Gram Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  “I swear on my mother’s wings, I put it back on the shelf.”

  The shelves in the artifact library were infused with a spell to hold and mitigate the magic of the artifacts, releasing them only if I recalled them with my magic or someone who had permission to manage them took them down.

  I definitely hadn’t released the wand from the shelves. That left Sebille.

  “Alligator pinkie swear,” she told me, her green eyes wide.

  “Alligators don’t have pinkies,” Rustin said, grinning widely.

  “This isn’t funny, Rustin!” I told him with some heat. “Look at the books.”

  All three of us turned to stare at the dripping bookshelves, bubbles still dancing over the saturated tomes and water sliding down to puddle in the carpet.

  “The thing seems to have misfired,” Sebille said.

  “Ya think?” I said a bit too loudly. Then I groaned, stepping into the store. My shoes squelched over the saturated rug, soapy water seeping between my toes.

  Anger filled me at the destruction. My bad mood was invigorated by frustration with Sebille, the artifact, and the terrible, bad, awful day I’d had.

  I threw out my keeper magic and heard a soft, happy whistling sound wind toward us from the artifact library. The door between the two spaces was ajar and it shouldn’t have been. My cat must have left it open again.

  I added Wicked to the list of friends and things I was mad at.

  The happy whistling came closer until it burst upon the air on the sparkling, star-shaped heels of Cinderella’s wand, the small, pastel-hued length of wood and magic dancing into Croakies with a song in its heart and destruction at its tip.

  It skidded to a stop in front of us, dipping as if giving us a curtsy, and then tilting sideways as my magic found it and tugged it toward my outstretched hand.

  The wand fought the grasp of my magic, sending a pretty burst of bubbles into the air as it tried to get away.

  I stepped closer, determined to grab the pesky little wand and stick it in the toxic artifact vault where it apparently belonged.

  But the wand was determined not to be corralled. It tipped, the dangerous end shooting up to point right at us, and a burst of fire-hose strength water and soap shot out of it, sending me flying backward to bash into Sebille and Rustin.

  The ghost witch gave a shout of discomfort as my assistant and I fell right through him and slammed into the door.

  Then, happy tune rising once again from its magical tip, the jovial wand danced back through the door and disappeared, slamming it in its wake.

  My cell phone rang.

  I shoved to my feet, pushing soapy water out of my face as I dug in the soggy pocket of my jeans for my phone. “It’s Grym.” I glanced to my friends. “Can you guys corral that thing and put it into the vault?”

  Sebille didn’t even bother responding. She shoved a soapy, drenched red braid off her face and stalked toward the door, growling deep in her throat.

  I didn’t envy that stupid wand. Especially when the ghost witch shot after her, a murderous look in his gaze.

  “Hey, Grym,” I said, wiping soap off my mouth with my shoulder. “I think we might have some information on the youth cream case.”

  A beat of silence met my statement. I pulled the phone away, looking at the screen to make sure it hadn’t disconnected. If that stupid wand had broken my phone…

  “Naida?”

  I blinked. It wasn’t Grym. It sounded like a kid. “Who is this?”

  The kid cleared his throat, coughing wetly. “It’s me, Naida. Grym. I think I’m running out of time. We need to figure out who made that cream and find out if there’s a way to reverse it.”

  The dividing door flew open and Wicked shot through, yowling pitifully. He was soaking wet and trailing bubbles as he shot across the store and into his hidey-hole beneath the counter.

  The wand shot through after him. Jerked to a stop in the air and spun in one direction then the other, seemingly looking for my cat.

  “Grym, you sound really young,” I told him frowning.

  Sebille and Rustin burst through the door. Sebille threw herself into the air and made a grab for the wand. It shot straight toward the ceiling and skittered across, leaving a wet, soapy trail on the plaster as it headed for the door.

  I gestured wildly toward the window, afraid it would blast through like the staff.

  Rustin went high and Sebille went low. They cut the wand off at the wall, and it bolted in my direction.

  Grym coughed again. He sounded terrible. “You should see me.”

  I really didn’t want to. It would make it all too real. My friend was in danger.

  “I look like a twelve-year-old. But that’s not the worst of it. I think my body is fighting the rapid change. My systems feel like they’re shutting down.”

  My hand snaked out and I grabbed the wand, sending a jolt of keeper magic into the thing as it fought to escape.

  Grym’s voice was filled with fear. I didn’t like the sound. Grym was a gargoyle. He was big and strong, and I’d watched him stand up to a dragon. He couldn’t be taken down by beauty cream.

  Could he?

  Sebille grabbed the artifact from my hand and slipped it quickly into a quelling bag, sealing the top with her magic.

  I sagged downward, the starch suddenly leaving my knees as I realized how much danger my friend was in. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Grym,” I told him. “I promise. But you need to hang in there.”

  Silence pulsed through the phone lines, threaded through by a wheezing sound I hoped wasn’t Grym’s breathing. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure it was.

  “Hurry, Naida.”

  He disconnected. I stumbled backward, dropping into the nearest chair as my legs turned to jelly.

  “Naida?”

  I looked up to find Rustin hovering nearby, his expression worried. “Are you okay?”

  I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. Grym was in terrible danger. I couldn’t stop my mind from sliding back to those horrible lumps of tissue on the chairs in Celia Pepper’s home. How long before Grym became like those poor women? “We need to find that artifact,” I told the ghost witch.

  Sebille returned, her expression dark. “That stupid cat is going to the moon.”

  I forced my mind out of its dark place and glanced up. “Why? What did he do now?”

  “The shelves are a mess back there. Stuff all over the floor. It’s no wonder the wand was in here wreaking havoc.” She frowned down at me. “You need to lock him in your apartment when you’re gone.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not locking Mr. Wicked up,” I told my assistant. “What makes you think he’s responsible for the artifacts being off the shelf. Maybe Cinderella’s wand tidied the shelves and shoved them off.”

  Sebille gave me her patented “You’re an idiot” look. “That’s not how the wand works, Keeper.”

  I swung my arm around the bookstore, seeing the devastation anew and feeling tears burning my eyes. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to work, either, Sebille.”

  She shrugged. “You have a point. But I saw him back there, burrowing around in the artifacts. Him and his little sister.”

  I felt my eyes go wide. “Hex is here?” I wondered if Lea knew her cat was in the library. She hadn’t called to tell me the cat was coming.

  The front door opened and my friend came through, her eyes going wide at the sight. “Oh no, Naida. Not again.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was referring to the earlier devastation caused by Maleficent’s wayward staff, or the wreckage caused by Felicity Quilleran when she’d visited the store a few weeks ago looking for Mr. Slimy and his resident ghost witch.

  Lea stepped inside and her foot squished in the saturated carpet. I bit my lip to keep from grinning. She was wearing a fuzzy pink onesie and her long, blonde hair was twisted up on top of her head in a messy ponytail. “What in the… Are those bubbles?”

  I sighed. “Long story.
Did you know Hex was here?”

  She expelled a huge sigh. “Thank the goddess. I couldn’t find her anywhere. I was starting to panic.”

  “Why are you dressed like a giant infant?” Sebille asked in a tone filled with disgust.

  Lea looked down at herself, running her hands over the fuzzy belly of her suit. “These are my PJs. It gets cold in the apartment over the shop at night.”

  Sebille snorted out a laugh, and I glared at her. “I seem to remember seeing you in a striped onesie when you stayed with me.”

  She flushed.

  “Which reminds me. Where…?”

  “Why are you here in your PJs?” Sebille asked Lea, cutting me off with a quick sideways glance.

  “I was heading downstairs to make myself some hot chocolate when I realized Hex was missing. I searched the apartment, the shop, and the greenhouse.”

  “How did she get into Croakies?” I mused aloud. “We’ve been gone for a couple of hours.”

  Lea sighed. “I wasn’t going to tell you this but…”

  Whatever it was, she wouldn’t catch my eye. Apparently, I wasn’t going to like it. I braced for whatever she was going to tell me, thinking unhappily that everyone and everything around me seemed to be changing at an uncomfortable rate of speed.

  “…through the mirror.”

  I blinked, bringing myself out of my thoughts in time to catch her last words. I didn’t need her to repeat it. I had a feeling I already knew what she’d said. “Hex came through the standing mirror in the library?”

  Lea bit her bottom lip, nodding. “I’m sorry, Naida. I bespelled the mirror in the shop to keep her from using it, but she must have found another mirror.”

  “Or used standing water,” Sebille added helpfully. “Those little monsters are fully capable of using any scrying object to travel.”

  I pounded my thighs with my fists. “Butterfly halitosis! You knew, Sebille? And you didn’t tell me?”

  She shrugged her bony shoulders, totally unconcerned with my anger. “I didn’t know for sure. But it makes sense.”

  I shook my head, losing patience with the conversation. “Whatever. We have bigger problems to deal with right now.” I looked at Lea. “I’ll shroud the mirror until we can figure out how to stop, or at least limit them from traveling around.”

  Lea nodded.

  “In the meantime, I need your help. Grym’s in trouble.” I quickly laid out Grym’s failing health and regressive physical state. “At the rate he’s deteriorating, I’m worried he doesn’t have more than a couple of days before this youth magic takes him completely down.” I grimaced at the euphemism, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the word, “death” in relationship to Grym.

  Lea thought about the problem for a moment, her agile mind clearly working it through. Finally, she nodded. “I feel confident that, between Madeline and me, we’ll come up with a reversal spell soon…”

  “He doesn’t have much tim…”

  She put up a hand to stop me. “But for now, I have a simple fix.”

  Hope flared in my chest. “What is it?”

  “Tell Grym to take his magical form. I doubt the magic will work the same way in his gargoyle form. If nothing else it should be greatly slowed down.”

  “But what if it speeds it up?” Rustin asked.

  All eyes turned to him. He’d been so quiet, I’d forgotten he was there.

  “Is that a possibility?” I asked.

  Rustin shrugged, his gaze sliding to Lea’s.

  She finally sighed. “A small one, but, yes. Magic is unpredictable at best. And since we don’t know the underpinnings of the youth spell, there’s no way to know for sure.”

  I felt hope crash around my feet.

  “Tell him, Naida,” Sebille said, her voice matter of fact. “Let him decide if it’s worth the risk.”

  I thought about it another minute and then sighed. “You’re right. It’s not our decision. It’s his. I’ll call him back.”

  Rustin’s wispy form rustled closer. I looked up.

  “There’s something else,” he told me.

  And judging by his expression, it wasn’t good. “What?”

  He held a wispy palm in front of my nose. Cool, ozone-flavored air drifted to my nostrils as the translucent form of his hand stopped mere inches from my face. I squinted down at it, seeing a small pile of something black and sparkly in the center.

  A scent like spent matches filtered through the ozone smell. “What is that?”

  Lea bent over his hand too, reaching a finger toward the black stuff. She sighed, her gaze lifting to Rustin’s. “I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

  Rancid whale blubber. Of course it wasn’t.

  “Croakies is infested.”

  I frowned. “Infested? With what? Mice?”

  Sebille clapped her hands with glee. “Please tell me Cinderella’s magic mice coachmen are here? Please, please, please?”

  We all looked at her like she’d sprouted a triangular pink nose and whiskers herself.

  “Um, disturbing on so many levels,” Lea said, “but no. I’m afraid you have a bad case of…”

  “Hobgoblins,” Rustin finished. “You have a hobgoblin infestation.”

  12

  Bleep the Bloody Bubbles!

  “But how!” I squealed, my gaze scouring the floor as I scratched suddenly itchy skin. “Why? Where could it have come from?”

  Rustin opened his hand and let the dust fall. It expired in a puff of smoke before it hit the carpet. “How is the big question. Why is obvious. This place is heaven on earth for a prankster. But the consequences, as we’ve already seen, can be deadly.”

  Lea’s eyes went wide. “You think somebody brought it here on purpose?”

  “The timing is a bit suspicious, don’t you think?” he told my friend.

  Yes, it was. Very suspicious. “Somebody’s trying to keep me off balance to make sure I don’t find that youth artifact.”

  He inclined his chin. “That seems logical.”

  I started pacing the book store, my shoes squishing loudly in the soapy, wet carpet. “This is bad. Really bad. If that things finds its way into the toxic magic vault…”

  “It won’t,” Sebille said.

  I stopped pacing, looking at her. “Do you know something you’re not telling us?”

  “No. I’m just saying, that vault is impervious to everything. Not so much as a cockroach can get in there.”

  “Unless you need to open it for some reason,” Rustin said, his gaze flying to mine. “Like you did when you put the staff away.”

  “Goblin boogers!” I shouted. We all turned on our heels and started running for the vault. It wasn’t until we reached the large, gray metal door situated in the deepest, darkest corner of the huge space that I realized we might be playing right into the thing’s hands.

  I turned to look at Lea and Rustin. “Can you guys put a barrier around this door? I don’t want anything to get in or out of the vault while it’s open.”

  They nodded and, a moment later, the air around us thickened, distorting the figures of Sebille and Rustin standing a few feet away through a glossy haze.

  I nodded to Sebille.

  She tugged a chain from under her dress. The key hanging from the chain was shaped like a thumbprint. I had no idea whose print it was, I assumed Bandy Joe’s since he’d been the very first KoA to run Croakies. Sebille pressed the key into a special indentation on the smooth door and green light flared as the key synced with the metal. There was a beat of silence before the internal workings of the door started to rumble and click.

  A moment later, the door shimmered with a harsh orange light. The opening quivered like heat over asphalt and thinned to a barrier Sebille and I could pass through, but nothing inside the vault would be able to penetrate.

  It took us only a few minutes to determine that everything was as it should be inside the vault. Fortunately, we only had a handful of artifacts at Croakies that were considered dang
erous enough to be enclosed inside the vault.

  There was Maleficent’s staff, of course, a small purse that made gold coins, the Evil Queen’s magic mirror, shrouded for extra protection, a small bottle of love potion that made the victim kill to protect his or her loved one, and a few other items that hadn’t moved since I’d taken over being the KoA at Croakies.

  Everything seemed as it should. There were no hobgoblins flitting around the vault.

  When we passed back out through the shimmering portal, the orange light oozed back into the door and it became solid again. As we walked away, we could hear the rumble of the inner workings settling back into place.

  “Nothing?” Lea asked, chewing her bottom lip.

  “No, thank the goddess,” I told them. “Everything’s in place.”

  Lea nodded, expelling a long breath. “Well, that’s one scare averted. I’ll just grab my cat and get out of your way.” She started to turn away and stopped. “Unless you need help cleaning up the mess in the store?”

  “No. But thanks. We’ve got this.” I looked at Sebille.

  “I’ll get started drying the books,” she said, marching off toward the front of the building.

  I glanced around. “Did anybody see the cats on our way through the library?”

  Rustin shook his head. “No. I’ll go help Sebille with the store.”

  “Thank you!” I called out to him as he floated quickly away.

  I dropped my arm around Lea’s shoulders. “I guess you and I will have to find the little monsters.”

  “I can do it if you need to go help up front.”

  I snorted out a laugh. “Do you really think I’d rather go face that mess than spend time on a treasure hunt with two adorable cats at the end of the rainbow?”

  She barked out a laugh. “Silly me.”

  Unfortunately, we’d gotten no closer to finding the little minxes after an hour of searching. We’d heard lots of snuffling and clawing sounds, but when we followed the noise to the spot where we thought we’d heard the cats, they were nowhere to be found.

  Neither cat was coming when we called either, which wasn’t all that unusual since they were cats and not dogs…but despite that, I was getting worried.