Bad Crohn’s evening. 🙁  Sorry, guys.

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“So wait a minute,” Sue Elder said, looking over at Molly. All three of the Terrible Trio had descended on the tea shop that afternoon, wanting to hear the story for themselves. The town was rife with rumors as to what had actually happened the previous afternoon, just as Molly had known it would be. Between the Road moving later that night, which half the town had felt (one of the hazards of being born in a CrossRoads town), and the Snow Queen showing up early and then dragging Molly off, the speculations were running faster than the snow melt in the spring rains. “She had one of the ornaments? How?”

“I assume she got it from Drew,” Molly said, scooping up a handful of cinnamon buttons from the bowl next to her. She began to press them into the frosting of the snowman cookies on the tray in front of her.

“Do you know what your problem is, Molly?” Lai asked impatiently, sneaking a few M&Ms from another one of the bowls. “You are too damn nice.”

“You’ve told me that before.” Molly put another button on a snowman. “Why does it continue to surprise you?”

“It doesn’t, it just irritates me,” Lai said. “Why didn’t you ask her what she needed him for?”

“I did,” Molly said. “She told me she couldn’t tell me.”

“And you believed her?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Molly finally looked up at her friend. “What good would it do for her to lie to me? What would be the point?” Then she quirked an eyebrow at her friend. “Unless, of course, you think she has the hots for him.”

“She could!” Lai said. “He’s hot!”

“He’s about three hundred years younger than she is, too,” Noemi Miller said, trying hard not to chuckle. “Talk about an age difference.”

Lai glared at the three of them, all trying to stifle giggles, and then cracked a smile. “Okay, well, maybe not,” she said. “But still! What could she have wanted him to do?”

“I don’t know,” Molly said, going back to her snowmen. “Schrodinger and I tried to figure that out all last night. He said that she’s got her fingers in more Realms than he could even imagine, and given his imagination, that’s a lot. So it must be something important.” She shrugged. “What else can I do?”

“You could try and figure it out,” Sue said, and Lai nodded. “We’ll help!”

“For what point?” Molly said, pressing the last button into place. She dropped the remaining buttons back into the bowl and picked up one of her icing bags. Each snowman needed a green and red scarf, after all. “She said she needed him to do something for her. Something important. And that he’d be back as soon as he could be.”

“Well, maybe we could help him!” Lai insisted. “Get him back sooner.”

Molly painted another green stripe. “And maybe we could mess it all up.”

Schrodinger had been sitting in the corner of the room, watching everything, listening to everything. Now he said, We might be able to help without actually interfering, you know.

All four of them turned to look at him. “How?” Noemi said finally, since no one else seemed able to speak.

I can find out what’s going on, maybe, he said. There are ways to move around the Realms, and we CrossCats are some of the best at moving unseen when we want to do so. I can do some sniffing, see what I can find out.

Molly was torn. On the one hand, not knowing what Drew was involved in was maddening. But the Snow Queen (Jade, she reminded herself) had been so…sad, really, when she talked about what he was doing. Would it be worth it to risk Schrodinger’s safety?

They have to catch me to hurt me, Schrodinger said, and came over to rub his head against her leg. And I’m not that easy to catch.

“I can’t stop you from going,” she said, putting her bag down and kneeling down to hug him. “But remember, you promised to be good. And part of being good is being safe.” She hugged him close to her. “I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt.”

I will be so careful, he promised her.

“You’d better.”

<><>

It was snowing again. Drew scowled at the falling flakes, and then let the curtain drop back down as he turned again to the room. The door wasn’t locked any more, but at the moment, there was nothing out in the rest of the house that he wanted to see.

Three weeks. At the very least, this was going to be his home for the next three weeks. A home without Molly, or Schrodinger. As far as he knew, Drew was alone in the Snow Queen’s cottage.

He snorted. “Cottage” in this case meant a small mansion, staffed by apparently invisible servants. Molly would have loved it.

Well, maybe after this is all over, Jade will let you borrow it for a weekend, he thought to himself. She’ll owe you at least that much.

Then he shook himself. That was the problem with being on his own – too much time on his hands to think. “I need to figure out something to do,” he said out loud, more to hear something other than the shushing of the snow against the windows. “Something to keep me occupied.”

Drew looked up at the ceiling, trying to think of options. He could read, of course – there was a library that Jade had told him he had free run of. There was a computer down there too, but he didn’t want to turn it on just yet. The temptation to contact Molly was too great at the moment, and if he did, he would have to tell her. And there was no way he wanted to put that much pressure on her shoulders.

And then it came to him.

“Of course!” Drew threw his head back and laughed at himself. “There’s more than one way to make sure we can keep in touch.”

It wouldn’t be easy. He’d have to keep his influence light. But Jade had said he couldn’t go back. She never said he couldn’t get help from others.

One specific other, in particular. And that was better than nothing.

<><>

It felt good to be out again. Schrodinger trotted out the back door of CrossWinds Books, out into the freshly fallen snow, trying to rein in his excitement. But to be out, without supervision, going back onto the Roads – it was intoxicating.

He paused in the small back alley, raising his nose to sniff the breeze. Sea salt combined with the cold dustiness of snow and the scent of wood smoke in his nostrils, but it wasn’t physical scents he was looking for. No, Schrodinger was looking for a very different kind of scent, and it was not in evidence behind the bookstore.

Which means I need to start walking.

He struck out in a random direction: the nice thing about living in a CrossRoads town was that there were Roads everywhere. You just had to walk a bit to find one. And if you didn’t happen to need a physical Gate to access those Roads, well…

Less than a minute later, Schrodinger found what he was looking for. The wind changed, and his sensitive nose picked up the unmistakable smell of a Road. He gathered himself together and jumped up…

And through something that stretched like a thin membrane around him, then broke, taking him from the world of Carter’s Cove and onto the surface of a Road.

The familiar oddity of the Road surrounded him, its magic stroking his fur with invisible fingers. Schrodinger looked around at the grey-green mist, using his special senses to determine where this Road went and where he needed to go. He hadn’t told Molly where he was going, but he knew where he had to start if he wanted to find out what was going on with the Snow Queen. There was one person who would know what she was doing.

The Librarian.

He oriented himself and trotted off, his head held high.

It was GOOD to be on the Roads again!

<><>

Molly finally threw the Trio out, promising to tell them as soon as Schrodinger came back with any information. “I have work to do!” she told them. “Unless you are going to help me decorate cookies for the school bake sale tomorrow, you need to get out. I need to be able to concentrate!”

They’d gone, promising to come back and help her pack them up in boxes for the next day, and Molly had breathed a sigh of relief once the quiet had descended again. She turned up the radio, since WCOV (Carter Cove’s own radio station) was broadcasting their recording of the Christmas concert from last year. Sharsha, the lovely singer that was studying here in the Cove, had had a starring role – her exquisite voice flowed from the speakers, filling the kitchen with music. Molly picked up her icing bag again and went back to her decorating, making red and green scarves on the sugar cookies she’d iced white before. Then, while the icing scarves hardened, she picked up another icing bag, this one filled with black icing, and filled in the top hats on each cookie, and adding eyes and button smiles. Then she went back to the red and green icing, making a festive holly sprig on each hat, before she picked up the last icing bag, this one filled with orange icing, for the final touch: the carrot nose. Then on to the next tray, starting once again with cinnamon buttons.

She had nearly eight dozen cookies to decorate and slide into clear cellophane bags placed on trays around the room, and the steady, delicate work distracted her from worrying about Drew and Schrodinger. It was like meditation – clearing out her mind of garbage, leaving only stillness and concentration. When she finally stood up and put the icing bag down after the last cookie, Molly was surprised to find it was nearly four in the afternoon.

“Is it safe?” Aunt Margie asked, poking her head around the door and grinning at her niece.

“Yes,” Molly said, placing all the icing bags in an empty bowl. She dropped the bowl into the sink and filled it with hot water, then turned to face her aunt. “Tea?”

“Please.”

As Molly went into her pantry to get another tea mug, Aunt Margie looked around at the cookies lining the tray. “These look great,” she called out. “The kids will love them!” Molly heard a tray move and grinned. Gotcha, you sneak.

“I hope so,” Molly called back. “Any specific tea request?”

“Surprise me,” Aunt Margie answered. “As long as it has caffeine.”

Molly suppressed the urge to get something horribly decaffeinated and plucked a box of her aunt’s favorite holiday spiced tea from the shelf. She put a tea bag in the large stoneware mug she’d chosen and called out, “Can I come out yet?”

“You have sharper ears than Schrodinger!” Aunt Margie complained. “Yes, you can come out.”

There was a small, gaily wrapped box waiting for her on the island, next to the last tray she’d finished decorating. Molly ignored it for the moment, picking up her own empty mug on the way to the stove, where her ever present kettle sat over a low flame, bubbling merrily. She put both mugs down, took a tea bag from her own personal stash in the ceramic tea house cookie jar Drew and Schrodinger had gotten her for her birthday, dropped the tea in her own mug and poured boiling water into both mugs. Then she refilled the kettle, set it back on the flame and brought both mugs back to the island.

“That smells wonderful.” Aunt Margie accepted the mug with a sigh of relief.

Molly went around to her own seat and put the tea down. Instead of picking up the gift, she picked up the tray of cookies and brought it to the farther counter. Then, she took the tray of cookies from the other side of the room, the first set she had iced, and brought them back to the island. All the while, she watched her aunt from beneath her lashes, smiling privately as Aunt Margie waited.

“Are you going to make me wait while you package all of these before you open this?” Aunt Margie said, as Molly reclaimed her seat.

“I should,” Molly said, but relented. Instead of picking up the cellophane bags, she picked up the small box. It was surprisingly heavy.

“Be careful,” Aunt Margie said. “The box it came in was marked Fragile.”

“It was delivered?” Molly looked at her aunt. “By who?”

“The postman.” Aunt Margie shrugged. “It came in the afternoon mail.”

The wrapping paper was silver and gold paisley, brilliant in the kitchen light. Molly unwrapped it carefully and opened the white box she found inside, pulling out a wad of green tissue paper. Then she gasped.

Inside the box, nestled in more tissue paper, was a china teacup, with a small ornament inside it. Molly lifted the cup out, marveling at the thinness of it. Hand-painted holly leaves and gold edging sparkled; she wondered how old it was. There was a matching plate, of course, and she lifted it out. Then she finally lifted out the familiar red card.

Aunt Margie took the ornament from the cup. “These are amazing,” she said. It was red and gold today, and like the others, it was small. Just the right size for the tree Drew had left on Molly’s dining room table.

“I know,” Molly said, opening the card. “I don’t know where he found them.”

The card said, “Tea is the best thing on a cold day. I know you love your tea cups, but you don’t have one that’s special for Christmas. I saw this and thought of you. I hope you enjoy it.”

Molly closed the card and put it back in the box. Then she moved the fragile tea cup to a shelf where it wouldn’t be hit accidentally.

“He’ll be back, child,” Aunt Margie said softly. “He’ll be back.”

“I know.” Molly returned to her seat and picked up the cellophane wrappers. “I know.”