Love Croakies Sam Cheever (red queen ebook txt) 📖

a few minutes later, the hard way. My toe smashed into something hard and heavy near a toppled dummy.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, goddess! That hurt.” I glanced at my tender toe and found blood seeping through my sock. Sizzling bat scat!

My companion crouched down and uncovered my attacker. A small stainless steel weight. Probably about three pounds. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

I nodded, releasing my bleeding foot and taking it from him. I dropped it into the purse and swung it to test its heft. “That’s better.”

“How’d you know…” he started to ask.

The sobbing in the mall turned more desperate. A woman’s tearful voice added pleading to the mix. “Let’s just go home, honey. Those things are going to come back.”

That didn’t sound good.

A curtain shifted behind the checkout counter, and a big woman with dark red hair teased up into a peacock thing on the back of her head stepped from what was probably the office slash inventory room.

Her flat, bulldog face turned belligerent when she spotted us. “What are you doing in here?”

“It’s okay, Daisy,” the manager said. “She’s helping.”

The woman had smallish, deep-set eyes in a wide face. When she slid her focus from me to the man with me, the gaze softened and her small mouth curved. “Ralph. You came to see me.” Her muscular body softened along with the smile. “I knew you’d come.”

She moved toward us on enormous cat feet, light and agile despite her bulk.

Ralph Pinch swallowed hard and took a step back. His hands came up as if to ward her off. “Now Daisy, we’ve had this conversation. I told you, I’m a married ma…”

Daisy, a more misnamed wretch I’d never seen, reached toward him with long muscular arms and smashed him up against her massive breasts. The man’s feet literally dangled above the floor. She rubbed her face against his as if scent-marking him. “I knew you loved me.”

Ralph’s bulging gaze slid to me, filled with pleading.

Beyond the open shop door, the sobs had reached a fever pitch and shouting had joined the crying.

“Please help,” said a pleading voice.

I blinked, realizing the plea had been delivered in a man’s voice and was much nearer than before.

It was Ralph.

I smiled at the woman. “Daisy, is it? Hi. I’m Naida. It’s nice to meet you.”

The woman’s lips curled on a silent snarl.

Aardvark cankles! I was going to be eaten.

I forced my lips to curve into a smile, lifting my hands to show how harmless I was. The weight-laden purse slipped into the inside curve of my bent arm and swung against my hip. “We’re just trying to help that woman out there. Can you help too? She sounds really scared.”

Daisy’s bulldog face turned purple. “You can’t have him. He’s mine.”

Too late, I noticed the slender shaft of a Cupid arrow jutting from the side of her thick throat.

“I promise I don’t want him…”

Her glower deepened and a growl rumbled in her throat. “Are you saying Ralph’s not good enough for you?”

Good goddess on a rowing machine!

“No, Ralph’s very nice.”

“Nice!” she roared. “He’s perfection! Do you think you can come in here and insult my man like that?” She shoved Ralph aside, sending him crashing against a shoe display, where he tumbled to the floor with a neon green running shoe in one hand.

With a bellow of pure rage, Daisy threw herself at me, teeth bared and fingers curved into deadly-looking claws.

I gave up trying to talk sense and gathered the straps of the purse in one hand. Weight on my toes so I could dance out of her way, I spun the weighted purse in one hand, like Wonder Woman with her lasso. As Daisy moved closer, I braced to jump away. She made a grab for my arm, snarling wetly, and I sent the heavy projectile flying toward her head.

It hit her right between the eyes.

Daisy went down like a ton of bricks.

“Oh,” said Ralph.

I turned to find the mall manager looking flushed and confused, the running shoe perched on his palms as if he were a salesman giving a hot prospect the big pitch.

I grinned. “Do you have that in my size?”

Ralph blinked in confusion. “Huh?”

Apparently, he’d hit his head on the shelves.

I walked over and offered him my hand.

Ralph shoved the shoe in it.

Hm. Lightweight, gel insoles. Nice shoe. I shook out of my shoe coma and threw the runner to the floor. “Come on, let’s get out of here before she wakes up.”

Behind me, Daisy groaned and shifted, her fingers twitching.

I grabbed Ralph’s clammy hand and yanked. He came to his feet but was a bit wobbly.

“Let me see your head,” I told him, turning him around to examine his scalp for a goose egg or worse.

Nothing.

“You’re okay. Come on.” I turned and started toward the door.

Ralph didn’t move.

I stopped and frowned at him. “We need to go.”

Ralph nodded, blinked, and then slid into a boneless pile on the floor.

Badger bunions!

I stood there for a beat, unsure what to do. If I left him behind, Daisy might hurt him. But what if I couldn’t wake him up in time and Daisy got us both?

Another sob sounded in the eerily silent mall.

My head whipped back and forth between the woman in the mall and Ralph.

Daisy flopped like a landed fish. She was waking up.

I hurried over to Ralph, bent over him, and slapped him hard on the face.

He came awake with a surprised, “Ungh!” His soft, white fists popped up, and he turned an angry gaze my way.

“It’s me!” I told him. “Daisy’s waking up, so if you don’t want to be her little play thing, you need to snap out of it and get moving!”

Ralph’s gaze slid to the enormous woman and widened. It was all the warning I had that she was on the move.

I ducked as a shadow swept over me and twisted, whipping the purse into her belly as I spun away from her attack.

Daisy bent double, pale and wheezing like a wounded buffalo.

Ralph shoved