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

She frowned but nodded. “Unfortunately, Hobs is a master at hiding stuff.”

He was. He’d once hidden a stash of frosted chocolate brownies in a wrinkle to another dimension. The thought made my stomach twist in alarm. “He could have even opened up one of those doors to another plane and hidden it there.”

We’d never find that serum.

“I just don’t think he’d take it, Naida.”

Sebille’s voice was firmer than before. She meant what she said.

I expelled air. “Okay. Let’s go with that for now. If he didn’t take the serum, how did he get exposed?”

“Someone deliberately gave it to him.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“Because he snuck up on them and caught them stealing it,” Sebille said, shrugging.

Okay, that made sense. I nodded. “It’s definitely plausible.”

Hobs’ little body convulsed suddenly, the shudders violent enough to have pitched him off my couch if I hadn’t been holding onto him.

I wrapped myself around him and held on, tears rolling down my cheeks. “What can I do!” I yelled at Sebille, my heart breaking.

She held up a finger and ran out of the room. A second later, I saw a burst of green energy on the landing and heard the buzz of her wings as she flew away.

“Wicked!” I screamed, wondering where my wayward feline had gotten to.

Sebille ran back into the room, holding a gooey square of chocolate pastry in her hand.

A frosted chocolate brownie! Hobs was crazy for them. It was as close to an addiction for the little hobgoblin as anything we had.

“Hold this under his nose.”

I grabbed the delectable treat, the intoxicating scent of rich chocolate wafting to my nose as I took it, and shoved the brownie in front of Hobs’ little button nose.

Nothing happened for several minutes. I’d just about given up on it working when his long-fingered hand snaked up and grabbed the brownie from me. He pressed it against his lips, not biting but just inhaling the treat. Ever so slowly, Hobs’ muscles slowly relaxed until he sagged against me, giving a long sigh as he fell into a restless sleep. His breathing was still much too fast, and his chest heaved as if he struggled to get enough air into his lungs.

I sagged too, completely wrung out. “That was horrible.”

Sebille slid her arms under Hobs and moved him to my bed, covering him with the blanket. She stood looking down on him for a beat, her brow furrowed with concern. I’d never seen her so pale. “We need to get Doctor Whom.”

I nodded.

“Meow!”

I turned to find Mr. Wicked trotting into the apartment, tail high and whipping. He was naked again, having somehow ditched his little bow tie and vest.

“Where have you been?” I scolded my cat, earning a hostile glare from his flashing orange eyes. The message couldn’t have been clearer if he’d spoken the words. “I’m a busy cat. Cut me some slack.”

Though I had no idea exactly what kept my magical cat busy all day and night, having first-hand knowledge of his whereabouts pretty much only when he was asleep on my pillow or sitting on the windowsill in the sun with Mr. Slimy at his side, I sensed that he used his magical connection to me to keep Croakies running smoothly and limit magical explosions of the kind we’d been suffering since the toxic magic vault had been breached.

Mostly he was successful. Occasionally, things got past him.

I’d long ago admitted to myself that, of the two of us, Wicked was easily the most magically astute.

Mr. Wicked jumped up onto the bed and draped himself alongside Hobs, placing a tiny gray paw in the center of the hobgoblin’s heaving chest. A faint charcoal glow appeared beneath Wicked’s paw, and I gasped as I felt the tug of his magic use in my belly.

Hobs’ chest stopped heaving and his breathing slowed. Finally, he sighed and melted into a much more restful sleep.

Wicked folded himself into a tidy coil next to his friend and proceeded to join him in a nap.

“Okay,” Sebille said. “Let’s get the Doc here before Wicked’s magic wears off.”

I eyed Hobs. “You think he’s going to get worse again?”

She stood and nodded, her manner totally free of her usual judgmental disdain. “Yes. His problem isn’t gone. He’s just oblivious to it while he sleeps. But the cat’s spell won’t last forever. It’s just given us some time to get help.” Sebille fixed my cat with a rare look of respect.

As if he could see her through his lids, Wicked’s eyes flashed open, the orange flaring with hostility. He hissed at the sprite, his claws flexing free before he sheathed them again.

Sebille hissed back at him. Then she turned on her heel and strode determinedly from the room. “Come on, Naida. We don’t have much time.”

I glanced at my cat, arching a brow in question. He softened his gaze, a soft rumble vibrating in his throat.

I shook my head. “You two. I’ll never understand your relationship.”

Wicked bathed a perfectly clean paw, ignoring me completely.

16

Whooo?

I felt like an idiot.

“Try again, Naida. We need him.”

I glared at Sebille, certain she was playing games but unable to deny her for fear that Hobs really would die without help. I expelled a breath and tried again. “Paging Doctor Whooooo!”

“More uplift on the Whooooo,” she said, her lips twitching. “Like an owl.”

I stamped my foot, then jumped and yelped as a bright light flashed in the middle of the library, and an enormous birdhouse appeared.

Light flared around the structure for a moment, blinking like silent, golden emergency lights on an ambulance. And then the lights cut off and the door in the center of the small structure opened on silent hinges.

A creature straight out of the pages of a Grimms fairy tale stood blinking owlishly at us.

He was approximately five feet tall. Several inches shorter than my own five-feet-nine-inch height. His form was pear-shaped, with a sloping aspect, as if he was made of wax and had spent too much time