Love Croakies Sam Cheever (red queen ebook txt) 📖

“Where’d they go?” I asked. When his gaze wrenched to mine, I clarified. “The demons?”

He swung the arm with the knife around the space, his eyes wide. “They’re everywhere. They tried to take Nina. I can’t let them take her.”

The woman sobbed again, shifting around behind the bench until I saw her belly. “She’s pregnant?” I exclaimed without thinking.

The man tensed, his gaze turning shrewd. “You’re not touching that baby.”

I held the purse in front of me because it was all I had. “No. I…”

“We came to help,” Ralph squeaked out. “I’m the manager, and she’s…” He frowned. “She’s with the police.”

The man’s expression cleared. “Police?”

Nina’s head slid out of the shadows. “Honey, maybe she knows Grym.”

Well, I’ll be a slug’s auntie.

“You know Grym?” I said, stepping closer before I realized what I was doing.

The man’s knife hand lowered a few inches. “I work for him.”

“You’re one of Grym’s guys?” I smiled, lowering the purse with relief. My arm had been shaking from the effort of holding it up.

“Detective Devin Sampson. That’s my wife, Nina.”

Behind him, Nina nodded enthusiastically. “Are you a cop too?”

“No.” I hesitated, then asked. “Are you part of Grym’s special squad?”

Devin’s eyes turned gold, and the hand he held at his side grew pale gray fur and black claws.

That would be a yes. If I had to guess from the shape of the transformed hand…er…paw...Devin Sampson was a Wolf shifter.

Standing on the cop’s other side, Ralph was oblivious to the change. “What’s a special squad?”

Devin let the illusion fall. He relaxed visibly. “We handle the weird stuff.”

It was as good an explanation as any. The truth of the matter was that all of Grym’s special squad guys were supernormals. I’d met a few of them but had never met Devin. I offered him my hand. “Naida Griffith.”

I let him roll my name over in his mind a moment, watching the moment he recognized it. “Ah. It’s nice to meet you, Keeper.”

I nodded.

“Keeper?” Ralph asked, growing increasingly confused. “Keeper of what?”

I shrugged. “Think of me as a mini-museum. I store and protect rare artifacts.”

Ralph nodded. “Cool.”

“Have you tried using your…” He glanced at Ralph and frowned. “Look, Keeper, there’s no way we can hide all this from the norms. We’ll need to bring in help afterward to clean this up.”

He meant that Grym would need to bring in some witches to wipe everybody’s memories.

I grimaced. I knew he was right. But I just hated the thought of messing with people’s minds. “I know. In answer to your question, I haven’t. Not yet. I wasn’t sure what we were dealing with.” That was a lie—a small one. I knew what we were dealing with, but it hadn’t occurred to me that there might be magical artifacts in a place like a mall. However, just like the weight I’d found in an athletic clothing store, people used lots of different items for display purposes. “I’ll do that now.” I looked around, noticing that all of the closest shops already had their security doors closed. “Why haven’t you moved to a more protected spot?”

Devin tensed for a moment, a frown finding his face. “Every time we try to move, they attack. We actually started way down on that end of the mall. It’s taken us over an hour to get here.”

We all looked toward the hallway where Ralph and I had just been. “You need to get to the elevator.”

He nodded. “If you can provide any kind of cover, I’d appreciate it.” He glanced at Nina and stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I know what these things are. They want the baby. They’re not getting her or that baby as long as I’m breathing.”

I thought about the story Osvald had told me and couldn’t help wondering if Desiree might be playing a special kind of game. “Let me do my thing.” I jerked my head toward Ralph. “Keep an eye on him for a minute?”

Devin nodded.

I moved away from the group, tucking myself into an alcove between two stores, and pulled as much energy as I could muster into my fingertips. I sent the magic into the universe, giving it an extra boost that I hoped would find any artifacts available in the enormous mall.

Maybe even something useful.

There was a distant ping. And then another. And another.

My eyes went wide. I would never have guessed there could be three magical artifacts inside the mall. The air above us thickened and roiled. I felt the sting of deadly magic a beat before the cherubs emerged from thin air.

Four of them.

All armed with jagged teeth and poisonous arrows.

Devin dove toward Ralph as the first nasty cherub nocked an arrow and aimed. He shoved the man behind a large potted palm, leaping into the air and punching the cupid in the face before it could fire the arrow. The thing tumbled tail over teakettle and slammed into the wall above my head.

“Oy!” I screamed as the demon slid down the bricks and slammed into me.

A whistling sound had me flinging up a hand just in time to catch an ancient-looking metal lantern. As my fingers touched it, flame flared to life inside the scratched and cloudy glass. The demon on my back had drawn back its chubby arm and was ready to stick me with a poisoned arrow. The lantern light flared brightly, transposing a squat skeleton over the fleshy demon before my eyes.

The cherub screamed, a terrified, high-pitched shriek of fear and pain that made my teeth hurt. It flew backward off me in an attempt to escape the illumination and slammed into the ground, writhing in agony as the light turned the spectral vision of a skeleton into reality.

Within the space of three screams, the cherub had been reduced to nothing but ash.

The fire in the lantern went out.

Ralph screamed as another cherub dove from the sky and landed on top of him behind the big pot.

Nina had somehow gotten her hands on my weighted purse and