“Ahhh!” I screamed as the heel bit into my throat and then danced away before I could wrap a hand around it.
The shoe in my other hand stopped trying to pull out of my grip and suddenly shot toward me, catching me off guard. The heel hit me between the eyes and agony ripped through me.
Fear turned to rage. I swung my hand at the errant shoe and blasted it with a slender gray ribbon of energy.
The wimpy shot of power wrapped around the flailing stiletto and gripped it tight, the artifact shifting colors again as it fought to get free.
The delicate high heel turned to a heavy boot. The loose shoe…boot…launched itself at my head, kicking me right in the temple. I went down, shrieking Grym’s name as the one shoe I’d managed to grab wrenched itself from my grip.
Despite the dizziness left behind by the violence of the attack, I started to shove myself back to my feet. There was a jangling sound, and I realized someone had come through the front door. My first thought was that the shoes were going to escape through the door.
I stumbled upward. But it appeared the shoes were vengeful. They contented themselves instead with wailing on me, serving up an energetic boot to the belly, one to the thigh, and a couple to my forearms as I tried to defend myself against the attack.
Just as I believed I wasn’t going to survive the attack, a big hand whipped out of nowhere and wrapped around one of the boots.
Grym fought the boot, almost losing it when it shifted from a bulky walking boot to a slender flip flop, finally managing to shove it into a bag unlike any I’d ever seen before and seal it in. The shoe immediately stopped fighting, the bag quieting, and Grym dropped it to the floor as he reached for the second flip flop.
Not a moment too soon.
The stupid thing hung in the air like a sparkly featherweight boxer, slapping me on one cheek and then the other so quickly I couldn’t get a hand on it as my head was thrown from side to side. Pain was a constant torment over my face, head and neck and stars danced before my gaze.
Grym grasped the angry flip flop and shoved it into a second bag before it could shift to a thigh-high biker boot and beat us both into carpet stains.
I sagged back against the shelves, my entire body throbbing with pain, blood running from my stiletto wounds, and my chest heaving. I was so not in shape for fieldwork.
Grym winced when he eyed me. “You okay?”
I couldn’t help myself, I gave him the evil eye. “Do I look okay?”
He shrugged. “Not really. But I’m sure that was pretty par for the course in your job, eh?”
Holy Humperdink! I thought. I certainly hoped not.
Detective Grym dropped me off at Croakies, nodding at me as I clasped the door and shoved it open. “Ms. Griffith, I appreciate your help.”
I grimaced as I turned in my seat, every muscle in my body sore. It had been a mistake to sit still for so long. “It was my…” I grimaced, putting a hand to my lower back like an old woman. “…pleasure.”
He made a sound that was suspiciously like a laugh, I turned to glare at him. “Don’t forget these.” He shoved the two bags at me. “Tell Alice to put them under nullifying magic and behind a locked door. And keep them separated.”
I took the bags, feeling the magic vibrating through the thick plastic. I didn’t know enough to discern if the energy was from the shoes or from the specially magicked bags that held them. “I will.”
I started to close the door.
“Ms. Griffith?”
I stopped, leaning down to look into the car before I remembered my entire body was broken. Pain sliced through me, and I winced before I could stop myself. “Yes?”
“Can I see your phone?”
I frowned, my hand hovering protectively over the cell phone in my pocket. “Why?”
He held out a hand, impatiently wiggling the fingers.
I stared at him for a few beats and then sighed, handing it to him. He was, after all, the long arm of the law.
Grym tapped a few buttons and handed it back to me. “In case you need to get in touch. It’s my direct line.”
I looked down to find that he’d stored his number as a Favorite. Cheeky. Embarrassingly, he was my only Favorite. “Thanks.”
“For what it’s worth, I think it was a dirty trick sending you out into the field before you’re trained. You could have been badly injured.”
Since I’d been stabbed by stilettos, beaten by a boot, and flogged by flip flops, I couldn’t imagine what he considered badly injured. Maybe it required a limb being sawed off. “I can handle myself.”
The detective was looking at me with pity again. I hated it when someone looked at me that way. It made me feel inadequate.
“I’m not completely untrained,” I objected. I’d thought I’d functioned reasonably well for my first day on the job.
He stared at me. “Look, what you’re doing…training to become a Keeper…it’s a dangerous job. You’re playing with fire attempting it without any knowledge. I wanted you to know that I won’t bring you out with me again until you’re trained. If Alice won’t come, then the KoA won’t be involved in the next takedown. It’s not my job to train you, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Again…stabbed, bludgeoned, flogged.
I glared at him, so offended by his statement that I couldn’t respond. He gave me a little wave and then pulled away from the curb, driving off down the street before it occurred to me that I’d just been insulted and dismissed in one, long breath.
“Gnish!” I called after him, mentally kicking myself for being stupid.
I should have laid him out.
Turning around, I hobbled toward Croakies. The door to the herbal shop opened and Lea
