Page 41 of More Than Meets the Eye

After that, he’d thought she’d finally gotten the message.

Apparently not.

He’d found a picture of her on social media and shown it to me, and I confirmed she was the person who’d threatened me. I’d also remembered that the words she’d used were the same as Jack’s caller used:

Don’t make me warn you again.

Sure, many people said things like that, but this seemed like too big a coincidence to ignore. Reynolds immediately called his wife and then his deputies to warn them.

Jack called Susan and told her.

Then Reynolds and his pack took off back into the woods to see if they could track Kay down.Literallytrack her—wolves’ senses of smell were very keen.

We hadn’t waited for the results, just headed home, dropping Carlos at his car first.

“Thanks for the help,” I’d told my vampire friend. “That woman left me feeling pretty shaky.”

“See? ‘Hey, Carlos’ was a perfectly good signal.” He’d grinned, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight, and then he’d climbed into his car and headed home, with us following.

After a night of restless sleep, we woke up to a bright, sunny Monday morning and a full week of work ahead, which made me happy.

My days off wererough.

Today, I happily rang up customers, took a fewnon-magical items in pawn, cleaned counters and shelves, and lived the ordinary life I imagined a normal pawnshop owner who didn’t live in Dead End might live.

Bliss!

The tourists on the weekly Golden Years Swamp Tours bus bought a lot, too, which was good for the bottom line. Not that I might need to worry so much about the bottom line if what Jack said about the Fae gold was correct.

I added “get Fae gold value” to “find out about magic mirror” on my to-do list and then shot a text to Phin.

Any luck?

He didn’t answer right away, which I hoped meant he was hard at work figuring out how to help Horatio.

An unusually high number of Dead End residents stopped in, but they didn’t buy much, just gave me weird smiles and said odd things, like “Oh, you’re still here?”

They must have heard about the dead guy in my garage.

I kept smiling and saying yes, I was still here. As it got close to lunchtime, the traffic slowed. Just when I was thinking about what to eat, the chimes rang, and the doorway darkened with the unmistakable bulk of Rooster Jenkins.

I’d known Rooster since I was a little girl, when he’d seemed to be the size of an actual mountain to me. He was in his late sixties now and had to weigh over four hundred pounds, but he carried it well on his nearly seven-feet-tall frame.

“Rooster! No more goats to pawn, I hope?” He was the one and only customer from whom I’d ever agreed to take a live animal, and I didn’t plan to repeat the experience soon.

I never got the stains out of those shoes.

He held up a bag. “Nope. Brought you lunch, though. Meat loaf sandwiches from Lauren’s Deli. One for you, three for me, and another six in case that man of yours is around.”

Rooster had been fascinated to meet somebody who could eat more than he could at one sitting. After Jack and I had saved him from being falsely accused of murder, he dropped by occasionally to say hi and bring lunch.

“I’m always glad to see you, and you don’t need to bring food. Just your own lovely self,” I told him, as I always did.

He grinned at me. “Sure. But I’m even lovelier when I bring meat loaf sandwiches.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

I locked the door and put theAT LUNCH, BACK IN 30 MINUTESsign up, and then Rooster and I headed into my back room to eat and chat.

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