Gram Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  “Hello, Naida. It’s nice to speak to you too. How’s Sebille?”

  My gaze narrowed as I looked toward Sebille, still sitting cross-legged on the floor near the shelves. She was taking time during the lull in the work to look through her new book. Wicked was batting at the end of the string belt on her relatively sedate black dress. Though, when he jumped on her red and purple striped sock with the end of the string between his jaws, she grabbed at it and tugged, engaging a game of tug and chase that only made her more exasperated.

  I hurried toward the door that divided Croakies from the artifact library, covering one ear to mute Sebille’s outraged shrieks. “She’s great. Look, Theo, I have a problem. Do you by any chance have a magic trap in the shop?”

  Theopolis Gargantu owned Enchanted’s only pawnshop, named Enchanted Collateral. Like most giants, he loved to collect stuff. All kinds of stuff. Running a pawn shop was a great way to feed that love of junk.

  “I actually do have a trap. Do you mind my asking why you need one?”

  “I don’t mind at all. Apparently, Croakies has become infested by a hobgoblin.”

  A heartfelt gasp came through the phone line. “Nasty creatures. They create all kinds of havoc. You need to get rid of it fast, Naida Keeper.”

  “That’s the plan. Would you mind if I borrowed your magic trap, Theo? I’d owe you one.”

  “Not at all, Naida. Not at all. I’ll be there in about an hour. I only have to find the thing. It’s in my office somewhere. I just don’t know exactly where.”

  With some intimate knowledge of what Theo’s office-slash-home looked like, I grimaced. I figured if he showed up in a couple of hours, I’d be lucky.

  Giants’ homes were living artifacts, which, like the giants themselves, loved clutter and thrived on change. Even if Theo had seen the trap within the last hour, chances of it being anywhere near the spot where he’d seen it were minimal.

  I thanked him and disconnected.

  Movement near the dividing door brought my head around as Rustin eased into view. His gaze was intense, his translucent expression dire. “Naida, if you want to keep that ’goyle around, you’d probably better do something fast.”

  I shoved my phone into my pocket, hurrying toward Rustin. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

  He floated ahead of me into the artifact library. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him. Madeline’s orders. A minute ago, he suddenly sat bolt upright, his eyes rolling back in his head, and his whole body started to tremble so hard I swear it shook the walls.”

  “Oh no! Grym!”

  I dropped to my knees on the hard floor, my hands stretched toward the unconscious man. He’d shifted back to his human skin. He was so pale he looked like he was already dead. Froth covered his lips and blood flecked his chin. “He’s coughing up blood,” I said, anxiety making it hard to breathe. “Sebille!” I screamed, realizing as I did that I sounded unhinged. Panic had twisted icy fingers around my heart and was squeezing hard.

  Sebille’s red shoes clacked against the concrete a moment later.

  I looked at Rustin. “Go! Find your aunt. I called her a couple of hours ago and she’s not calling back.”

  He inclined his chin and disappeared. I prayed the tether between him and Slimy was long enough for him to reach Madeline.

  Sebille ran over as I felt for Grym’s pulse. I realized he wasn’t breathing. “No, Grym!”

  “What happened?” she asked, shouldering me aside.

  “I don’t know. It sounds like he had some kind of seizure.”

  Sebille placed her palms above Grym’s chest. Green light bathed his skin, making him look even more sickly.

  A moment later he twitched and his eyes flew open as he sucked in a gasp.

  “Grym?” I said, moving around to his other side and clasping his ice-cold hand. “You stopped breathing.”

  He looked up at me, licking his dry lips, but before he could speak, his eyes rolled closed again.

  “Sebille?”

  “It’s okay, Naida,” she said, her tone cool. “He’s just sleeping this time.” She sat back on her heels, staring at him. “I wonder if it would help to put him into a natural healing cycle.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, willing to consider anything.

  “For lack of a better way to describe it, we basically bury him with a select collection of healing herbs. He’d have to stay that way for at least twenty-four hours.”

  I thought about her suggestion, my hand smoothing over Grym’s strong arm as I struggled with the concept of burying him alive. “What are the chances that will heal him?”

  “Heal?” She frowned. “We just don’t know enough about the magic that poisoned him. I could be more certain if we did. But at the very least I think we can put him in stasis until we come up with a cure.”

  A cool moisture bathed my back. I turned to find Rustin hovering there. “Did you reach her?”

  He shook his head. “No. And I’m getting worried. There are no signs that anybody’s been in the house for a while.”

  “Maude?”

  He shook his head. “Not even Maude.”

  Nausea blossomed through me. What in the names of all the goddess’s cats did that mean? Then I had a thought. “Could she have gone to the Universe again?” Madeline had gone into the Universe with me recently to help me find the Power That Be who’d set a poisonous artifact loose on humans in my dimension. I found out later she’d been pursuing her own agenda when I’d thought she was helping me. A fact which didn’t surprise me, knowing Madeline Quilleran as I did.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Rustin said, frowning. “If so, she didn’t tell me she was going, which would be strange.”

  He was right. She most likely would have told Rustin. But knowing Madeline, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for her not to have communicated her plans, even to him. “Okay, Plan B.” I tugged my phone out as the front door to Croakies jangled. Lea’s voice rang out.

  “In the library!” I called back.

  A moment later she hurried in, her pretty round face flushed. She carried a vial of something in one hand and wiped tangled blonde curls from her eyes with the other.

  “He needs to take this…” she said, hurrying over to crouch beside Grym. “Help me get it down his throat.”

  “Wait, what is that? How did you know?”

  “Lift his head, Naida!”

  I was unused to my sweet-natured friend barking orders at me. I complied, but the urgency of her attitude made my pulse spike.

  Lea managed to get most of the liquid down Grym’s throat. It was a thick, muddy-looking mess that smelled like rotting vegetation. I grimaced as I caught a whiff of it.

  She nodded as the last drop trickled into his mouth.

  I gently lowered his head.

  Lea stood and looked at Sebille. “Sindra has the plot prepared. We need to get him into it ASAP.”

  Sweat broke out on my brow. I swallowed hard. “He weighs a ton. How are we going to move him?” I asked.

  “You don’t have Aladdin’s flying carpet here, do you?” Lea asked, giving me a weary smile.

  I shook my head. “I did, but the PTB ordered it moved to another dimension.” Something about fleas and magical transference. I hadn’t asked a lot of questions at the time. I’d been busy trying to learn how to keep traveling artifacts from…well…traveling.

  “We can move him,” Sebille said, standing and hurrying toward the mirror.

  “We?” I asked.

  She touched the mirror with her fingertip, a thin stream of green light entering the glass and spreading across the surface. The magic hit the edges of the mirror and receded again, leaving a view of Lea’s greenhouse behind as it went.

  A fairy in the austere costume of Queen Sindra’s guard buzzed into view. “What is it, Princess Sebille?”

  Sebille’s freckled face puckered with displeasure but she didn’t yell at him for calling her Princess. It was one of her pet peeves sinc
e she wanted nothing to do with royalty or the ways of her people.

  “Tell the Queen we need escort service for a heavy load. And make it quick. This is a life or death matter.”

  The guard doubled over in a low bow and buzzed quickly away. Sebille headed toward the back of the library, sending a bright jolt of magic toward the garage-sized door as she moved. Light flared around her and she disappeared from view with a soft pop, reappearing in her Sprite form. The size of a large dragonfly, she buzzed to meet the small army of Fae surging toward the door.

  “This way,” she told them, before hurrying back to Grym.

  Lea and I stepped back as the Fae dropped to surround Grym in a buzzing outline. A soft green glow appeared underneath him. As the light grew, Grym’s form started to lift off the ground. Once he was well above the floor, Sebille gave a soft whistle and the fairies shot toward the door, impossibly fast, disappearing outside.

  I looked at Lea. “Well, that worked.”

  She smiled sadly. “Let’s go. There’s still work to be done.”

  Wicked followed me through the big door. I threw a bolt of magic at it to close and ward the entrance against unauthorized access.

  My cat bounced along with me, batting at grasshoppers as we cut the distance between the back of Croakies and Lea’s enormous greenhouse.

  As we entered, I spotted the aura of the fairies’ magic at the back of the big structure. By the time we reached them, they’d already lowered Grym into a deep hole they’d dug into the rich, black earth and lined with thick, shiny leaves.

  The earthy scent of the dirt mingled with the sweet smell of broken leaves as he sank into the prepared spot.

  I looked at Lea, chewing my bottom lip with worry. “What if he wakes up while he’s under there?”

  She shook her head. “He won’t. The elixir I gave him will keep him in stasis while the plants and earth heal him.”

  “How will he breathe?”

  “How do any of us breathe? We take in what the plants give off. He’ll be part of the same ecosystem, just in a more intimate way.”

  It made a twisted kind of sense and I trusted Lea. She was an Earth witch. If anyone would know this stuff, it would be her.

  The Fae buzzed away from Grym and Sebille popped back to her full size. “He’s ready,” she told Lea.

  My friend inclined her head. She reached down and broke several leaves from a nearby plant, folding them in half and pushing them carefully into Grym’s mouth.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “A magically enhanced type of Aloe Vera. The leaves will provide all the oxygen he needs until we pull him out of stasis.”

  When she was done, she stepped back and nodded toward the fairies. They surged forward, covering his entire form like a swarm of locusts. The sight made me hold my breath with worry. But as they streamed back, I was surprised to see that Grym was entirely covered in the black dirt.

  Lea nodded her head. “That’s it. He should be fine until I get the cure worked up.”

  I blinked. “Cure? You figured it out?”

  Her smile was filled with pride and excitement. “I did. Well, Maddy and I did. It was a joint effort.”

  Maddy? “Then, why didn’t we just give it to him?”

  “I’m afraid it will take some time to create. There’s one ingredient, in particular, that’s going to be hard to get hold of.”

  “What is it? I can ask LA if they have any.”

  Lea sighed. “I doubt they will. It’s a special flower called Devil’s Crown. I guess it only blooms at night, in the desert, on the south-facing side of a mountain. Maddy’s using her contacts to try to find it.” Lea wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “We’ll get it done, Naida. Now that we have a little time I’m confident we can save Grym.”

  I nodded, chewing my lip with worry. I really hoped she was right.

  17

  Into the Bubbles You go!

  By the time the bell jangled on the bookstore entrance, I’d almost forgotten about Theo’s imminent arrival.

  When I glanced up from my book order, I found myself looking into his wide, happy face below the top of the doorframe.

  He ducked through the door, easing himself slightly sideways to fit his enormous bulk through the normal-sized entrance. “Hello, Naida Keeper!” His booming voice made Slimy jump against the glass wall of his tank, his black eyes bulging more than usual.

  I came out from behind the counter and walked over to the giant, offering him my hand. “Thanks for coming, Theo.”

  He shoved my hand aside and wrapped me up in a hug that totally engulfed me. I was surrounded by heat and the sweet scent of cookies. Being around Theo always made me hungry. Giants loved sugar, especially in the form of baked goods, my own personal favorite, and he always smelled like carb heaven. “I’m so sorry to hear about your infestation, Keeper,” he told me as he let me go.

  “Thanks. Did you find the trap?”

  “Yes. It took a while.” Theo grinned.

  Yeah, I’d noticed.

  He patted the large, square pockets of his tan corduroy coat, a blast from the fashion past, and stuck his hand inside the right one, drawing out a purple plastic bottle with a white label and handing it to me. “This will take care of your little problem.”

  I looked down at the label, which depicted kids blowing iridescent orbs through a small wand. “Bubbles?”

  He nodded, his brown gaze sparkling. “Delightful, huh?”

  “You mean I could have just gone down to the Penny store and bought some bubbles to use as a magic trap?”

  He blinked. “What? No. Of course not. That would be silly. I ordered this from the Universal Mass Online Retailer. UMOR for short. It’s a huge online magic supply store. You can only reach it through the Dark Web.”

  I filed that away for later use. Unscrewing the bottle, I sniffed the contents. It smelled fruity. Like grape juice. “How do we do this?”

  “Have you purified with Sage?”

  I nodded. “After you called.” In between burying my friend alive and trying to run a business.

  “And you have the brownies?”

  “Brownies plural? LA said I’d need one.”

  The giant grinned widely. “The second one’s for me. I’m famished.”

  Laughing, I went to retrieve the small box from our favorite bakery. “Fortunately for you, the Sprite went to get them and she always gets multiples. Hopefully, she left two…”

  Theo extended his hand and took the greasy cardboard, grabbing one brownie from it and shoving the box inside his coat. “Perfect. Would you like me to do the honors?”

  “Be my guest.” I handed the bottle to him.

  Theo extracted the wand and tapped it against the bottle a few times, shaking off the excess liquid. What was left created a glossy web that covered the entire circle at the end of the wand. He bent down and set the bottle on the ground, placing the brownie on top of it, and motioned me back. I watched, fascinated as Theo shuffled his feet a few inches farther away and leaned over the bottle, the wand held upright.

  He turned to me. “Ready?”

  I nodded, not sure what I was getting ready for, but if it meant catching the little jerk who’d made a mess of my life lately, I was definitely game. “Ready.”

  Theo closed his eyes, murmured something I didn’t catch, and then flung the wand into the air.

  I watched it topple end over end for a beat and then stop, hanging in the air directly above the bottle. Theo took another step back and urged me to do the same.

  Light shot from the bottle in a cylindrical burst that filled the matching circle on the wand and expanded outward, a glossy column that caught the various lights in the store and threw them back in a rainbow of colors. The brownie levitated above it, the delectable scent of chocolate filling the room.

  The lights were pretty. The magic was quivery like bubbles. And the spell throbbed with latent energy, giving off a high-pitched range of sounds.

  The bo
ttle spun, faster and faster, as the wand rotated in the opposite direction at the same, impossible speed.

  After a moment, they both stopped spinning with a shriek and went perfectly still. For the single beat of a heart, the magic waited, and then exploded outward in a wash of bubbles, covering everything in the center of the bookstore in a grape-scented gloss of cool magic.

  I sputtered, scrubbed my hand over my face, and coughed as the tinge of sulfur in the magic caught at my dry throat and irritated the tender tissue there.

  When I opened my eyes again, I blinked.

  The bottle of bubbles was tipped over onto the rug, spilling a puddle of liquid onto my carpet. The wand still hung in the air, steady and unmoving. Between them, encased in a lustrous column of magical energy, stood a tiny creature with sharply pointed ears, large blue eyes, and a long nose shaped like a bent funnel over full pink lips.

  He was already popping the last bite of brownie into his mouth as my gaze found him.

  The hobgoblin blinked in surprise, its little head, no bigger than my fist, rotated from me to Theo and then back again.

  “Is it trapped?” I asked Theo.

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  “How do I release it?”

  Theo’s eyes went wide. “Release it? Why would you do that? Just have your Sprite blast it with magic and eradicate it.” Theo’s lips curled. “Nasty critter.”

  I didn’t miss the judder of fear that slammed through the little creature at Theo’s harsh words, or the way the cute little shock of light brown hair between its ears quivered along with its body. The hobgoblin was dressed in a small white smock, its wiry arms and legs sticking out of the garment. Its feet were bare, slightly oversized, and each big toe had a tuft of hair on it that matched the tuft between its ears. The hobgoblin’s fingers were long, on tiny hands. They constantly clenched and unclenched while plucking nervously at the smock.

  But it was the eyes that held me in thrall. They were beautiful, with long lashes, and they were filled with expression. Mostly fear and pleading.