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

That stopped me in my verbal tracks. “Oh. Okay.” That made sense.

Grym looked disappointed, as if he’d expected me to deny it.

Uh, no.

“Are you ever going to forgive me?” Grym asked, his manner sliding along the scale from mortification to pique, nudging perturbed.

I thought about that for a minute. The minute stretched uncomfortably between us, turning to two and then three minutes.

Grym’s broad shoulders rounded. “Got it. I’ll just get out of here then.”

Watching him head to the door, I chewed the inside of my cheek. I’d been waiting for Grym to apologize to me, but he clearly expected me to do the apologizing. Our fight actually had been a tiny bit my fault.

Okay, maybe ten percent my fault.

Twenty.

I’ll go forty-five, but that was as far as my pride would let me go.

Dangit!

Well, that was awkward. Le sigh… “Grym, wait.”

He turned back, one large, square hand clasping the doorknob. His eyes were cold, his expression stony. “Yep?”

I opened my mouth to try to break the ice between us.

A horrific jangling sound basted through Croakies. A red light of unknown origin flashed through the room, bathing everything in a Valentine-ish hue.

Trouble!

“Is that…” Grym started to ask.

“Yes.” My eyes went wide, and my gaze swung to Grym. “Lock the door!” Without waiting to make sure he did as I asked, I took off running toward the artifact library.

Sebille joined me in the center aisle as I ran. I spared her a quick glance, shouting to be heard over the jangling warning bell. “What’s going on?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t seen anything.”

Grym’s heavy footsteps pounded up behind us. “Toxic Magic Vault?”

I shot him a look, frowning. “Hang back a little, in case whoever it is gets past us.”

He nodded and slowed, his big body nearly blocking the aisle.

I glanced at Sebille and she nodded, popping to sprite size and buzzing higher for a bird’s eye view.

Without warning, the jangling bell shut off, and the resulting silence was shocking. I skidded to a stop twenty feet away from the vault, my gaze widening at the sight.

The door was open, the light of the protective ward flashing through the space like a silent beacon. The pulsing light painted the mess inside the vault with an amber glow.

Behind me, Grym swore softly. “Can you tell what’s gone?”

I grimaced, moving slowly toward the breeched vault. The secondary ward, the one that protected the vault while Sebille or I had the door open, had fallen, its remnants glowing a soft green along the floor where it was anchored.

The floor inside the vault was covered in debris, the detritus of what were powerful and dangerous magical artifacts spread across the dusty concrete floor.

The magic mirror lay on its back in front of the shelf where it had been stored, the wooden frame intact but the glass shattered into a million pieces around it. The old Black and White television stood where we’d left it, but its screen was also shattered. The theme song from the Andrew of Mayberry shows a soft echo of its death.

The other items I’d placed there had been swept off the shelves and lay in a tangled and broken pile on the floor.

I didn’t go inside. The magical artifacts were no doubt leaking their poisons into the air of the vault. I’d have to get a toxic magic cleanup crew into the vault to verify its safety before we entered.

Pale green energy flashed as Sebille buzzed down to hover beside me. Her brightly hued dragonfly wings painted the air in a rainbow mix of purple and green as she hovered, the green glow of her eyes fierce as a result of what she saw in the vault. “Goddess in garters, what a mess.”

I expelled air in agreement.

Grym came up beside me. “Can you tell if anything’s gone?”

I shook my head. “Not until we dig around in the mess and take inventory.”

“I’ll help,” he said, his tone deliberately upbeat, probably to offset the slow sinking of my body toward the ground.

I forced my legs and shoulders straight. “Do you know a toxic magic cleanup company we can call?”

To my surprise, he nodded. “I have people.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll get them here right away.”

Gratitude made me smile, despite our recent tiff. “Thanks, Grym.”

He nodded, but he was already speaking into the phone, moving away from me.

Sebille was strangely silent. I glanced her way and saw that she looked more perplexed than concerned by the mess. “Can you read a magic signature?”

It took her a few beats to answer, and when she did, her tone was distracted. “I’m not sure.”

“Not sure? Could the signature have been affected by the toxic magic?”

She blinked, her face clearing. “That actually would explain…”

When she didn’t complete her thought, I asked, “Explain what?”

“They’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Grym told us, striding back down the aisle. “I told them to come around to the back. Do you want me to go meet them?”

“Yes. If you don’t mind. Sebille and I need to stay here to keep an eye on things until they get here.”

He nodded and spun on his heel, moving briskly away from us.

Sebille and I spent a too-long beat staring after him before we both blinked ourselves out of our perusal. We shared an embarrassed laugh.

Flushing softly, Sebille waggled her brows. “He looks as good going as he does coming.”

I couldn’t argue the point. So I didn’t. “Finish your sentence. It would explain what?”

“It’s too weird. It has to be wrong.”

“But worth mentioning,” I told her in a firm tone. Something very strange had happened in my artifact library, and I needed to know what.

“Aside from the usual signatures of the people who live here. There was something else.” She frowned. “The best way I can describe it is Love.”

I blinked in surprise. “Huh?” The sprite had definitely bought her own Valentine’s Day promotions.

She popped into full size and put her hands out, palms up. “See? I told you it doesn’t make sense.”

Eyeing the destruction in