by Cat Larson
I walked back to my car. The sooner we got off the phone, the sooner I could try calling Fernando.
“Well—”
“You have to check on her.”
“What? Why?”
“I already told you.”
“Right. Your strange feeling.” Get in line, Mom. I huffed then watched as a cloud of air danced in front of me. The temperature felt like it’d dropped another ten degrees, turning me into a walking ice woman. “It just so happens that I’m at her place and she’s not home.”
“You’re… you’re in Bigfoot Bay?” The utter disbelief in her voice wasn’t the least bit surprising. I hadn’t stepped foot here again after I’d left. “So, you felt it too—about Violet?”
I got in my car and cranked on the heat. “Not exactly.”
“You have to check on her,” she repeated.
“I told you she’s not home. And now I’m going home. I’ll try reaching her later.” She could be sure of that. Violet wasn’t off the hook. Not by a long shot. She had plenty of explaining to do and so did Fernando. Once I was certain of his safety, I was going to wring his neck for putting himself in jeopardy, even if he wasn’t aware that’s what he was doing.
“Samm?”
Now, I just had to think of a logical reason why he couldn’t be around Violet anymore. Something along the lines of my sister was criminally insane and had an ax to grind with men. Literally.
“Samm!”
“What?”
“Aren’t you listening to me? I’ve been talking to you.”
“Sorry.” I turned on the windshield wipers, but it didn’t seem to do much good. The glass blanketed white again the moment the blades cleared. Great. It was going to be a fun drive.
“I don’t care if you say she’s not home. You’re there for a reason, and I’d sleep much better tonight knowing you went inside and looked around.”
“The door’s locked.”
“There’s a key underneath the flowerpot.”
Of course, there was. The only spot more obvious would be under the welcome mat. It was Bigfoot Bay, after all. People here were more likely to scrub a dirty window for you than to break into one.
I dropped my head. “Fine,” I grumbled, turning off my car and grabbing my purse. “I’ll call you back when—”
“You’ll do no such thing. I’m going to stay on with you.”
“Fine.”
The line crackled as I headed up the snow-covered path. I didn’t know how long before we’d be disconnected anyway. I was amazed it was holding out this long. The service on her archaic flip phone in her remote little village was more miss than hit.
I trudged up to the front entrance again and felt around with my foot for the flowerpot. If Mother Nature didn’t let up soon, we’d be under a state of emergency.
“Are you inside yet?”
“Mom, I’m still looking for the key. Everything’s buried here. Not everyone is basking in a tropical paradise.”
I kicked over the pot then rooted around for the frozen key with my equally frozen fingers. Ah, gotcha.
“It’s almost ten. Why isn’t she home?”
I paused with the key halfway to the lock. Good question. Where the heck was she? Violet didn’t own a car, preferring to walk everywhere. It hadn’t even occurred to me until then that she could’ve left somewhere with Fernando. Was it against his will? I quickly booted that distressing possibility from my mind, lest I freak out again.
“You know, she could just be sleeping,” I said, for as much as my assurance as my mother’s.
“No, she would’ve woken up and answered my call.”
“The weather’s bad. Maybe there’s a line down somewhere.”
Another thing my sister didn’t own—a cell phone. She refused, claiming they scrambled her energy. So, a downed phone line was a plausible reason for her not answering, but I failed to mention that the snow hadn’t started until after I’d arrived.
I keyed open the door and stepped inside. “Violet!” I yelled. “Violet, I know you’re hiding. Come out and—” Pfff. A head of lettuce assaulted me. What in the world? I blew it aside, tasting the bitterness on my lips. Not lettuce.
“What’s happening?”
“I just got a faceful of something leafy and bitter.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Blech. Maybe it was her equivalent of a security system. I hoped it wasn’t poisonous.
“That’s mugwort,” my mother said. “A protective herb. You’d know that if—”
“All right, all right.” I didn’t need a lecture. “Violet?” I felt along the wall for a light switch.
“What do you see?”
“I don’t see anything. I can’t find a light.” I jabbed my hipbone into something sharp. Dang it! It was throbbing now. My eyes were taking too long to acclimate to the darkness, and unless I found a switch soon, I’d end up black and blue.
“Forget about that. What do you sense?”
“I don’t sense anything either. Look, she’s not here, okay? I’m sure everything’s fine. Maybe your bad feeling was just some undercooked river fish.”
“Sammara Eve Hain. Do not take that tone with me. You know better.”
I sighed. She was pulling out the big guns. “Just Eve is fine, you know.”
It’d fall on deaf ears, of course, but it couldn’t hurt to keep trying. Just like she did. There’d been some pretty high hopes for me, after all, being the firstborn female in the family. I mean, come on… I’m named Sammara, shortened to Samm.
Samm Hain. As in Samhain, Celtic for summer’s end. Just toss my middle name at the end and you’ve got Samhain Eve.
Otherwise known as Halloween.
Hilarious, right?
Yeah, I was aware it wasn’t pronounced the same as the actual Gaelic word, but tomayto, tomahto. When it was written down, the matter became moot anyway. Either my mother had indulged in too much dandelion wine right before filling out my birth certificate or she’d been that desperate to secure my witchy future by choosing a symbolic namesake. Seeing as I had never noticed her touch a drop of anything harder than iced tea, all bets go to the latter.
Meanwhile, my sister, Violet Rose, got the pretty flowery name. And what happened? She ended up being the one who embraced her witchery with all the grace of a pack of rabid wildebeests.
“Sammara Eve Hain, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Mom.” Had she been talking?
“Just because you turned your back on your gifts doesn’t mean you can insult those who didn’t. I know exactly what I felt, and it wasn’t bad fish.”
“Yes, Mom.” I tried not to snort at “gifts.” “Sorry.”
In our family, we were blessed (cursed) with magical talents that came to us naturally. One so-called practical divination skill was uncloaked at birth and heavily nurtured right out of the womb. The rest could be mastered with lots of study and practice. And even then, it wasn’t guaranteed unless you were born with it.
My inborn skill was fire reading. Seriously? How practical was that? In a nutshell, it was candle-gazing. I would’ve been better prepared for life learning how to clean out a chimney or knit a scarf. The frustration that arose from my useless teaching only proved I wasn’t meant to follow my witchy path, and it hadn’t hurt me in the least to shun it all these years. On the contrary. I was much better off pretending to be a normal human female.
“Turn a blind eye to it all you want, Samm. It’s still a part of you.”
The connection crackled again, and I hoped this would be the time I lost her. No such luck. I twirled a piece of hair around my finger as the room finally began to come into focus. I couldn’t discern everything, but so far, nothing appeared broken or out of place, certainly nothing like I had imagined when I’d heard those crashes.
“Violet?” I called once more while crossing the room, still in search of light.
“I’m not sure how long my service will hold out. I want your promise right now that you’ll sta
y there however long it takes until you’re sure your sister’s safe and sound.”
“What? No. I can’t do that. I have a life, a job.” A fiancé. “I can’t just camp out here.”
At last. I spotted a small stained-glass lamp in the corner, and I went over and tugged the cord. The bulb was dim, but it’d do.
“Oh really? And what’s the job-of-the-month this time?”
“Not fair, Mom.” I wasn’t about to tell her I was actually in between jobs. Again. “Just because I haven’t discovered my passion yet like Violet…” My eyes raked over dozens of little jars, lining the built-in shelves. Since tea was part of her store name, I assumed they were filled with tea leaves, but for all I knew, they contained ground-up toad warts and graveyard dust.
“And you know exactly why that is, don’t you?”
“Um, maybe because I haven’t found anything that resonates with me yet? I’m still young. I have plenty of time to decide the rest of my life.”
I turned around, spying bars of soap interspersed among boxes of stationery. Lots of stationery. Who wrote letters by hand anymore? My baby sister was more old-fashioned than my parents.
If Violet was playing hide-and-seek, there were only a couple more places to check—the “Employees Only” room that looked nothing more than an herb-infested supply closet (I peeked) and a backroom leading to what had to be her living quarters.
My mom snickered. “And nothing will ever satisfy you, dear daughter, until you wake up and follow your—”
“All right. I’ll stay, okay?”
Geez. She acted like my desire to lead an ordinary life was just a phase I’d eventually grow out of, like the terrible twos. At least my father was more sympathetic, seeing as his magic was dormant. Anything dealt to my sister and me at birth was all courtesy of the maternal bloodline.
“Thank you, Samm. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I grunted. “You know I worry about you girls. I didn’t want to mention this at first, but I heard it the other day.” She whispered, “Did you?”
“Do you mean static? Because I’m hearing plenty of that right now.” We’d probably lose connection at any moment. I pushed open the door to the backroom, seeing an unmade bed. I stepped inside.
“Don’t change the subject. You know very well what I meant. The—”
The call dropped, along with the battery life, and I ignored the heebie-jeebies swirling in my stomach. I would not let her superstitious nature infect me. Besides, for all I knew, she’d heard the cry of a howler monkey, not “The Shriek.” The screaming omen was already taken seriously enough in our family; I didn’t need to encourage her further.
Torrential nausea bubbled inside me, and I stuffed that down too. My mom was being ridiculous. It was just some wild animal; I was sure of it. She was in the middle of a rainforest, after all. I massaged my midsection briskly as my eyes caught sight of a scattering of grass on the floor.
Grass?
The low-wattage bulbs in the place weren’t doing my vision any favors, so I crouched down to get a better look. I picked up a blade and rubbed it between my fingers. It certainly felt like grass, but the kind found in the peak of spring, not the brown, lifeless stuff that was currently lying dormant under the snow outside.
I squinted, taking in the rest of the surrounding scene. There was an object a little farther ahead, so I moved in closer. It looked like… My insides churned violently; I couldn’t tame it any longer. On the hardwood floor of my sister’s bedroom lay a charred cell phone—Fernando’s cell phone—and right beside it sat a large frog. The blood rushed from my head at an alarming pace.
He croaked.
I passed out.
Chapter Two
I woke a short time later to something cool on my throat. I peeked open an eye and rubbed the back of my head, more confused than a leprechaun in a Skittles factory. What the heck was going on, and why was I on the ground? Why did it feel like I’d been clobbered by a two-by-four? And why was there a…
“Ahhhh!” I leaped up and the ‘something cool’ was flung to the side. It took a moment to get my bearings in order to comprehend what that something was. Or rather someone.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
I scooped him up and cradled him in my palms. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” His bulging eyes blinked up at me. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
Croak.
Holy crud. Of course, he couldn’t answer me. Not in a language I understood. I had to lie down again. My legs wobbled, my head ached, and my once large, muscled fiancé was small enough to fit in my hand. Not to mention also soft and squishy like a water balloon. Wanting to cry was an understatement.
“Violet!” I howled. “You are not getting away with this!”
I couldn’t break down. Not yet. I had to keep it together. I set Fernando on the floor gently, and he hopped away. He didn’t appear physically harmed from my tossing him aside earlier, but I swore he looked a little insulted over my reaction. Not that I knew the first thing about what a frog looked like when its feelings were hurt.
I dropped my head in my hands. Jiminy Cricket… I had to find Violet. Now. She would pay for this big-time. I sidled over and stroked his smooth back. He wouldn’t even blink at me this time. With either eyelid. Great. I’d emotionally wounded my amphibian fiancé.
“You are not getting away with this, Violet!” I reiterated loudly as if my underhanded sister were lurking in the shadows. “You hear me? You’ve gone too far this time.”
This was worse than everything else she’d ever done put together. Worse than the time she had used a spell to warm up her hot chocolate, starting the curtains on fire and blaming it on me. Worse than the time she’d turned my goldfish into a miniature dragon because she thought it was a more interesting pet. Even worse than the time she’d attempted to bring her favorite doll to life, ending up changing our babysitter into a plastic figurine instead. Talk about a total quagmire, at least until Mom came along and straightened it out.
And believe me, there was more. Much more. But at least all those times could’ve been chalked up to her youth and immaturity. Now, she knew better. Juvenility was not a cute trait in a twenty-three-year-old.
I muttered under my breath. She just couldn’t accept my being in love with a human, could she? It wasn’t enough that she couldn’t stand men. No. She had to control how I ran my life too. Argh. I was going to blow a gasket.
After pacing around the shop for a while in a futile attempt to cool down, I picked up the stupid landline phone only to discover it was still dead as Caesar’s ghost. I needed to get a hold of my mom again, although she wouldn’t be able to fix Violet’s mess this time. Now that she’d entered adulthood, she was the only one who could reverse the spell. And she was nowhere in sight.
Goodbye nice, normal life. Hello… Stop it, Eve. Pull yourself together for Fernando’s sake.
I took a deep breath, then opened the front door to an icy blast that almost knocked me backward. I quickly shut it, scanning the floor in a panic. I felt a rush of relief when I saw Fernando in the corner. I had to be more careful opening up doors now. If he’d have leaped out, I could have lost him forever.
I stared out the window at the whiteout conditions. It was as if the town had been buried in several feet of snow. I couldn’t even see my car parked on the street. Despite that, I had to brave the weather and find Fernando’s car, now that I was convinced Violet had taken off in it. Just because she preferred to walk didn’t mean she didn’t know how to drive.
Well, if she thought she would hide away for a few hours, coming back when the coast was clear, she was out of her freaking mind. I was not going anywhere until my fiancé was walking on two legs again.
My phone hadn’t magically recharged again and sitting around wouldn’t accomplish a thing. I stormed into Violet’s bedroom and grabbed a pair of boots from her closet, along with a hat. Movement in the corner of my eye showed that I hadn’t entered alone. Putting on my best smile, I bent down
and touched his little head.
On a whim, I closed my eyes and kissed him. Hey, it always worked in fairy tales. I slowly lifted a lid.
Croak.
I sighed. Fairy tales were frauds.
“It’s going to be okay. I promise. I’ll get us out of this one way or another.”
Finding my sister was the first step to his freedom, and time was of the essence. I slipped out, closing the door behind me and sheltering him inside the bedroom. I couldn’t have him springing all over the place while I was gone and risk him getting into her crazy concoctions. When his safety was assured, I grabbed the key that’d been stowed under the flowerless flowerpot and locked the shop on my way out. It was foolish to drive so I was forced to come up with plan B.
Icy, thick flakes whipped into me as I slogged down the street or sidewalk or brittle winter grass. At this point, I hadn’t a clue what I was stepping on. I kept my head down, beginning to feel like I was the last one alive. It was trance-like. It took the flashing light of a plow to bring me back to reality.
Fortunately, another light also beaconed in the distance. The Bigfoot Bay police station. Just the place I was looking for. I changed course and pushed my feet through the unshoveled walk. When I finally entered the building, the fresh-faced officer manning the front desk jumped up.
“Miss?” He rushed over. “Are you hurt? Was there an accident?”
At least I was still identifiable; I hadn’t been mistaken for a yeti. I shook myself off, layers of snow tumbling to the floor.
“No, I’m fine.” Physically. I stomped my boots, hoping to thaw out my toes. “Sorry about that.” I’d just made one heck of a slushy mess for someone. I glanced around. He appeared to be the only one in the small station. “If you point me toward a mop I can—”
“Never mind that. What in the blazes are you doing out in this weather at this hour? I sure hope you’re not driving.”
