The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

by Ally Carter

Maggie let herself think that maybe—just maybe—Christmas might not be so awful after all.

She thought her heart might gallop right out of her chest as she held the mistletoe against her lips and read the novel’s epigraph for the millionth time, “For a murder isn’t a murder when there is no death. And a mystery isn’t a mystery when”—she slammed the book shut— “It’s only a test.”

She needed to know if it was okay to hope because Maggie had learned a long time ago that hope was the most dangerous emotion. It had been ripped from her and used against her. It had torn her to shreds a dozen times and she wasn’t going to do that to herself if she could help it. She wouldn’t survive it. But if she was right . . .

“Because even though I’m a sucker for an only-one-bed romance, I don’t know if it counts if there’s a second bed on the other side of the wall.” “But I like your bed being on that side of the wall. I like it even better when you’re in that bed. And— Wait. You read romance?” “Sweetheart”—Ethan lowered his voice and his eyes—“I absolutely read romance.”

look like I’m one long white nightgown away from being killed in a gothic novel.” But Ethan simply said, “I’ll protect you.” She laughed softly. “From a ghost?” “From everything.”

He said it like that was something people do—make plans a year in advance and keep them. They look forward to things and dates and dreams. They live life as if they’re never going to stumble through a door one day and leave their whole world on the other side. He said it like he didn’t know that plans are like hearts: they get broken.

“You know, if mankind has one universal superpower, it’s gaslighting women into thinking they’re the problem.”