Gram Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  I looked around the room, a grin finding my face. “It’s all back to normal.”

  Sebille blew on the tip of the wand, spinning it in her fingers, and sticking it into one of the big pockets on the front of the frilly white apron. “This thing rocks. I’m using it on my place next.”

  I narrowed my gaze on her. “Your place?”

  She seemed to miss the sarcasm in my question, simply nodding enthusiastically. “Did you get the staff?”

  “I did. You should have seen it, Sebille, it was really cool…” My cell phone rang, cutting off my story about the gazebo, Wicked, and my greatly enhanced magic.

  “Grym,” I told her, looking at the name on the screen. “Hey, Detective. How’s the investigation going?”

  “Good,” he said, his voice breaking on the word.

  I frowned. “Are you okay? You sound different.”

  He cleared his throat. “I think I might be coming down with something.”

  “Don’t give it to me, whatever it is. I don’t need to be sick right now.”

  He coughed. “Yeah, me neither. I was calling to tell you that I think I’ve found the boyfriend who sells cosmetics. Are you interested in coming with me to talk to him tomorrow?”

  I frowned, wondering at the detective’s sudden interest in having me involved in every facet of the case. But I realized, as he probably had, that we might as well work it together, rather than investigating along parallel lines. “Sure. What time?”

  “Ten…” he cleared his throat when his voice squeaked and tried again. “Ten AM. I’ll pick you up at Croakies.”

  “Okay. See you in the morning.” I hung up and stared at my phone.

  “Is there something wrong?” Sebille asked.

  I shook my head. “No. He just sounds different. I think he’s getting sick and he wants me to come with him to talk to a witness tomorrow.”

  Sebille nodded. “Eat some of that fruit Lea brought you. You need lots of Vitamin C. I’ll make you a special citrus tea in the morning.”

  I narrowed my gaze on her. “Who are you, and why are you being nice to me?”

  Sebille snorted. “I think this wand might have done something to me. I was singing at Mr. Slimy, dancing around his tank earlier.” She shook her head. “I’ve been whistling too.”

  I grimaced. “How’d the frog take the singing?”

  She shrugged. “I think he was trying to drown himself in his pond, but it wasn’t deep enough.”

  I laughed. “I don’t blame him. You couldn’t carry a tune in a suitcase with piano key lining.”

  “Har!” she said, sneering.

  There’s the Sebille I knew and loved. “Speaking about Mr. Slimy, you haven’t seen Rustin have you?”

  “I haven’t been looking for him. Why?”

  I explained to her what had happened at the gazebo.

  “Lizard nipples!” she exclaimed. “You blew everything out of the gazebo?”

  “Yeah,” I said, frowning again. “I hope I didn’t hurt Rustin.”

  “You don’t have that kind of oomph,” she told me thoughtfully. “How did that happen?”

  “Rustin said the gazebo enhances magical energy. That, plus Mr. Wicked adding his enhancing powers to the mix, must have added up to a whale-bladder-sized magical whammy.”

  “Sweet Caroline!” she said, punching me on the arm. “Look at you, magicking like the grown-ups.”

  I made a face at her. “I’m exhausted. I need to go to bed. It sounds like tomorrow’s going to be another wild one.”

  She nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I almost said, “You’ll see me when you come upstairs,” but decided in my great weariness it might come out sounding resentful so I bit my tongue. Instead, I walked over and looked down at Mr. Slimy. He was still sitting in his pond, probably in case Sebille decided to serenade him again, and his bulgy black gaze was locked on me. “Hey buddy, is your passenger onboard?”

  Slimy blinked at me, his throat working as he gave me blank face. “No?” I sighed. “Okay.” I started to turn away.

  I’m hungry.

  I turned to Sebille. “You can have some of my apple if you want. There’s still a lot left.”

  She was gone. The connecting door between the bookstore and the artifact library was open.

  You promised to bring me bugs.

  I yelped and jumped backward, Slimy’s blank gaze following my movement.

  No. It wasn’t possible. Then I had a thought. Moving closer, I asked, “Rustin?”

  The frog just stared back at me. “Come on, Rustin. This isn’t funny.”

  Nothing.

  I shook my head. “I’ll grab you some crickets.” After relying on live bugs we caught in and around the store for several days, Sebille and I finally searched online to discover what frogs liked to eat. We discovered we could buy live crickets and mealworms for Mr. Slimy’s gastronomic pleasure. Worms too, but there was no way I was handling a worm. Ugh!

  A few minutes later, I turned off the lights and made sure all the locks were engaged, both physical and magical, and climbed the stairs to my apartment.

  The door was, as usual, open a crack. I carefully shoved it wider so it didn’t smack into Sebille’s furniture and rubbed my tired eyes as I stepped into the apartment. I started to yawn, but jerked to a stop, my yawn cut short by a shock of surprise.

  “What is happening?” I asked again, thinking I should just tattoo the question on my forehead.

  All of Sebille’s furniture was gone.

  My rooms were back to normal. Except, they felt strangely, unnaturally quiet.

  Great galloping gargoyles! Where was Sebille?

  7

  Youth is Not for the Faint of Heart

  I’d looked all over both sides of Croakies but hadn’t found Sebille. She also hadn’t answered her phone, so I’d tried calling Lea to see if she was in the greenhouse with the other Fae. Lea had assured me she’d seen my assistant within the last hour and she’d been fine.

  Finally, since her furniture was gone, I decided Sebille must have found another apartment and forgotten to tell me. I would have jumped up and down with happiness, but I was too tired to get my toes off the ground.

  Eight hours later, I was still too tired to get my toes off the ground. I’d had nightmares all night long about being old and wrinkled and being attacked by a shrinking gun.

  Don’t laugh, haven’t you ever seen Men in Black? Yeah, like all good humor being based in truth, all good movies are too.

  In fact, I’d heard a shrinking artifact actually existed. Though I’d never clapped eyes on it.

  Shoving a tangled ribbon of long brown hair out of my eyes, I yawned widely.

  I stared at my tea, thinking that I might need to resort to coffee for an extra jolt of caffeine.

  My phone rang and I looked at the name on the screen.

  Grym again.

  I sighed. The man was quickly moving from the persistent column into the annoying one. “Hello, Detective,” I said, following up the greeting with a jaw-wrenching yawn. “What’s up?”

  “Naida…” His voice broke on my name, coming through the line with a higher pitch than it should have. “I’m sorry to bother you so early.”

  I frowned, pulling the phone away from my ear and looking at the name again. The detective didn’t sound like himself. “Do you have a cold or something? Your voice sounds funny.”

  “No. I’ve just got a frog in my throat.”

  And I’d thought it was bad to have a frog in a fish tank. “Try drinking some lemon and ginger tea,” I advised.

  “I’ll do that. I’m calling because it seems we have another artifact situation.”

  I came instantly alert. “Another…” I wasn’t sure what to call it. “fetus” didn’t feel right. “Embryo?”

  “I’m afraid so. Can I pick you up in a few minutes? I’d like you to search the apartment for the artifact.”

  I glanced at the clock on my wall. Sha
ped like a frog that looked a lot like Mr. Slimy, it usually made me smile. At the moment, it just made me want to yawn again. “I have to open Croakies in half an hour.”

  “Can you open a little late?”

  I could. But if things turned out anything like they had the day before, it would be more than a little late.

  My door rattled under a thunderous knocking I recognized all too well. Sebille opened it a minute later, peering inside. “Do you want me to run to the bakery?”

  I shook my head. “I need to go out for a bit. Can you hold down the fort?”

  Sebille sighed, looking disappointed that she wouldn’t get her daily dose of sugar and fat. “I’ll bring donuts back,” I said, sweetening the pot.

  Her dejected expression brightened. “Okay.” She slammed the door before I could ask where she’d gone the previous night.

  “Keeper?” a high-pitched voice said into my ear, followed by a firm throat clearing.

  I grimaced. “You should probably see a doctor about that, Detective.”

  Grym chose not to respond to my good advice. “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

  He disconnected before I could argue that I needed more time. “Dormouse dandruff!” I exclaimed, jabbing the button to end the call. “It will take me that long just to brush my hair.”

  I rolled into the bookstore twenty minutes later to find a clearly annoyed Detective Grym standing by the front door, scratching one arm and glaring at me.

  I’d finally given up trying to wrangle my tangled mass of hair into any kind of tidiness and decided to pull it into a messy ponytail instead. To compensate for that breach of good grooming, I’d spent extra time on eyeliner and mascara in a smoky charcoal gray color that I hoped would emphasize the blue of my eyes.

  I’d pulled on my best pair of yoga pants and a tee-shirt that exclaimed, “Pink Elephants are my Crack” and a pair of black sneakers that I hoped would look like dress shoes.

  I was too tired to dress in clothes that constricted.

  It was a thing. When I was tired or stressed, I tended to want to burrow into soft fleece and eat cookies. The yoga pants and tee were my compromise on that desire.

  Grym’s gaze focused on the dancing pink elephant on my shirt and he rolled his eyes. “Are you finally ready?”

  I blinked, looking carefully at the growly detective. It wasn’t just his voice that had changed. “Are you wearing makeup?” I asked him.

  He frowned, running a hand through his dark hair and sending it into spikes. “Of course not. Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because your face is as smooth as a baby’s bottom.” I got closer, peering at him until he growled low in his throat. He didn’t look anything like the grizzled gargoyle detective I sort of knew and kind of liked. “And you have no laugh lines.”

  He turned away and grabbed the door. “Let’s go. We’re late.”

  As we left, Sebille called out, “Two frosted chocolate cake with sprinkles!”

  Giving her the thumbs up, I hurried after Grym. I narrowed my gaze on him as he reached down and hiked up his jeans, realizing that he looked leaner than before. “Have you lost weight too?”

  “No, I haven’t lost weight, Naida Keeper,” he all but growled out.

  I lifted a hand in surrender. “Okay, sorry.”

  We were silent for the first few minutes, him glaring straight ahead and me trying to decide if making conversation was worth the risk of having my head bitten off. I finally decided silence was golden. I’d wrangled a Black Widow spider the size of my fist once. She’d tried to bite off my head with jaws that extended on several hinges and had almost succeeded.

  I wasn’t in a hurry to repeat that experience.

  But when I saw him turn into the Enchanted Glenn Apartments, I spoke up. “What are we doing here again?”

  Grym parked in front of the manager’s building. “The victim is the apartment manager.”

  I blinked in surprise, remembering the sour-tempered woman with the long, melting wax face. “Seriously? She didn’t strike me as the type to use expensive cosmetics.”

  “No,” Grym said, the scowl replaced by a thoughtful look. “She didn’t.”

  The room looked exactly the same as it had when we’d been there before. With the exception of the missing manager.

  Or should I say, the greatly reduced manager?

  We found the telltale speck on the seat of her office chair, but the moisture the embryo was resting in had soaked down into the upholstery, creating a dark spot instead of a puddle.

  I grimaced. “This is just grisly.”

  Grym seemed to agree. His full, well-shaped lips were contorted with disgust. We looked around for a container of cream or some kind of lotion but found nothing.

  As before, my keeper magic didn’t find anything I could call forward as an artifact. It did, however, circle around the manager’s chair for a few beats as if confused before dissipating with a soft hiss.

  I frowned. “Someone has to be bringing the stuff in and taking it back out with them when they leave.”

  Grym didn’t look convinced. He stood behind the manager’s chair, staring down at it and scratching a spot on the underside of his forearm. “It has to be here somewhere.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, but it’s not. If the artifact had been there, my seeking magic would have found it.”

  He slammed a fist down on the desktop, making me jerk in surprise.

  “Detective?”

  His hands clenched at his sides, his gaze sliding to me, filled with hostility. Almost as quickly as the emotion washed over him, it slid away. “I’m sorry, Naida.” Scrubbing a hand over his face, he fixed me with a worried gaze. “I’ve been trying to deny it but, something’s wrong with me…”

  The last couple of words came out on a broken squeak. I walked over and grabbed his hand and looked at the spot he’d been scratching. It was red from the nearly constant scraping, but the skin was smoother than a baby’s bottom.

  A sudden, horrifying thought made my breath hitch. My gaze shot to his, and I saw understanding there.

  He’d already figured it out.

  “How?” I asked, wanting to step away in case it was catching. I forced myself to stand still, holding onto his wrist. My touch was the only comfort I could give him.

  “I must have rubbed against the spot on the tablecloth when I was examining the table,” Grym finally said. He stared at his arm. “I’ve been trying to make excuses for the signs that I’m infected. But it’s becoming nearly impossible to do.”

  He’d brushed against the greasy circle on the cloth, getting some of the artifact on his arm. It must have been just a tiny amount, which was why it was working so slowly on him. But slow or not, I doubted the artifact would stop its forward progress until it returned him to his earliest state.

  My gaze slid back down to Ms. Wexille’s chair. “We need to find this artifact fast.” I hadn’t meant to speak the thought out loud. I realized I had when Grym shifted away, tugging his arm from my grip. “Don’t you think I realize that, Naida Keeper?”

  I bit back a sigh. I hadn’t meant to pile on.

  Stupid, stupid me.

  Grym disappeared into another room in the apartment for several moments. I could hear him searching furniture and opening doors. I did the same, exploring the kitchen and the living area for anything that looked like a greasy cosmetic cream.

  I didn’t find anything and apparently Grym didn’t either.

  When he came back to the front room a while later, he didn’t even look my way. “Let’s get out of here,” Grym said, his long strides eating up the distance to the front door more quickly than seemed possible. I wondered if his youthful changes were internal as well, or if the outside youth would war with the time-worn organs and create a new type of damage that couldn’t be seen.

  Shaking my head, I hurried after him. I had no desire to join Grym in finding out. But I also knew I couldn’t just let nature…or unnatural magic…take its
course and remove a new friend from my life.

  My heart pounding with fear, I stopped at the door. “I…” When Grym turned back to me, his jaw rigid and his eyes dark with fear, I gave him a tight smile. “I’m going to try searching one more time for the artifact. I’ll meet you in the car in a few minutes.”

  He nodded, clearly happy to get out of the place. “Don’t touch anything, Naida,” he said softly.

  I would have been annoyed if I hadn’t recognized the worry in his gaze. He hadn’t been warning me about disturbing a crime scene. He’d been telling me not to risk contaminating myself.

  As he’d done.

  Five minutes later, I shoved a small, plastic container inside my pocket and headed for Grym’s charcoal-gray car. As a gargoyle, the car suited him perfectly. If gargoyles became cars, they would turn into Grym’s boxy SUV.

  He eyed me as I slid into my seat. “Ready?” I asked, to spur him on. “I need to stop at Enchanted Bakery before you take me back.”

  He put the car into gear. “I heard. Two frosted chocolate cake donuts with sprinkles.” He smiled at the last part. “How old is your assistant, anyway?”

  I shook my head. “Sprites never outgrow their love of sugar. Sugar is comfort. Especially when it’s wrapped around fat and chocolate.”

  He snickered softly, looking more relaxed than he’d appeared earlier. It had apparently been good for him to share his worries.

  “I…um…”

  He glanced my way. “Spit it out, Keeper.”

  “I’m going to consult with Madeline Quilleran about your…issue.” I fully expected him to argue with me. He didn’t, simply nodding after thinking about it for a moment.

  That, more than anything, told me how worried he was.

  Twenty minutes later, I stepped out of the boxy SUV and looked at him. “I’ll let you know what Madeline tells me.”

  “Thanks.”

  I started to close the door.