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He was wishing he’d thought to grab a flashlight, but he didn’t have to go more than a few steps before he spotted the blue box safely wedged between two joists nailed to open wall studs in the wall of the tunnel.

“Found them,” he called.

“Youdid?” Tosh squeaked.

Ellery lifted the box from its hiding place and walked back to the entrance. He handed the box to Tosh.

“I don’t think you have to say anything to her.”

“Oh,Ellery. Thank you.” Tosh clutched the box, then hesitated and held it back out to him. “Maybe you should keep them until we’re ready to leave.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Oscar interjected. “No way is she going to risk going throughyourrooms.”

Now there was a hair-raising thought. “Do you think she’d actually—”

“I wouldn’t have thought she’d dothis,” Tosh was still holding the box out to Ellery. He took it reluctantly.

She said, “I’m sorry to involve you.”

“Well, no. Of course, I’m involved. I’m sorry this happened to you. And, yes, this is probably the simplest solution. I’ll hang onto these until you leave.”

“Up until this very moment I still thought maybe it was a misunderstanding or that they had somehow been put to the side.”

“It’s an uncomfortable situation,” Ellery agreed. That was putting it mildly. He couldn’t help wishing he could talk this development over with Jack, but the last thing Jack needed was to be bothered with stuff like this. He already had his hands full with genuine emergencies.

“Hopefully, this will be the end of it,” Oscar said.

“Hopefully,” Tosh replied. She sounded as doubtful as Ellery felt.

Arf! Arf! Arf!

The snow-packed courtyard outside Captain’s Seat was a blizzard of activity as flurries of snowballs whizzed through the air—most of them missing their targets. Laughter echoed off the trees and stone walls.

Freddie, unsurprisingly, was in his element, hurling snowballs with the precision of a quarterback. At one point, he playfully targeted Tosh, neatly knocking the toque from her head. Tosh, hair tumbled around her face, burst into laughter and retaliated, her snowballs finding their mark on Freddie’s broad chest. Oscar leaped (unnecessarily, as it turned out) to her defense, his aim surprisingly good for someone more accustomed to handling reels of film than the tools of the action hero trade.

Watson—deemed off target by Ellery before the first snowball was launched—ran from ice fort to ice fort—barking excitedly in a misguided attempt to restore law and order. Jack’s influence was no doubt wearing off on him.

Nobody was winning. Nobody was losing. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.

Chelsea launched an impressive barrage of ice bombs in Freddie’s direction, though most of them flew wide. Freddie, grinning, egged her on, gesturing to his chest, his head, and then widely over his head. He yodeled in a falsetto, “Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo!”

Chelsea’s aim got even wilder.

Or maybe she did mean to paste Tosh in the face. Twice.

Nearby, Lenny and Flip worked as a team, seeming to mostly play defense, building the walls of their fort impressivelyhigh and stockpiling snowballs for the...winter? Lenny laughed crazily as Flip dramatically dove behind the fort, doing an action hero somersault as he narrowly avoided a snowball from Oscar.

As host, Ellery felt it was his duty to make sure all participants received equal attention, and he pelted snowballs at anyone within range. Watson naturally mistook Ellery’s snowballs for the balls they played chase with, and darted after Ellery’s missiles, barking excitedly and occasionally catching a stray snowball in his mouth—to his continued bafflement.

When Ellery’s cell phone rang and Jack’s photo flashed up, he called for a time-out and rose from the behind the mound of his fort. He was promptly hit by a shower of snowballs.

“That’s it. I’m phoning the U.N.!” he called, and of course was hit with another volley of snowballs.

He retreated to the front steps of the mansion, answered the phone, and gulped, “Hey!”

“Hey. What’s happening at the North Pole?” Jack inquired.

“We’re having a snowball fight.”