Love Croakies by Sam Cheever (the kiss of deception read online .txt) 📕

Love Croakies

Sam Cheever

Electric Prose Publications

Copyright © 2021 by Sam Cheever

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

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1. Hearts and Heresy

2. Pink Puckery Lips

3. All Is Not What It Seems

4. Naida Elf on a Fleshy Shelf

5. Heartily Sick of Pink

6. Love. The Deadly Plague

7. Wretched Creatures, Slug Monsters

8. Your Eyes are Pools of Liquid…Urp!

9. Get Your Hand off my Boob, Lady!

10. Good Goddess on a Rowing Machine!

11. Just Another Ugly Dirigible

12. Spots to be A-Voided

13. To Grandmother’s House We Go

14. Shortcut to the Sorceress’s Lair

15. Ding Dong, the Witch is Decidedly Less Dead Than We’d Hoped

16. Whooo?

17. Into the Great Unknown Together

18. Goddess in a Wet Suit. It’s Going to be Chaos!

19. Thar She Be

20. Is There a Book for That?

21. Kegel, Kegel, Kegel

22. It’s Bad, Naida

23. They Look Like Aliens

24. Not Happening, Gargoyle

25. Let’s Get This Show on the Road

26. Get Your Fool Head Out of Your Backside

27. You’re Invited to Attend a Special Event

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Unbaked Croakies

Also by Sam Cheever

About the Author

Praise for Sam Cheever

“You have that essential Je ne sais quoi that it takes to tell a story so mesmerizing you cannot stop reading once started. You are not telling stories to your readers…you are taking them with you on your adventures so that the experience can be shared by all as it happens and not simply replayed like a memory on the page of a diary! You are indeed gifted and it is my pleasure to read your books!”

Valerie Irwin

The heart holds the potential for great love…and a deadly need to protect it.

Love potion? Really?

I don’t have enough trouble dealing with a cranky assistant, a mouthy frog, an opinionated cat, and a hobgoblin who thinks getting smacked upside the head is the best kind of fun?

Now I’m dealing with a love potion that turns a delightful human emotion into a death sentence.

Banshee bunions!

As if I didn’t already have enough trouble with my love life.

Now I have to save someone else from dying of love.

This magical librarian gig is going to be the death of me.

Or…you know…of someone else.

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1

Hearts and Heresy

Never let it be said that I have a thing against heart-shaped stuff. Goddess knew I was currently surrounded by it.

Heart-shaped cutouts hung from nearly every surface above navel height throughout Croakies bookstore. Heart-shaped doilies dotted every flat surface.

Heart-shaped candies enclosed in heart-shaped tins and wrapped in heart-colored foil filled a heart-shaped wicker basket on the sales counter.

Heart-shaped cookies, sans frosting since I’d sworn off frosted cookies after our ill-fated Christmas fiasco, were displayed on a heart-shaped platter with a pink paper heart taped to it proclaiming, “Snarf to your heart’s desire!”

And, right at that moment, a heart-shaped face, peering at me with heart-felt emotion brimming in eyes that reflected a heartbreaking level of devastation from my lack of hearty despair for her heartfelt disappointment.

“But you advertised that ‘Hearts of Bomb’ would be available today,” The cupid’s bow lips said. The heartsick client shook her head, her stick-straight mop of Valentine-colored hair swinging back and forth to reflect her disgust. “You promised.”

I opened my mouth to tell Holly Heartsick that the shipment of books had been delayed, risking another accusation of bookseller heartlessness. Thankfully, the heart-rending announcement was waylaid by the arrival of my own personal Valerie Valentine.

Sebille’s naturally heart-colored hair was plaited into two waist-length braids on either side of her long, freckled face. She wore a matching red dress dotted with white hearts and pink and white striped socks that covered her knees beneath the calf-length dress. Her usual Wicked Witch of the West shoes were the perfect complement to the bad dress and ugly stockings.

By contrast, I wore a plain white shirt, worn blue jeans and white sneakers. My below-shoulder-length brown hair was straight and my dark blue eyes were wary. Valentine’s Day wasn’t my favorite holiday. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I don’t seem to like any holidays. That wasn’t true. Exactly. I just haven’t found the one I like yet.

The sprite surged energetically into the bookstore, her sticklike arms wrapped around a plain brown box marked all over with heart-shaped stickers. “They’re here!” Her iridescent green eyes flashing, she grinned at my excited customer, who was currently hopping around and clapping her hands with wholehearted, heartfelt glee.

My shoulders slumped with relief. I grabbed a frosting-free sugar cookie, pink sparkles glittering from its pale surface, and jammed it into my mouth, wishing I had tea to go with it. Sebille settled the box on the table and opened it, pulling out a glossy paperback whose cover was a study in…you guessed it…pinks and red hearts.

Sebille plucked a copy of ‘Hearts of Bomb’ from the box and offered it to my merrily cackling client.

“Yay! I can’t believe it’s here,” Holly Heartface enthused as she did a little happy dance.

I rolled my eyes for two very good reasons.

Number one, though I loved books, and made half…okay a third…all right, a tenth…of my living with the sale of them, I couldn’t imagine becoming so enamored of one that my world literally ended if I couldn’t get my hands on it.

And two, unlike my heart-eyed customers, I knew the author of the book personally and was finding it exceedingly difficult picturing my Uncle Archibald Pudsnecker, a.k.a. Ben E. Nigma, as the type to write a cozy murder mystery with a cutesy name meant to bring to mind a stalky vegetable. Especially since the book that was currently