Chapter 3
Possessed Cookies
Ispent the next hour searching for “reindeer sightings Palm Springs” and “hallucinogenic desert plants” while sitting rigidly on my living room couch.
Each search result offered less help than the previous one, unless I needed to know about the Christmas light display at the botanical gardens featuring wire reindeer sculptures.
Spoiler alert: I very much did not.
My browser history now looked like a conspiracy theorist having a Christmas-themed breakdown.
I scrolled through local social media groups and even checked a Palm Springs forum, hoping to find anyone else who’d seen Rudolph’s oversized cousin wandering around.
Nothing. Not a single “OMG I saw a reindeer in Rosewood Park!” post to validate my rapidly deteriorating mental state.
Pushing my laptop away, I rubbed my temples where a headache pulsed with vindictive regularity.
Maybe the tequila from last night had been laced with something.
Or I was having some kind of psychotic break triggered by excessive workplace Christmas decorations.
Neither explanation accounted for the weird shit happening with my body temperature or the voice in my head, but it beat accepting that I was telepathically communicating with North Pole wildlife.
My phone vibrated against the coffee table, Mom’s smiling face lighting up the screen for a video call. I swiped to accept, arranging my face into what I hoped wasn’t the wide-eyed panic of someone who’d conversed with a magical forest creature.
“Neve!” Dad’s face filled the screen, much closer to the camera than necessary.
His usual exuberant smile seemed dimmed, the corners of his mouth fighting to maintain their upward curve.
His silver beard, usually trimmed to perfection, looked unkempt and dull.
Dark circles carved half-moons beneath his eyes.
I frowned. “Dad, you look...”
“Fantastic!” He pulled back, revealing Mom beside him. Both wore matching thermal shirts with the Joint International Nordic Glacial Logistics and Ecology snowflake logo. “Just a bit under the weather. Nothing serious!”
Mom adjusted the camera. “How are you, sweetie? Work going well?”
My fingers tightened around my phone. “I had a bit of an incident at work today. I kind of told off some clients and got sent home.”
“Oh! That doesn’t sound like you.” Mom’s eyebrows lifted, but her expression remained oddly indifferent.
“It wasn’t like me. There was this weird moment where I felt so cold, and my voice sounded different. I told them that people like them used to get coal.” I stopped, noting the quick glance my parents exchanged. “What? Why are you looking at each other like that?”
Dad’s laugh boomed through the speaker. “Well, it’s not like this is the first time you’ve had a little flare-up.”
Mom’s elbow shot into his side. “Christopher.”
He winced. “What? I meant a tantrum. You know, when she was a kid.”
My skin prickled, and I swallowed hard. “What kind of flare-up are we talking about? Did anything unusual happen when I was little? Medical conditions or, I don’t know, weird abilities?”
Mom’s smile suddenly stretched across her face, completely fake. “You were just like every other child! Always building snow people and—”
This time, Dad’s elbow shot out.
“We never lived anywhere with snow. I grew up in California, and we decided boarding school was the best option for me since the research facility couldn’t have kids there.” It came out automatically, almost as if I were reading a script to people who weren’t my parents.
Dad coughed violently, the camera shaking. “Signal’s breaking up! Arctic storms interfering with—”
“Dad, I can see and hear you perfectly fine.”
“…call you next week… love you!” The screen froze conveniently on his panicked expression before cutting to black.
I stared at my dark phone screen, my reflection looking back with suspicious eyes. They were hiding something. Parents were supposed to lie about birthday presents and Easter bunnies, not have cryptic reactions to their adult daughter possibly developing ice powers.
The walls of my house closed in again, with the same suffocating pressure from earlier returning. I needed air and food that wasn’t questionable takeout leftovers. Grabbing my purse, I headed for the door. Grocery shopping might be mundane, but right now, mundane was exactly what I needed.
Twenty minutes later, I stalked the aisles of Ralph’s with the determination of someone barely holding it together, one grocery item at a time.
My cart contained the building blocks of responsible adulthood: kale I’d probably throw out in a week, protein bars with ridiculously long shelf lives, and oat milk that tasted nothing like actual milk.
See? Totally not having a crisis.
A woman with a screaming toddler passed, and I reflexively gripped the handle of my cart tighter. The metal frosted over beneath my fingers.
I jerked away, and the frost disappeared almost instantly in the warm store air. It was condensation. Heat meeting cold metal. Science.
I turned down the main aisle, and my feet moved in the direction of the overwhelming scents of vanilla and cinnamon. My carefully curated grocery route never included the bakery section because I hated baked goods as much as I hated going to the dentist or getting a Pap smear.
Maybe even more.
Before I knew it, I was standing in front of a display of holiday cookies with gingerbread men and their stupid smiling faces, snowflake-shaped sugar cookies drowning in blue sprinkles, and an entire army of those weird butter cookies that typically came in the blue tin that everyone’s grandmother repurposed for sewing supplies.
My hand reached out against my will, hovering over a package of chocolate chip cookies still warm from the store oven.
“They taste even better if you dunk them in milk.”
The deep voice came from so far above me that I nearly got a crick in my neck looking up. And up. And up.
Holy crap, he had to be at least six and a half feet tall. His skin was medium brown, and his golden-brown eyes held a gentleness that didn’t quite match his massive frame.
Recognition hit me like a tidal wave. He was one of the nine men who’d been watching me at the restaurant.
“You.” I took a step back, nearly colliding with an endcap of fruitcakes. “You were at Sinclair’s with your friends last night.”
He nodded, one dark curl falling out of place across his forehead. The slight movement was careful, as though he was afraid of startling me.
“With eight friends. At the table that vanished.” I narrowed my eyes. “The table that literally disappeared after my date called me an ice demon. You paid the bill.”
His expression remained impassive, but something flickered in his eyes. “We left through the back.” His voice rumbled like distant thunder, low enough that I had to lean in to hear. “We figured you had enough to deal with.”
That was the understatement of the century. I gripped my shopping cart to steady myself, careful to keep my hands on the plastic. “So you just happened to be grocery shopping at the same store as me?” I gestured at his empty hands. “Without a cart or basket.”
His massive shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Time is getting short. The signs are becoming more obvious.”
Was that supposed to make sense? “What signs?”
“The cold following you. The frost at your fingertips.” He glanced meaningfully at the cookies I’d been drawn to. “The way you’re pulled toward things you tell yourself you don’t like.”
Ice slid down my spine. “Excuse me?”
“His magic is fading.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping even lower. “The clock’s already ticking. Soon it will be gone, and everything will be ruined.”
The fluorescent lights overhead flickered, sending harsh shadows skittering across the bakery display. A cold sweat broke out across my skin, icy pinpricks that didn’t feel like normal perspiration at all, more like frost forming.
My body was betraying me in ways I couldn’t explain, couldn’t control, couldn’t rationalize with my carefully constructed worldview. I wiped my palms against my jeans, leaving damp smears that glinted with something that looked like tiny crystals before they melted away.
“Who are you talking about? What magic?” My voice came out higher and slightly panicked. Did this guy know what was happening to me?
He looked pained for a moment and swallowed hard. His eyes held mine, urgent and intense. “Jingle all the way.”
I backed away. “I don’t know what kind of Christmas cult you’re part of, but I’m not interested.”
Spinning my cart around, I fled so fast I nearly flattened an older man examining an angel food cake. I didn’t stop until I reached the self-checkout, abandoning half my groceries and only scanning the essentials.
The bakery section cookies had somehow made it into my cart, and I tried not to hyperventilate. My mouth watered, and my fingers itched to rip into them right then and there.
Maybe being twenty-seven came with its own secret hormone glitch no one talked about. Was there a quarter-life perimenopause crisis where hormones went haywire? There had to be. Instead of hot flashes, I was getting cold flashes.
I grabbed my bags and power-walked to the parking lot without looking back. The giant with the cryptic warnings could keep his cult recruitment speech and his cookie recommendations to himself.
I nearly had a heart attack as I opened the back door of my car and found the package of cookies sitting on the seat.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Setting my bags on the floorboard, I used my foot to move the possessed cookies out of my car. There was no way I was touching them with my bare hands.
For good measure, I kicked them behind the rear wheel before sliding into the driver’s seat. I cranked the engine and backed up, cringing as I ran over the cookies. I hated wasting perfectly good food, but I was pretty certain something nefarious was going on.
I peeled out of the parking lot like a getaway driver, tires squealing in protest as I pressed the accelerator harder than necessary.
My knuckles whitened against the steering wheel, and I kept checking the rearview mirror, half-expecting to see the man running after my car with his cryptic warnings and magical cookies.
The shopping center shrank behind me, and I let out a breath, a visible puff that crystallized in the air.
Something was happening to me. Something I couldn’t explain away with WebMD symptom searches or rational thinking, and that terrified me more than any stranger with golden-brown eyes ever could.
I skated through another workday, moving carefully, speaking minimally, and avoiding eye contact with Bartlett.
Thankfully, today had been blissfully free of inexplicable frost patterns and reindeer visitations.
I even managed to get through a client consultation without suggesting that anyone should receive lumps of coal. Progress.
Friday afternoon freedom beckoned as I put away files and shut down my computer. The weekend stretched ahead like a promise with forty-eight uninterrupted hours where I could lock myself in my house and avoid Christmas decorations, mysterious men, and any form of supernatural wildlife.
As I stepped onto the elevator and caught my reflection in the mirrored walls, I frowned at the noticeable unevenness creeping across my spray tan. The warm glow I’d gotten on Monday was already fading in patches.
Perfect. Just what I needed to complete my week of bizarre bodily betrayals.
I briefly considered letting the tan fade completely.
It would certainly save me money, but the last time I’d gone au naturel for longer than a week, a guy at the grocery store had asked if I was filming a vampire movie.
My natural complexion wasn’t just pale, it was practically translucent.
Without the protective layer of artificial bronze, I reflected sunlight with enough intensity to potentially cause traffic accidents.
Decision made, I texted Serena at Glow Goddess to see if she could squeeze me in. Her immediate “come right over” response was the only good thing that had happened all week.
Thirty minutes later, I stood in a paper-thin disposable thong, arms extended like a starfish while Serena circled me with her spray gun. The small booth smelled of coconut and chemicals, a combination that had once been comforting, but now it made my nose itch.
“Hmm.” Serena paused, her brow furrowing as she examined my stomach.
I dropped my arms. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s...” She tilted her head. “It’s not taking right. See this?” She pointed to a patch on my ribcage where the color looked almost watered down. “And here.” Another spot on my forearm showed the same uneven absorption.
“Maybe the nozzle is clogged?” I offered, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. If even my spray tans were going haywire, what hope did I have for maintaining any semblance of normal?
Serena shook her head. “Let me try the darker formula. Maybe your skin is being stubborn today.”
“Whatever works.” I resumed my starfish pose, closing my eyes when she began spraying again.
The cool mist hit my skin in even sweeps. I counted my breaths, trying not to think about ice powers or telepathic reindeer or cookies that magically appeared in my car.
“What the hell?” Serena’s voice snapped my eyes open.
The new formula wasn’t doing much better. In some places it had taken fine, but on my chest and hands it refused to absorb, leaving a mottled, sickly effect.
“Is something wrong with the machine?” I stared down at my blotchy arms in horror. I looked like I was molting.
Serena ran a finger experimentally across my shoulder. “Your skin feels normal. The temperature’s fine, no excess oils.” She frowned harder. “It’s like the pigment is being... rejected.”
“Rejected? By my skin?” I squeaked. “That’s not a thing. That can’t be a thing.”
She pressed her lips together. “Well, it’s definitely a thing happening right now. I’ve been doing this for eight years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Of course, she hadn’t. Because normal people’s bodies didn’t suddenly decide to repel spray tans. Normal people didn’t frost over windows or talk to Christmas fauna.
After a third failed attempt with yet another formula, I gave up. I looked like I’d been tanning with stickers all over my body. I paid Serena extra for her trouble, mumbled something about seeing a dermatologist, and fled to my car.
By the time I got home, I’d convinced myself this was just one more thing to add to my growing list of “weird shit happening to Neve that she’s going to aggressively ignore until it goes away.” Right below ice powers and the box of cookies that was waiting for me on my doorstep.