Black & White Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  And if I was being honest with myself, it was a good one. “Okay. We don’t want the neighbors to call Fiff.”

  “No, we do not,” Grym agreed, with feeling.

  When we reached the street, I slipped my arm through his and we strolled along the sidewalk, heads on a swivel. I tried to ignore the firm warmth of his big body pressed against my side. It felt good. And that made me kind of mad. And that was stupid. I’d mostly forgiven Grym for what I’d perceived as his disloyalty for turning me into the Société of Dire Magic. On a rational level, I understood he’d just been doing his job. On an emotional level, my feelings were hurt.

  But he did feel warm and safe, if still a little damp, pressed against me.

  And I couldn’t deny to myself that I liked that closeness.

  “Hello!”

  We turned to find a middle-aged woman with a damp sheet in her hands. She was standing in front of a laundry line, a basket at her feet. She smiled at us, her lips dark and smooth with layers of lipstick and her hair perfectly done up in a little flip. She wore a cotton dress, not unlike the one I was wearing, and dainty little shoes that had straps around the ankles.

  Thinking of how I usually looked when I did my laundry, I fought back a grin. The “real” life portrayed in the shows from the 1960s was nothing like reality. Or, at least I hoped it wasn’t. I hated to think of all those women getting dressed up every morning to clean the toilets.

  I was lucky if I was wearing more than just my underwear when I cleaned my house.

  “Hi!” I said, pasting a grin on my face and giving her a little wave.

  “You must be new in town,” the woman said, clipping the pristine white sheet to the line and bending to pick up the empty basket. She swayed toward us. “It’s always nice to have new blood in Maybury.”

  She scanned a pair of light-colored eyes appreciatively over Grym and something ugly bloomed in my chest. Something that felt too much like jealousy for my comfort. I pressed more tightly against his side and offered the woman my hand. “Naida Griffith. It’s nice to meet you.”

  The woman clasped my fingers in a limp grip. “Polly Smith.” She turned to Grym, offering him her hand and gripping his as if he were a lifeline in the middle of the ocean. “It’s such a pleasure.”

  Grym smiled widely, holding her hand a beat longer than strictly necessary. “It’s nice to meet you, Polly. My name’s Grym. We are new in town, and we’re looking for just the right neighborhood. We ran into a nice lady downtown who said this was the best place to live in town.”

  “Oh?” Polly asked, arching a brow that appeared to be nothing but pencil. “Who might that be?”

  Grym looked at me, frowning as if trying to remember. “Thelma Lou?”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t remember her last name.”

  Polly’s overpainted upper lip curled. “Thelma lives down there. Third house from the end of the street. She’s new too.”

  I felt my eyebrows climb higher on my forehead. If the artifact recognized Lea as new, maybe there was still hope?

  Grym nodded, giving me a bright smile. “See, honey, I told you this was the right street.”

  Her lips compressing, Polly glowered at me. “What do you all want with Thelma Lou?”

  I held her gaze, an easy lie not popping into my mind.

  Grym saved me. “She promised us a tour of the neighborhood.”

  Polly’s glower transformed into a leer. She sidled over and draped herself over one of Grym’s broad shoulders. “Is that all? Why, sugar, you don’t need Thelma for that. I can give you that tour.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but…”

  “We’d really appreciate that,” Grym said, cutting off my rejection. “Do you know everybody on the street?” He dropped my arm like a hot potato and let the “hot to trot” Polly tug him down the street. “Most everybody,” she said. “That there’s Old Man Aberdeen’s place. He don’t like people steppin’ on his lawn.” She rolled her eyes, making me feel as if I was spending time with the sprite. “But the man does grow prize winnin’ roses, I’ll give him that.”

  I scanned the front of the clapboard home, a pale color that could be anything from tan to light green for all I knew. There were indeed roses all across the front of the home and filling the front corners in carefully tended raised beds. There might not have been any color to showcase the full splendor of the flowers, but the air was rich with the scent of them.

  Grym nodded toward a small play area at the center of the street. “That’s a pretty little park.”

  Polly’s gaze barely left the detective’s strong jaw long enough to acknowledge the space. But she did grimace slightly. “Yes. Unfortunately, it draws the little monsters like bees to honey.”

  “Little monsters?” I asked, nursing a weird hope that she was talking about Hobs.

  “Children.” Polly shuddered. “I can’t stand the little hooligans myself.” She fixed a feral smile on Grym. “I consider myself lucky I didn’t conceive before Mr. Smith passed.”

  She winked at Grym, her message sent. She was a widow. And she apparently thought Grym would be interested in knowing that.

  Watching him touching her arm as she fawned all over him, I frowned. I could see why she’d think that.

  We approached Lea’s, aka Thelma Lou’s home and I saw a familiar small gray form draped over the windowsill inside the house. “Oh, she has a cat!” I exclaimed happily. My strange glee earned me a double-barreled eyebrow arching from the amorous Polly. “Yes. Nasty critters. And they get into everything.” She shook her head.

  “Get into everything?” Grym asked.

  “Yes. She lets it run around the neighborhood and the nasty creature is always getting into people’s business. Yesterday, it walked across Old Man Aberdeen’s yard and squatted in his rose bed. I thought he was going to drop dead of apoplexy on the spot.”

  “I’m sure it didn’t hurt anything,” I said, frowning. The woman didn’t like anyone or anything, apparently.

  Polly shrugged. “Lately, it’s been up to even more trouble than usual. It ran in front of Pearla Rogers this morning and almost sent her to her knees. She was carrying bags of food from the diner downtown and didn’t see the thing until it was too late.”

  “We should go talk to Thelma Lou,” I told Grym.

  He nodded. “Thank you for giving us the tour,” Grym told Polly, trying to extricate himself from her octopus-like grip.

  “It was nothin’, sugar.” She winked again. “I’d be happy ta do it anytime.”

  He finally got free of her with a less-than-gentle tug that sent her stumbling away but still smiling, and we started up the sidewalk to Lea’s house.

  Hex watched our approach but didn’t react except to blink slowly at us.

  Not a good sign.

  I rang the bell. There was no answer.

  “Maybe she’s out back,” Grym suggested.

  I nodded and we hurried around the house to a small, neatly-kept back yard surrounded by a low picket fence. There was a tidy flagstone patio, accessed by a small door that stood ajar. On the patio was a wrought-iron table with two iron chairs. I didn’t see Lea, but there was a glass of iced tea on the table, sweat running down the tall glass and dripping through the ornate metal to the flagstones beneath the table.

  “It looks like she was just here,” Grym said.

  Stepping over the short fence, we headed for the door into the house.

  Grym pushed it open, one hand reaching for a weapon he didn’t have, and called out, “Miss Thelma?”

  Silence met his call, so he pushed the door wider and stepped inside. “Miss Thelma, are you okay?”

  At first, I thought she’d left the house. But then I heard a soft noise that sounded like someone in pain. My gaze met Grym’s, and he plunged all the way through the door.

  We found her lying on the floor in front of an ancient refrigerator, her hair spread across the well-worn wood in a glossy pool.<
br />
  I hurried over. “Lea! Are you all right? What happened?”

  She sat up with Grym’s help, her eyes finding mine even as she reached for her head and groaned. “I must have fallen and hit my head.”

  She frowned, rubbing her temples. “What did you call me?”

  I realized my mistake and forced an innocent look onto my face. “Thelma Lou? Why?” I felt bad lying to my best friend, but she was already hurting, and I didn’t want to give her even more stress. Telling her she was an Earth witch from decades in the future seemed more than likely to do that.

  “Let me help you up off this floor.” Grym grabbed her under the arms and helped her stand. Lea swayed, her face turning grayer as she stood. “I should probably sit down.”

  We helped her into a vinyl-covered chair at a round wooden table.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said, sighing. “I must be coming down with something.”

  Lea seemed to remember she didn’t know us very well. Certainly not well enough to find us in her kitchen. She frowned at Grym and then me. “I’ve met you before, haven’t I?”

  I nodded. “At the jail.”

  Her eyes went wide with horror. “Oh!”

  Grym lifted his hands. “Nothing to worry about, Miss Thelma. We’re not here to hurt anybody. We just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

  I found a glass in the cupboards and filled it with water from the faucet, handing it to her. “Here, drink this.”

  She drank, much too docile for my taste. If she was herself, my friend would have been demanding answers at that point.

  “Meow!” A soft, warm body wound through my legs and jumped up into Lea’s lap. She bent down and kissed the little cat between her soft ears. “Hello, sweet girl. I’m all right.”

  Hex glared at me as if Lea’s condition was my fault. I bit back the urge to defend myself. “What a pretty cat,” I said instead. “What’s her name?”

  Lea blinked rapidly as if trying to remember. “I…I’m not sure.” She sagged in the chair. “Something’s very wrong with me.”

  “How long have you been feeling bad?” Grym asked.

  Lea shrugged. “A couple of days now.” She sighed, running her hand over the cat’s soft gray fur. “Hex has been worried about me.”

  “Hex?” I asked, my gaze flying to Grym’s.

  “Yes, um, I guess that’s her name.” She seemed to consider it, and the thought process didn’t make her look happy. “Such a strange name for a cat.”

  Not if you were an earth witch, I thought to myself. “It’s a perfect name,” I said aloud, giving my friend a reassuring smile. “She’s adorable.” A thought occurred to me, and I gave it voice before I had a chance to reconsider. “You haven’t seen another cat like her around here, have you?”

  Lea frowned, rubbing her temple. “No. Why do you ask?”

  Hex’s dark gaze rose to mine and she cocked her head, her tail doing a slow slide across the floor behind her.

  Something in her gaze gave me pause. There was an intelligence there that made me wonder if she’d understood my question. Being Mr. Wicked’s littermate, it would make perfect sense if she had. He not only seemed to understand what I said to him, he often seemed to be a few steps ahead of me in the thought process.

  So I stared at Hex a moment longer, feeling as if the little cat was trying to tell me something.

  The moment was broken by Grym’s deep voice. “Naida?”

  I blinked and realized I’d gotten totally distracted. Glancing his way, I had the sense I’d missed something important. “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering.”

  “Thelma Lou said that Hex has been acting strangely. That she keeps trying to get into Old Man Aberdeen’s house. Apparently, Thelma spent an hour looking for her yesterday and found her perched on an exterior windowsill of his home.” He lifted his brows, trying to beam an unspoken message into my brain that I couldn’t decipher.

  Whatever happened to the old-fashioned method of communication called speaking? I was just as much a modern girl as the next guy. But, holy window willies, some things should never go out of style.

  In exasperation, I widened my eyes at him, and he sighed.

  “Maybe Wicked’s in the house,” Grym finally said.

  “Who’s Wicked? What are you talking about?” Lea asked, sounding a bit panicked.

  Ah, okay. Maybe unspoken communication had been a good idea. It simplified things.

  Who knew?

  I looked at her. “A friend of mine lost her cat, and he looks a lot like Hex. We were hoping to help her find him.”

  Lea reached out and snatched up her cat, snuggling her close. “Hex is mine. Your friend should look somewhere else for her cat.”

  “We weren’t…”

  “You should go now,” Lea said, her face mottled with splotches as fear and anger turned her unreasonable.

  “We really weren’t…” I tried again.

  Lea stood, clutching Hex as if the Hounds of Hades were trying to get her, and pointed a rigid finger toward the door. “Go!”

  9

  I Have me Some Aboriginals to Subdue!

  “That went well,” I told Grym.

  “At least we have an idea of where to start looking for Wicked.”

  I nodded. “Did you get the impression Hex was Hex?”

  “It scares me that I know what you just said. But, yeah. At least on some level. She’s still herself. But Lea’s struggling. I wonder if her mind is trying to kick off the effects of the artifact?”

  “That would be good, right?” I asked.

  Grim shrugged. “I just don’t know.”

  We hit the sidewalk, heading back down the street toward the home with the prize-winning roses. If Old Mr. Aberdeen was the type to yell at kids for stepping on his grass, how would he take two strangers showing up at his door uninvited, looking for a cat?

  Probably not well.

  Nobody answered Mr. Aberdeen’s door. We discussed it and finally decided to try the back door, though it would probably send the old man into orbit as a level five intrusion.

  The back yard of the house was just grass. No trees. No roses. No patio.

  In fact, we realized as we rounded the corner of the home, there wasn’t even a door on the back.

  Or windows.

  “What in the…” Grym said.

  It hit me immediately what was going on because I’d seen it recently. In the abyss. “The back isn’t formed yet,” I murmured to myself.

  “What?” Grym asked, looking perplexed.

  “I saw this in the abyss. Only the parts that are needed are created. Old Mr. Aberdeen’s persona apparently doesn’t need a back yard.”

  “Or, like you said, it just hasn’t formed yet.”

  I realized what he was saying. “Like Mr. Aberdeen is new to the artifact?”

  Grym nodded.

  “You don’t think…”

  A crash sounded inside the house, followed by a shrill scream. Grym and I took off running and barely slowed as we hit the small front porch. Grym pounded hard on the door, calling the man’s name.

  I tried to peer in through the large front window, but the drapes were closed and I couldn’t see anything through the small center crack.

  Grym reared back and punched a kick into the door. The sound of splintering wood filled the following silence.

  I looked anxiously up and down the street. Luckily, no one else seemed interested in the sound of someone breaking into Old Mr. Aberdeen’s place. There wasn’t so much as a twitching curtain.

  “Mr. Aberdeen!” Grym called again. He waited a second longer and then kicked the door again. Nothing.

  “Maybe you should make like a gargoyle,” I told him.

  He glanced up and down the street and apparently saw what I’d seen. Nobody was watching. A strange look came over his face, like he was straining. Then he looked down at his hands, frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “My
magic isn’t working.”

  That was bad. “Should we try kicking the door again?”

  Grym kicked the door three more times before it finally crashed inward. For something that was basically made up from the ether, that Mayberry house sure was sturdy.

  The door flew open and crashed against the wall with a horrendous crunching sound. Grym dove through the door with me hot on his heels.

  A man flew toward us, wild gray hair flying and a heavy frying pan clutched in his gnarled hands. His eyes were wild, his mouth open in another feral scream, and he was wearing only boxer shorts and a stained wife-beater tee shirt.

  “Mongrels!” he shrieked and I yelped, diving sideways as the pan sliced through the air where my head had been.

  Grym jumped in the opposite direction, hitting the couch with his knees and falling into it.

  The flowered divan slammed into the wall as the elderly man spun, more agile than a gentleman of his age should have been, and headed toward Grym with the pan.

  The detective held up his blocky hands. “Sir! Mr. Aberdeen, we’re here to help.”

  Long, stringy arms that were covered in an abundance of silvery hair swung the pan downward, barely missing Grym and smacking the sofa seat.

  Grym slapped his hand down on top of the potentially deadly weapon so the elderly man couldn’t heft it back up.

  “Let it go, sonny!” Mr. Aberdeen yelled. “I have me some Aboriginals to subdue!”

  I caught Grym’s eye and lifted my brows. His lips quivered in a smile. “No aboriginals here, sir. We heard a scream and wondered if you were all right.”

  A high-pitched squeal sounded from the next room. I turned my head in time to see a chandelier swing past the arched doorway, a small, white projectile flying from it with arms outstretched and enormous eyes bulging with excitement.

  The small projectile hit the chair across the room and it went down under his weight. He landed face down, arms and legs akimbo, with an audible “umph!”.

  My heart rate spiked and I shoved to my feet. “Grym!”

  But he wasn’t paying attention. He’d nearly managed to get the old man’s fingers unclenched from around the pan and was still trying to reason with him. “Sir, I’m going to need you to not hit me with this pan.”