Gram Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  We ended at the front of the library, standing near Shakespeare’s desk. My gaze fell on the standing mirror we used to communicate with other magic users and, occasionally, for scrying or traveling.

  I had a sudden worry that Wicked and Hex had gone through the mirror.

  Lea must have had the same thought, she reached out and clasped my hand in a hard, icy grip. “Naida?”

  “They wouldn’t have,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure I was right.

  “But if they did. How would we get them back?”

  I had no idea. “If they went in there, they’ll come back. They’re probably better at magic than either of us.” My voice was firm, but doubt made my throat dry. I swallowed hard against the panic.

  Worst case scenario, Madeline might be able to help us get the cats back. But how did we know if they were in danger? Waiting to find out if they returned on their own suddenly seemed too risky.

  My gaze slid to the desk and I had an idea. “Okay, let’s think this through, I told her. I’m guessing, knowing those two, that they were in here looking for the hobgoblin, right?”

  Lea nodded, frowning. “That seems the most logical reason. Hex has never snuck away before. She must have had a good reason.”

  I had my own thoughts on that, but I kept them to myself. Mr. Wicked sometimes thought finding the perfect ray of sunlight was a good reason to shove valuable artifacts to the floor of the library. Their sense of the appropriate didn’t exactly match ours.

  “So all we need to do is find that hobgoblin and we should find the cats.”

  She made a face that looked like she had a gas bubble. “That’s not going to be easy in this place. There’s at least an acre of space, filled to the ceiling with shelves and stuff. That thing could be hiding anywhere.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  “Which is why we’re going to get some help.”

  I sat down in the chair in front of Shakespeare’s desk, placing my palms on the antique leather blotter in the center. The hand-tooled leather looked like a book bearing the Shakespeare family sigil, the family motto in blurred gold letters along the spine. Non Sanz Droict. Not without Right.

  Fortunately, as the Keeper of the Artifacts, I had the right to use the powerful artifact. “Show me a guide to finding hobgoblins,” I asked the desk.

  The leather warmed and moved beneath my touch as the artifact searched for the perfect reference volume. After a few endless moments, a bright light flashed above the desk and a book covered in red cloth floated on the air before me.

  I reached for it and read the title engraved across the front. “Hobgoblins and other Pesky Vermin.”

  Lea tugged a chair over next to me and sat down, only to shoot back to her feet with a shriek a moment later.

  I didn’t need to look at the chair she shoved angrily away to know she’d accidentally taken a seat in Casanova’s chair.

  “Somebody needs to castrate that stupid thing,” she groused, causing the chair to leap into the air and hit the ground hard, its legs scooting rapidly along the floor as the chair disappeared into the stacks of artifacts.

  I chuckled. “You said the magic words. Hopefully, it won’t show up again for a while.”

  Lea harrumphed, still too irritated to laugh. Rather than trying to sit again, she stood over me and watched as I opened the ancient volume. The sour stench of old paper and book mold wafted upward as I turned to the index in the front.

  We both shrieked in surprise as a face oozed through the paper and rose into the air, a scary smile stretched across its surface.

  I slammed the book closed and looked at the author’s name written across the front cover.

  Of course.

  Doctor Mortimus Osvald.

  The doctor and I had danced together before, when I’d been looking for a soul-stealing artifact. With a grimace, I stood up and looked at Lea. “If we’re going to deal with Osvald, I think I’m going to need some tea.”

  I sat down at the table with a steaming cup of tea. Lea sat across from me, her gaze sliding nervously toward the book. “What’s wrong with this Oswald guy?” she asked.

  “Osvald,” I corrected. I grimaced as the tea hit my tongue, way too herbal-ly tasting and scorching hot. I really wished I could brew tea like Sebille. She truly was tea-talented. “He’s just odd and annoying.”

  I set my tea down and shoved it away, looking at Lea. “Ready?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure…”

  I opened the book. Nothing happened for a moment. Finally, a nose and a pair of eyes oozed upward from the yellowed paper. The black eyes blinked and then the lips eased into view. “Is it safe?”

  Guilt slid through me. I’d been kind of abrupt closing the book before. “Yeah. Sorry about that, Doctor Osvald. I had a…an emergency.”

  He eased upward, his head rising above the page and circling to take in the surrounding area. The dark brown hair was still unkempt, still clinging to his heavily veined neck, and his black eyes still seemed to follow me no matter how I moved.

  Doctor Osvald looked like an evil character from a Grimm’s Fairytale. I didn’t believe the man was malevolent. However, the jury was still out on my second thought…that he was slightly insane.

  As before, he addressed me with a smile, his full lips looking cracked and dry in his ruddy face. “Welcome to my comprehensive volume of Hobgoblins and Other Pesky Vermin. Would you like to read through the text on your own, or shall I guide you through the text and footnotes?”

  I glanced at Lea and she shrugged, sipping her tea. She didn’t grimace so either my horrible attempt at tea had numbed her pallet completely, or she was used to me making horrible tea.

  I decided it would be faster for him to give us the high points. “Your guidance, please.”

  Osvald inclined his shaggy head. “Excellent. Where shall we start?”

  “I’ve been infested by a hobgoblin.”

  Osvald’s head seemed to shudder, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  My pulse spiked. Were the little pranksters really that bad? I swallowed hard. “Can you help me find it?”

  His eyes opened and he gave me that tight, terrifying smile again. “Of course. That’s why I’m here.” He frowned. “Well, actually I’m here because a warlock bound me to my library of books and I can’t escape until a thousand people ask for my help.”

  I felt my face fall. “Oh.” That was so sad.

  Then he grinned. “Gotcha.”

  “Hey,” I said. “That was mean. I was feeling sorry for you.”

  He laughed. “I just thought you should know what you were in for. Hobgoblins are skilled at playing the victim. They’re wretched little actors who take great pleasure in creating chaos wherever they go.”

  “Fiddling frog farts,” I murmured.

  He nodded in agreement. “Hobgoblins are the cockroaches of the magical world. They tend to hide inside walls and underneath floors. They’re happiest within the bones of a structure and have been known to set up nests and grow large families if left alone in a place for long enough.”

  Lea gave me an “Oh, shirt!” look, and I let my eyes go wide.

  “We need to find it before it gets to that,” I told Osvald.

  “There’s only one sure-fire way to rid yourself of the little pests.”

  I sat closer. “I’m listening.”

  He nodded. “Burn the whole place to the ground.”

  I sat there, blinking, sure he was tweaking me again. Unfortunately, Osvald stared back at me, his scary black eyes filled with sincerity.

  “I can’t burn Croakies down,” I told him, my voice breaking a bit as hysteria tightened my chest.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Osvald said.

  “Unfortunate!” I said, my voice slightly screechy. “It’s not unfortunate. This is my home. I have untold magic housed within these walls. It’s my job to take care of all of it. I can’t just burn it down.”

  Osvald’s gaze grew slightly concerned by
my screeching. He looked around the room, possibly searching for an exit. But he was stuck there, hovering over the apparently useless pages of his stupid book.

  “You need to help me. This book…” I stabbed my finger against the Chapter heading on the first page. “This says, How to Locate and Expel a Hobgoblin. There has to be a way that doesn’t destroy everything.”

  Osvald’s mouth came open and his eyes skimmed to Lea, a pleading light in them.

  My friend leaned closer, her gaze filled with tension. “You. Will. Help.”

  Fire sparked in her pretty gaze, magic lighting her face with golden power. It was a very scary and effective sight. I’d seen her use it before to make an impression.

  It seemed to work especially well on the book squatter. If he’d had hands, I’m pretty sure he’d have raised them in defense. “All right, you two.” His bookish aristocratic accent succumbed to a Cockney twang as he bobbled on the air in front of us. “I do have some things you can try.”

  “Good.” I gave Lea a smile and she sat back, sipping her tea and making a face as she plucked an errant hunk of leaf from her tongue.

  I grimaced apologetically.

  “Start talking,” I told the so-called Hobgoblin expert.

  “As I said, the hobgoblin enjoys the structure of a building. You can break up all the walls…”

  “Nope. Next,” I interrupted.

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Sometimes an electrical current coursing through the walls will…”

  “Uh, uh,” I said.

  He sighed. “A carefully pinpointed explosion…”

  I flicked his nose, sending him shooting backward on a yelp of surprise.

  “I say!”

  Lea snorted out a laugh. “You didn’t even feel that.”

  “No, but it was alarming.”

  “Not nearly as alarming as your suggestions have been so far,” I groused.

  He huffed out a breath. “There is one thing, but it’s highly experimental.”

  “Does it destroy the building?”

  “Destroy? Er, no, but…”

  “Then it’s just the ticket. What is it?”

  “Cleanse the space with burning sage. The sage will hypnotize and draw the hobgoblin out of the walls. Then you must use a magic trap to capture him.”

  “A magic trap?” I asked, glancing at Lea.

  She shook her head.

  “Like you’d trap a demon or a fallen angel,” Osvald clarified unhelpfully.

  I lifted my brows. Did he really think Lea and I regularly trapped celestial beings?

  “Do you mean a pentacle?” Lea asked.

  Osvald’s lips pressed together. “I don’t know the specifics. I only know you must use a magic trap. May I leave now? I’ve had just about as much fun as I care to have today.”

  I lifted the cover and prepared to close the book, hesitating as his thick brows lifted in worry. “Sorry. I’m a little upset about all this.”

  He harrumphed. “I’d be grateful if you never opened this book again.”

  Feeling bad, I closed the cover gently and let Doctor Osvald retreat to the safety of wherever he went.

  I glanced at Lea. “Any ideas about a magic trap?”

  She shook her head, pushing to her feet. “I’ll go do some research.” She started out and then stopped, her gaze sliding to the mirror in my bathroom across the room. “You’ll let me know if they show up…?”

  Sadness filled me as I followed her line of sight.

  The kittens.

  I nodded, sighing as she left. I was suddenly so tired. I had so many problems to solve and I didn’t seem to be making headway into any of them.

  13

  The Hobgoblin of Little Minds…

  I tossed and turned all night, dreaming about Mr. Wicked and imagining all sorts of horrible things that might be happening to him and Hex on their little adventure. My biggest concern was that Wicked had used the Book of Pages to travel somewhere. He seemed to have a direct conduit to the keeper tool. It responded to him much more readily than it ever had for me. And I could definitely see him using it if there was something he wanted to do.

  I woke well before the sun rose, my gaze sliding to the empty, Wicked-shaped dip in the pillow. My hand slipped over the indentation, tears burning in my gaze.

  It had occurred to me at some point in the night that Wicked might have been taken. But the fact that Hex was missing too pointed strongly toward the probability that they were having an adventure.

  “Turtle toes!” I muttered, feeling helpless and inept.

  The niggling doubt that they were in danger, possibly because of something I’d done…or hadn’t done…wouldn’t leave me alone.

  I needed to start solving problems soon, or I was going to lose too many people I cared about. It was just a miracle the youth magic hadn’t struck again. That realization made me wonder if it hadn’t been specifically targeted toward the book club for some reason. And that thought brought forward a new fear, along with an old one.

  Were Mrs. Foxladle and Franny Clauss in danger? Or, almost worse, were they the perpetrators of the crime themselves?

  At four-thirty AM, I finally gave up and climbed out of bed. After singing the Make Me a Magic Muffin song, I burnt some tea and checked my phone. I’d texted Grym the night before to tell him what Lea had said about taking his gargoyle form to slow down the progression.

  He’d finally texted me back a couple of hours later. His message was brief. Thanks. Cosmetics plant in the morning?

  I texted back my agreement and made a note to call him later to find out if changing to his supernormal form had helped.

  I carried my tea downstairs, intending to give the library and bookstore another thorough look for the two cats.

  My eyes went wide as I stepped off the bottom stair and saw the shrouded, standing mirror wobbling on its rickety legs, a persistent dinging sound emanating from under the black fabric I’d shrouded it with.

  I ran over and yanked off the shroud without thinking, hoping it was Wicked and Hex trying to come through, and my eyes went wide.

  The face staring back at me was narrow and pale, with a sharp chin, made even sharper by the dark blonde goatee speckling the pink skin. The man wore a dark suit coat with rounded lapels and a bowler hat. His thin mustache twitched beneath his nose as he looked at me, making him look like a mouse sizing up a predator. “Miss Griffith?”

  I frowned at the plaque on the pale wood desk behind which he was seated, recognizing the sigil of the Société of Dire Magic. “Yes.”

  He inclined the sharp chin, pale blue eyes dipping for a beat as he plucked a sheet of paper off the top of the desk. “I’m Rogers from the SDM.” He stopped, seeming to wait for my response.

  My frown deepened. “Okay. What’s this about?”

  His gaze dipped to the paper in his hands. “I’m responding to a report that you’ve lost control of not one but two dangerous artifacts. The Société is considering recalling you as Keeper until you can be properly re-trained.”

  My mouth fell open and I blinked rapidly, my stomach twisting with alarm. “What report?”

  I realized as soon as the words escaped my lips that I’d glommed onto the least important part of the problem, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I wanted to know who’d ratted me out.

  “That’s not important, Miss Griffith…”

  “It is to me.”

  His lips pressed together and his brows lifted, not very effective at showing his displeasure since they were so light I could barely see them. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in, Miss Griffith?”

  “No, I don’t. That’s mostly because this is the first time I’m hearing about this. I’ve done a good job as keeper since having the job dumped on me without adequate training…”

  His lips curved upward as I realized my mistake and hurried to try to correct it. “But I’ve trained myself…”

  His smile widened. “That’s obvious, Miss G…�
�

  “Please call me Keeper, it is my title and I’ve earned it.”

  The smile slid away, the pale gaze darkening with pique. “This was a courtesy call to inform you that I will be closely monitoring the situation. Good day, Miss Griffith.”

  The image in the mirror disappeared, turning the glass dark for a moment before the charcoal smoke of the communication magic eased away.

  I stood staring at the empty glass for a long moment, feeling sick to my stomach and terrified at the same time.

  The Société couldn’t take my job away from me…could they? I just wasn’t sure. And since I was the only Keeper of the Artifacts in my dimension, there was nobody I could ask. “Troll boogers!” I exclaimed, beginning to pace. What was I going to do?

  Everything was upside down and backward and I seemed unable to figure out how to fix any of it. Maybe the Société was right. Maybe I should be recalled for training.

  I sighed, swiping angrily at the tears sliding down my cheeks. I could really use Mr. Wicked right about now. Cuddling with him always made me feel better.

  Hello?

  I jerked to a stop, thinking at first that someone was in the library with me. I looked around, trying to find the source of the voice.

  Holy hog feathers! the voice said. Are you deaf?

  I glanced toward the tallest shelf and the parrot perched atop Blackbeard’s sword, frowning. “Not right now, SB. I’m busy.”

  SB? Do I look like a parrot to you? Holy horned housefly, you have got to be the thickest creature I’ve ever met.

  “Yes, you do look…” I stopped, realizing the parrot’s head was down, his chest moving rhythmically as if he were sleeping. “SB?”

  The parrot’s head stayed down.

  I think that little guy dosed him with something, the voice said. After he put me up here.

  Little guy? I realized after hearing more of it, that the voice definitely didn’t sound like SB’s. But then, who was it?

  Maude Quilleran’s declaration perked in my mind. No, it couldn’t be. “Mr. Slimy?”

  Of course it’s me. Who else would it be? Can you get me down from here, please? I have vertigo and I’ve been stuck here all night. Which reminds me, has anybody ever told you that you sleep like the dead?