Love Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  Her response was to sprinkle me with magic dust.

  I sneezed.

  Heavy footsteps pounded toward me, and I looked up just in time to see a wild-eyed man, probably in his mid-forties if I had to guess, barreling toward the woman in my arms.

  A burly biker chick lumbered toward Sebille’s abandoned charge, a hungry glint in her narrowed eye. “There you are, my pretty. Now stop flirting with that bunion on a frog’s butt and come with me. We’re meant to be together.”

  “Hey!” I objected. “I’m no bunion. Besides, frogs don’t have butt bunions. Toads do have bumps, which are generally mistaken for warts, but they’re not really war…”

  A massive, tattooed hand snapped out and punched me in the face. Agony razored through me and my vision went wonky. I stumbled sideways. The sobbing woman who’d been clutching me as if I were a lifeboat on storm-tossed seas quickly released me rather than follow me to the ground.

  I landed on my hip, pain radiating up my body and into my jaw. Or maybe it was the other way around since my jaw felt crooked on my face. “Hehya! Daltpt hurbpt!”

  I clasped my estranged jaw and felt my eyes go wide. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be. “Dyoupt pbrokt bmy djaw!”

  The forty-something man reached the sobbing elderly woman and wrapped her into his arms, cooing softly as she tried to extricate herself from his determined clutches. “My love,” he said, “Your eyes are pools of liquid…urp!”

  The woman kneed him in the family vault, and he turned green as she smacked him on the head with her purse. “Hands off, Romeo. I ain’t your Juliet. Now off with ya, son.” She stuck a gnarled hand into her oversized purse and pulled out a gun. “Or I’ll finish the job I started with my knee in a more permanent way.”

  Keening like a newborn, the unfortunate lothario shuffled away, one hand up to hold off her hostile response, and his body doubled protectively around his injured stick and pebbles.

  A shrill scream rent the air. I turned to find Sebille’s abandoned charge kicking and shrieking her outrage from her spot on the biker chick’s broad shoulder.

  Sebille buzzed down and popped back to full size. “You just going to stand here and watch that happen?” she demanded.

  My hands clenched into fists. “Ibpt tabpts dnervbe!” Agony speared my face from trying to speak and I groaned, clutching my jaw.

  She rolled her eyes. “You sound like an idiot.” She touched my jaw and heat flared through the fractured bone and bruised tissue. Painful heat. Pits of Hades-type heat. I’d have screamed from the feeling of being boiled alive, but my entire face was locked into Sebille’s healing magic. I couldn’t so much as blink.

  A few frantic beats of my heart later, the sprite lowered her hand and the heat sifted away, leaving me pain-free and able to talk again. “You’re lucky I need to deal with this mess, or you and I would be having a discussion.”

  Her iridescent green eyes mock-widened. “Oooo! Not a discussion.” She clutched herself, fake shaking. “Not that!”

  “Shut it!” I growled, stomping after the still-shrieking woman. “If you hadn’t flown off like a scared little girl, that poor woman wouldn’t be in the clutches of a maniac right now.”

  Sebille caught up with me. “What can I say? I panicked. I don’t people well.”

  “You don’t people at all,” I corrected. “But Grym asked for our help for…whatever this is. So try to be more helpful next time.”

  “Whatever.” The sprite flashed forward and smacked the biker chick on top of the head. Green light spurted from her palm as her hand connected to the woman’s dark, closely-shorn skull. The oversized woman jerked to a stop and slowly folded toward the ground─sleeping like a giant tattooed baby.

  Apparently, I just needed to point Sebille at the right kind of problem, and she was happy to step in. Violence seemed to be the key ingredient necessary for her “help”.

  I stuck that one in the memory banks and grabbed the biker chick’s almost-prisoner, easing her to her feet. “Are you all right?” I asked the wet-faced woman. She sniffled noisily, dragging a hand underneath her glossy nose. “I think so.”

  I grimaced at the slime on her hand. “Uh, okay. You should get out of here then.”

  But she didn’t immediately leave. She glanced at the fallen biker chick. “What happened to her?”

  “She fainted,” Sebille offered, shrugging for effect.

  “Oh.” The woman frowned. She didn’t look convinced.

  Behind me, the mall doors opened again and a chorus of screams filled the parking lot until they were sliced off by the closing doors. “We need to get in there,” I told Sebille.

  She nodded and fell in beside me as I hurried toward the mall.

  “Wait!” the young woman behind us called out. “We can’t just leave her here.”

  Since that was exactly what we were going to do, I lifted a hand and waved her off, calling over my shoulder. “Go home. We’ll send her some help as soon as we can.”

  “But…”

  Her worried protestations faded to the background as I caught a glimpse of the chaos inside the mall.

  Actually, chaos was too moderate a word for it.

  Sebille and I shared a look as our determination wavered. Did we really want to insert ourselves into that?

  With a sigh, I grabbed the door handle. “This is going to be okay,” I told my assistant, not even convincing myself.

  “Yeah? Then why is returning to the Jurassic era starting to look like a better option?” Sebille asked. “I could definitely use me some T-Rex about now.”

  I sighed. She wasn’t wrong.

  9

  Get Your Hand off my Boob, Lady!

  I’d never seen the mall in such an uproar before. And I’d been there for the big Black Friday electronics sale. Two times. Once, they’d had fifty-inch TVs on sale for two hundred dollars. That had been a zoo.

  But this…

  This…

  A slender form flew through the air and smacked into me, knocking me into Sebille and sending all three of us to the ground. The woman on top of us groaned and tried to shove herself free of the tangle.

  A strangled squeak told me she’d shoved against something belonging to my assistant that wasn’t public touch approved.

  “Get your hand off my boob, lady!” Sebille shrieked.

  I’d never heard the sprite sound quite so outraged.

  The woman gave a little yelp and yanked her hand back, rubbing it against her jeans as if trying to wipe off the boob cooties.

  The three of us took a moment to disentangle ourselves from the messy pile. It wasn’t easy to do without inadvertently molesting each other.

  Finally, we stood fairly upright. In my case, even my hair was upright. I reached up to shove the messy strands relatively flat. “What happened? Why were you flying through the air?”

  The woman harumphed, crossing slender arms over an abundant chest. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  I dug deep for patience. Sebille, who wouldn’t know patience if it gave her boob cooties…heh…rolled her eyes. “We know it wasn’t your fault. That isn’t what she asked. What’s happening here?”

  Okay, that wasn’t what I’d asked either, but it was a better question. I nodded, feeling stupid.

  The woman’s lip curled. “I have no idea. I was running away from those things…” She threw a hand in the direction of the central mall area and shuddered. “The next thing I knew, somebody gave me a shove and I went flying.” She absently rubbed her hip. “I don’t know who thought those cherub things were a good PR stunt for Valentine’s Day, but they’ve backfired in a spectacular way. Somebody’s going to get sued.”

  At her mention of cherubs, Sebille and I shared a look.

  I started running toward the center of the mall, where the screams and explosions had reached a crescendo. Sebille flashed past me in her sprite form.

  Buzzard blisters! “Sebille!” I yelled after her. “Not in front of the non-magics.”


  I couldn’t see her tiny green eyes roll, but I knew they were arollin’. “She’s gone,” she yelled back. “Give me some credit, Naida.”

  We hit the end of the short spoke of stores on the first level and emerged into a large, open area with picnic tables and the sweet-spicy mix of smells that told me we’d stumbled into the food court. Even as I had the thought, something warm and meaty splatted me on the side of the face.

  Sebille flashed back to human size. “What a mess.”

  She wasn’t wrong. The place looked like someone had emptied the entire contents of the food court into the middle of the mall. And what was there had been smashed and ground under a hundred panicked feet.

  The scent of catsup hit my nostrils as the hotdog I’d been attacked with slid slowly down my cheek on a condiment track and plopped onto the food-littered floor.

  “Heads up!” somebody screamed. Sebille and I ducked just in time to miss being hit in the face with a fried rice plate.

  My stomach growled at the smell of crisp and tangy egg rolls.

  “When did they add Chinese food to the court?” Sebille asked, spinning to avoid a paper cup filled with liquid. The cup hit the ground with a wet splat just behind us, the liquid splashing the back of my calves. “Ew! What is happening?”

  We ducked behind an overturned picnic table and looked around. Several people were hightailing it to the exit at the end of the wide hall. The escaping customers were battered and blotched with food, and a couple of them were limping. As I watched, one young woman went down, shrieking. She covered her head with her arms as a plate of nachos hit her square in the back. I couldn’t tell where the cheesy projectile had come from. It had seemed to come out of thin air.

  All over the messy marble floor, people lay in messy piles, limbs at awkward angles and eyes wide and glassy.

  “Are they…dead?” I asked in a horrified whisper.

  Sebille merely frowned.

  The air above us spun and thickened. A terrifying cherubic face appeared. Sharp metallic-looking teeth gnashed too close to my nose, and a slender arrow pierced the space between Sebille and me.

  Sebille shot energy at the nasty thing, but the cherub disappeared with a pop of displaced air.

  “Why are these things here?” I asked. “And where’s Grym?”

  Across the court, a man stumbled out from behind a post, arms frantically flailing against the air. He jerked suddenly, yelping, and slumped toward the ground, a tiny metal shaft protruding from his throat.

  The air above the man thickened and a cherub seemed to buzz into view from nothing. The creature hovered about head-height, its tiny wings moving at hummingbird speed to keep it aloft. It held an empty bow in its chubby fist. Sebille’s fingers spit with energy. “Keep it busy,” she barked out. Then she popped into a dragon-fly-sized sprite and buzzed away, leaving a sparkling trail of pale green magic in her wake.

  The cherub’s gaze slid in her direction. I grabbed the hot dog that had painted my face and surged to my feet. “Hey, ugly!” The creature jerked around to face me, a horrifying smile spreading on its chubby face.

  An arrow appeared in one pudgy hand and the thing nocked it, a gleam in its black eyes.

  I wound up and, using my best pitcher-on-the-mound technique, threw the dog at the cherub.

  It splatted the spot just between its eyes.

  The thing jerked, buzzed skyward in a panicked movement, and then growled before swiveling the bow in my direction.

  Sebille suddenly appeared, hovering on the air behind it. A fully-formed web of magic flared from her fingers and dropped over the nasty critter.

  Unfortunately, the arrow the cherub had nocked flew free, heading right for me.

  Something big slammed into me, sending me flying just as the arrow hit the space where I’d been. The figure that had hit me grunted softly as we landed, and we skidded several feet through the slippery food debris before we came up hard against another large post.

  I’d ducked and covered my head, expecting impact, but it never happened.

  As we came to an abrupt stop, I looked up to see a muscular arm stretching toward the column. The hand attached to the arm had kept me from crashing into the big post.

  Grym’s dark-caramel gaze looked slightly feverish in the harsh light. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, my gaze locked on his. “Fine. Thanks for saving me. You got here just in time.”

  His yummy lips curved slowly upward, the sight making me feel warm and tingly in all the right places. “Nice pitch.”

  Heat flared in my cheeks. “Um, yeah, thanks. I played a little softball back in the day.” I shifted uncomfortably, hoping the movement would inspire him to move. His nearness was making me a little dizzy.

  His gaze heated. “Well, you throw a mean hotdog.”

  My mouth became a desert, my tongue a dehydrated husk in my mouth. “I…” I cleared my throat, trying to find some moisture to rehydrate my mouth.

  A large bug buzzed overhead. Sebille hovered on the air a foot from our heads, arms crossed and a judgy look on her tiny face. “Are you two done congratulating each other? Because these things won’t capture themselves.”

  Grym and I glanced up at the cranky sprite. Her fire-red brows lifted into her hairline.

  Grym blinked as if suddenly remembering where he was. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” He shoved himself off me and climbed quickly to his feet, reaching down to give me a hand up. “You’re sure you’re okay?” His tone was tender, his gaze skimming quickly over me to check for damage.

  Words wouldn’t come. I swallowed hard and nodded.

  Then I saw the speck of blood on his shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

  He glanced at the small slice through his denim shirt, his mouth curving up on the corners. “It’s just a flesh wound.” He laughed. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

  I rubbed my gritty hands on my jeans. “What’s going on here?”

  Grym looked around, his expression turning dire. “The cherubs seem to have adjusted their attack to stealth mode.”

  “They’re invisible?” The shriekish quality of my voice was embarrassing. I worked to tone it down. “The one that attacked us just kind of popped out of thin air.” My stomach twisted into a painful knot. The only thing worse than shark-toothed cherubs shooting people with poison arrows was not being able to see those cherubs coming.

  But Grym shook his head. “Not invisible. I mean, for all practical purposes they are invisible to the naked eye. But it’s more like they’re using voids or something.”

  I thought about what I’d seen and realized it was exactly like that. Archie was a void sorcerer, and he’d stepped out of voids in thin air just as the cherub had. “Is that possible?” I asked Sebille and Grym. Though we were all magic-users, they’d been part of the magic world all their lives, where my magic had been ignored and hidden from me until it was impossible to ignore any longer. I knew next to nothing about the magical world compared to them.

  Though, my job was proving to be an adept teacher on the subject, if a little death by fire-squadish in the delivery.

  “I haven’t seen anybody who could use a void like Uncle Pudsy,” I said

  Grym nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. But the thing is, demons aren’t generally able to use voids that way.”

  “Spatially restricted invisibility magic?” Sebille offered.

  Grym thought about her question for a beat and then shrugged. “Could be. I’ve heard of demons who were able to utilize that type of magic in controlled situations.” He looked around, frowning. “But this whole place would have to be spelled for it to work.”

  “That would be a humdinger of a spell,” Sebille said, sharing his frown.

  “Like something a demi-god might be able to use?” I said, reminding them what…or who…we were dealing with.

  “Hello?”

  We all turned at the sound of an uncertain male voice. A short, portly man was waddling in our direction, his sparse combover flop
ping in his eyes before he shoved it off his forehead. The air behind him shimmered and I glanced at Sebille. She buzzed away, using the small trees adorning the central mall space to keep out of sight of the approaching human.

  A beat later, a wash of green energy lit up the space behind him and he jumped, rubbing the back of his neck as he turned to look.

  Seeing nothing, he ambled in our direction again. “I’m evacuating the mall, folks. Some kind of flash mob has taken over and people are acting crazy. It’s not safe here.”

  Grym showed the man his badge. “Detective Wise Grym of the Enchanted Police Department. And you are?”

  The man examined Grym’s badge, his expression relaxing. “Thank goodness you’re here. I don’t know what’s going on.” He seemed to realize Grym was still waiting for him to identify himself and nodded. “Name’s Pinch. Ralph Pinch. I’m the manager of this mall.” His gaze slid toward the pile of ostensibly sleeping people. “Are they okay?”

  Grym nodded. “They passed out.”

  The manager’s eyes went wide. “Oh my! You mean all this is because of a bunch of people who drank too much?”

  Grym opened his mouth and stopped, seeming to rethink whatever he’d been about to say. Finally, he nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  The man nodded. “Well, in all my years managing this place, I’d have to say this is a first.” He crossed pudgy arms over his well-padded chest and shook his head. “What will we do with them?”

  “I’ve called for backup,” Grym told him. “We’ll get this cleaned up in no time, sir.”

  The man nodded. “Good. What do you want me to do?”

  “Getting people out of here is a good idea. Then lock the doors and watch for my people to arrive.”

  The manager nodded. “I have a few staff left in the building. I’ll see if I can roust them to help.”

  “I can help,” I told the man. I shared a look with Grym and he frowned. “I’ll back you up,” I told the manager in a firm tone that was meant to remind Grym the human manager was in danger from the cherubs. He probably wouldn’t even see them coming and, if he did, he wouldn’t know what to do about them.