I heard the under-oiled brakes on the Golden Years Swamp Tours bus out in the parking lot, right on schedule. The GYST was a very popular day trip for senior citizens in Orlando with their families, who’d had more than enough of the theme parks. There was only so much giant mouse you could take when you were older than twelve.
We had a deal with Mr. Holby, the gregarious tour operator, to swing by after their mornings at the airboat swamp tour place. We paid him fifty dollars every time he brought a bus by, and his passengers got to spend money on things they didn’t need and enjoy the “authentic Florida swamp town pawnshop experience.” And of course we made money. So it was a win-win-win all the way around.
I put on my cheerful face as Eleanor came out from the back room—just a sweet, neighborly woman who’d been securing the Glock she might or might not know how to use—and we prepared for an hour of small talk, brisk sales, and breathless descriptions of the “real, live alligator” they’d all seen from the boats.
“As if we’ve never seen an alligator before,” Eleanor muttered under her breath to me some time later, when she was ringing up a sale of a taxidermied raccoon for a man and his wife who were wearing matching orange-and-green my-eyes-are-bleeding shirts. Given the way they were talking about him, I wouldn’t bet money against the idea that Rocky Raccoon might have a shirt of his own not long after they got home.
Dead End Pawn: Selling you the things you never knew you had to have. (Note to everyone who has to clean out an elderly relative’s house when he or she goes to the nursing home: You’re welcome.)
The GYST people might be a little over the top sometimes, but they were customers, and we served them with politeness and a smile. For a while, we were so busy that I didn’t have time to think about murders, dead bodies, or fascinating tigers who might or might not be in love with intense-looking rebel leaders.
So I almost missed the small voice calling my name.
“Miss Tess? I have some coins. Do you have time for me?”
I looked down, and my heart sank into the vicinity of my stomach. Shelley Adler was Exhibit A as to why Dead End’s having no state or federal regulations, and only minimal law enforcement, wasn’t always a good thing.
“I always have time for you, sweetheart,” I said, smiling.
Shelley was nine years old, but she was so small and thin that she looked maybe seven. Her mother, Melody, had been a single mom, and she’d died in a freak one-car accident on a cloudless night just a few months back. Melody’s parents had been in the car with her, leaving Shelley alone in the world except for the Kowalskis, who were distant cousins.
There was something about Dead End that seemed to churn out more than its fair share of orphans. Jack, me, and now Shelley, three cases in point. I looked down at the girl’s bright blue eyes staring up at me from her pinched, anxious face, and resolved to quit whining, even to myself, about my aunt and uncle’s overprotectiveness.
She was dressed in what looked like shiny new clothes, and I literally meant shiny. The word FIERCE shone out at me in blindingly pink sequins from her shirt, her pants had pockets made of what looked like reflective tape, and her shoes lit up in little flashes of colored light at the heels and toes as she fidgeted back and forth. An unzipped neon green jacket finished off the ensemble. Her entire outfit looked like it had been picked out by a third-rate stripper after one too many tequila shots—it didn’t fit her very well, either—and I’d never seen her dressed like that before. Either the Kowalskis had let her pick out her own clothes at the store, or some guy who’d never had a daughter or a sister had bought them for her. I looked up and, sure enough, there was Walt Kowalski lurking near the door, glowering at me. Olga, being the massively important witch that she was, must have thought that shopping for a child’s clothes was beneath her and sent one of her hulking, loser sons to do it.
The word that came to mind rhymed with witch, but it wasn’t nearly as charitable.
“Hey, sweet girl, how are you? I haven’t seen you for a while.” I bent down and folded her into a hug, closing my eyes and smelling the sweet scent of baby shampoo in her hair. “What do you have for me this time?”
She bent her head while she fumbled in her pocket, and the sight of the crooked part in her light brown hair nearly undid me.
“Two Spanish doubloons,” she crowed, holding them up excitedly. “I’ve never found two together before.”
Shelley had a metal detector and a fierce work ethic. She’d worked out a payment plan with Jeremiah for the metal detector a little over a year ago, when Melody had come in to pawn some jewelry. Shelley had solemnly handed over a dollar a week, until the twenty-five dollars had been paid in full. When Jeremiah had tried to let her off early, telling her she was free and clear, she’d shaken her serious little head.
“No, sir. I still have two dollars to go. I keep track of it in my notebook.”
She’d used the money she’d earned from selling coins, and the occasional other bits and baubles she found, to help out her mom. On a good month, she’d earn at least a hundred dollars. Our deal was always that we paid her twenty dollars per coin upfront, and then we researched the coins by sending them to our expert at the historical society, rather than trying to guess at their value. The next time we saw her, we gave her whichever was highest, the coin’s value as an antique coin, or the value of the gold in it, less a smaller-than-usual percentage for the costs of resale. There’s always been rumors of pirates who hid out in the swamps around Dead End back in the 1700s, and the rumors must have some truth to them, because Shelley kept finding coins.
Once she’d lucked into a coin that had been rare enough that the historian had raved about it in his online forums. Collectors had burned up our phone lines, and the profit from that one coin had bought Shelley’s mom a five-year-old Ford Taurus to drive to work and Shelley the latest American Girl doll, complete with full wardrobe and a tiny, carved bed. She’d shown me pictures of the whole collection, each item carefully circled in the shiny doll catalog, the next time Melody brought her in to sell a coin.
“How is Elizabeth?” I asked her, remembering the doll’s name.
A frown creased her face. “She misses my mom,” she said, barely whispering.
I wanted to hug her again, but the stiffness in her posture warned me not to do it. I’d been where she was now, and sometimes unasked-for hugs had made me want to scream or cry, because sympathy was the worst.
It was hard to be strong when adults were raining “poor baby” all over you.
“Well, let’s take a look at these coins,” I said briskly, while the last of the GYST folks chattered and waved their way out the door.
I examined them carefully, to be sure they were gold, and then nodded. “Looks good. Our usual deal?”
Every time I asked, and every time she agreed, but it was part of our ritual. I counted out two tens, two fives, and ten ones and handed it over, and wrote her a receipt. She signed it with careful block letters MICHELLE ANNE ADLER—always her full name—and I handed over her copy.
“Okay, I’ll send these off to Dr. Parrish, and we’ll settle up next time you—”
Walt Kowalski slammed one meaty fist down on the counter, making me flinch, and pointed a finger at my face with his other hand. “What the hell is that? You cheat little girls now, Callahan? You know those coins are worth more than that.”
Shelley cowered away from him, and I wanted to punch him right in his stupid, belligerent face. Walt had thick lips, an over-sized balding head, and no neck. His brother Hank was a marginally better-looking version of Walt, and it was rare to see one without the other, so I expected Hank to come charging in the shop any minute.
“I’m going to get my gun,” Eleanor announced, and disappeared into the back.
“No guns,” I shouted, feeling like I was rapidly losing control of my shop, my life, and everything else.
“And you! You get your finger out of my face, Walt Kowalski,” I said fiercely. “Or do you have a burning need to find out just exactly how you’re going to die?”
I’d never threatened anyone with my gift before, but if ever there’d been a reason to do it, now seemed like the time. I acted like I was reaching to touch his hand, which I knew neither one of us wanted.
His face turned bright red with rage, but he lowered his hand and backed off a step. “Freak.”
“That’s rich, coming from you,” I shot back. “Not that it’s any of your damned business, but yes, those coins are almost certainly worth more than twenty dollars each. We send them off to get valued, and then we give Shelley the balance of the sale amount.”
Shelley, her shoulders hunched up almost to her ears, swallowed audibly but then spoke up. “It’s true, Mr. Walt. Remember when Mommy bought that car?”
“It’s Uncle Walt,” he snapped at her, before returning his attention to me. “You’d better be ready to turn over that money soon, or you’ll be sorry.”
I’d had enough. More than enough. I came out from behind the counter and got right up in his face. “Don’t you ever threaten me again, you…” I glanced at Shelley and rethought the very satisfying name I’d been about to call him. “You…not-very-nice person.”
He laughed. There was spittle. I wanted to barf.
He loomed over me. “Or what, Red?”
I hated to be called Red, and he knew it. He and Hank had enjoyed tormenting me in school, and calling me Red was just the tip of the iceberg, because they were exactly the type to pick on kids a lot littler than they were. Creeps. Someday, I still intended to wreak my vengeance for the many, many times they’d filled my desk full of toads. (Apparently, living in a house that was practically in the swamp, plus being part of a family of witches, equaled access to a lot of toads.) That, no matter how miserable it had made me at the time, had been kids’ stuff. This was far more ominous.
Walt and Hank had been horrible little boys, and they’d grown up into horrible men. I wanted to take Shelley away from them right this minute, but the sheriff had given Olga his blessing and there wasn’t anything I could do about it until I had proof that they weren’t acting in Shelley’s best interests.
Yes, I’d looked it up.
“Or what?” Walt repeated, leering at me and being very obvious about trying to look down my shirt.
Suddenly, the air in the room changed, and the tiny hairs on my arms stood straight up.
Jack.
“Or I’ll rip your intestines out, tie them around your head, and make you walk down the street like that,” Jack said, in a deep, rough voice that carried so much menace that Walt’s face drained of all color.
I glanced at Shelley, afraid that she’d be terrified by such a graphic description, but she was—shockingly—smiling just a little bit, and the look on her face was as fierce as the word on her shirt. Seemed like Shelley hadn’t turned into quite the timid mouse she was pretending to be, in spite of everything.
Walt slowly turned around, and I backed away, took Shelley’s hand, and pulled her behind the safety of the counter. The last thing I wanted was for her to get in the middle of whatever this was going to be.
Come to think of it, I didn’t want the delicate glass counters or fragile treasures in my shop to be in the middle of it, either. I grabbed the baseball bat that leaned against the corner and walked right in between the two men before anything physical could start happening.
“A couple of things. First, I don’t appreciate being threatened in my own shop.”
“Our own shop,” Jack inserted, and Walt looked confused.
I sent Jack a warning look. “Second, I don’t want any kind of fighting in here.”
Walt clenched his hands into fists and sneered at me. “I don’t really care what you want, Red.”
Jack took a single step forward and roared.
When I say roared, I don’t mean any growl or snarl or little housecat kind of thing. This was a deep, primal, “watch out, puny humans, I will take your head off with one bite” kind of roar. I dropped the bat, because my fingers quit knowing how to work. Behind me, Shelley squeaked. Walt made an odd noise that sounded like he was swallowing his tongue.
Jack pushed his sleeves back, and I noticed that his tanned arms were now very faintly banded with orange and black stripes. He looked at Walt, pinning him in place with his suddenly amber gaze. “Do you know who I am?”
Walt nodded frantically.
“Do you know what I am?”
“Yes. I know,” Walt said, his voice hoarse with fear.
“I will hunt you down and hurt you very badly if you ever even think about setting foot in this shop again,” Jack told him, enunciating each word very clearly. “Nod if you understand me.”
Walt opened his mouth as if to argue, but then he must have reconsidered, because he just nodded.
“Out. Now,” Jack said.
Walt was all but running by the time he hit the door.
“That was awesome,” Shelley said, grinning from ear to ear. “You are the best. Are you a lion?”
Jack crouched down so he was eye level with the girl, and he grinned. “Lion,” he scoffed. “Did you know that we tigers have the largest brains in the cat kingdom?”
“You’re a tiger?” Her eyes got so big and round that she looked like a Japanese manga character. “A real tiger? A shifter, right?”
He nodded. “I am. I’m sorry if I scared you.”
She tossed her head. “Ha. I’m not scared. But you scared stupid Mr. Walt.”
“He deserved it,” Jack said solemnly. “He was threatening Tess.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “Will you show me the tiger?”
I shook my head. “Honey, we don’t just ask shapeshifters to change their form. It can take them a long time and be painful to do that, and it’s kind of personal, and—”
“Stand back, Shelley,” Jack said. He stood up, grinned at me, and transformed in seconds into an enormous tiger, right there in the middle of Dead End Pawn.
And then Eleanor came running back into the room and shot him.