“What’s wrong with you, Dour Dana?”

I started arranging the books atop the table in a happy display of pink and red hearts, my lips curling. “Not a thing, Valentina. Why are you so blasted happy?”

Sebille shrugged, her thin lips curving in an irrepressible smile. “Nothing. I just like Valentine’s Day.”

I looked agape at my usually morose and unhelpful assistant. “Why? You realize it’s a totally made-up holiday, right? It’s a retail holiday, created just for selling stuff.”

“Apparently you haven’t noticed this is a retail establishment?”

I slammed a paperback down on the table with excessive force.

Sebille came over, a half-eaten cookie in her hand and vanilla crumbs painting the corners of her lips. “Still no word from Grym, huh?”

I grimaced and didn’t respond. My fight with the prickly detective was not a subject I wanted to discuss.

With anyone.

Sebille nodded. “Okay, don’t tell me. I’ll just guess.”

Realizing that letting the sprite’s imagination run wild over the bumps in the road of my love life was a recipe for disaster, I sighed. “He’s about as malleable as a…” The thought slid away from my brain and turned to mist. I’d been having trouble holding a cogent thought all day. I blamed the copious amounts of sugar I’d eaten. I’d gorged on two heart-shaped jelly donuts for breakfast, a heart-shaped red velvet cupcake for lunch, two tins of heart-shaped candy, and three of the sugar cookies.

I was mood eating. And, I was in dire need of some of the stalky inspiration from Pudsy’s cozy. Or anything even remotely resembling a vegetable.

“As malleable as a boulder?” Sebille finished for me, snickering. “Granite?” Her snickers turned to guffaws. “A mountain?” She bent double, happy tears pouring from her iridescent green gaze.

I was not amused. “Gargoyle humor. Har,” I said, glaring. 

The dividing door opened between the bookstore and the artifact library at the back of the store. A blur of pale pink and white shot into the store and skidded to a stop right in front of me. For a blip, the air around the creature looking up at me with oversized blue eyes was striped with cartoon-like contrails from his superfast arrival. Then the glowy lines on the air sifted away into nothingness.

I narrowed my gaze on Hobs, my resident hobgoblin. “Are you wearing a diaper?”

He laughed, happily bouncing on his oversized toes. “Miss Sebille made it for me. Do you like it?”

My still-narrowed gaze slid to the matching, heart-shaped spots of pale red highlighting his cheeks and then to the tiny bow in his hand. “Please tell me you’re not supposed to be playing Cupid?”

Hobs cocked his head, looking confused. “I’m not supposed to be playing Cupid?” His high-pitched voice was filled with a question.

I sighed and threw a glower Sebille’s way.

“What?” she objected. “Customers will love him.”

My eyes went wide. “We can’t…”

The dividing door slammed back on its hinges and Mr. Wicked skulked through, his dark orange gaze wide as he hit my calf with a manic, “Yeow!”

“Hey, buddy,” I said, bending to scoop him into my arms. I buried my face in his fur and sucked a snout full of something small and irritating.

Sneezing violently several times, I nearly dropped my cat. I sniffled, glancing at my hands. They sparkled. “What is in your fur?” I asked him.

Wicked swished his tail. Hard. A tiny growl slid from his throat.

He was all sparkly. Pink sparkly! “Sebille!”

She rolled her eyes. “Uncoil your granny panties,” she said. “He’s fine.”

I sneezed again, placing him on the floor. “You’re killing me with this Valentine’s stuff. What other surprises do you have for me?”

She flipped a dismissive hand. “I’ll make tea. Maybe that will calm you down.”

“Ribbit!”

I looked down at the fat, green squish on the floor by my feet.

He blinked up at me, his eyes blank pools of black, like miniature Pudsy voids.

Horror slid up my spine. “What…?”

Get it off me! screamed the irate frog in my mind. Now!

Enormous pink lips protruded from the frog’s sparkly green face. “Oh, Slimy,” I said in a commiserating tone. “I can’t believe she did this to you.” I crouched down and tugged at the lips, expecting them to be made of paper or wax. Instead, realistic-feeling flesh, plumped and puckered, resisted my tugging. I jerked my hand away, straightening on a squeal. “They’re real!” I rounded on the Sprite, who quickly turned away from me when I tried to catch her eye. “I can’t believe you gave him puckery lips! Have you lost your mind?”

She hid a grin behind her hand. “Don’t you get the joke? Kiss the frog, get a prince? Come on,” she said as steam wafted from my ears. “Customers are going to love it.”

“Ribbit!” Slimy proclaimed indignantly.

I pointed a shaky finger toward the quivering frog. “Fix. Him.”

Sebille gave me a long-suffering sigh and threw a pale green jet of magic toward the frog. The big, puckery lips disappeared with a pop.

Slimy gave the sprite one last indignant, “Ribbit!” and then hopped underneath the nearest bookshelf to work on regaining his self-respect.

“You’ve lost your mind, sprite,” I told her, madder than I’d ever been. Well…in the last week anyway. “What’s going on with you?”

Amazingly, she gave me a secret smile and headed for the door. “I’m taking my break.”

I felt my eyes go wide. “What? You can’t take a break. You just got here.”

She shrugged and slipped through the door, leaving me with one delighted Cupid who I couldn’t let anybody see, a traumatized frog, and a seriously annoyed cat.

I sagged. Could the day get any worse?

Proving that it could, the front door bell jangled and I steeled myself for more shrieking Ben E. Nigma fans. Instead, I found myself looking into a handsome, craggy face and an intense dark caramel gaze. “Oh,” I said, my wit firmly intact.

“Hello, Naida,” said Detective Wise Grym, a.k.a. my maybe-boyfriend.