke their necks or fell into the road and got run over by a car. I was convinced I could hear the sound of a car engine already and redoubled my efforts to catch up with them. But that only made me lose my balance, too. I landed on my belly in the snow and was immediately transformed into a human bobsled. With my increased surface area and slippery coat, I practically flew across the snow. As I went speeding down the mountainside, neither my outstretched arms nor my panicked shouts—something unimaginative along the lines of “Noooooooooo!”—could stop me. I shot past the twins, was flung over the top of the next wall of snow, and landed slap-bang in the middle of the road. It all happened so quickly there wasn’t even time for my life to flash before my eyes.