Love Croakies Sam Cheever (red queen ebook txt) 📖

gave me a look. “You saw the address on the log. It’s no mistake. If you want to talk to Princess Desiree, you need to do this.”

I sighed. I knew I was being difficult about the whole “visit the evil sorceress in The Enchanted Forest” thing. But who could blame me? Dacara was about as evil as they came. She and her wraiths had nearly killed all of us the last time we’d gone there.

Dacara was called the dual sorceress because she was one of a rare few sorcerers who wielded more than one kind of magic energy. In her case, death magic, represented by her ability to call and direct wraiths, as well as a deadly fire energy. She’d been banished to her ugly black castle in The Enchanted Forest by the Magical Universe, whose bidding had been done by the Société of Dire Magic.

Dacara wasn’t supposed to be able to leave the forest. But she’d recently found a loophole in the form of a sweet time-and-space-traveling tortoise named Tildy.

My friends and I had nearly died keeping her from tortoise-napping the sweet magical dinosaur to escape her prison.

The demonic Desiree deciding to pay the dual sorceress a visit was a bad thing. A really bad thing. If the two of them escaped into the world and combined their magics…well…the word apocalypse came to mind.

I blinked. “Wait a minute. Dacara’s castle is spelled so she can’t leave it. Are you telling me Desiree just popped into that castle to see her?”

“We did,” Grym reminded me. I glanced his way. He and Archie had been bent over some star-chart type maps they’d spread over the table─the table that had been in three broken pieces when Sebille and I went into the void. Either Hobs had gotten good with tools, or I had a fairy godmother in the store.

I was guessing the former.

When Grym wasn’t correcting me, he and Archie had their heads down and were murmuring softly in between pointing at several black circle things dotting the map.

“We did get in,” I agreed. “After fighting our way through an army of wraiths,” I complained.

Archie’s head came up. His eyes, the same shade of blue as mine, were underscored by purple arcs of weariness. “We might be able to skip the wraiths this time,” he said, his brows lowering into an expression filled with concern.

I perked up. “How?”

Archie poked a long finger at one of the black circles on the map. “Altas Magnanimus. Alt-Mag for short.”

“Altas Whatsus?” I asked.

“It’s a rare kind of void,” Grym told us, looking excited. “Archie says it comes around once in a millennium.”

Archie nodded. “Yes. Rare indeed. And as unpredictably dangerous as a female bear with young ones.” The twin lines between his brows deepened. “But, if I can control it, we can bypass the trek to the castle, the deadlier aspects of the forest, and the wraiths.”

“If?” Sebille asked, arcing a red brow.

He nodded thoughtfully. “Alt-Mag is a scientific oddity. There are no other voids like it in the Universe. In fact, some in the void scientific community have argued that it’s not really a void.”

“There’s a void scientific community?” I asked, totally missing the larger point as I had a tendency to do.

Archie ignored my question, proving it wasn’t important.

I did a mental shrug. “What is it then?”

“If you buy into the train of thought that it’s not genus voidis, then the logical conclusion is that it’s an anomaly.” When he saw the dual blank looks Sebille and I were sending him, he shook his head. “The Universe is constantly shifting and twisting. The action pinches some things and expands others, creating an area that’s prone to gathering magical detritus, if you will.”

Our blank expressions deepened.

He sighed. “Think of it as a magical gas bubble.”

I blinked. “The Universe has gas?”

“Once in a millennia, yes,” Archie agreed.

“But does that mean it’s in danger of popping?” Sebille asked.

Archie sighed. “Ay, there’s the rub.”

Aaaannnnnddd he was quoting Shakespeare.

It was as if England was reaching out through one of his voids and sucking him back.

“Stay with us, professor,” I teased. “Tell us why this Alt-gasbag does us any good.”

He blinked. “Oh, yes. Well, it can carry us right to the castle like a taxi, can’t it?”

“I don’t know. Can it?” Sebille asked.

“It can.” With the affirmation, Archie seemed resolved. “I can do this. It should be just like driving any void.”

I hated to pop his proverbial confidence bubble, but… “I seem to remember, when we were in the age of dinosaurs, that ‘driving’ the voids home was going to take years or more.”

“Well, yes, Naida,” he said, clearly offended. “But that was through thousands of years. This is a simple spatial shift. And the bubble should be somewhere in the forest already.”

“Piece of cake then,” I said.

Sebille rolled her eyes.

Grym’s phone rang. “I need to get this,” he told us after glancing at the ID. He wandered away from us talking on his cell.

“Okay,” I said. “We just need to go to the forest, find this gas bubble, and ride it to the castle?”

“Praying it doesn’t pop,” Sebille added with a grimace.

Archie bobbed his head back and forth. “Yes, and no. That’s far too simplistic a portrayal of what needs to happen.”

“Then ’splain it to us,” I said. “I have a feeling we’re running out of time.”

For the first time since I’d known him, my uncle seemed short on words. His lips moved a few times and then slammed together, his gaze lowering to the small circle on the map.

“Spill it, Pudsy,” Sebille demanded.

Archie shook his head. “I need to speak with Professor Osvald.”

Sebille and I shared a surprised look. Neither of us had apparently seen that one coming. “The book head?” Sebille asked. “Why?”

Archie tipped his head. “Did Osvald ever explain to you how he got locked inside his books?”

“Mostly he just ducks and runs when he sees us,” Sebille said.

I winced. She wasn’t wrong. “He might have mentioned a curse or something.”

“Osvald was ‘riding’ Alt-Mag as you