“Okay.” Wondering how much of his own coffee he’d sampled, she picked up her cup and backed away from the counter. “I need to go and…” A wave of the keys filled in the blank.
Kenny beamed, his face pleating into a hundred wrinkles, suddenly looking like one of the apple dolls Auntie Kay entered in the county fair every year. Auntie Kay’s were specific to people in and around Darsden East—
Her two suitcases and her carry-on bag were exactly where she’d left them, resting on a charm scuffed into the sidewalk by the junk shop’s door. She paused, turned to face the street, and frowned. Something felt wrong. Off.
A teenage boy slouched past; baseball cap on backward, dark glasses covering his eyes, jeans nearly falling off nonexistent hips, the tinny sound of Rita McNeil being the wind beneath someone’s wings coming from his earbuds.
An SUV, two pickup trucks, and a car that looked a lot like her Uncle Stephen’s ancient Pacer drove by.
Two pigeons stared down at her from the power lines while one stared up at the sky.
Not exactly signs of an approaching apocalypse.
She was probably just reacting to the entirely new and not entirely pleasant feeling of being so far from home.
Key in the lock, she paused again and traced four lines scored lightly into the glass, the spread a little wider than her fingers. There could be a hundred explanations. Her brain kept fixating on the one involving claws, but that didn’t make the other ninety-nine any less valid.
The lock turned with a definitive snick. The door opened silently, swinging in on well-maintained hinges. The bank of four light switches was just to the left of the door where light switches always were. Allie reached out with the hand holding the coffee cup and nudged the first one up with the rim.
As the lights immediately overhead came on, hot coffee spilled over her hand.
Swearing, she took four quick steps to a glass display case where she could put the cup down beside a half empty box of glow-in-the-dark yoyos and suck at the scalded skin at the base of her thumb.
It took her a moment to realize what she was staring at through the glass top of the case.
Resting on a folded paper towel, tucked in between a set of cowboy boot salt and pepper shakers and a set of four highball glasses commemorating the Winter Olympics, was a monkey’s paw. The fur around the wrist had matted into triangular clumps. Only two of the darker gray, leathery fingers were folded down. It still had a wish left.
“Are you sure it’s real?”
Even with the glass between them, it was making her skin crawl. “Pretty sure, yeah.” There was only one way to be positive, and Allie didn’t want to know that badly.
“How much is she charging for it?”
“Mom! I hardly think that’s the point. This is a dangerous artifact just lying out in the open.”
“You said it was in a glass case.”
Reaching around, Allie slid open the nearer half of the badly fitting wooden panel and then closed it again. Quickly. “The case isn’t locked. Anyone could reach in and take it.”
“Sweetie, anyone stealing from your grandmother would get exactly what they deserved.”
“No one deserves one of those things!” Was it moving? Was that a twitch. She tapped a finger against the glass but didn’t see a reaction.
“If you can’t handle it, Auntie Jane says she’d be willing to join you.”
“No, it’s all right.” Auntie Jane or a monkey’s paw; wasn’t that a choice between the lesser of two evils. “I can handle things here. I was just startled a bit by…” Allie’s eyes widened. “Mom, there’s a signed photograph of a minotaur on the wall behind the counter.”
“Probably Boris.”
“He dotted his i with a little heart.”
“Definitely Boris. Your grandmother seemed very fond of him.”
Given the way Boris was built, Allie didn’t doubt that in the least.
“You are in cattle country, remember.” There was the faint sound of a distant horn, and her mother sighed. “Oh, wonderful; your father stopped at Ikea on the way home from the airport. That explains why it took him so long. And it looks like more bookcases. I’m glad you got there safely, don’t forget to put the charm in the fridge. Tom, where are we supposed to put…”
