Froggy Style

by J. A. Kazimer

  “Perhaps another person in your employ?”

  “Nope.”

  “But I have a receipt from last night, for a two-hundred-dollar charge, and then there’s another, much larger cash advance.” Enough of a cash advance to hire a killer and have a little bit left over for a nice steak afterward. “The credit card company said both charges originated here.” I yanked the paper from my pocket and shoved it toward her. “Care to explain?”

  “Explain what? A receipt? Yeah,” her lips thinned, “you charged something somewhere. By the smell of you, I’m guessing a brothel. But it wasn’t here.”

  “But—”

  “Listen,” her eyes skimmed over me with indifference, as if my superior manly form was of little consequence, “I’ve never seen you before and we closed up shop early last night. Are we done here?”

  My eyes narrowed. Something wasn’t right, something besides her obviously poor eyesight. This had to be the place. Had to. The sign on the door. The vague familiarity of the bitchy brunette. She was lying for some unexplainable reason. Perhaps meeting me last evening had ruined her for all men. Ah, the peril of being me.

  “Then explain this.” I twirled around and yanked my pants down.

  “Sir,” Karl said, “I don’t think—”

  I held up my hand for quiet, waiting for the woman to speak, to acknowledge our association, or at the very least apologize for the large girly flowers tattooed across the small of my back. When she failed to respond, I ventured, “Well?”

  “The tattoo’s nice,” she said, and then motioned to the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “Mademoiselle, you don’t understand—” I spun back around to glare at her. “This is a matter of life and death. If you refuse to aid me, I’ll be forced to take action. . . .” I let my threat trail off.

  “Oh, I understand plenty, Kermit.” Her eyes shrank to slits. “Now get out of my shop before I take some actions of my own.” Sadly, her threat carried much more weight, in the form of a Fairyville Slugger wooden bat that she picked up from underneath the reception desk.

  Using the bat like a cattle prod, she pushed me toward the door. The wood dug into my spine, bruising my already multicolored back. “This isn’t the last you’ve heard from Jean-Michel La . . . ,” I said as my feet hit the sidewalk. “Oh, forget it.”

  Karl followed, his knees scraping the cement as the woman shoved him out of the door after me. She waved the bat in good-bye and then slammed the door in my face.

  “Sir, I guess we were mistaken about your final stop last evening,” he said.

  “Not quite.”

  Karl’s eyes narrowed. “Huh? The woman . . . Ms. Bliss . . . she said she didn’t remember you. Vehemently, I might add.”

  “That’s what she said, all right.”

  “Then why do you look so pleased?” His brow knit in confusion. “We’re no closer to stopping Princess Beauty’s murder.”

  “Not true.” I helped my manservant from the sidewalk and watched with disgust as he dusted off his tights.

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Karl said. “What did I miss?”

  “She called me Kermit.”

  Chapter 9

  Twenty minutes later, I’d finished explaining to my manservant the significance of Ms. Lollie Bliss’s apparent slip of the tongue, and leaned back against the leather couch in the center of my suite with satisfaction. I was right. I could feel it in my formerly aquatic bones.

  “But how can you know for sure?” Karl asked. “Maybe you misheard?”

  “She called me Kermit. I’d swear to it. That means she knows who I am.” I lowered my voice. “Who I truly am.”

  Karl scratched his chin. “So what? That doesn’t prove anything. She could’ve read that article about you in the paper, or seen you on Fairyland Tonight.” Damn FT. Those hack paparazzi followed me everywhere. It was getting so bad a prince couldn’t drive recklessly and run down innocent peasants anymore without some video showing up on FairyTube.

  As much sense as Karl’s explanation made, I suspected there was more to Lollie’s reaction. Why else would she kick us out of her shop? She knew more than she was letting on, most likely about the upcoming murder of my neither sweet nor innocent future wife.

  I’d bet my castle on it.

  Maybe just the west wing. It was far too drafty for my taste anyway.

  A moot point, anyhow. Unless I found the assassin in the next eight days and four hours Beauty would be much less beautiful, and so would I. Green wasn’t a great color on anyone, let alone a prince with my smooth complexion.

  “E-mail Georgie,” I said to Karl. “Get me everything he can on Ms. Lollie Bliss.” Georgie Porgie, a gelatinous fellow who often smelled of pudding and pie, worked in my employ gathering intel when the need arose. And what I needed now was information, and a lot of it. Mostly regarding a tattooed woman named Lollie Bliss.

  Karl nodded, yanking his BlackFerry from his pocket and quickly sending off a missive to my less-than-attractive employee. When he finished with his task, Karl turned to me. “I have a thought.” He scratched his chin, his eyes scanning my opulent hotel room. “Since we can’t find your assassin, why don’t you tell Princess Beauty the truth?”

  I chuckled. “Good one.”

  “Sir, I’m not joking.” He stood and started to pace, his chubby thighs wobbling like little piggies in the clingy fabric of his tights. “There is a murderer after your sweet and innocent bride.”

  Partly true, I supposed, at least the part about the killer. But Beauty sweet? Innocent? I had my doubts. After all, Beauty was a twenty-six-year-old spinster. Who knew what sort of debauchery she was into? I started to say as much, but Karl shushed me. “How can she protect herself from the threat if she does not know about it?” he asked with a weary air.

  What a drama queen. I wouldn’t let anything happen to Beauty. I’d protect her with my life.

  If I had to.

  “You have to tell her the truth.”

  “But—”

  “Tonight.” Karl stopped pacing to glare at me. “At dinner.”

  Shit. I’d nearly forgotten all about my impending disaster/dinner date with Beauty and her family at one of the fancier restaurants in Cin City. A “get to know you” dinner. I suspected there might be more to it than that, like Beauty’s relatives scamming me for a free meal.

  “What time’s dinner?” I asked with a sigh and glanced at my watch.

  “Eight o’clock, sir.”

  That left me with an hour to kill. I contemplated the liquor cabinet. Dinner with the future in-laws was bad enough, but a sober dinner with the future in-laws seemed like a death sentence. Add the complication of telling Beauty I “accidentally” hired someone to kill her, and bingo, it was the stuff of fairytales. And not the Happily Ever After kind either.

  The Grimm ones.

  I rose from the bed and strode across the room to the well-stocked bar. The plush carpet tickled my bare feet. “I can’t tell Beauty the truth.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she won’t marry me,” I said very slowly, as if Karl was the village idiot. “What woman would marry a prince who doesn’t love her, and worse, hired a killer to murder her?”

  “But—”

  “No.” I poured a healthy dose of brown liquor into a highball glass. “The less Sleeping Beauty knows about this . . . about me, the better.” For me, at least until she said “I do.” I wasn’t ready to risk the rest of my life on the truth. Tossing my servant a figurative bone, I added, “Would you mind picking out appropriate dinner attire while I grab a shower?”

  Karl sprang into action, running to my closet to inventory the mass of suits, jackets, and starchy shirts in an array of colors, except for any variation of green. “Of course, sir. Right away.”

  “Thanks,” I said, slamming my drink and then heading to the bathroom for a quick and much-needed shower. I still smelled faintly of strip club and sadistic tattooed chick. The things I did
in order to save Beauty’s life. I hoped her pajama-wearing self appreciated it.

  Chapter 10

  A half hour into the meal, I realized how little Beauty appreciated anything, let alone my sacrifice on her behalf, unless appreciation came in the form of loud whining and random complaints.

  “Where is that waiter with my drink?” Beauty complained for the fourth time in two minutes. “I’m dying of thirst here.” She cleared her throat to emphasize her point.

  If only, I thought, but alas, thirst would not be the death of my complaining bride, as the waiter soon arrived with our cocktails.

  “About time,” Beauty said, snatching the drink from the waiter’s hand and gulping it down before letting out a princess-like burp.

  I accepted my own drink, taking a fortifying sip before glancing across the table at my fair Beauty, who was dressed in pink flannel floor-length pj’s and what appeared to be arm floaties strapped to her flannel-clad biceps. When I raised a questioning eyebrow, her stepfather, the king, responded with, “Just in case.”

  Next to the king, Beauty’s younger sister, Pretty, perched on the edge of her chair, her green eyes brushing over me with desire. I squirmed under her obsession-filled gaze. And really, who could blame her? I was the Frog Prince, after all.

  In direct contrast to Pretty’s reverence, Handsome, Beauty’s stepbrother, who was dressed in a dark blue cop uniform, sat on the other side of the table, glaring at me like I was a child molester. I pictured the next twenty years of my life with Beauty and her odd family and gagged on my glazed ugly duckling appetizer.

  Murder didn’t seem like such a bad idea anymore.

  “So you grew up in New Never City?” Beauty’s not-as-annoying sister, Pretty, smiled up at me, batting her eyelashes like a maid a-milking, her green eyes and pale hair as shiny and soft as a newborn unicorn.

  Suspicion filled me. No one was that innocent, no matter how cute and perky. I set my fork down and glanced around the expensive restaurant before answering the younger woman. A famous celebrity couple sat a table away, acting annoyed as paparazzi snapped photo after photo. A swarm of B-list celebrities stood at the bar waiting for a table while preening in front of uninterested photographers.

  “I did,” I answered Pretty. “Mostly. I spent the first few years of my life . . . traveling.”

  Across the table Beauty let out a snort and a fountain of water spewed from her mouth. I extended an eyebrow. “What?” she yelled, wiping her drool-coated chin. “Take a picture, why don’t you? It lasts longer.”

  “Jean-Michel, you were saying?” Beauty’s stepfather glared at his stepdaughter. She responded by letting out a loud belch, and then yawned.

  Oh, how I looked forward to our wedding night.

  If we had a wedding night.

  I almost smiled at the thought.

  Dinner with Beauty, while an unmitigated disaster, hadn’t changed my mind about our upcoming nuptials. Yes, she was rude, whiny, and generally annoying, but the longer I stared into her grape-colored eyes, the more convinced I became that she was the One.

  Mostly because karma was a bitch.

  I smirked at my intended. “Mademoiselle, have you ever been to Paris? It is quite beautiful this time of year.” Not that I would know. I’d rather not spend eight hours locked in a plane with sniveling kids and equally whiny parents only to wake up in a city that harbored chicks with armpit hair longer than Goldie’s famous locks.

  “I don’t go outside,” Beauty answered.

  My eyes flew to hers. “Ever?”

  “Not for a very long time, not since we moved from New Never City to here when I was four years old.” Her eyes bored into mine, reminding me yet again that she was the One. “Nothing’s been the same since that day.”

  “Beauty,” the king warned his stepdaughter.

  “As I was saying before I was interrupted by dear old Daddy,” her lips curved into a wicked smile, “the desert air makes me sleepy.”

  “Enough,” the king growled, and then turned to me. “Beauty’s quite the little homemaker. Isn’t she, Handsome?”

  “Yeah, right,” Beauty mumbled loud enough for the table across from us to hear. “I can’t sew. I hate cooking. And don’t even get me started on how much I hate to clean up after myself. That’s what maids are for, or so I keep telling the maids when they whine about steam cleaning my linens four times a day.”

  The king’s smile tightened until I was afraid his face would break. But Handsome, being the good son, smiled and gave a slight nod. True to his name, a lock of black hair fell rakishly across half of his chiseled face in a look that probably cost more to achieve than our waiter made in a year. “No one can compare to Beauty,” he said with a glare in my direction.

  Our waiter appeared on my right, cutting off the awkward conversation, a steak the size of the big, bad one himself on a plate in his hand. “Your dinner, sir.” He set the plate in front of me, and then served the rest of the table.

  Handsome and the king had also ordered steaks, each bloodier than the next. Pretty had opted for a salad. And Beauty . . . well, Beauty had ordered something called jambes de la grenouille, which looked suspiciously like fried frog legs.

  Maybe we were meant for each other after all.

  God help us.

  Beauty smiled up at me and then let out another loud belch.

  The king glared at his daughter, but said nothing. Beauty shoveled a spoonful of breaded feet into her wide mouth. “Yummy,” she said.

  “Bon appétit,” I said in my best French accent, which in all honesty sounded a bit like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets. Everyone but Beauty, who never looked up from her plate, rewarded me with a devious smile before they dove into their meal.

  Ah, the joys of family dining.

  Other than the crunch of teeth meeting cow flesh and reptile bones, silence filled the table. Mindlessly I chewed my food, thirty-two times, swallowed, and then took another bite, all the while avoiding any small talk with my future bride and her family.

  Halfway through the meal, I glanced up from my plate in time to see a driblet of froggy juice slide down Beauty’s chin. Rather than use a napkin to wipe the smear, she stuck out her tongue and lapped it away. But rather than upsetting me, her seemingly deliberate actions amused me. It was almost as if she thought I’d end our engagement if she acted up. As if I could. No matter what Beauty did, I would marry her. My curse gave neither of us much of a choice.

  Beauty slurped up another mouthful. I grinned, which forced a frown to her lips. “What’s your problem? Didn’t your mama tell you it’s not polite to stare?” She threw her spoon down; it clattered against her plate, drawing the attention of the other diners as well as a swarm of paparazzi. A flashbulb exploded on my right.

  “Beauty!” Her father dropped his own fork to reprimand his stepdaughter. “For once in your life, act like a lady.”

  “Why would I do that?” Her eyes narrowed as if truly perplexed, or perhaps she was blinded by the sudden splash of camera lights bearing down on us.

  The king’s face turned bulgy red, and a vein popped out of his forehead, not a look that inspired confidence. “Why must you ruin everything!”

  “Whoa.” I lifted my hand to quash the budding shouting match, but Beauty’s glare quickly changed my mind about interfering. My hand dropped, and I looked to Pretty for help. She winced, but said nothing, and went back to picking at her leafy green plate. Damn vegetarians. They were never any help when you needed them.

  The king waggled a finger at his stepdaughter. “You’ll push and push until Jean-Michel can’t take any more and he ends the engagement. Like all the others.”

  “Others?” I asked.

  Rage burned in Beauty’s eyes. “Well then, if you like Jean-Michel so much, why don’t you marry him?”

  I winced as their arguing escalated to ear-piercing screeches. Angry words flew like killer bluebirds, turning our once-peaceful dinner into an evening with Hansel and Gretel after a sugar f
ix. Paparazzi circled around us like a mulberry bush. Pop! went the flashbulbs.

  “Ungrateful little—” the king screamed at Beauty.

  “Enough,” I yelled. “Let’s rewind. What’s this about others?”

  No one paid me any attention, a relatively new feeling for me. Years of affluence and servants guaranteed my every need catered to, my every thought treated with reverence. Damn. I actually missed the reverence.

  “Spoiled, lazy brat.” Spit flew from the king’s lips, landing on my steak. “I should’ve paddled you years—”

  I tossed my fork onto my plate with a loud clang. The bickering stopped as the king and his sleepy daughter stared at me as if I’d just kicked a dwarf and his puppy.

  “So what’s this about ‘others’?” I hoisted an eyebrow at Beauty. “Just how many times have you been engaged, madam?”

  Pretty answered for my suddenly tongue-tied intended. “Let’s see, in the past couple of years, there were . . . twenty-eight. If you count Prince Chafing. Which Beauty doesn’t. She claims they were never engaged, no matter how many rug burns she had.”

  Twenty-eight broken engagements? Shit. Now I was sure telling Beauty about my little “indiscretion” would destroy our upcoming wedded bliss, nearly as much as her brains splattered across our wedding cake.

  “Twenty-eight?” I repeated.

  Beauty had the decency to blush. “I’m selective.”

  “Not bloody likely.” The king snorted. “More like no man will put up with her . . . affliction long enough to marry her.”

  “The sleepy thing?” I tilted my head to the side. All in all, as afflictions went, it wasn’t that bad. So she dozed off. Big deal. It wasn’t like she “hey diddle diddled” seven filthy dwarfs like another princess of my acquaintance.

  “Not that affliction.” He brushed his thick fingers over his lips. “The other one.”

  “What other one?” There was more? And I was only finding out about it now? Stupid fairy godmother. Elly needed to do better research before binding me to a princess for life.

  “You know,” he said to me and then nodded Beauty’s way.