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

five more times before they devolved into boneless laughter and lost the ability to ask for more.

Sebille and I shared a horrified glance. Steeped in ogre history my wide white boohind.

We’d been had.

An hour later, we parked on the street and walked the two blocks toward Croakies. I stared at the object clinging to the very tips of my fingers and grimaced. “It’s your turn to hold it.”

I’d driven all the way back from ogreville with one hand, the other gripping the object we’d retrieved from the ogres between two fingernails.

Sebille’s response was a snort of laughter. “I’m not touching that thing. I know where it's been.”

Unfortunately, I knew where it had been too, and I fully intended to drop it in bleach as soon as we got home. I shoved the object I was holding toward Sebille, but she popped into her sprite form and darted several yards above my head.

“You’re the worst,” I groused in ill humor.

I unwound the wards and unlocked the front door of the bookstore, pushing it open. Sebille buzzed past my head, entering the store ahead of me and darting toward the dividing door. A quick flash of pale green energy opened the door that separated the artifact library from the bookstore, and she buzzed on through.

With a sigh, I started to close the front door.

A large hand slammed against the door’s surface before I could close it.

I yelped in surprise and jumped, dropping the disgusting artifact I’d been barely holding to the floor.

A tall man with lank dark hair, piercing gray eyes, and an oversized hook nose stepped through the door he’d kept me from closing.

“Oh. Can I help you?” I asked. The man in front of me oozed hostility like a baby rainbow dragon oozes happiness.

I frowned. What had made me think about Sadie? A beat later, my friend Rustin, the ghost witch, and his adorable amalgamate dragon came through the door behind my visitor. Ah. I must have heard the buzzing of her wings, and my subconscious added her to my metaphor.

Sadie was a rare amalgamate dragon from the rainforests of Hawaii. She’d been integral to Rustin achieving a corporeal form after his evil Uncle Jacob Quilleran put his soul form into Mr. Slimy with an experimental spell that hadn’t gone as planned.

Fortunately Rustin’s aunt Madeline, who was one of the most powerful witches in Enchanted and probably the world, had given him a dual form of some kind. Though, to my knowledge, none of us had seen the other side of the duo yet. Rustin might have changed magically, but at over six-feet-tall with black-as-night hair, a square chin, and wire-rimmed glasses on his classically perfect nose, he still looked like my friend.

“Rustin!” I said. Stepping past my hostile visitor, I embraced the ghost witch. “How was your trip?” Rustin had taken Sadie to Hawaii for a couple of weeks to look for other amalgamates.

“It was good. Sadie loved being in the rain forest again.” Rustin’s gaze followed the little dragon as she flitted around the store, warbling softly. We watched as her slanted eyes turned turquoise, then purple, and then went black again.

“She’s looking for the songbirds,” Rustin said in his deep-timbered voice. His blue eyes twinkled behind his glasses.

I’d noticed his voice getting deeper lately and wondered if that was from the other half of his dual nature. I was going to have to crank up the courage to ask him about it soon. I’d been hoping he’d share. But he hadn’t. And the longer he’d gone without sharing, the more I worried he had a reason to hide it.

I nodded. “Sorry, Miss Sadie. They’re all gone.”

Until recently, the bookstore had been overflowing with songbirds, which were the residual effect of a handheld magic vacuum we’d acquired when we’d been trapped in another dimension. Long story, don’t ask. Once I’d realized that I gained several songbirds with every use, I’d declared its use off-limits to all and sundry.

But I had a resident hobgoblin at Croakies. If you know anything about hobgoblins, then you know what happened next. Yeah, telling one of the cute but naughty little creatures not to do something was like painting it in chocolate and waving it in front of their cacao-loving faces until they bit. Before I’d known it, I’d had hundreds of the birds in Croakies. I’d only recently lured the last of them outside.

Sadie warbled again, her eyes glowing with pretty aqua light. Multi-hued illumination sifted along her body, fading to white as it slid off the tip of her tail.

I gave her a smile. “Hobs, Wicked, and Slimy are in the library stalking dust bunnies. You should go surprise them.”

Sadie took off toward the door with a cheerful little trill. I sent a ribbon of Keeper magic to open it long enough for her to fly through.

A cleared throat behind me made me jump, my eyes going wide. Bat boogers! I’d forgotten about my visitor. I spun around, praying the tall man with the mean eyes was magical. If not, he’d just gotten an eyeful of stuff he wouldn’t understand and shouldn’t have witnessed.

“Can I help you?” I asked again.

I sent out a wave of keeper energy, looking for a magical signature. The magic flared into the space between us and condensed again, forming a wavy gray ribbon that circled his feet and wound its way up his legs to his torso. He had a faint magical aura that was unfocused but didn’t seem overtly hostile.

The man’s shoulders came off straight for just a beat, rounding slightly. “Yes. Do you by any chance have tea?”

“She does,” Rustin said, grinning wickedly. “But trust me when I tell you that you don’t want her to make it.”

I bit down on my tongue to keep from sticking it out at him.

“I’ll go fetch Sebille,” Rustin said, sauntering toward the door through which his little dragon had disappeared.

I moved books off the small table at the front of the store and motioned toward