When the wealthy Goodman family assembles for its gloomy annual holiday reunion in their divorced mother's crumbling mansion outside New York City, Holly is pressed into service by her own domineering mother to help cater the Goodman's elegant Christmas Eve dinner. Holly Singletary is a Tech Sergeant in the US Army reserve and a hardworking student from a religious African-American family. Ivy, William Ivor Goodman, is the second and despised idle son of one of America's wealthiest men.What begins as a single evening turns into a three-day nightmare as "the storm of the century", the heaviest blizzard ever to hit New York City, causes both families - the Goodmans and the Singletarys - to be snowed in together for the holidays with no electricity or cell-phone connections to the outside world.But someone - or something, perhaps the ghost reputed to live in the sealed-off East Wing - has chosen this Christmas to kill off the Goodman family one by one.Trapped with the killer, Holly and Ivy find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other. Against a background of violence and tragedy, their passion ignites, but not for the first time - there is that little matter of a stolen kiss between them in first grade.And only Holly, who reluctantly comes to realize how deeply she cares for Ivy, can solve the mystery of the murderer's identity before Ivy becomes the final victim...