Page 8 of Wind with a Chance of Wolfsbane

She touched hers. “Then you can have mine.”

I shook my head. “No.”

Her blue eyes held nothing but compassion for me. “Willa, it’s no biggie. I’m not as attached to mine.”

It was a huge deal, and she knew it. Plus, shewasattached to it.

Mina had a tough exterior. She’d been born with it, but it had gone to new levels when our parents had been murdered. I was one of the only people she let her guard down with. She pushed her dark hair back from her face and stuck out her tongue. “Look faster, or Helen will pop a blood vessel or something.”

I chuckled lightly as I resumed my search.

“Hey, let’s be sure we leave the van unlocked,” said Mina, making me laugh more. “Maybe we could put a sign on it that tells people to go ahead and steal it.”

“No one would want it,” I returned, making her laugh. “It smells like cigarettes and cheap beer."

“Funny enough, so does Lester,” she added.

Chuckling, I caught sight of something shiny tucked back under the seat. Excited, I reached for it, but my excitement wore off quickly when my fingers skimmed over the item. I pulled it out from under the seat.

“Did you find it?” asked Mina.

I stared down at the silver coin in my hand and shook my head. “What’s this?”

Mina leaned over the seat to get a better look at it. “Money?”

“No, look harder,” I said, pointing to the emblem embossed on it. “That’s the Murray family crest.”

“Our family is so weird and yet oddly cool,” she added. “We have our own money. Wonder if it’s worth anything.”

The beat-up white van drove by again, this time faster than before. There were a ton of open parking spaces. It could have picked any number of them. The fact that it was still circling the lot was certainly strange. Since it didn’t stop near us, I let it slide.

Sighing, I put the coin into the front pouch of my small backpack. “Mina, I don’t think the necklace is in…”

She leaped over the seat and right at me, slamming into me and knocking me to the side and nearly out of the van.

“Hey!” I shouted, righting myself.

She scrambled to her knees. “Look!”

I did.

Mina was holding my necklace up with a huge smile on her face. “Found it.”

I tackled her, squeezing her tightly before taking it from her. I went to put it on, only to realize the clasp was broken. “The clasp is hosed.”

“We can fix it on the plane,” she said. “We’ll have plenty of time. Let’s go.”

We exited the van, and I found my suitcase wide open on the ground of the parking lot. Everything had been carefully folded and packed neatly. Now, it looked like a cyclone had hit it.

Mina cringed. “Sorry. I wanted to be sure I didn’t miss it anywhere if it was in there.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said, opening my backpack. I pulled out the well-loved and well-read copy of Bram Stoker’sDraculathat I carried with me everywhere. It was a worn copy that I’d had since I was little. It was an early printing, and I knew it had worth from that alone. But it was impossible to put a monetary value on it because it had been given to me by our father when I was young. Since he’d passed, I was rarely found without it. In addition to being an early edition, it was filled to the brim with notes in the margin. Ones written in tiny, perfect letters.

I’d read the notes so many times that I could recite them by heart.

I opened it and carefully laid the necklace between the pages like a bookmark.

Mina watched the action closely, peering into my backpack. She side-eyed my book. “I can’t believe you dragged that ratty thing with us here.”

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