Frosted Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  Mrs. Foxladle, I thought, with a feeling of sadness. She seemed so fragile, so human, what if the shock of the spell hurt her? Or worse? Anger slid through me, I suddenly wanted to get my hands on whoever had released the spell. I wasn’t sure what I’d do to them, but boxing their ears wasn’t going to be enough to make me feel better.

  Maybe I’d lock them in a room with Sebille for a few hours.

  Sebille smiled, the effect more soothing in Rhonda’s face than it would have been in Sebille’s. The Sprite was all sharp angles and acidic purpose. Nothing about her ever soothed. “Mrs. Foxladle?”

  The dragon nodded.

  “If you’ll just trust us, we’ll fix this. I promise.”

  The dragon frowned. “Who are you, dear?”

  “I’m…” Sebille closed her mouth, apparently deciding not to say what she’d been about to say. “I’m just a friend.”

  The Gargoyle’s head moved with the creak of rock against rock. A determined gaze found mine. “I’m trying to keep her safe,” he ground out. “What happened?”

  I recognized the inflections in the familiar voice. “Theo?”

  The Gargoyle nodded. “Somebody spelled us.”

  I nodded. “It’s probably in the food.”

  He frowned. “All I ate were cookies.”

  I thought of the insatiable appetite everyone seemed to have for those frosted sugar cookies. And the residual drunkenness. The spell had to be in the cookies. “We’ll fix it. We just need to find someone who can rework the spell.”

  “Theo?” a faint voice asked. Faux Mrs. Foxladle put a hand on the Gargoyle’s blocky arm. “Is that you in there?”

  Theo Grym nodded, eyeing the elderly woman with confusion. “Birte?”

  “Yes. Why are you a Gargoyle? And why am I…?” She looked down at herself and frowned. “Old?”

  “It’s an identity mixing hex,” Sebille Rhonda offered. “We’re working on reversing it now. We just need everybody to stay calm.”

  The floor behind us creaked. Sebille whipped around and we looked up, up, up into the giant’s slowly opening eyes. Rage flared through them when he saw us, and then eased into something that looked more like pain. “What…” he stopped, licked his lips. “What’s going on?”

  “Devard,” Sebille Rhonda told me. “Someone’s spelled us. I know you’re discombobulated, Devard, but you need to rein in your baser instincts and stay calm. We’re all trapped here, and I can’t have you hurting people.”

  Devard Theo grunted, but he seemed to have understood her warning.

  “What is he?” I whispered to Sebille.

  “Naga,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.

  I felt my froggy eyes go wide. Yikes! An ancient snake monster. I’d have to be sure and be nicer to him in the future.

  A ratty feather sifted down as the parrot flew overhead to land on Sebille’s shoulder. “The giant be a fair bet to beat the Gods of Winter, Lass,” Lea SB said.

  I sighed. “Translation, please?”

  “I think she’s suggesting we send Devard Theo to the greenhouse to fetch my mother. We need a Fae to reverse this spell.”

  “Ah,” I said with a froggy smile. “I like that idea.” Ribbit!

  “He’s too big to get through the door,” Grym Peabody said, eyeing the giant. When he’d been transformed into Theo, Devard had somehow ended up in a size that was halfway between his normal, human-facing seven feet tall, and his full-on giant size of about thirty feet tall. “How are we going to get him out?”

  We all stared at the front door. Short of blasting a giantnormous hole in the front of the building, we weren’t getting Devard through the front.

  “We can let him out the back door,” I suggested to Sebille. There was a garage-sized door in the back for larger artifacts.

  My assistant nodded. “But we’ll never get him through the dividing door.”

  She was right. I really didn’t want to bash a hole through that door and open the library up to everyone.

  “If you had your keeper powers, you could stretch it,” Sebille suggested.

  If only.

  Theo Grym gently settled the now calm dragon to the floor. “I’ll go get the queen,” he said. “This body will make it through the snow, and I don’t think it will freeze easily.”

  Standing next to him in Mr. Peabody’s form, Grym nodded. “He’s right. He won’t freeze and he’s heavy enough to plow through any amount of snow out there.”

  “Okay, it’s settled then,” Sebille said.

  Theo Grym nodded and headed for the front door. He walked past the wet spot on the carpet where Eattle had been.

  The Elf was gone.

  “Hey, did anybody see where Eattle went?” I croaked.

  Lea twisted SB’s head, her beady black eyes scouring the room. “The scalawag’s debunked.”

  Frowning, Sebille shook her head. “He was there a minute ago.”

  The sound of a toilet flushing brought all our gazes to the bathroom door. It opened a beat later and Earline walked out. She jerked to a stop, seeing everybody staring at her. Finally, she said. “Is this the line for the bathroom? I didn’t think I was in there that long.”

  She had no idea.

  Earline walked away and headed for the food table.

  Sebille Rhonda’s face folded into a horrified grimace.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her, watching Earline stick a pudgy hand into the bowl of potato chips.

  “She didn’t even wash her hands.”

  I would have grimaced if I could have. Instead, I had to settle for a croak of disgust. No chips for me.

  Grym tugged Sebille aside. “Okay, we hopefully have help on the way for the identity mixing spell. I think we’ve got everybody settled down. What do we need to get control of next?”

  “Ribbit!”

  Grym looked down on me with Mr. Peabody’s mild gaze. “What did she say?”

  I really wished the Gargoyle could understand amphibian.

  Sebille sighed. “She said we need to get into the artifact library. Somebody stole her body and was looking for something in there. Whoever it is, they spelled us to keep us from discovering which of us was missing and they could be taking off right now with a stolen artifact. Given the weather and the general chaos we’re currently experiencing, we’re going to be seriously late to the game and struggling to catch up by the time we figure out who it is.”

  Grym arched Peabody’s shaggy gray-brown brows. “She said all that with just one Ribbit, huh?”

  Sebille put Rhonda’s eye muscles through another circuit.

  Yep, the Banshee was definitely going to have something to scream about when she got her saggy, worn-out eyes back.

  9

  Yet More Beasties

  A thunderous roar shook the walls.

  Sebille and Grym whipped around and Sebille’s hands tightened on my squishy body.

  She loosened her grip when I made a constricted croaking sound. “What was that?”

  Behind us, the giant straightened to his full height. His fist clenched. “Death,” he said, his lip curling.

  We were all silent for a moment. Finally, I asked, “Did he say death?”

  Grym frowned at me. “I wish that frog could talk.”

  “Yes,” Sebille ground out through clenched teeth. “He said death.” She turned to Devard Theo. “Explain.”

  “As you can imagine, I have to keep my magical form tightly bound. It’s unmanageable and unstable. I’m afraid this spell might have released the Naga. While my spirit is in this giant’s form, my body became the Naga. It’s not going to be happy with the magical shenanigans.”

  Raging reptiles!

  We all took a moment to let that sink in. My little froggy heart was pounding against my chest like a “too stupid to live” teenage girl pounds on the door of the haunted house at midnight at Halloween.

  Another roar shook the building. The bookshelves creaked as something really big pressed against them. I
watched in horror as a massive form uncoiled at the back of the store. The monster had a body that was bigger around than Grym in his Gargoyle form and a head…

  I swallowed hard.

  “Slithering snake fangs,” I murmured. “We’re toast.”

  The serpent oozed forward, its ten-foot-long head resting on top of the third bookshelf from the back and its body slithering up behind it.

  The shelves groaned and wobbled as the enormous monster crept across their tops, its slanted eyes fixed hungrily on us and the slits of its nostrils flaring with interest.

  Mrs. Foxladle lost her hard-won composure, her wings pounding in panic as she backpedaled toward the food table near the counter. She crashed into it and bellowed out a panicked cry tinged with smoke. I knew fire was just behind the smoke.

  I looked at Sebille. “Do something?”

  “I can immobilize everybody again, but you and Grym will be caught this time.”

  The snake reached the front shelf and the head slid sideways, eyeing Lea, who was hopping around near the front door. The thick body tensed, preparing to strike. The long, forked tongue slipped out to test the air, scenting its prey.

  “No!” I screamed. RibbitRibbitRibbitRibbit!!

  Grym Peabody lunged into the center of the room, waving his arms. “Here snakey, snakey! Come and get me.”

  The snake complied, the head whipping forward so quickly I was afraid Grym wouldn’t have time to move out of the way.

  He leaped sideways, hitting the ground behind the sales counter as the enormous fangs slammed into the top of the counter, piercing the granite surface like it was made of paper, and retracting with an angry hiss.

  A thick yellow substance seeped down the front of the counter, sizzling like acid.

  The head swung back toward Lea.

  “Scream!” I yelled at Sebille.

  She tugged up her sweater, wrapping it around me in a smothering cocoon, and yelled Grym’s name in warning.

  The bladed sound of the Banshee’s scream was dulled by the sweater and, judging by the pressure against my frame, Sebille’s hands.

  Even beneath my protective cocoon, I could feel the undeniable power of the banshee’s scream pulsing against my skull. As before, unrelenting pressure filled my head until it felt like it would explode.

  Since I’d experienced it before, I knew about when the sound would change. I counted the frantic beats of my heart as I waited for it to happen. After a long moment, the sound dulled to a throb…the final push…pulsing darkly until my brain felt soft.

  The throbbing eased into a low, rhythmic hum at last. I went limp in Sebille’s hands, fighting to slow my frantically pounding heart.

  After a moment, I realized it wasn’t my heart that was pounding.

  There was a long moment of stillness before Sebille slowly unwound me. I waited in fear, terrified of what I’d see when the store was revealed.

  As the fabric was pulled away, I found myself staring into fangs as long as Sebille’s arm, dripping acid onto the rug at her feet.

  The Naga was mere inches away, its snaky face filled with the promise of death.

  That had been close.

  I gulped as the carpet sizzled and burned below me.

  Slowly lifting my gaze to Sebille, I saw the terror mirrored in the unfamiliar brown depths of Rhonda’s eyes. The white of the Naga’s fangs were mirrored in her eyes, giving them the appearance of a reptilian gaze.

  “Banshee bloomers,” Sebille breathed out. “He almost got me.”

  The front door blew open and Theo Grym stumbled inside, a blast of frigid air blowing snow inside with him and turning the carpet white in an inverted vee in front of the door.

  He held a duffle bag in one hand and wiped a thick layer of snow from his face with the other. “It’s like Hades out there, if Hades was cold instead of hot,” he said.

  “Did you get mother?” Sebille asked. She dodged around the snake and ran to him, taking the duffel he handed to her.

  Sebille set it on the ground and unzipped it. A column of dragonfly-sized Sprites fluttered out, the illumination of their iridescent, multi-colored wings flashing as they spread out around the space.

  Queen Sindra flew over and hovered before the snake, her tiny face filled with wonder. “A Naga? How is that possible?”

  “It was bound by my friend Devard.”

  Sindra flew over the snake’s head and along its length, studying it as if she were a tiny, flying scientist who’d just made a major discovery. When she returned to us, she shook her head. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do with this.”

  “Can we rebind it?” Sebille asked.

  We all looked at the giant, who was now Devard, but he was glassy-eyed and unmoving, caught in the Banshee’s spell.

  “Maybe it will return to its host when the identity mixing spell is reversed,” I offered.

  Sindra eyed me. “Naida?”

  “Ribbit,” I affirmed.

  She grinned. “You look good in green.”

  “I’ll be honest,” I told her, “It’s not my favorite color.”

  She chuckled.

  Sebille explained our situation to her mother.

  Sindra listened, her guards flickering rapidly around the store, checking out my immobile guests. When Sebille finished, the queen nodded her understanding. “First things first. Let’s reverse this spell. Then we’ll need to make sure your human guests are comfortable…” She lifted tiny blonde brows at me.

  I got her meaning. We’d have to wipe their memory of the whole mess.

  “Ribbit,” I said in agreement.

  “Then you’ll be able to go see what’s happening in the library.”

  With the plan set, I felt better. However, there would be new problems if whoever had visited the Universe’s equivalent of Hades on us at my Holiday party managed to find the artifact they were looking for and absconded with it.

  I mentally checked myself. One thing at a time. It was all my little froggy heart could handle.

  Sindra looked at Sebille, I wondered how she’d recognized her so easily. I made a mental note to ask. Later. “Do you have any ideas how the spell was spread?”

  “The frosted cookies,” I told Sebille.

  She nodded. “That’s what I was thinking too. They were doused with a spell to make them irresistible. There’s only one reason for someone to do that.”

  “If they wanted to make sure everybody had one,” I croaked in agreement.

  “Who brought those cookies?” Sindra asked.

  Sebille looked down at me. I thought about shrugging, but my little squishy shoulders wouldn’t comply. “Mrs. Foxladle brought a tin of cookies.”

  Sebille shook her head. “Not her.”

  I agreed. “Devard?”

  Sebille’s negative response was a beat slow. “I don’t know why Devard would want to spell us.”

  “Maybe he’s still mad at you for turning that guy into a slug.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think so. Besides, he spelled himself.”

  That did seem to be a point in his favor. “Theo and Birte brought cookies too,” I said reluctantly. I didn’t want to blame the giant. He was my friend. But in the interests of getting to the bottom of the current mess, I had to face the facts. “I suppose it’s possible he wanted something from the library.”

  “But you said you saw yourself climbing the stacks, searching. Theo’s been here, in the form of the Gargoyle, all along.”

  Yes. He had.

  “I’m at a loss,” I told my assistant.

  “Okay, let’s see if we can read the spell on those cookies,” Sindra said.

  “Can you do that?” I asked as Sebille started toward the destroyed food table. Earline was bending toward the ground, one stubby hand reaching for the meatballs that were spilled across the carpet.

  Ew!

  “If it’s a Fae spell, we can,” Sebille told me.

  “Which cookies were they?” Sindra asked. She buzzed back and
forth above the broken cookies spilled on the floor.

  They all looked alike when they were broken.

  Sebille bent over them too, frowning. “I don’t know.”

  “They smelled like sugar and vanilla,” I told Sebille.

  “That was the lure,” she said, her eyes widening. “But it should still be there.” She set me down on the ground and went to her knees, sniffing the mounds of broken cookies.

  After a minute, she pulled a nearly intact bell-shaped frosted cookie from one pile and sniffed it, her eyes going glazed. She was opening her mouth to eat it when Sindra flew over and whacked her on the nose with a wing.

  Sebille blinked, her face folding into a glower. “Ow, that hurt!”

  “You’ll thank me tomorrow,” Sindra said. She held her hands over the cookie and a soft, green glow emanated from her palms. The energy bathed the cookie, surrounded it, and covered it in tiny, crisscrossing lines like you’d see on a graph.

  The lines blurred and thickened and then thinned back out and settled into place, a series of strange symbols floating above the different segments of the cookie.

  “Here’s the lure,” Sindra said. She wiggled her fingers over the cookie and lifted her hand, drawing the magic from the surface of the cookie like a shimmering spider web and flinging it away.

  The magic that was left coalesced into the irregular shape of the frosting, covering it with raised symbols that glowed a vibrant purple above the chunk of cookie.

  Sindra’s gaze lifted to Sebille’s. “Purple,” she said.

  Sebille frowned.

  “What does that mean?” I asked Sebille.

  She shook her head.

  Sindra wiggled her fingers over the symbols, and some of them lifted away. She gathered them in her palm and, examining the remaining symbols carefully, settled each one in a different spot on the surface, nudging a few aside to insert new ones, and placing several of them at the front and back of the existing spell.

  Finally, she buzzed higher into the air, looking down at the results. Then she covered the entire thing with a sparkling green layer of her own, distinctive magic. “That should do it.” She pointed to Grym Peabody. “Give him a small piece of the cookie.”