Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) (3 page)

I took a deep breath and tried to think about Grundleshanks and what a special toad he was.

“No,” I said, in my most serious tone of voice. “I’ve never heard of toads spontaneously exploding.”

I tried to look over his shoulder at the phone screen, but my eyes were still light-sensitive.

Gus noticed and darkened the screen for me. “Toad liver is a delicacy for crows in Hamburg, Germany.”

“I know where Hamburg is.”

“Of course you do.” Gus said, patting me on the arm.

I rolled my eyes and felt a stab of pain. I really needed to stop doing that, before my eyes got stuck in that position.

“Wouldn’t it be a delicacy for crows everywhere?” I asked.

“You would think. But I haven’t heard of anything like this happening in the U.S. Maybe German crows have a more advanced palate.
Anyway
. The birds figured out how to get livers out of living toads.”

“Wait. Living toads? As in
alive
toads?” I asked, trying to catch up.

“Is your brain ticking along two beats slower than normal?” Gus looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “Generally, yes. That is what living means. I have yet to run into it as a synonym for dead. Alive, living, non-dead. Undead. Hey! The crows created an army of undead toads!”

“That’s just… gross.”

“Gross and cool. Oh, hold up. You’re going to love this,” he said, and continued reading. “In retaliation, the toads would swell up to three times their size and explode, spewing their innards up to one meter.”

“Ewwww! That’s disgusting.”

“What’s even freakier is the toads were still alive after exploding.”

“Are you kidding me?!” I screeched. “That’s not even possible. They were alive after getting their livers plucked out?”

“Apparently.”

“And then they were still alive after their innards exploded?”

“That’s what it says.”

“For how long?!” I asked, fascinated in spite of myself.

“All it says is
a short time
.” Gus replied.

“That’s just… insane. Freaky. Freakily insane. Attack of the Zombie Toads.”

Gus kept reading from the tiny screen. “A thousand toads exploded over three days.”

“Holy crap. And then it just stopped? That can’t possibly be right. No way can anything still be alive after having their livers plucked out and their innards exploded.”

Gus grinned. “Demon Crows vs. Zombie Toads. It’s an Otherworldly Smack-Down. There’s no other explanation. Crows and toads are both messengers of the underworld. There had to be something supernatural at work. Besides, if birds suddenly developed the ability to pluck their favorite yummies out of living creatures, with surgical precision, why would they stop?”

“Maybe they ran out of toads?” I said, guessing. “Or they got tired of being drenched in toad entrails?”

Gus shook his head. “We’re not talking normal toads and crows here. We’re talking demonic. Or Daimonic. What if it was Voodoo? Voodoo practitioners can create all sorts of unnatural phenomena.”

I shuddered. I had experienced some of that kind of power first-hand recently, thanks to Mama Lua and her zombie powder.

I suddenly got a mental flash of Gus, terrified, ducking, his hands trying to protect his face, as a giant black bird came barreling at him. I shook my head to clear the image out and tried to replace it with a visual of happy Gus, walking through a field of flowers, on a sunny day.

Gus rubbed his hands with glee and raised his eyebrows. “Or… what if toads and crows are just a front? What if the words are code for something else? Like Templars and Crusaders? Hey, maybe we can—”

“—Stop right there,” I said. I knew where this was going. “I don’t care how bizarre it is, or how Voodoo-ish, or what they actually mean by toads and crows. I am not getting on a plane to Germany to go check it out. You'll just have to let this one be.”

Gus shrugged. “If it happened once, there’s a good chance it'll happen again. Just in case…” he pointed at me. “Keep one eye on the skies, and one hand over your liver.”

I looked down at myself and tried to figure out where exactly my liver was… 

Just in case.

Chapter 4

T
he next morning, I was startled out of a sound sleep by a subsonic
boom.
I felt it, more than heard it. Like my body was a drum skin, stretched taut over a kettledrum, and someone had struck a warning thud.

My heart raced. My mind tried to swim through its morning fog. Where had I felt that sensation before?

The house wards.

I jumped out of bed and raced downstairs, the Dobies at my heels. My cottage was known for having a magickally proactive defense system, with a history of having turned at least one would-be arsonist into a rowan tree. There was no telling what the wards would do if they were triggered.

*     *     *

I tore open the front door and was practically knocked over by the wind chill. My eyes teared up from the cold and I tightened my robe around me.

There was a large box on the front porch.

That would explain the wards going off. Someone must have thrown the box on the porch, instead of gently placing it.

I looked around, trying to spot a hapless delivery person sprawled out on a bush, or an additional piece of shrubbery that hadn’t been there before, but everything looked normal.

There was a
Sunset Farms
logo on one side of the box. This must be the organic fruit and veggie bi-weekly delivery Gus had ordered while he was in Chicago.

I made a face. When I tried to talk him into an all-fruit box, Gus accused me of being a sugar junkie and lectured me about fruit addiction. 

I picked it up and carried it into the kitchen, trying not to trip over the Dobie menaces who, for some unknown reason, were feeling compelled to do figure eights around my feet.

After I started a pot of decaf coffee brewing, I fed the Dobes, put winter sweaters, hats and doggy booties on them, and let them out into the run Gus had built for them before he left for Chicago, so they could play. Gus would be laughing his ass off when he saw their wardrobe, but it was ridiculously cold outside.

How did people deal with this kind of cold year after year? I’d only been dealing with it since Samhain, and the novelty had definitely worn off. If I could pick up the cottage and grounds, and move them to Los Angeles, I’d be on the first plane back to sunny California.

I tossed a starter log into the fireplace and lit it. Once the flames were merrily crackling away, I went upstairs to check on Gus and tell him his delivery had arrived. But he wasn’t in his room.

I looked around, surprised. I couldn’t imagine where he would have gone so early. Gus was a big believer in getting his beauty sleep. I quickly searched the rest of the house, but he was nowhere to be found.

I started feeling anxious. I know he’s a grown man, but I’m a worrywart and this was Gus we were talking about after all. If anyone could figure out a way to get into trouble, it would be him. So I went to my bedroom, sat on the carpet in front of my altar, and did a quick check of the web using my sixth sense.

*     *     *

It took me awhile to locate Gus. For me, Gus was usually a gold light on a glimmering green/gold string. Today, his light was partially hidden by a dark cloud. It didn’t feel immediately menacing, but that cloud worried me. I’d never seen anything like it before. I tried to poke at it, but my attempts were completely blocked.

The alarm on my clock/radio went off, shooting me back to reality with a nasty screech. I stood up and half ran, half hopped over to the nightstand, my right foot all pins and needles from being under my body.

I slapped at the alarm to turn it off, but—like most electronics—it totally defied me. Every time I turned it off, it would turn itself back on. Finally, I gave up and pulled the plug out of the wall.

Great. Gus was being stalked by something that looked like it was out of the Abyss, my concentration was shot, and according to the alarm, it was time to get ready for my breakfast date with Paul.

I sent up a prayer to the Goddess to watch over Gus, then quickly showered and dressed in my best
hide-the-baby-bump
fashion.

*     *     *

I don’t know how I managed it, but I was actually ready to go twenty minutes before I needed to leave. So I stopped in the kitchen, poured myself a cup of decaf and unpacked the box. Of course, the good stuff—oranges, plums, apples—were at the bottom. I had to dig through all the veggies first.

Fennel bulb after fennel bulb. How much fennel can two people eat? And since when did fennel become a vegetable? I always thought it was an herb.

Green peppers.

A head of lettuce.

A bunch of weird-looking green stuff—I checked the invoice, and it was kale.

Small oblong heads of endive.

Human head.

I dropped the head and screamed. From the floor, Gus’s face looked up at me.

“
Help me
,” it said.

I screamed again.

Chapter 5

G
us slammed through the back door.

“Why does your cottage have to be this far north?” He grumbled.

I looked at him, shocked. “What…?”

“In its next life, I expect it to reincarnate itself south of the equator. Brazil would be nice.”

I looked down at the floor, where a head of cabbage rolled against my feet.

Cabbage?

I looked back up at Gus.

“I’ll have a talk with the Daimon of the cottage,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I’m sure, by its next lifetime, it’ll be ready for a warmer climate.”

I hadn’t thought about it before, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the cottage did actually have a resident Daimon.

“Thank you.” Gus replied.

I nodded and looked back down at the head by my feet.

Still cabbage.

I picked it up and put it on the counter.

What the hell just happened?

“Hey! My delivery is here.” Gus said.

I turned to Gus, uneasy. “Gus, what are you up to?”

He looked at me, blankly. “Trying to give you a balanced diet? You can thank me at any point. I’m sure the baby will appreciate it.”

I narrowed my eyes at him and concentrated. He had one hand on the counter, and the other behind his back. “What are you hiding? I don’t think it’s a grapefruit.”

He gave me a sheepish grin.

“Seriously.” I said. “What are you up to? There’s some massively dark energy around you and it’s freaking me out a little.”

Gus reluctantly held up a perfectly preserved Grundleshanks, encased in a clear brick of ice. “Necromancers-R-Us. Care to dance with the dead?” he said, waving Grundleshanks at me.

I yelped and jumped back as a drop of melting ice water hit my arm.

“Knock it off,” I batted Gus’s arm away. “Put him in the sink before he drips on the floor.”

Instead, he thrust Grundleshanks closer to my face and, doing his best Al Pacino impersonation, said: “Say hello to my little friend.”

As the smell of decomposing toad and melting ice hit my nose, I felt my stomach turn and heave. I barely made it to the kitchen sink in time.

Gus sighed. “Seriously, is it too much to ask for you to be a little less disgusting? All this vomiting is making me queasy.”

“You’re standing in my kitchen, waving a dead body at me, and I’m making
you
queasy?” I said, running water down the garbage disposal side of the sink to clear it out.

“There is no possible way you can smell him. You can barely see him. He’s an amphibian Han Solo, dipped in watery carbonite. Look at him. I’m never going to get this ritual done.”

I ignored the toad and rinsed out my mouth. When I looked down, I noticed I was going to have to change my clothes.

“Crap. This is my nicest shirt. Now what am I going to wear?”

“It’s not my fault.” Gus said, defensively. “You can’t blame me if being pregnant has turned you into Super-Smeller Girl. I wouldn’t have brought Grundleshanks in if he was decomposing and stinky to
normal
noses.”

“Sure you would have.” I scrubbed at the stains with water and dish soap, but I only succeeded in making the shirt slimy and sudsy.

He thought about it for a bit and nodded. “You’re probably right. A boy’s got to get his kicks somehow. If you’re done, move over so I can thaw him out.”

“No way! You are not using the sink!”

“Why not? You do disgusting things in the sink.”

“
I
have morning sickness. I’m not playing animal coroner. Forget about it.”

Gus looked around, frustrated, his gaze landing on the microwave.

“No!” I hollered. “New house rule.
No Dead Animals in Any of the Kitchen Appliances
.”

“Oh, relax. Just on defrost. Just for a few seconds. I’ll even wrap him in a paper towel and put him in a ziplock bag.”

“I will scalp you in your sleep.” I said, glaring at him.

“Well, that’s not very generous. Whatever happened to ‘love thy roommate as thyself’? Isn’t ‘thy shalt not be selfish’ one of the commandments, Miss EpiscoPagan?”

“You know what your problem is? You are incapable of sharing a kitchen with normal people. Maybe your next boyfriend should be a vet—or a coroner.”

“I’m sharing just fine, missy. You’re the one having the hissy fit.”

“Whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes. Then I winced. I really needed to stop doing that. It kinda hurt.

“Some days I wonder if you even remember you’re a witch. If you’re going to be pissy and possessive about the kitchen, you should put a personal fridge and small microwave on my list of approved Yule gifts for Gus.”

I took my hand off my eyes and glared at him. “How many brain cells did you kill in Chicago? If burying makes bones fragile, what do you think microwaving’s gonna do to them?”

Gus finally gave in. “Fine. With the way things work in here, he’ll probably explode anyway, and we’ll have toad guts all over the place.”

Oh no!
My stomach started heaving at the thought. I quickly squeezed down on an acupressure point on my wrist that was supposed to control nausea.