Page 5 of More Than Meets the Eye

“Okay.” Tess walked behind the counter and pointed to the glass top. “Please put it here, and let’s see what we’ve got.”

What we had was an ornate antique mirror that looked like a prop out of a fairy tale movie.

“That’s beautiful,” Tess breathed, gently touching the gilded frame. “Scots pine with real gold leaf on the wood. Joe Bob, where did you get such a gorgeous piece? This must be more than a hundred years old. Do you see this sparkly patch here?”

Joe Bob and I leaned over to look.

“And the cloudy bit here? That’s from mercury oxidation. Old mirrors were made by layering liquid mercury over a thin layer of tin, which caused a reaction and created the reflective material against the glass. When the mercury oxidizes over the years, it causes this effect.”

“I thought mercury was poisonous. Isn’t that why they don’t put it in thermometers anymore?” I knew I’d heard something about that.

“Yes, definitely. It’s really dangerous. That’s why today mirrors are made using silver or aluminum. The process is fascinating! First, they—” She broke off and looked up at us, a rueful grin on her face. “Sorry. Sometimes, I forget that not everyone is as interested in how old things are made as I am.”

“I think it’s fascinating.” It was true. I did. But it was also true that I found it fascinating when she read recipes out of her cookbook out loud.

You have it bad, Shepherd.

I put a hand in my pocket, just to be sure the stone was still there.

Joe Bob just looked antsy. “Well, okay, I’m sure that’s awesome, but I have to pick Deese up from school soon. Could we maybe talk about whether you want to buy it, and how much you could offer? I need to get Donna a different wedding gift now, and she hinted pretty strongly that she wanted a red leather love seat she saw over at the Pottery Barn in Orlando.”

Dead End was an hour or two from Orlando, depending on traffic, so residents did most of our major shopping there, other than what we could buy at the Super Target not too far down the road. There’d once been an effort to put up an UltraShopMart, but the project leads had been criminals who’d tried to kill me and Deputy Andy Kelly, so the entire town had banded together to shut that down.

Tess tilted her head, a puzzled expression in her beautiful blue eyes. “I’m definitely interested in an antique mirror of this quality, but you mentioned weird magic, right? Are we talking portal to another dimension or something of the ‘mirror, mirror, on the wall’ variety?”

The mirror’s glass surface lit up as if it had been waiting to hear the magic words, and a shadowy face scowled out at us.

This was not a pretty face.

This guy looked like he’d hit the century mark around 1810 and had only grown older and meaner ever since.

And then he started talking, which made everything worse. “Ha! Like I never heardthatbefore! ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall.’ Sooriginal. And not even correct. Do I look like I’m on a wall, Missy? That looks like the ceiling I’m staring up at. I mean, what do I know? I’ve just lived in this mirror forhundreds of years,and?—”

I grabbed a cleaning cloth from beneath the counter and tossed it over the mirror. He kept ranting, and he got louder, but at least we didn’t have to look at him anymore.

Tess, meanwhile, buried her face in her hands. I wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying, but the sounds coming from her weren’t good.

“Tess?” I said.

“Tess?” Joe Bob said.

“Hey, lady! Take this cloth off me right now!” the mirror said.

“Why?” Tess looked at me. “I try to live a good life. I’m a good neighbor. I’m nice to people. Why do these things keep happening to me?”

Joe Bob’s face fell. “Does that mean you won’t buy it?”

The man in the mirror made a wordless screeching sound and then started categorizing Joe Bob’s many failings.

When he got to “brain the size of a walnut,” I whipped the cloth off the mirror and leaned over. “I have a hammer.”

Mirror Dude narrowed his glassy eyes at me. “You wouldn’t dare!”

I slowly grinned, letting him see a lot of teeth. “Wanna bet?”

“Fine.” He made a point of turning his back on us.

“Joe Bob, will you wait here a moment, please?” Tess took my arm. “We need to confer in the back for a second.”

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