Thirty plus senior citizens ambling into my pawnshop meant that I had no time for family drama. The Golden Years Swamp Tours bus stopped by a few times a week on its way to take the nation’s grandparents on alligator-viewing expeditions. The day trips were very popular, and we had a deal with the owner/driver/operator to bring the passengers to Dead End Pawn to buy everything they never needed to clutter up their retirement homes. The seniors loved getting away from Orlando’s theme parks for a day, we loved selling them things, and Mr. Holby loved the fifty bucks we gave him for each stop, so it was a match made in swamp heaven.
“Okay, I can’t deal with this right now,” I hissed at Aunt Ruby, grabbing the rolling pin out of her hands. “Get out and take her with you. I have customers.”
Aunt Ruby was pleasingly plump, had the pink-and-white complexion of an English rose, and was “only my hairdresser knows for sure” blonde. Right now, she was also breathing fire. If looks could kill, my newly discovered grandmother would be a well-dressed corpse on the freshly mopped floor.
“I am not going anywhere with her,” Leona (I couldn’t quite get grandma to work in my mind) said haughtily.
“Look—”
“Do you know, I think this darling little emerald bracelet would look amazing on you,” Leona said to one of the GYSTers, a sweet looking lady who was hovering over the jewelry counter. “Let me show it to you. Key, Tess?”
Leona held out her hand, and I stood gaping at her. Nobody had ever worked in my shop wearing designer clothes and pearls before.
She tapped her foot. “Key, Tess?”
I handed her the key, still not quite able to form words. Aunt Ruby, not to be outdone by this interloper, smiled so brightly at one of the shoppers that he nearly tripped over his walker. “Have you seen Tess’s selection of pirate coins and Spanish doubloons?”
Jack made his way over to me, threading his way through the shoppers with his characteristic predatory grace. He probably didn’t even realize that people just naturally moved out of his way. Even the most normal, non-magical of humans usually felt a sense of danger when Jack was around. Lizard brain or years of evolution, I was betting.
“You have an interesting family, my friend,” he murmured in my ear, which promptly sent a tingling sensation through my body.
Jack and I had had a moment a couple of months back, mostly fueled by whiskey (him) and danger (me), and it had been hard for me to put him on the mental “just friends” shelf ever since. The fact that I hadn’t had a serious date in ages didn’t help, especially when I was wondering what he’d look like naked.
“She’s not family until proven guilty,” I said automatically, which didn’t even make sense. “Go away. I have treasures to sell.”
He laughed, reached over and gave Fluffy a pat on the head, and left.
I rang up several sales, one of which included the emerald bracelet, oohed and aahed over the identical pictures on identical phones of alligators they’d seen on the swamp tour, and answered questions about the provenance—owner history—of some of the more valuable collectibles.
Then a little bald man wearing his pants so high his belt was tucked under his armpits waved his hand in the air at me. “Miss! Miss! Is this an authentic Wildenhammer?”
I handed a yellow-and-blue Dead End Pawn bag to one of the GYSTers with her purchases neatly wrapped inside and headed to the glass case that held some of our smaller and more precious items. I didn’t even have to look to know what he was talking about, though. The tiny wooden train always sparked exactly that look of reverence on serious collectors’ faces.
“It certainly is,” I told him. “Would you like to see it?”
It wasn’t actually for sale, though. Well, it was, but the people who came through my pawnshop weren’t usually the type to fork over big bucks for wooden toys. Collectors snapped up larger Wildenhammers for several thousand dollars on the auction sites the minute any appeared.
“Oh, could I?” He clasped his hands in front of his ample belly and beamed at me. “I have several pieces at home.”
Several pieces? I automatically looked at his watch and shoes, one of the ways Jeremiah had taught me to assess a person’s potential to buy. His puke-green flip-flops told me nothing, but the Patek Philippe watch all but flashed strobe lights at me. (Not that I’m mercenary, exactly, but a girl’s gotta make a living, right?)
I unlocked the case, pulled out the wooden caboose, and carefully placed it on the counter, and then both of us proceeded to stare at it and wait for it to do something.
This is not as stupid as it might sound. Wildenhammer toys were magical, because their creator was a forest Fae. A tiny wooden ballerina that Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike had given me one Christmas still graced my bedroom dresser, and—every once in a great while—she would dance for me.
“He’s a resident of Dead End, you know,” I confided. “His son went to school with me.”
This wasn’t telling tales. Each of Felix Wildenhammer’s magical toys was shipped out of the Dead End post office. We’d even had a few ardent collectors show up in town, hoping to find their idol. But Dead Enders kept each other’s secrets, and nobody had ever given away the location of Mr. W’s converted barn that served as his home and workshop. We used to go on school field trips to see the toys in December, but he’d quit allowing that several years back.
“I know,” the man said. “I can’t believe you have one of his pieces in—no offense, miss—a pawnshop.”
I stifled a sigh. “None taken. A customer inherited this train, but it didn’t fit in with her modern steel-and-glass decorating, so she sold it to me.”
I’d paid far too much for it, too. But it had been one of my first purchases after I’d learned that Jeremiah had willed the pawnshop to me, and I’d been operating in a haze of grief and guilt. I definitely hadn’t budgeted for the extra twelve hundred dollars I’d given the woman for the little train, but I consoled myself with the thought that one day the right collector would come along.
Maybe today, even.
My customer bit his lip and squinted at me. “May I touch it?”
“Sure. You can pick it up and examine it. I know a collector like you will be careful with it.”
Holding his breath, the little man gently lifted the train and examined it from all angles. Then, apparently realizing that his look of awe wasn’t going to help him with negotiations, he reluctantly put it back on the counter and put his hands behind his back. I let him think about it for a minute, saying nothing, because most people can’t stand silence and will rush in with an offer to kick start the haggling.
“I can’t go higher than twelve,” he finally said, and this time I let the sigh loose.
“I’m sorry, sir, but twelve is what I paid for it. I have to have something for overhead and at least a small profit,” I said, reaching for the train as if I were going to put it away.
“Wait! Um, fifteen,” he said, leaning forward, his muscles straining toward the little train.
I tried not to smile. “I was really hoping for seventeen.”
“Sixteen,” he countered.
“Done,” I said. Sixteen hundred dollars was fair, and clearly this man would cherish the piece. That meant a lot to me, even though it wasn’t very businesslike.
He held out his hand, practically bouncing with joy. “Thank you, young lady. I’ll have the money wired to you this afternoon, and I’ll be back for my train in the morning, if that’s acceptable.”
“Wired?” I blinked at his hand, always hating this awkward moment. “I’m sorry. I don’t shake hands. I have this weird germ phobia. We take cash and credit cards, Mister….”
He gave me a funny look, but for once it didn’t seem to be about my refusal to shake hands. “Oglethorpe. And I’m not in the habit of carrying sixteen thousand dollars’ worth of cash around with me. I suppose I can put it on my card. Do you take Visa?”
My knees went wobbly, and I forgot how to breathe for a second. “Sixteen thousand dollars?”
Mr. Oglethorpe’s eyes narrowed, and I realized he was shrewder than I’d thought. “You meant sixteen hundred?”
Greed (buy a car, since the giant alligator had totaled mine, pay some bills, have more than fifty-nine dollars in savings) warred with conscience (I could not defraud a customer, I could not defraud a customer, I could not defraud a customer), and conscience won out.
Damn conscience.
I sighed. “Yes, I meant sixteen hundred. Mr. Oglethorpe, as much as I’d love to take your money, the train isn’t worth that.”
Leona walked up to us, from where she’d been ushering the last of the GYSTers out the door. “Take his money, darling. Men come and go, but money is forever.”
Aunt Ruby glared at my new grandmother. “We raised Tess to be honest and fair, and she’s a credit to our family.”
I clutched my head. “Okay, I can handle this without input, thank you both.”
Mr. Oglethorpe’s gaze ping-ponged between the two of them. “Um—”
“Your bus is leaving,” I said, suddenly hearing the grinding of gears from the parking lot.
“My bus?” He looked puzzled. “Miss—”
“Callahan,” Aunt Ruby said with satisfaction, probably because she shared the last name. Uncle Mike was my missing father’s older brother. Which reminded me, where was he? He should have at least been here for moral support.
“Miss Callahan, I drove here in my car, specifically to see if you had any Wildenhammers in your shop,” he said, waving his hand in the general direction of my parking lot. “And as much as the retired CEO and business shark inside me is telling me to take advantage of your lack of knowledge, the human side of me is impressed by your honesty and unwillingness to do the same to me. So, let me explain.”
He pointed at the train, as if to ask for permission, and I nodded.
“Do you see this tiny fleur-de-lis on the bottom?”
We all crowded together to look at the spot he indicated.
“This means that it’s a one-of-a-kind piece that Felix Wildenhammer made early in his career as a toymaker, before he started creating multiples of the same piece. You could probably get twenty thousand dollars at auction for it.”
I sucked in a breath. “Twenty thousand…holy cow.”
“Then give her twenty thousand,” Leona demanded.
I shook my head and answered her before he could. “At auction doesn’t mean cash in hand. It means an auction house takes a hefty commission out of whatever they manage to sell it for. And we wouldn’t even know about this if Mr. Oglethorpe hadn’t told us.”
I felt like an idiot not knowing such a basic thing about Mr. Wildenhammer, who was practically my neighbor, but the hard truth about the pawn business was that we couldn’t be experts on everything. We read a lot, used online sites to double-check, and we did the best we could.
Aunt Ruby read the expression on my face. “I didn’t know either, Tess, so don’t beat yourself up. I don’t think this flower thing is common knowledge.”
“I didn’t know, either,” Leona said, smiling at me.
I smiled back, because, why not? A new grandmother and a sixteen-thousand-dollar sale all in one day. What was next? A unicorn? Bring it.
“No,” Oglethorpe said. “It’s actually a fairly recent revelation, but we have a collector’s site on the Darken.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “What’s the Darken?”
Next to me, Leona cleared her throat. “Now that one, I do know. It’s the hidden internet for magic users. It’s quite benign, in spite of its ominous label.”
Mr. Oglethorpe shook his head. “Not entirely, ma’am. There are places hidden there that truly merit the name.”
“This is fascinating, but back to the train,” said Aunt Ruby.
I agreed with her. Special websites didn’t interest me nearly as much as sixteen thousand dollar sales.
Except…
“I can’t take that much from you,” I said. “I bought it for twelve, as I said. Twelve hundred.”
“Doesn’t a good deal like that make up for the losses you take sometimes?” Aunt Ruby gave me her innocent face, which I didn’t believe for a second.
“Well…”
Mr. Oglethorpe grinned. “How about we settle on the twelve I originally offered? For me, it will be a steal, for you it will be a windfall, and we’ll all go away happy.”
I wavered. That was so much money. More than I’d ever sold anything in the shop for, before. “Can I throw in a dream catcher that almost certainly has a nightmare trapped in it?”
He shuddered. “Certainly not.”
The little caboose picked that time to let out a shrill whistle and roll across the counter to Mr. Oglethorpe, whose bald head turned pink with excitement.
“So I guess you have a deal,” I said, helpless to contain the enormous smile spreading across my face. Even after taxes and overhead, it was a hefty profit.
Aunt Ruby could barely contain herself, but she managed to keep quiet until the paperwork was complete, the wire transfer was done (Mr. Oglethorpe decided he couldn’t wait), and my deliriously happy customer left cradling the train like it was a baby. When the door closed behind him, she whirled to me and gave me a huge hug.
“What a great sale, Tess,” she said. “You can quit driving our worn-out farm truck and get a car!”
Leona, shot Aunt Ruby a narrow look. “I don’t understand why you didn’t just buy the girl a car, but Grandmother is here now, darling,” she told me, and then, before I could stop her, she hugged me, too.
That’s when I started screaming.
I saw at least ten people die before the world—and my pawnshop—went black.