“That’s pretty bad,” Evelin said, the words falling weakly out of her numb mouth. Had she really just read what she thought she did? An ultimatum from an unknown hypnotist—and a creepy one at that—for the return of Raisa’s stolen wallet. She shivered. Not from the temperature in the room, but with the recognition that she was in the midst of someone dangerous.

Because there was no chance that Raisa had lost her wallet, or had it stolen, before going to the party. In fact, Evelin had seen her produce it from her purse with ease earlier, and put it back just as well. It was a small, black wallet, with a braided strand of dried grass dangling from its zipper. She had taken out a five dollar bill and tossed it to one of the guys across from her at the table, as payment for some sort of card game bet in a game Evelin did not know how to play, so she merely watched until it was over.

“I need to cancel my bank cards,” Raisa muttered to herself. She picked up her phone from its place on the couch. “I need to call the bank. I don’t know the bank’s number. Do you know any bank phone numbers? Do I need to contact the credit card company separately? What if it’s too late? What if it’s full of charges?”

“It’s a hard time for me to say to calm down, but…”

“Yeah, I know. But I’ve never had my wallet stolen before. I’ve always been so careful.” Raisa tossed her phone into her lap and threw her face into her hands. She repeated in a quiet, fragile voice, “I’ve always been so careful.”

“It’s got to be here in the house,” Evelin suggested. “You had your wallet earlier, we know the hypnotist likely has it, and no one has been able to leave here because of the snow.”

“Do you think we can find it? What if the hypnotist comes back?”

“I’ll try to find it,” Evelin decided. “You should get some real, actual sleep. Do you think you’ll be okay here on the couch?”

Raisa paused.

“No, totally, I get it. You can use the guest bedroom I was in, if you’d like. It’s colder than the living room is, and it smells like storage, but at least you’ll have some privacy.”

“Thank you,” said Raisa, as she packed her belongings back into her purse, except for the phone she kept in her hand. “I don’t really mind temperature so much, anyway.”

“Great. And while you sleep, I’ll have a look around the house before everyone else wakes.”

Evelin directed Raisa down the hall, to the door of the guest bedroom. The lamp light behind them illuminated the way. Raisa had almost opened the door when her phone chimed loudly. Both of the women bristled at the sound.

“Service has been down, but it sounds like the wifi is still up and running,” Raisa whispered. She glanced at her phone’s glowing screen. “Oh no.”

“What is it?”

Raisa turned the screen toward Evelin to show a message preview. “I found these pictures of you on some blog. I didn’t know you were into this kind of stuff,” the message said.

“It’s a scam,” Evelin warned. “It was going around a while ago. If you click the link, it’s either phishing or malware or something.”

“Are you certain?” Raisa unlocked her phone and opened her online messaging app.

“I guess, but I never got targeted by that scam. I only heard of it.”

Raisa’s posture shrank in upon itself. “I wish it was only a scam.” She turned the phone toward Evelin again.

The photo previews could not have been any clearer. In them, Raisa lay on the couch, her eyes glazed, her body in full view, and her mind lost to the world. Exactly as Evelin had found her.

Raisa reached around and clicked the link in the message, which opened up a blog page. She peered over at the screen as she scrolled. Her photos were the very latest post, marked with the caption, “Raisa is sleeping deeply.”

Raisa’s hand loosened and her eyelids drooped. Her phone fell out of her hand. Evelin dove down to catch it as Raisa repeated, “I am sleeping deeply.”

“They’re a clever hypnotist,” Evelin conceded. “To put your trigger phrase in the caption to put you under if you see the blog post.” She caught the phone just before it hit the floor—that would have been loud enough a noise to wake anyone still sleeping in the house, including an unethical hypnotist—and righted herself again.

“I am sleeping deeply.”

Evelin waved her hand again in front of Raisa until she stirred. “But what they don’t know is that you’ve got me on your side now.”

Raisa flushed with redness as she woke. “This is so embarrassing,” she complained. “Hypnotized photos on someone’s public blog? And my name is there too? This is horrible.”

Evelin scrolled down through other blog posts. “It might get worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at these.” Evelin handed the phone back to Raisa. She knew what Raisa would see: posts upon posts of women in beautiful, elegant clothing hypnotized, proof that they had followed the instructions to show up in something pretty the next time. Not one of the women appeared on the blog only once or twice, and in their various appearances, they wore different outfits.

“The wallet is the hook,” Raisa realised. “Then they keep hypnotizing the women over and over? I don’t think I want to end up among them, Evelin. I hate being seen so… I don’t know… vulnerable?”

“You won’t end up among them, not except for what’s already been posted. We’ll get to the bottom of this. And then, once we do, we’ll hold the hypnotist accountable not only for stealing your wallet, but also for all of these pictures.”

But unease stirred in Evelin’s chest. She did not want to end up on the blog, hypnotized in various pretty outfits, either. Elegant clothing was never really her style, and the last thing she wanted to be was somebody’s coerced dress-up doll. But if the hypnotist realised she was helping Raisa, or if they just wanted to pick more than one target from the house party guest list…

She did not even know the guests well. In the morning, she resolved to tell Samuel about all of it. He knew everyone on the list, and he might have even been told which of his friends was a hypnotist. It would make the search a lot easier.

If she did not find the wallet overnight, which was her first plan. Anyone still sleeping, despite the wind that whipped the side of the house and the snow that battered the roof, couldn’t have been that light of a sleeper. She would use the noise of the storm to her advantage as she crept around the house.

Raisa let her hold on to the phone. It would be of more use to Evelin, she had said.

Evelin finished leading Raisa to the guest bedroom, and once Raisa was settled in, Evelin returned to the couch to think. Knowing, all the while, that it was exactly where Raisa’s thoughts had been stolen. She opened the blog on her phone and scrolled, her eyes scanning the images of the hypnotized beauties. Maybe there would be a clue in a reflection, or some other detail. But the hypnotist had been careful, and even in the women’s blank eyes, there was no reflection of who had put them in their trances.

Nor did a reflection reveal itself in large, glinting rhinestones, in shiny, metal belt buckles, nor in windows, the silver of candelabras, polished tile.

Each caption varied slightly. Raisa is sleeping deeply. Margeaux is good and obedient. Laurel is helplessly entranced. None of them were very long, and all of them could have very easily been the subjects’ hypnotic triggers, the way Raisa’s was. Evelin had chills as she read them, and as she continued to scroll through the images of mostly strangers resting, or posed, or leaning limply.

She set her phone down on the couch and exhaled a long breath. It was late. Her best chance to help Raisa find her wallet was during the night, but during the night was also when Raisa had been ambushed by the hypnotist, wasn’t it? And if Evelin just found somewhere to get some shut-eye without looking for the wallet, Raisa would never know. She was sleeping well in the guest bedroom. Evelin could just tell her that she had looked and turned up nothing. Meanwhile, no one else would ever have any reason to suspect her of snooping around.

But that would not be a kind thing to do to Raisa. Plus, if Raisa’s phone had a step counter on the health app, it would be blatant if none were taken during the late night hours. So she peeled herself from the couch, turned on the phone flashlight, and set to work with trepidation and light steps.

Evelin knelt down on the floor and searched beneath the couch. She stuck her hand into the small space between the bottom of the couch and the floor. Dust bunnies clung to her hand, and her fingers wrapped around a long, hard plastic object, but when she pulled it out from beneath the furniture—shuddering at the mass of dust that came out on her hand—it was only an old television remote with its battery slot cover and batteries missing. Evelin smiled, remembering that Samuel had complained two years before about the missing remote and how he had needed a replacement, before remembering she had no time for reminiscing over memories of old if she was going to find Raisa’s wallet before daylight and still get enough sleep to appear functional the next day.

When she was sufficiently certain the wallet was not beneath the couch, she searched beneath the chairs and came up with even less to show for it. So she resigned herself to leaving the living room, knowing that it was not a safe place for Raisa earlier in the night, but it was the safest place for Evelin to be. It was not, after all, someone else’s bedroom while they were sleeping.

No, she would save those spaces for later. She hated the thought of sneaking in while people slept. But the kitchen and dining room were still fair game to search, as were the two washrooms in the hall. Evelin had wondered how Samuel could afford the house on the salary of a post office worker, and had sometimes imagined there was something direly wrong with the house that made it cheap to buy. Asbestos, or structural failure, or maybe ghosts.

As she crept to the dining room, she tried not to entertain the suspicions of ghosts all over again. But she entered the space to the sound of a wretched groaning, and almost turned away to run when she saw the hunched figure the sound came from.

“Evelin?” The silhouette of a man straightened its posture.

Evelin’s breath caught in her throat. It wasn’t a ghost at all, it was a person, and if a person was out in the common area of the house, that meant…

She cursed beneath her breath. Had she encountered the devious hypnotist already?

“Evelin, is that you?”

Evelin dragged the light of the phone flashlight across the silhouette. “Samuel?”

“Ow,” he complained. “You had the right idea, bringing a light. I forgot I moved the table out to add more chairs for the party. Blasted thing struck my knee, or maybe I struck it with my knee.” Samuel laughed with slight embarrassment. “I can’t believe you saw that.”

Relief flooded Evelin. “You have no idea how happy I am that it’s you out here.”

“Did you really suspect ghosts again? I told you, there are none here. A shame, too,” Samuel mused, “because I’d bet they’d be great to talk to.”

“Well, now you’ve got a whole party full of people to talk to until the snow clears enough so we can get out of here,” Evelin said. “Though, maybe that’s not such a good thing. There’s a bit of a problem.”

“A problem?” Concern filled Samuel’s pallid face and lifted one of his light eyebrows. The shadows the topography of his own features cast on his flesh hollowed him out. He pulled the nearest dining room chair toward himself and sat down on it, leaning against its high back. “Tell me more.”

Evelin sat down at the chair across from Samuel, directing her light ahead of her, but trying to avoid shining it right in his eyes. “One of your friends is doing something really bad,” she whispered. “Are any of your friends hypnotists?”

Samuel’s lips formed a thin, tight line, until laughter broke the dam.

“Shut up,” Evelin hissed. “I mean, be quiet. You might wake them up.”

“A hypnotist? This is even more interesting than your ideas about ghosts. Evelin, does my house scare you that much? I’ve cleaned up the cobwebs months ago, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“This isn’t about the cobwebs you sent me pictures of,” Evelin protested.

“Maybe it’s your stress. You did have a paper due tonight, didn’t you? University is making you neurotic.”

“It’s not that, either. I found Raisa on the couch in a trance, and someone’s posted hypnotized photos of her on their blog. Here. In your house.” Evelin opened the blog on the phone and showed Samuel the first post. “See?”

“Hm.” He frowned as he regarded the image and its accompanying caption.

“And the hypnotist took her wallet. So it’s got to still be in the house, because it’s too snowy out to leave. I’m trying to find it before everyone wakes up.”

“Evelin, I was just out to get a glass of water,” Samuel confessed. “Maybe the hypnotist got to me, too, because I’m getting sleepy. Can we talk about this in the morning?”

“I don’t have that kind of time.”

“Tell you what,” Samuel offered. “I’ll help you look for the wallet if you’ll wait until the morning and get some rest, too. Is that a fair compromise? I’m sure Raisa will be fine with us waiting to search if there are two people helping her instead of one.”

Evelin conceded. After all, Samuel knew the house even better than she did; it was his house. And while she was lucky enough to encounter Samuel in the dining room, if anyone else was up and about at that hour, maybe next time her luck would have failed her.

Maybe next time, she worried, she would have been the next hypnotized woman featured on the blog.