First Frost (10 page)

As soon as the sun rose, Bianca and Ming went to the museum. Bianca figured it would be best to keep the museum open at least part time since it was their only source of income. For the first time in fifty years, there was no story time. Bianca waited until everyone arrived and gathered in the Princess Room to make the announcement.

“Good morning, everyone,” Bianca said.

“Good morning,” everyone replied.

“Where’s Miss Rose?” a little girl in the crowd asked.

“Umm, she’s not coming today,” Bianca replied nervously.

“Oh? What happened?” one of the moms asked.

“My grandmother is sick. My mom had to go away for a while and take care of her until she gets better,” Bianca lied. She had practiced telling the lie until it felt natural and almost true. Ming had even coached her while they’d driven to the museum that morning. Still…she could feel her cheeks burning as the lie slipped out of her mouth.

“Anyway…if you need anything, I’ll be in the gift shop.” Bianca then ran away as fast as she could before anyone could ask her any more questions.

She hid behind the counter and groaned.

“You okay?” Ming asked. She was perched on the stool, reading a magazine.

“This is a disaster. It feels so wrong to lie,” Bianca whispered to Ming, who was happy to be behind the counter of the gift shop. Ming had wasted no time exploring every inch of the museum, especially now that Rose wasn’t around to tell her not to touch anything.

“Well, what are you going to do? Tell the truth?” Ming closed the magazine and tucked it between the cash register and the wall.

“Yeah…like that’s gonna happen any time this century. I may as well take myself to the psych ward.”

“Do you want me to read the kids a story? How hard can it be?”

“Ming, have you ever had my mother tell you a story?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Trust me. They won’t want anyone but her.”

“Why?” Ming asked, confused.

“I don’t even know how to describe how she does it. All I know is that she has a way of bringing stories to life. Almost as if she were playing a movie inside your head. She takes these fairy tales and adds more to them somehow. You can smell the river, see every leaf twitching in the wind, see the characters, and for a moment, it’s almost as though you can feel what they are feeling.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to describe what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that.”

“I bet.”

Bianca grabbed the phone book. It had a thin layer of dust over it. “Ew,” she muttered as she picked up a rag and wiped the dust off.

“Whatcha lookin’ for?” Ming asked.

“A repairman, I need to have the front window of my house fixed,” Bianca replied as she flipped through the pages of the phonebook. Eventually, she came across an ad that looked somewhat professional. She grabbed the phone on the wall and dialed the number.

“Moore Repairs. If it’s broken, we can fix it. This is Bill. How can I help you?”

“Yes…hi…I need to have the front window in my house repaired,” Bianca said.

He asked several questions, and after a few minutes of talking back and forth, they settled on a day and the price to have her window fixed.

“Cool. Thank you so much,” Bianca said politely.

“No problem. We’ll send someone over tomorrow morning,” Bill replied.

Bianca thanked him once more and then hung up.

“How are you going to pay for the window?”

“I know where Mom keeps her credit card. I’m authorized to use it, only if it’s an emergency. I think this counts as an emergency.”

A woman approached the counter and purchased a few items from the gift shop. Ming smiled, hopped off the stool, and scanned her items. Bianca was going to be sure to tell Rose about Ming helping her out in the museum. Maybe she would break her rule and let her work here.

“What did the witch want again? I forgot,” Ming asked when she was finished taking care of the customer.

“A spell book.”

“Why?”

“It belonged to Queen Mirabel,” Bianca explained.

“The one from Snow White…right?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. Do you know where it is?”

“Nope.”

“Then we have nothing else to bargain with,” Ming said.

“Well, there are other things in the museum that belonged to the queen, but she specifically asked for the spell book,” Bianca explained.

“Is there an attic or a basement in this place?” Ming asked.

“Yeah, an attic and a basement.”

“Do you think it’s hidden somewhere in the museum?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it were in here somewhere. Doesn’t hurt to look around and see if we find something,” Bianca said.

Ming’s chocolate brown eyes widened as a thought occurred to her. “Ooh, maybe there are clues to follow, like in
The DaVinci Code.”

“Except without Tom Hanks’ weird hair.”

“Yeah…no bad hair allowed.” They both nodded in agreement.

“Okay, do we split up?” Bianca asked.

“Hell, no! I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that’s a bad, BAD idea. We stick together the entire time.”

“Fair enough. I’m going to check in Mom’s office and see if I find anything there. It should be safe enough with you here and the museum being full of normal people.”

“Don’t you have walkie-talkies or anything like that just in case you see anything suspicious?”

“Umm…we have cell phones. They should be good enough for now.”

“As long as you’re okay with that,” Ming said.

“All right. I’m gonna take a look around and if I don’t find anything, we’ll go to the attic together when I close the museum.”

“Okeydokey. Oooh, look a wand! I’m totally buying this,” Ming said as she picked up a pink, sparkly, plastic wand.

Bianca sighed. It was going to be a long day.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, they closed the doors of the museum, a couple of hours earlier than usual. Thankfully no one complained. Bianca locked the doors, counted the money in the cash register, and locked it in the safe underneath Rose’s desk. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found anything in her mother’s office or in any other room in the museum, at least nothing that seemed like an obvious place to hide a really old spell book.

“Done?” Ming asked as soon as Bianca stepped out of Rose’s office.

“Almost. I have to set the alarm before we leave here tonight,” Bianca said.

“Okay. I’ll try to remind you,” Ming promised.

Bianca went to the utility closet and grabbed two flashlights. She handed one to Ming and lead the way up to the attic. She thought about the last time she was in that room. Rose and Bianca had explored one of the trunks and had found a treasure trove. She could only hope that she would find what she was desperately searching for.

“So what does this book look like? Any idea?” Ming asked.

“I have no idea what it looks like.” Bianca took a deep breath and added sarcastically, “This should be fun.”

“Well…I’m sure it’s not going to say
Evil Queen’s Spell Book
on the cover of it. Right?”

“Right.”

Bianca wondered why no one recognized that Queen Mirabel was evil sooner. How it was that she could hide her true nature for so many years. Most of the time people can sense when there’s something
wrong
with a person. Yet…Queen Mirabel was able to hide her intentions very well. The only one who saw right through the charade was Snow White.

Maybe that’s why she hated Snow White so much. Maybe it had nothing to do with Mirabel’s jealousy of her beauty and everything to do with the fact that Snow White saw right through her.

“Right!” Bianca shouted.

“What?” Ming asked with a frown.

“It’s not going to some big creepy book. She was a queen. She needed to hide what she really was from her husband, the king, and everyone else. It has to be in a book that looks harmless and possibly even…boring.”

“Boring, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Ye Olde Knitting Book?” Ming joked.

Bianca giggled. “Probably something along those lines.”

“Ye Olde Cooking Book?” Ming suggested.

“Ye Olde Cleaning Book.”

They made more jokes that involved “Ye Olde” as they looked in the boxes in the attic.

After an hour of searching, Ming suddenly let out a blood curdling scream. Bianca tripped over her shoelaces, scrambled up to her feet and ran to Ming, expecting to see the worst.

“What? What is it?”

“Spider,” Ming squeaked. A tiny spider crawled underneath a box that Ming had been searching through.

“A spider? You screamed as though someone were trying to kill you.” Bianca took off her shoe and killed the spider with a single stroke.

“Next time you feel like screaming, save it for when the bad guys show up,” Bianca said as she put her shoe back on.

Ming stuck her tongue out at Bianca, and they resumed their search for the spell book.

“I don’t think it’s up here, B,” Ming said.

Bianca sighed, disappointed. They looked in every box and trunk in the attic and still…nothing.

“Yeah, I’m not finding anything either.”

“Basement?”

“Yeah.”

So off to the basement they went. This time they didn’t need flashlights because there was electricity in the basement, and they were able to turn on some lights. There were boxes everywhere, twice as many than what was in the attic.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find it. Stop looking as though someone just ran over your puppy,” Ming said.

“I wish,” Bianca muttered. She was worried that they would never find the book in that mess. Nothing was labeled. It would take all night to look through all the stuff in the basement.

“If you were an evil spell book, where would you be?” Ming wondered aloud.

“In my hands so we could get my mom back,” Bianca replied.

“Well, it’s not in your hands yet, and we’re not going to find it by standing around looking depressed.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course, I’m right. Come on, you take that half and I’ll take this one,” Ming said as she went to the left side of the room.

Bianca took a deep breath and continued her search for the spell book.