He blinked up at me, his eyes blank pools of black, like miniature Pudsy voids.
Horror slid up my spine. “What…?”
Get it off me! screamed the irate frog in my mind. Now!
Enormous pink lips protruded from the frog’s sparkly green face. “Oh, Slimy,” I said in a commiserating tone. “I can’t believe she did this to you.” I crouched down and tugged at the lips, expecting them to be made of paper or wax. Instead, realistic-feeling flesh, plumped and puckered, resisted my tugging. I jerked my hand away, straightening on a squeal. “They’re real!” I rounded on the Sprite, who quickly turned away from me when I tried to catch her eye. “I can’t believe you gave him puckery lips! Have you lost your mind?”
She hid a grin behind her hand. “Don’t you get the joke? Kiss the frog, get a prince? Come on,” she said as steam wafted from my ears. “Customers are going to love it.”
“Ribbit!” Slimy proclaimed indignantly.
I pointed a shaky finger toward the quivering frog. “Fix. Him.”
Sebille gave me a long-suffering sigh and threw a pale green jet of magic toward the frog. The big, puckery lips disappeared with a pop.
Slimy gave the sprite one last indignant, “Ribbit!” and then hopped underneath the nearest bookshelf to work on regaining his self-respect.
“You’ve lost your mind, sprite,” I told her, madder than I’d ever been. Well…in the last week anyway. “What’s going on with you?”
Amazingly, she gave me a secret smile and headed for the door. “I’m taking my break.”
I felt my eyes go wide. “What? You can’t take a break. You just got here.”
She shrugged and slipped through the door, leaving me with one delighted Cupid who I couldn’t let anybody see, a traumatized frog, and a seriously annoyed cat.
I sagged. Could the day get any worse?
Proving that it could, the front door bell jangled and I steeled myself for more shrieking Ben E. Nigma fans. Instead, I found myself looking into a handsome, craggy face and an intense dark caramel gaze. “Oh,” I said, my wit firmly intact.
“Hello, Naida,” said Detective Wise Grym, a.k.a. my maybe-boyfriend.
2
Pink Puckery Lips
Grym and I stared at each other for a long moment, awkwardness like a cloud between us. After several beats of taut silence, a loud crunching tugged my gaze toward the floor beside me. The pink-faced hobgoblin wearing a diaper had both long-fingered hands full of cookies, and his mouth was so full that crumbs trickled from between his lips as he chewed, forming a small pile at his feet.
Grym blinked. “Why is Hobs wearing a diaper?”
I expelled enough air to fill a dirigible and shook my head. “Ask the sprite. She seems to think we can’t sell any books without putting on a Valentine’s Day circus.”
Grym shifted from one foot to the other, looking sheepish for unknown reasons. That was when I realized he held one hand behind his back.
“What are you holding there?” I asked, hope flaring to life in my breast. Maybe he was ready to apologize for telling me he thought we should keep our relationship a secret…just for now…with a fat bouquet of roses. Or, even better, a box of chocolates. Anticipation put a gleam in my eye and made my mouth water. After all, I hadn’t eaten anything sweet in forever. If forever could be described as “in the last three minutes.”
He shuffled again and exhaled loudly, adding air to the blimp hanging metaphorically between us. He brought his hand out from behind his back, showing me its contents.
Hope crashed at my feet as I recognized the heart-drenched cover of Ben E. Nigma’s over-hyped book, Hearts of Bomb. “You brought me a book? You do know I own a bookstore, right?”
He frowned. “Sebille told me Pudsy was coming to the store to sign books today. I was hoping to grab a spot at the front of the line.”
I was aghast. Flummoxed. Flabbergasted. Not only did Grym finally come back without bearing apologies or gifts, but he’d come to Croakies with a book that had clearly been purchased from a competitor. “Did you buy that from Frugal Freddy’s over by the mall?”
He winced. “I didn’t think you’d welcome my business.”
My eyes vibrated with a desire to roll. I jammed my hands on my hips and glared at him. “But you thought I’d be happy to have you buy it at my competitor’s and then use Croakies to get it signed?”
He didn’t wince again, but his face flushed to a nice…yes…heart color. “I guess I didn’t think.”
I shook my head, fighting to regain my good humor. Even though it would be a miracle if I did since I’d lost it somewhere around a month ago and hadn’t seen hide nor hair of it since.
I knew I was cranky.
Okay, I’d left cranky behind twenty-nine and a half days ago, buried so deep beneath a wave of irritation that it would take the entire crew of Raiders of the Misplaced Aardvark to find it. But I gave it the old Keeper of the Artifacts try anyway. I sighed. “Look, this is the first I’ve heard of a signing.” It was highly possible there was one scheduled. After all, why would I, the owner of the bookstore and the niece of the author need to know such a thing? Don’t be silly. It wasn’t as if I had any say at all in how my store was run. I mean, my cat had sparkles, my frog had puckery lips, my hobgoblin was rocking a diaper and shooting toothpicks into the cookies on the platter with his bow.
“Hobs! Stop that. Leave the cookies alone.”
He shrugged and headed into the library to see what other trouble he could get up to.
On top of everything, my almost, possibly-already-ex-boyfriend had cheated on me with Frugal Freddy.
That last part was beyond galling.
“What does Frugal Freddy have that I don’t?” I blurted before I could stop myself.
Grym’s heart-red cheeks flared brighter. “He’s
