Milk & Croakies Read online

Then I heard a bell tinkling.

  I frowned.

  Beyond the big doors, lightning speared the sky and thunder followed right on its heels.

  The ladder juddered again.

  Ribbit!

  Slimy’s bulging black eyes peered toward the ladder, unblinking. His throat worked steadily and he gave off the general air of someone who didn’t like what he was seeing.

  I really wished he’d talk to me.

  “What is it, Slimy? Do you see something?”

  Ribbit.

  “Yeah, unless someone has a Frog-to-English dictionary, that’s not going to do me much good.”

  Without warning, Slimy leaped from my lap.

  I gave a startled scream as he hit a pile of dusty hay and jumped again, heading directly for the ladder. “Slimy, no!”

  He, of course, ignored me and kept hopping. I ran to try to catch him, my hands clasping empty air multiple times before he stopped, his tongue snapping out to tug a spider out of an enormous web between the rungs of the ladder.

  I sighed. “This is no time for you to decide to eat, Slimy. We have an invisible…”

  Slam!

  I screamed, pressing my palm against my pounding chest as I looked toward the enclosure holding the cattle.

  Slam!

  One of the cows, a large black one, was kicking the wall of the enclosure, her brown eyes staring in my direction.

  My pulse was somewhere around my ears, my heart pounding against my ribs. Between the thunder booming outside and the cows trying to send me to the stars inside, I was seriously on edge. “What?” I demanded of the cow.

  Slam!

  My nerve endings rose up out of my skin and did a panicked little jig, preparing to send me into full-on hysteria. “What do you want? Why can’t anybody talk to me?”

  Slam!

  I jumped again, giving an angry little scream.

  Thinking there might be something inside the enclosure the cow was afraid of, I looked over the wall of the cow pen, seeing nothing but dirt, hay and enormous cow patties, a.k.a. poops, on the floor. Maybe there was a mouse or some…

  Slam!

  “Erghhh! Spinning cow udders! Will you please stop that?”

  The cow turned its head at my outburst and stared at me a minute, then walked away from the wall and shoved its way into the crowd around the hay feeder.

  I sagged against the wall.

  Tinkle, tinkle.

  Hot breath bathed my neck. I screamed, jumped sideways and did the high step toward the middle of the barn.

  I watched in horror as the dirt puffed up along the floor, heading right for me.

  Tinkle, tinkle.

  Hot breath wafted past, followed by a snuffling sound and then something large and wet slipped over my face.

  It felt like a…tongue?

  Then it hit me. “Bessy?”

  Snorfle, snorfle, lick.

  I ran my sleeve over my wet cheek. “Well, you certainly are a friendly invisible cow, aren’t you?”

  Tinkle, tinkle.

  The bell was going to come in handy. It should be easy to find her with the bell tinkling helpfully.

  Reluctantly, due to my awareness of the tooth-filled mouth nearby and the enormous size of the creature, I reached a tentative hand in Bessy’s direction. I felt velvety smooth skin with large, moist holes in it. I sank knuckle-deep in a nostril. “Singing chicken gizzards!” Yanking my hand back, I dragged it over my wet and muddy jeans, adding to the frog pee I’d already wiped there.

  I lowered my hand and reached again, hoping to grab the bell around Bessy’s neck. I could hold her there and give Farmer Blue a call. My job had been to find the cow. I’d done that. I was thinking maybe that would be good enough. Even as I had the thought, I knew I couldn’t leave it at that. There was clearly a magical artifact at work and it was my job to find it.

  Sometimes I hated my job.

  My fingers closed over something cool and metallic. The bell. “Gotcha!” I said softly.

  Boom!

  Thunder shook the barn again. Bessy jerked away from my grip, and the rope holding the bell came loose in my hand. I looked down as the faint shape of a brass cowbell formed in my palm and then thickened, becoming visible. The rope that hung from the bell was worn through as if Bessy had been rubbing it against something for a while.

  I looked up from the bell, squinting. “Bessy? Are you still there?” Maybe the fact that I could see the bell meant that whatever had been keeping her out of sight was failing.

  Could I be that lucky?

  Boom!

  Slam!

  Tinkle, tinkle.

  Not a chance. The tinkling of the bell no longer pointed to where Bessy was. And walking forward, gently waving my arms, I didn’t feel her nearby.

  I sighed. Bessy was gone. I would need to make my way to the farmhouse and give Farmer Blue the bad news. But first I needed to gather up my frog. I glanced toward the ladder. “Slimy?” Where was the little guy? “Slimy, come on, we need to go talk to the client.”

  I listened for a soft ribbit beneath the pounding of the rain on the roof and walls.

  Silence.

  “Slimy?” Dropping to my knees beside the ladder, I ran my hands through the loose, dusty hay that littered nearly every inch of the barn floor, looking around, under and behind the wooden ladder.

  No Slimy.

  A sense of dread filled my chest. My stomach twisted with fear.

  Had Slimy been lost to the same artifact as Bessy?

  “Please, no!” I muttered as panic turned my insides to mush.

  Slam!

  A steaming cup of tea appeared in front of my face. I shivered violently, pulling the hand-knitted blanket closer around my shoulders and looked up into the pink-cheeked round face of Mrs. Farmer Blue. “Thank you.”

  She patted my shoulder with a chubby hand. “You’re welcome, dear. Don’t worry. Your little pet will show up.”

  I sipped my tea, keeping my face averted so she couldn’t see the doubt in my expression. I’d looked everywhere for Slimy, spent an hour turning the barn over in an attempt to find him. It was as if he’d simply disappeared.

  Poof.

  Farmer Blue sat across from me at the table, staring down at the dusty cowbell I’d brought back with me. He hadn’t said five words since I’d returned with the bad news that I’d had his favorite cow in my hands and had lost her again. “I’m really sorry about Bessy,” I told him.

  He made a harrumphing type sound and continued to stare at the bell.

  Meow!

  I looked down into Wicked’s judgmental orange gaze. He blamed me for losing Slimy. Or maybe he was mad because I’d lost Bessy the cow. I couldn’t be sure of anything except that he was mad. Holding my gaze, he very deliberately rubbed himself across Mrs. Blue’s stout shins.

  “What a pretty boy you are,” Mrs. Blue crooned, bending to scratch Mr. Wicked behind his traitorous ears. “And so sweet he is too.”

  “Yeah,” I grumbled crankily. “Sweet.”

  Wicked purred loudly in defiance, trotting back over to the small dish that had recently held canned tuna fish mixed with fresh cream. If I didn’t get him out of the Blue kitchen fast, he was going to gain five pounds and leave me behind like yesterday’s stinky trash.

  “You want some more, sweet boy?” Mrs. Farmer Blue hurried over and picked up the dish as Mr. Wicked twined eagerly around her ankles, nearly tripping the poor woman as she tried to scoop tuna into the dish.

  “What kind of magic is this?” Farmer Blue asked, his brows lowered over question-filled hazel eyes.

  I wish I knew. But I couldn’t tell him that. “Have you recently purchased any new equipment for the barn?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. Everything I have was passed down from my Da and his. There’s nothin’ newer than me in that old barn.”

  I couldn’t help thinking that the same could be said of the house, judging by the small rounded refrigerator, the massive stove that I was pretty
sure was fueled by wood, and the ancient cabinets that looked as if they had an inch of paint on them.

  Mrs. Blue settled the dish back in front of my disloyal cat and he dove in, tail whipping happily behind him and his purr coating the air like the layers of paint covered the cabinets.

  “Any new animals?” I asked.

  He thought about that for a beat and shook his head.

  “There’s an opossum that’s moved into the hayloft,” Mrs. Blue said, wiping her hands on the old-fashioned apron she wore over her flower-print cotton dress.

  “That opossum ain’t disappearin’ my cows,” Farmer Blue groused. “This here’s some kind of ugly magic.”

  His wife rolled her eyes. “There’s no such thing as magic Foster.” She looked at me, giving me a smile. “Isn’t that right, young lady?”

  I blinked and looked at Farmer Blue. He shrugged. “She refuses to believe. But I had a cousin who was light in the loafers. I know there’s things in the world that defy explanation.”

  I sat there a moment, wondering how to address the questions suddenly flooding my mind. Finally, I settled for the obvious. “Light in the loafers?”

  He got a disgusted look on his ruddy face. “You know, a fairy.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. Opened it again and made a slightly alarmed sound. Surely he wasn’t calling a gay man a fairy?

  Surely.

  The air before me sparkled and I realized my mistake as the tiny form of Shirley the cranky Pixie started to form on the air. “Oh! Sorry. I but? dialed you by mistake (spelling intentional), Shirley. You can go away!”

  A tiny, irritated face appeared in a burst of magical sparks, and the Pixie huffed with frustration before she ground out, “Don’t call me!” and disappeared in a flash of white light.

  As the supernormal world’s Witch-a-pedia, Shirley the Pixie was the reluctant source of tons of valuable magical information she’d much rather not share. She hated being summoned. She probably hated it even more when she was summarily dismissed after an accidental summoning.

  “What was that with all the sparkles,” Farmer Blue asked, frowning as he poked a calloused digit into the air where Shirley had been.

  I glanced at Mrs. Farmer Blue. She’d turned away and was busying herself washing things in the sink. Something about her brisk, slightly jerky movements told me she’d seen the Pixie’s almost-arrival.

  I decided denial was the best course of action. “Huh? What?”

  Farmer Blue’s face folded into a perplexed scowl.

  “Tell me more about this cousin you mentioned,” I urged.

  Blue grunted. “Percival. He had a strange way about him. And he was always popping away and then popping back again.” Blue shook his head. “I saw him disappear into thin air once.”

  I relaxed, realizing the curmudgeonly farmer had meant an actual magical Fairy. “By any chance, has Percival been here lately?”

  “Nah. He disappeared a while ago and never came back.”

  I stared at him, my brows skimming my hairline.

  After a moment, he seemed to understand why I was looking at him with a giant unibrow. “Ah, hah. Not like that. He didn’t disappear like Bessy.” He chuckled softly. “He climbed into his tiny pink car and headed for a rainbow screaming something about dancing a jig at the end. I don’t know if he ever found the end of that rainbow. But I always said I wished him well.”

  My brows stuck to my dark brown hair for a moment longer and then fell back where they belonged. I had no idea what the man was talking about. But I refused to dig any deeper into it for fear I’d get caught in the hallucinogenic-like visions living in his mind and never find my way out again.

  I was starting to understand why Mrs. Farmer Blue pretended she didn’t believe in magic. It was probably just easier that way.

  I stood, reluctantly shrugging the blanket off my still-damp shoulders. I needed to get home and get into some dry clothes. And I needed to hit the books, looking for a magical artifact that made things invisible. Maybe it was some kind of farm implement or a spelled farm animal.

  Once I had an idea what I was dealing with, I’d come back with help if I had to drag Sebille and Lea there kicking and screaming.

  Slimy’s life…and Bessy’s too…were at stake. I wouldn’t be taking no for an answer.

  3

  Beware Quillerans Bearing Small Baskets

  “No,” Sebille said, glowering at me across the sales counter in the bookstore.

  “You have to come with me,” I said in a voice that sounded desperate and whiny even to me. “I lost Slimy!”

  That did seem to make a dent in her steely resistance. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said. But I could tell she wasn’t fully convinced.

  “Lea’s coming,” I told the defiant Sprite, a.k.a. my assistant. “She’s making up a spell to illuminate invisible things.”

  My information didn’t work out quite the way I’d hoped.

  “Good. Then you don’t need me.” Sebille slammed the spell book she’d been perusing closed with a bang and spun on her shiny red heel, stalking toward the back room. I glanced down at the book, reading the title with interest. How to Magically remove Freckles, Birthmarks, and Age Spots.

  Hmm, since Sebille had no birthmarks and she wasn’t nearly old enough for age spots, I realized she was researching how to get rid of her freckles. Interesting. I’d never known the spots that covered her long, lean face bothered her. I just accepted them as something that came with her fire-red hair and pale skin.

  Shaking off the thought, I huffed out a frustrated breath as the door slammed shut between the two sections of the collective space called Croakies. My business was comprised of a magical bookstore in the front and a library of magical artifacts in the back. As the Librarian in charge of magical artifacts, it was my job to find and wrangle missing and out-of-control artifacts and bring them back to Croakies to be filed safely away.

  Unfortunately for me, in the current instance, I needed Sebille’s help. I could admit to myself that I was woefully inadequate to most artifact wrangling tasks all alone. But I’d never tell the Sprite I needed her. That way lay much future emotional pain. And pretty much world-ending, apocalyptic-level ego explosions.

  The bell on the door jangled. I turned to find my second favorite witch coming through the door. Lea was, of course, my first favorite witch. Even if she had left me to make my way alone among the cow patties. Grumble.

  Maude Quilleran had a wide smile on her face and a small basket in her hand. My faithless cat, who still wasn’t speaking to me since we’d left the Blue’s farm without his best bud, Slimy, ran to greet Maude with a happy yowl and a window-rattling purr.

  Maude crouched down to greet him with a wide grin. “Hello there, handsome.” She set the tiny basket onto the carpet and scooped up my cat, hugging him against her chest and kissing him between his perky gray ears. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

  The teen witch had been responsible for giving me Wicked. Once upon a time, I’d done her a small favor involving a magical hairbrush, and she’d wanted to repay me. I’d resisted, knowing that the fifteen minutes of my time wasn’t worth enough to take the teenager’s hard-earned allowance from her. So she’d surprised me with a tiny gray kitten. I’d later learned the gift was a much bigger one than I’d known. And Maude had given him to me at great personal risk. For those reasons and more, I would forever be grateful to her for bringing Wicked into my life.

  Even when he was acting like a frog’s butt about a…erm…frog’s butt.

  I gave the young girl a hug, smashing Wicked between us until he yowled with displeasure. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

  Maude settled Mr. Wicked to his feet and retrieved the basket. “I know. I’m sorry. We’ve been busy working with Rustin.”

  Rustin was Maude’s cousin and the victim of the Quilleran family’s darker inclinations. He’d been spelled into Mr. Slimy when I first met him, destined to fade away
into frogginess if I didn’t work against a literal clock to save him.

  Unfortunately, we hadn’t been able to totally extract him from the frog…at least not until recently…but the work of his Aunt Madeline Quilleran and Maude had saved his soul from being sucked into the frog’s essence, and had given Slimy magical intelligence he shouldn’t have had as a frog.

  “How is Rustin? I kind of miss the annoying guy.”

  Maude giggled. “That’s why I’m here, partly.” She held up the basket. “This is the other reason. I wondered if you might be willing to help Sadie.”

  “Sadie?” I eyed the basket as a wave of trepidation swept over me. Beware Quillerans bearing small baskets, my mind screamed at me. “Who’s Sadie?”

  “Not who,” Maude said, flipping the lid back on the basket and reaching inside. “What.”

  I blinked, my eyes going wide. Maude had grabbed a tiny piece of rainbow from the basket and was holding it in one hand, her pretty face filled with hope. “This is Sadie. She’s very sweet. I’m sure Mr. Slimy will like her.”

  I narrowed my gaze on the little witch. “You brought me a lizard?”

  Maude flushed. “She’s not a lizard exactly.”

  Something in the way she said it warned me I should pay close attention to the “not exactly” part of her response. “What exactly is she?”

  Maude chewed her bottom lip.

  The brightly hued reptile in her hand blinked slowly, lifting her tiny head as if trying to figure out what I was. I narrowed my eyes at the little creature, returning the favor. She did remind me of someone, though I couldn’t quite pinpoint who.

  “Well, technically, I guess she is a lizard. A reptile anyway.”

  My gaze jerked to Maude and she flushed guiltily. “How is it that you brought me a creature which you’ve apparently named already, and you have no idea what she is?”

  Maude expelled her breath in a huff. “She’s a rare amalgamate dragon from the rainforests of Hawaii.”

  A lot of questions flitted through my mind, but I went with the first and easiest. “Why?”

  “Sadie was involved in our experiments with Rustin. But she’s not a good fit for what we’re trying to do. Aunt Maddie was going to…dispose of her.” Maude’s lips thinned and tightened with disgust. “I just couldn’t let that happen.”