“Well, I heard the temperature was supposed to drop, but I had no idea they were talking snow!”
The snow came down harder, blanketing the mostly-still-green grass with a layer of white and covering Evanee’s brown hair. And then all of a sudden, the snow globe in Evanee’s arm began to shake on its own. She stared down at it, wide-eyed and afraid. The water sloshed violently from side to side, and the snow erupted into a blizzard inside the watery world.
Evanee’s heart beat wildly in her chest. She tossed the globe onto her love seat and ran around to the other side of the fire as it continued to shake. The wind whipped up around her shoulders, swirling the snow in her own world into a violent frenzy, just like it was doing inside the watery one. And then out of nowhere, a streaking burst of light shot out of the snow globe, and what sounded like thunder boomed overhead rattling the air. Thinking the strange events meant the world was about to end, Evanee ran for her house with her heart racing, cuddling Prim in her arms.
She’d no sooner gotten to the back door than the wind died down, the thunder stopped, and the snow disappeared. She was scared to turn around, but she forced herself and was shocked to see that everything in her backyard was just as it had been earlier that evening. There was no longer any snow, and Queenie was curled up in a ball on her chair across from where Prim and Evanee had just been cuddling.
“Oh my God,” she whispered under her breath. “Am in the Twilight Zone? Is this place haunted?”
“Definitely not the Twilight Zone,” said a voice from the darkness.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” screamed Evanee, nearly jumping out of her skin as if someone had just come up from behind her and spooked her.
Queenie jumped too.
When she’d stopped screaming, only the sound of silence hung in the air. “Hello?” said Evanee, looking out into the darkness.
“Hello,” said the voice.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” she screamed again.
“Oh my Gawwd, can you not yell? You’re giving me a headache!”
“Wh-who’s there?” asked Evanee, patting herself down for her phone. She silently cursed herself. She was pretty sure she’d left it sitting on the kitchen counter in her loft.
“Seriously?” said the voice. “Hello? Over here!”
Evanee’s eyes scanned the dark backyard, trying to find where the voice had come from.
“Down here!”
That was when Evanee noticed Queenie’s paw up in the air, waving at her.
“Queenie?” she gasped. “A-are you t-talking to me?”
“Well, I’m not talking to him!” she practically hollered, pointing at Prim.
“Ahhhhhhh!” screamed Evanee, hugging Prim to her chest and practically smashing the poor thing.
Queenie sat up and plugged both ears with her little furry paws. “Please! Can you stop screaming! That’s so annoying!”
“How in the world can you talk?”
Queenie removed her paws from her ears and shrugged. “Party trick.”
“Party trick?!” Evanee shook her head. “This is surreal. This isn’t really happening.”
“Oh, it’s happening alright, sister. Get used to it. There’s a whole lot more strange where I came from.”
“Stranger than a talking cat?” Evanee didn’t think she could handle more strangeness. She turned and put a hand on her back door. “I need to go to bed. Queenie, you can just sleep out here tonight. This is too bizarre. Weirdest dream ever.”
“Sorry to break it to you, but it’s not a dream,” Queenie called out before Evanee could open the door. “And as much as I appreciate the sentiment behind naming me Queenie—I mean, let’s face it, I should have been named Queenie, but alas, I wasn’t. My name is Esmerelda. Esmerelda Snow.”
“And I’m Whitley Snow,” said a second voice.
Evanee turned her head to see what appeared to be the young woman from inside the snow globe walking towards her from behind a pine tree. She wore the same exact fancy dress she’d been wearing in the globe. Panic climbed into Evanee’s throat, making it almost impossible to speak.
Standing on the far end of the patio now, Whitley continued. “We’re sisters. Twins, actually.”
“Ahhhhhh!” screamed Evanee, her eyes wide. “I’m calling the cops! Go away!”
Whitley rushed forward, holding her hands out pleadingly. “Oh, please don’t do that. We’re not here to hurt you.”
“Don’t touch me!” gasped Evanee, twisting her torso away from Whitley as she tried to touch her arm.
Whitley’s hands went up defensively. “I won’t! I won’t! But please don’t call the police! I swear we would never hurt you!”
“What’s going on? Where did you come from?” Evanee’s voice shook.
Whitley giggled. “Silly woman. Don’t you recognize me? I came from in there!” She pointed at the snow globe on the love seat.
Evanee’s eyes opened wide. “In there? The snow globe?!”
Whitley nodded. “Don’t you recognize me and my dress?”
“No, I recognize you alright. I-I just don’t understand how this is happening right now. It has to be a dream.”
“No, it’s not a dream. This is real, I promise.” Whitley shrugged and took two steps back towards the fire pit, where she rubbed her hands together and held them over the fire. “But to answer your question, this is happening because, well, magic,” she said simply.
“Magic?” Evanee shook her head as if she were trying to erase everything she’d just witnessed from her brain. “But magic isn’t real.”
“Magic’s totally real,” said Queenie. “How else do you think I can talk and she jumped out of a snow globe?”
Evanee swallowed hard. “Okay, so let me get this straight. You can talk and you’re her twin?”
The cat nodded. “How’s that so hard to understand?”
“Well, you’re a cat. I don’t think a cat can be a human being’s twin sister.”
“Ehh,” she buzzed. “Wrong. They can and I am.”
Whitley giggled. “Esmerelda’s right. But it’s not like you think. She wasn’t always a cat.”
Evanee stared at the furry gray feline, who had her tail wrapped around her feet. “Not always a cat?”
“She used to be a human. A woman, obviously,” added Whitley.
“Then how did she become a cat?”
“Long story,” sighed Esmerelda, now seemingly tired of the conversation. She yawned, stretching her paws out in front of her so they warmed against the fire. “Isn’t it bedtime yet? I’ve had such a long day, and it’s really cold out here. Can’t we go inside?”
“It is cold out here,” agreed Whitley. “Maybe we could talk about this inside?”
“Inside?” Evanee pointed at her shop’s back door. “Inside my place?! Ohhhh no. Not happening. I’m too weirded out right now.”
“Ugh,” groaned the cat. “Lame.”
“Essy!” Whitley chastised before nodding at Evanee. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. I swear we’re not here to hurt you.”
Evanee narrowed her eyes on the magical young woman. “Then why are you here?”
“Long story short, I think the easiest way to explain this is that I’m sort of like a genie.”
“A genie?”
Whitley nodded. “Yes. If you rub a genie’s lamp, the genie pops out and you get three wishes, right?”
Evanee shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never rubbed a genie’s lamp before.”
“But tonight you sort of did. You shook my snow globe, read the magical words, and made a wish. So out I come to grant your wish!”
Evanee’s head pulled back. “To grant my wish? You’re going to grant my wish?”
Whitley turned to face her and smiled brilliantly. “That’s basically the plan.”
Evanee narrowed her eyes on the young woman. She hardly believed her for a second! “Righhht,” she drawled. “Well, then, if you’re so magical, then what’s my wish?”
“Easy!” chirped Whitley.
“You wished to find your prince!”
“A darn good wish if you ask me,” yawned Esmerelda from the chair. “It’s what I’d wish for.”
Still holding Prim closely to her chest, Evanee was more than slightly shocked to hear the young woman actually knew what she’d wished for. She shook her head. “Okay, so if you’re here to grant me my wish, where’s my prince?”
“Well, I haven’t gone over everything yet,” Whitley began uneasily. “There is some fine print we’d have to discuss.”
“Fine print?”
Whitley nodded. “But before we get to the fine print, what do you think of my dress?”
Evanee quirked a brow. “Your dress? Really? I’m freaking out here because I’ve got the Twilight Zone going on in my backyard, and you’re fishing for compliments on your dress?”
Esmerelda chuckled.
Whitley’s smile turned into a pout. “Are you saying you don’t like it?”
“It doesn’t matter if I like it or don’t like it. This isn’t exactly the time to be talking about if I like your dress or not.”
“But it sort of is,” sighed Whitley. “You liking my dress is kind of tied to me finding you your prince.”
“You’re kidding.”
With her bottom lip sucked between her teeth, Whitley shook her head.
“How are the two things related?”
Whitley shrugged and let out a tired sigh. “They just are. Listen. I’m not trying to be a whiner, but I’ve literally been stuck inside that snow globe since last winter. I’m cold. I’m hungry, and I’d love to get out of these heels and this dress and put on something nice and cozy like you’re wearing. You don’t happen to have another pair of sweatpants I could borrow, do you?”
“You want to borrow my sweatpants now?” Evanee rolled her eyes. “Why not? Don’t all fictitious characters that show up and claim they’re coming out of a snow globe want to do that?”
Esmerelda laughed. “OMG. You’re sooooo much better than the last girl. Plus you know how to use eyeliner properly.”
Evanee frowned. “Last girl? What last girl?”
Whitley waved a hand in the air. “Ignore her. Listen. What do you say? Can’t we go inside and talk? And if in the end, you decide you don’t want your one free wish, then we’ll go. Okay?”
“Seriously? If I decide I don’t want a wish, you’ll leave?”
Whitley’s head bounced.
“No questions asked?”
“No questions asked.”
Evanee thought about it for a moment. She had to be dreaming all this. There was no other answer, but she sort of wanted the dream to continue so she could meet her Prince Charming. “Fine. You can come in, but only for a minute.”
Esmerelda leapt off the chair and went dashing for the cat door. “Dibs on the tuna fish.”
“Yay!” squealed Whitley. “Evanee, we are about to have so much fun.”
6
Upstairs, seated at the kitchen table, Whitley Snow nursed a mug of hot cocoa while her sister, Esmerelda Snow, devoured a can of Prim’s cat food.
“Ewww, what is this stuff?” asked Esmerelda as she chewed the wet cat food, a look of disgust on her face.
“It’s a special brand,” explained Evanee. “Prim’s got an intestinal problem, so she has to eat food the vet gives us.”
Esmerelda stopped eating and sat up straighter. “Why do you keep referring to Prim as her? You know he’s a boy, don’t you?”
Evanee adjusted herself in her seat and glanced across the room, where Prim lay fast asleep on their shared bed. She cleared her throat. “Uh-hum. Yes, I know that technically, she’s not exactly a girl.”
Esmerelda squinched her eyes. “Not technically? That’s like saying she’s not technically a cat. I’m not technically a cat. He is most definitely a boy.”
Evanee groaned and leaned her head forward into her hands. The night was becoming a lot to handle, and talking about her cat’s gender identity wasn’t exactly something she wanted to deal with at the moment. “Must we talk about this in front of her?”
Esmerelda glanced over at Prim. “You know that he knows he’s a boy, right?”
Evanee sucked in her breath. “What?!”
“He knows he’s a boy. He doesn’t like the fact that you dress him up in tutus and princess crowns. He thinks it’s weird. I think it’s weird too, if you’re curious.”
“I’m not, but that’s beside the point. Are you saying that you’ve spoken to Prim about this?”
“Briefly,” she said, licking her paw and then rubbing it across her whiskers. “I asked him why you kept referring to him as a girl when he most certainly has the… uh-hum… anatomy of a male cat. Not that I was looking or anything…”
Whitley giggled. “Sure you weren’t, Essy.”
“I wasn’t!” meowed her twin. “It’s just that it’s kind of hard to miss. I mean, it’s, like, right there in my face. Eye level, you know?”
Evanee pulled a knee up onto her chair with her and wrapped her arm around it. Resting her chin on her knee, she sighed, “I found her when she was a kitten. She just seemed so sweet, I thought for sure she was a girl. And she seemed really into hair and makeup. So I decided to name her Prim. I thought it was adorable.”
Whitley nodded. “It’s a pretty cute name for a cat.”
“For a female cat!” said Esmerelda. “Your cat’s a guy. That’s weird to name a guy Prim.”
“Well, by the time Prim had her first vet appointment, I’d had her for quite a while, and I guess I just didn’t pay attention to her anatomy. So when the vet told me that I had a boy cat on my hands, I was a little shocked, to be honest. I figured what difference did it make if I just kept treating her like a girl? I mean, she’s a cat after all.”
Esmerelda’s green eyes sharpened. “Cats have feelings too, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I take good care of her. She wants for nothing.”
Esmerelda hopped onto the little stool that Evanee had made just for Prim to be able to watch birds in the tree outside the window. “Yeah, you certainly spoil the kid rotten, that’s for sure.”
“But you really think she doesn’t like being treated like a girl?”
The furry gray cat shrugged her shoulders before curling up into a ball. “As far as I can tell. But I’d be annoyed if someone thought I was a tomcat. So, you’d have to consider the fact that maybe he hates being mistaken for a princess cat.”
Evanee sighed. She’d have to give that some thought. She didn’t see Prim as anything other than her sweet little princess. To think of her all of a sudden as some testosterone-ridden male tomcat made her feel funny.
“Well, it’s an interesting perspective, I’ll give you that. I guess I’ll have to mull it over a little.”
“You do that. I’m going to take a little catnap if you don’t mind.” Before Esmerelda closed her eyes to doze off, she sucked in her breath a little. “Oh, by the way, can you possibly run to the store tomorrow and get me some real cat food? None of this medicated crap. It smells like dog poop and it doesn’t taste much better. I’d prefer maybe a can of real tuna fish or something like that?”
“Tomorrow?” said Evanee, furrowing her brow in confusion. “What are you talking about? You won’t still be here tomorrow.”
“Essy,” whispered Whitley, “why don’t you just go to sleep? Evanee and I need to have a little talk. You know, woman to woman.”
Esmerelda’s green eyes shot open then. “Whitley Snow! Did you just insinuate that I’m not a woman anymore?!”
Whitley’s cheeks flushed. “You know what I mean, Essy,” she said uncomfortably.
“No! I don’t! Explain yourself!”
Whitley sighed. “I just meant that I wanted to have a talk with her. That’s all. I shouldn’t have said it like I did. I’m sorry.”
“You better be!”
“Can you forgive me?”
“Only if you make sure I get some tuna fish tomorrow,” said Essy, her face all
pouty.
Whitley rolled her big green eyes dramatically. “Oh, fine. I’ll make sure you get some tuna fish tomorrow. Forgive me now?”
“And you have to admit that I’m still a woman. Even though I look like this!”
“You’re still a woman, even though you look like a cat. Okay?”
Essy pointed a fuzzy paw at her sister. “And don’t you forget it!”
“I won’t. Now go to sleep. Let me and Evanee have a conversation.”
But Whitley didn’t even have to suggest it. Essy had already curled herself back up again and was already half-asleep.
Whitley turned to Evanee. “I’m so sorry about her. She was a lot to handle before she was turned into a cat. It’s only gotten worse since then.”
Evanee shook her head. “I don’t understand. How did she become a cat, and how did you get stuck inside a snow globe?”
Whitley ran a hand through her long brown hair. “There was this witch,” she admitted. “And…” She looked at Evanee nervously. “If I tell you something else, do you promise not to freak out on me?”
Evanee touched her chest. “Who, me? Freak out? Nah—”
“I’m serious. No more screaming, okay?”
Evanee shrugged. What did she care? It was all a dream anyway. “Go ahead.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. Essy and I are…” Whitley swallowed hard. “Well, we’re witches too.”
Evanee’s eyes blinked rapidly as the words sank in. “Like ‘hocus pocus,’ and ‘I’ll get you, my pretty’ witches?”
Whitley giggled. “No, like ‘we were born with magic powers and that’s about it’ witches.”
“So you’re saying you have magic?”
Whitley went to Evanee’s bed and sat down, letting out a heavy sigh. “No, not anymore. When the other witch put the spell on us, we lost our powers. It’s kind of a long story, actually. But basically, Es and I are required to hand out a bunch of wishes. Once we’ve completed that, then the spell will be broken and we can go back to our father and our old lives, and I’m pretty sure we’ll get our powers back.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be too hard to hand out a couple of wishes,” said Evanee. “I mean, who doesn’t want wishes? That can’t take that long.”
Snow Way Out: A Mystic Snow Globe Romantic Mystery (The Mystic Snow Globe Mystery Series Book 2) Page 5
