Croakies & Scream Page 2

  Thanking him, I headed for the sale aisles. It seemed like a good place to start. I determinedly avoided looking into any of the mirrors as I passed, happy only to see my indistinct shape and movement as I hurried past. But as I passed one ornate golden standing mirror, a flash of unaccustomed color caught my eye and I jolted to a halt, my gaze sliding to the mirror.

  What I was looking at was definitely scary. But, unfortunately, it was just me.

  Rustin materialized next to me, turning the over-heated air cool and moist with his ghostly presence. “There’s something very dark here,” he told me, his tone ominous.

  “Of course there is,” I said, sighing. “Okay, let’s split up. I’ll take this side. You take the other half of the room. We’ll meet in the middle.”

  He disappeared without another word. I clutched Slimy’s basket and resumed my trek toward the floor stock arrayed beneath the banner. I stopped in front of the collection of mirrors resting on the shelves, noting that they were all oddly shaped, most likely meant to represent holiday-specific things and creatures.

  The pumpkin-shaped mirror was in an orange frame with a thick green stem sticking up from the top. There was a witch-shaped mirror with a pointy hat painted on the glass. When I stared into it, I appeared to be wearing the hat.

  Cute.

  Not.

  Especially since the giant pimple on my schnoz could definitely be misconstrued as a witch’s wart.

  Next to the witch was a mirror with a frog-shaped green frame. I kind of liked that one, particularly the googly eyes glued onto the frog’s face. I opened the lid on Mr. Slimy’s basket and let him see. “Look, it’s a you mirror.”

  He eyed the corpulent frame and harrumphed. If I’m that fat I’m going to have to cut back on the calcium-dusted crickets.

  I chuckled. “You might as well cast your bulgy blacks around these mirrors with me.”

  I’d recently learned that the frog had kind of a second sight when it came to magic and supernormals. He’d been able to see through a magically-induced fog to the powerful evil goddess hiding within it.

  I walked along the metal shelving unit, holding the frog up so he could view them all. “See anything?”

  Not here, no. But that critter up there looks a little hostile.

  “Up where?” I swung my gaze along the mirrors on the highest shelves, mere feet below the ceiling. As my gaze swung toward one of them, an ornate oval version with black and gold framing, the surface seemed to shift. But by the time I’d focused my attention on the mirror itself, the glass was empty.

  A woman strolled past behind me, and I realized I’d probably just seen her movement in the glass.

  Fifteen minutes later, Slimy and I met up with Rustin. “Anything?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “Whatever was here before is gone.”

  We started back toward the front of the store. The sales kid spotted me trying to make it out of the store and started toward me. I picked up my speed in the hopes I could beat him to the door.

  Unexpected, a vision popped in front of my eyes and I stumbled, barely catching myself on the nearest shelf before I fell. It was the mirror again, with one additional detail I hadn’t caught before. There’d been a face in the glass, a shadowed one, with hostile blue eyes.

  “Is that a frog?”

  I looked up into the clerk’s pale green gaze. “Um, yeah. It is.”

  I thought the kid was going to tell me no frogs were allowed in the building. Instead, he got a gooey expression on his face and reached out to chuck Mr. Slimy under the chin. “He’s kind of cute.”

  That critter touched me! Slimy said, horrified.

  I quickly shoved him into his basket, closing the lid before the kid decided it might be fun to hold him.

  “Can I hold him?”

  I shook my head, trying to step past the nosy sales kid so I could get to the exit. “I wouldn’t advise it. He tends to pee on you when he gets nervous.”

  The kid’s cheeks puffed as he grinned. “Sweet!”

  I narrowed my gaze on him. “Um. Yeah. Well, I’ve gotta…” I pointed toward the door.

  “What do you feed him?”

  I bit back a frustrated sigh. “Bugs. He likes bugs.”

  “My cousin had a boa constrictor once. He fed it rats and stuff. It was cool.” He frowned. “Hey, don’t snakes eat frogs too?”

  The basket started to vibrate. A trembly voice in my head squeaked, Snakes?!

  I shoved past the clerk. “Snakes eat people too,” I told him, raising my eyebrows.

  The kid didn’t seem to know how to process that little piece of info. His frown deepened. “Not cool, dude.”

  I took off for the door, relieved to be getting out of the store, and jolted to a stop as I rounded a shelf and came face-to-face with a large standing mirror. The rectangular glass was surrounded by a plain-looking frame of light wood.

  A pale face stared back at me. A ghostly face, with wide blue eyes, bumpy brown hair, and a wart-like protuberance on her nose.

  As I stared in shock at the spectral-like figure, the wide mouth in the mirror started to curve upward, showing a familiar set of teeth in a snarly smile.

  There was only one problem, and it was a big one.

  The figure in the mirror was me. But the real me wasn’t smiling.

  3

  Hiding a Body and other Pertinent Things

  “You saw your doppelganger?” Lea asked, her blonde brows spiking upward. I noted the pale aspect of her pretty round face and the way her hand clutched the counter, knuckles white.

  I stood in Lea’s shop, Herbal Remedies with Mystical Properties. I’d sought her out after returning from Mirror World because I was spooked. I wanted to run the experience past my best friend to see what she thought. “That bad?”

  I could see she was trying not to overreact, but it was clear she was having only mild success. “Doppelgangers have…” She grimaced before catching herself and forcing her expression to neutral. “Are you sure the person in the mirror looked like you?”

  “Just like me. Same unruly brown hair, same terrified blue eyes…” Same ginormous pimple. I thought about it for a moment. “Well, her eyes weren’t terrified, but mine were. And she was wearing my clothes. How does that even happen?”

  Lea took that as the rhetorical question it was. She sighed. “I’m not going to lie to you, Naida. This is bad.”

  The icy spot I’d been nurturing in my heart since seeing the image staring back at me from the glass at Mirror World blossomed, consuming my entire middle. “Bad, how exactly?”

  Other than the obvious badness of having a doppelganger show up in my life.

  “Many believe doppelgangers portend death or bad luck.”

  “Do you believe that?” I asked, my voice strangled.

  She winced, and that was all the response I needed. I collapsed over the counter, placing my head in my hands. “Crocodile crudités…”

  I felt the warmth of her hand against my back. “We’ll figure this out, Naida. There has to be a way to settle it without…you know.”

  I grasped at the bent, soggy paper straw she offered me. “Okay. Can we do a spell or something?”

  She nodded. “I’ll start researching it. What happened after you saw the spirit in the mirror?”

  I blinked. “Um. Well. It just…walked out.”

  “Walked out? Like out of the mirror?” Her voice had kind of a screechy quality that brought her cat familiar’s head up from where she lay in a beam of sun on the floor. Hex eyed her witch through narrowed dark gold eyes for a moment. Then, apparently deciding there was no emergency, flopped onto her back and gave herself over to the sun.

  “Not out,” I said, shaking my head. “More like out of sight behind the frame.”

  “So, as far as you know, she stayed within the mirror’s frame of influence?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. That’s good. I’ll start there.” She nodded, looking thoughtful. Then she lif
ted her gaze and grabbed my arm. “Your friend in New York, can you talk to her about this?”

  My friend worked at one of the big publishing houses in New York. She sometimes got me new releases early as thanks for my having helped her escape a rogue mirror artifact once. The experience had left her permanently changed, turning her into a doppelganger spirit, but she’d managed to keep all her better human qualities intact. Fortunately, her boss, who was a banshee, had been very understanding of her new wispiness. It had been a strange case, but a fascinating one, and it had been a lesson for me on the precociousness of magic. It had also bought me a lifetime friend who knew something about the ins and outs of doppelganger magic.

  “I’ll talk to Pansy about it. See if she can give me any insights.”

  Lea squeezed my hand. “In the meantime, stay away from all mirrors. Have Sebille shroud them for you. Just in case.”

  I left a few minutes later with a heavy heart. With everything that was going on…the thinning magic veil and continued threats from the Société of Dire Magic to strip me of my Keeper of the Artifacts title, I was stretched thin both physically and mentally. I didn’t need the worry of a doppelganger spirit on top of everything else.

  The scene I walked into a moment later at Croakies didn’t exactly improve my mood.

  There was a small, well-dressed man standing in front of the door, and I whacked him in the back as I shoved it open. The bell jangled happily above my head as the man grunted in pain. “Oh my goddess! I’m so sorry. Did I hurt…:”

  The man turned around, and my apology fell silent.

  The face staring back at me made my blood run cold.

  Rogers from the Société of Dire Magic fixed a pale blue gaze on me, his lips twisting with disgust. The man’s face was narrow and pasty, with a pointy chin that was made sharper by the dark blond goatee marking it.

  As he had the last time I’d seen him, Rogers wore an old-fashioned black suit with rounded lapels and a bowler hat. His thin mustache twitched beneath his nose as he looked at me, making him look like a mouse sizing up a predator. “Miss Griffith.”

  The simple greeting held more disgust than a year of Sebille’s eye rolls, which was really saying something. “Rogers.”

  “I see things are out of control as usual.”

  Frowning, My gaze followed his as it slipped toward the sales counter, screeching to a halt on an unfortunate sight.

  The hobgoblin sat on the edge of the counter, the golden mask that had attacked Rustin the night before fixed over his face. Hobs’ familiar shock of light-brown hair stuck up from behind the mask, and his oversized ears twitched happily as he lifted a small hand with spidery fingers in a wave. “Mornin’, Miss.”

  Hobs swung his oversized feet against the back of the cabinets, creating a thump, thump, thump that seemed perfectly designed to annoy the crabby SDM representative.

  Rogers flinched with each small, concussive sound.

  “Hobs, what are you doing in the store?” I threw Rogers an apologetic glance and reached back to lock the door so no human customers could come inside before I got the hobgoblin tucked safely away in the artifact library. “You know you’re not supposed to be in here during the day.” The statement was meant for Rogers’ consumption. Kind of a CYA move that would actually do nothing to C my A, since the Société seemed determined to shut me down.

  I held out my arms and the little creature leaped into them, giving me a hug with his skinny but surprisingly strong arms before sliding to the ground and cocking one jaunty hip. “Miss Sebille is playing hide and seek with me.” A high-pitched giggle emerged from behind the mask. “She’ll never find me here.”

  “Here? As in standing in plain sight in the bookstore?”

  “No, Miss. Behind this mask. I’m totally hidden.”

  I frowned. “I don’t think…”

  The dividing door slammed open and a breathless Sebille ran through, her gaze sliding around the space. “Have you seen…?” She spotted Rogers and jolted into silence. “Um, my favorite pen. I’ve been looking all over for it.”

  I barely restrained the eye-roll dancing on my lids. “It’s too late, Sebille. Rogers has already seen Hobs.”

  She frowned. “He has? Where is he?”

  I opened my mouth, my gaze sliding toward the small, masked invader. “You mean, you don’t actually see him?”

  She skimmed a look in the same direction, her eyes narrowed. “No. Because. He’s. Not. Here.” She peaked bright red brows, fixing a glare on the SDM rep. “Is there something we can help you with, snitch?”

  Rogers’ face turned mulish. “Yes, you can show me the library. I’m here to do a surprise inspection.” Rogers pasted on a mean smile. “Surprise!”

  “On Halloween Eve? Are you crazy? You know everything goes topsy-turvy during Samhain,” I squealed.

  “I don’t know any such thing. Are you telling me you’ve lost control?”

  Sebille growled. I fought the impulse to tell her to stop. If anybody deserved to be growled at, it was the mean and petty SDM rep. “Grasshopper droppings,” I muttered.

  His mean smile tightened. “Don’t swear at me, Miss Griffith. I have the full power of the Société of Dire Magic behind me. One word from me and you’ll be stripped of your title. Right now, that word is dancing on my lips. All signs point to the fact that you’re a terrible keeper. Reports of fleeing artifacts abound in this dimension. You’ve lost more humans to poisonous artifacts than any of your peers. And you seem to have a genuinely clueless aura about what you’re supposed to be doing, how, and when.”

  “That’s not my fault…” I began, before biting my tongue against the defense I’d been about to mount. Defending myself against the charge of incompetence wouldn’t just harm me. It would also take down the keeper before me, who’d done a poor job of passing on the keys…metaphorically speaking…of keepership to me. “The Universe has been in flux since I became keeper. There’s a fault somewhere in the system.”

  His pale brows lifted for a beat before he schooled the obvious surprise in his expression. Did he actually think I hadn’t noticed the problem? He must truly think I was a gnish. “And now I discover you have a hobgoblin living in the artifact library,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Have you lost your tiny little mind?”

  Another growl emerged from the Sebille region of the room. “Hobs is helping us. He’s not dangerous,” she said.

  The little guy sidled over to Sebille, pressing against her leg like a frightened toddler. I almost smiled as my hard-as-troll-nails assistant dropped a soothing hand to his tiny shoulder. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  Rogers straightened to his full height, which put him about eye-level with Sebille and at my nose level. But he didn’t seem to notice he was too small to frighten anybody in the room except for the hobgoblin. “The rules are clear. Hobgoblins are not allowed in artifact libraries. That…creature must go.”

  “But…” I attempted to plead my case.

  “Or, you can just hand me your keys right now.”

  My mouth slammed closed. I wasn’t handing Rogers the keys to Croakies, and I certainly wasn’t throwing Hobs out on his sizeable ears. But I needed time to come up with a solution, so I simply frowned and held my tongue.

  “Now, if you’ll be so good as to show me into the stacks…” the SDM representative said smugly.

  More growling drifted from the Sebille locale.

  Seeing no way out of it, I nodded. Sebille glared at me as I passed by, but I lifted my finger in a “give me a minute” signal and she kept her peace until I’d closed the dividing door behind Rogers.

  As soon as the door was closed, Sebille rounded on me. “You can’t seriously be considering throwing Hobs out!”

  “Of course not,” I said in a low voice. “But, I need a minute to figure out what to do about this.”

  “I know what to do about it. There’s a swamp in the Enchanted Forest where a body will disappear within hours.”

&n
bsp; I sighed. And, yes, it might have taken me a beat longer than it should have to reject her solution. But, hey, give me credit for eventually getting there. “We’re not offing Rogers, Sebille.”

  “Better him than Hobs,” she muttered crankily.

  I didn’t remind her that it had only been a couple of weeks since she’d been on Rogers’ side of the issue we were discussing. Since that first angry rejection of the hobgoblin, Sebille had realized how much fun it was to have a creature in the store she could fling against the wall like sticky string and have him gather himself back up, laugh, and charge back for more.

  He was Sebille’s perfect playmate and she was smitten. Hobs was like the opposite-child to her antipodal-motherness. The child of her cranky nature rather than her heart. And Hobs loved to play happy victim to Sebille’s creative torture-play.

  They were perfect for each other.

  “I’m not going to put him out on the street,” I promised them both, earning a wobbly smile from Hobs, which I could barely see through the mouth slot of the mask. “I need to look at the rules and figure out how to get around them.”

  A consummate rule-breaker herself, Sebille clearly liked that idea. “Good. But keep that disappearing body option on the back burner. Just in case.”

  The front door handle juddered, and I turned to see Detective Wise Grym’s handsome face framed in the window. He lifted his brows and gave his watch an exaggerated look. I hurried over and opened the door to him. “Did you close early?” Grym asked, giving me a grin.

  I shook my head. “Sorry. Hobs showed up in the store and I had to make sure nobody saw him.”

  “Too late for that,” Sebille said snarkily.

  I threw a glower in her direction before addressing Grym. “The Société of Dire Magic decided to show up today of all days for a surprise inspection.”

  Grym narrowed his delicious dark-caramel gaze. “During Samhain? The Société knows this is magical goat rodeo time, right?”