Macy doesn’t answer, just keeps walking and pretends like she doesn’t hear him. I’m beginning to wish I could do the same.

“All right, all right, I get it.” Flint shakes his head. “I won’t say anything else against the Chosen One. Except tell you to be careful.”

“We’re friends, Flint.”

“Yeah, well, take it from someone who knows. Jaxon doesn’t have friends.”

I want to ask him what he means by that, considering Jaxon’s got the Order, and they seem pretty damn close to me, but we’ve reached the first row of trees, where the others are gathered. Plus, I’m the one who just said I didn’t want to talk about Jaxon. If I start asking questions, that gives Flint carte blanche to say whatever he wants, and that doesn’t seem fair, since Jaxon isn’t around to defend himself.

Flint walks into the middle of the group like he owns the place. Then again, judging from the way the others respond to him, maybe he does. It’s not that they all come to attention, necessarily. It’s just obvious that they all really want him to notice them…and they all really want to hear what he has to say.

I can’t help wondering what that kind of popularity is like. I don’t want it—would probably melt under the pressure of it in less than twenty-four hours. But I do wonder what it feels like. And how Flint feels about it.

I don’t have long to dwell on my thoughts, though, because Flint gets started giving a quick rundown of the rules—starting with one that sounds an awful lot like there are no rules, except it’s followed by the one that says if you get hit by five snowballs, you’re out—and then disperses the crowd. As the five-minute countdown starts, he grabs Macy’s and my hands and starts running with us toward a large thicket of evergreen and aspen trees several hundred yards away.

“We’ve got two minutes to find a good spot,” he says. “Another two and a half to get things together. Then it’s open season.”

“But if everyone finds a spot, who will we have to throw sno—”

“They won’t,” Flint and Macy interrupt me at the exact same time.

“Don’t worry,” Flint tells me as we finally reach the trees. “There will be plenty of people to wage war on.”

Wage war? I can barely breathe. It’s a combination of the high altitude and cold air, I know, but I can’t help feeling self-conscious about the way I’m huffing and puffing. Especially since he and Macy both sound like they just finished a leisurely garden stroll.

“So what do we do now?” I ask, even though it’s fairly obvious, considering Flint is already scooping up snow and making it into balls.

“Build up our arsenal.” He gives me a wicked grin. “Just because I think Jaxon is a jackass doesn’t mean the guy doesn’t know strategy.”

We spend the next couple of minutes making as many snowballs as we possibly can. I half expect Macy and Flint to outpace me here, too, but it turns out all those years of making pastries and patting dough into balls with my mother paid off, because I am an excellent snowball maker. Totally kick-ass. And I’m twice as fast as they are.

“Coming up on five minutes,” Macy says, her phone ringing with a fifteen-second warning.

“Move, move, move,” Flint calls out, even as he shoos me behind the closest tree.

Just in time, too, because as soon as Macy’s phone screeches out the five-minute mark, all hell breaks loose.

People drop from the trees all around us, snowballs flying fast and furious in every direction. Others run by at breakneck speeds, lobbing them kamikaze-style at anyone within range.

One snowball whizzes right past my ear, and I breathe a sigh of relief until another one slams into my side—even with the tree, and Flint, for cover.

“That’s one,” I hiss, jerking to the right to avoid another snowball flying straight at me. It hits Flint in the shoulder instead, and he mutters a low curse.

“Are we going to hide back here all day?” Macy demands from where she’s crouched at the base of a nearby tree. “Or are we going to get in this thing?”

“By all means,” Flint says, gesturing for her to go first.

She rolls her eyes at him, but it takes her only a few seconds to scoop snow into a couple of giant snowballs. Then she’s letting her snowballs fly with a giant war whoop that practically shakes the snow off the nearby branches, before running toward our arsenal to reload.

I follow her into the fray, a snowball clutched in my gloved hands as I wait for a perfect opportunity to use it.

The opportunity presents itself when one of the large guys from Flint’s group comes barreling toward me, snowballs hidden in the bottom of the jacket he’s turned into a carrying pouch. He sends them flying at me, one after another, but I manage to dodge them all. Then I throw my snowball as hard as I can, straight at him. It hits him in his very surprised face.

We’ve built up about a hundred snowballs in our arsenal, and we use them all as more and more people pour through the forest, looking for a place to hide as they catch their breath and try to make a few extra snowballs of their own.

I’m a little surprised at how close-knit the groups are—and how alliances transcend snowball teams and seem to revert back to the factions I noticed at the party yesterday. Even though members of Flint’s clique are divided into duos and trios, they all seem to come together and watch one another’s backs when someone from one of the other factions—whether it’s the slender group dressed in bright jewel tones or the more muscular group that Marc and Quinn are currently fighting with—threatens one of them.

I also notice that one group is missing—Jaxon’s. Not just the Order, which is definitely not here, but the whole black-clothed designer faction that presided over the party with such obvious disdain. Guess Jaxon was right when he said Flint didn’t want him here. Part of me wants to try to figure out what is up with that, but right now I’m too busy dodging snowball volleys to do more than give it a passing thought.

It’s total guerrilla warfare out here—fast and brutal and winner takes all. It’s also the most fun I’ve had since my parents died, and probably even longer than that.

We exhaust our supply of snowballs pretty quickly, and then we’re just like everyone else, running through the trees, trying to find cover as we fling snow at whoever’s within reach.

I laugh like a hyena the whole time. Macy and Flint look bemused at first, but soon they’re laughing with me—especially when one or the other of us gets hit.

It’s after an ambush that leads to Macy getting her fourth hit and Flint and me getting our third ones that we decide to get serious. We find the biggest two trees we can to hide behind, and we drop to our knees, packing snowballs as quickly as possible. After we’ve got about thirty made, Flint yanks off his hat and scarf and starts piling them inside.