Moonlight Dragon Collection: Urban Fantasy Read online

  "Until he tries to murder you..."

  "There they are," I sighed to the jewelry case. "And here I thought you'd decided to clam up for good."

  Melanie adjusted her corset and studied her blouse, as if considering how a cameo would look pinned there.

  "Don't even think about it," I warned her.

  She huffed. "I can't believe those cameos are still talking to you. I thought the curse would expire by now. All they do is blab blab blab—what kind of a curse is that? They should be, like, trying to bite your fingers off or flying at your face or something."

  "Gee, thanks!"

  Melanie shrugged. "I should be a curse-maker. I'd be the best at it. My curses would all be Mayan."

  "Since when are you Mayan?"

  "Some Mexicans are Mayan!"

  "Really?"

  "As a matter of fact, all monkey shifters are descendants of the Mayan people. So take that!"

  I had to admit, that was pretty cool. "So do you perform human sacrifices?"

  A shadow filled the front doorway. "Er, did someone just mention human sacrifices? I thought this was a pawn shop."

  My comment about the two possibly being one and the same died a quick death when I got a look at who had asked the question.

  I'm not usually attracted to blonds. Or to redheads. But this guy was a strawberry blond and somehow he made it work. I'm sure the fact that he had perfectly symmetrical features just like a model and bright blue eyes had something to do with it. Also, the perfect, charming grin. The height and the smoking bod didn't hurt either. Still, this was exactly the sort of guy who raised all my defenses.

  "Um, yeah, this is a pawn shop," I said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing utterly.

  "Anne! Anne!" Melanie put her hand against her chest and pointed sideways at him urgently. The only way she could have been more subtle was if she'd yelled, "Hey, Anne! A cute guy just walked in that you should try to date!"

  "Ah, great," he said, acting oblivious of her theatrics. He deserved at least a Tony award for that. "I was afraid I'd have to carry this around with me all day. I've been getting some weird looks."

  "I doubt they've been weird looks," Melanie muttered, but she said it so loudly we all heard it. I felt myself go red.

  "So, uh, what've you got?" I'd been too busy trying not to check him out to notice he had something charcoal gray beneath his arm that made his bicep bulge very impressively. He must work out.

  "I don't know where else to unload this thing." He joined me at the glass counter and placed what he was carrying carefully on top. He patted it on the head. "Ugly, huh?"

  Ugly wasn't exactly the word I would have used for the two and a half foot high gargoyle statue he'd set down. Gargoyles were cool in a vintage, take me to Paris sort of way, and this one was no different. Its mouth was open in a snarl and two topaz jewels that looked like real gemstones, not plastic or glass, stared back at me. It was a beautifully detailed statue. I could see striations of muscle and even veins in its wings.

  I didn't often care for the things customers brought in to pawn or sell. They were typically junk that no one wanted. However this statue piqued my interest, though I couldn't say why.

  I didn't own my own knick knacks—not when I lived in the back of a shop that was chock full of them—nor did I collect anything. My only personal possession besides my clothes was a panda pin my mother had given me. Maybe I was due for something useless to call my own.

  "It has its appeal," I hedged. I ran a finger along one stone wing. Though the statue looked like it had been formed from volcanic rock, it wasn't porous, just sort of bumpy, like how I imagined an elephant's skin to feel. I liked that it hadn't been cast out of plaster of Paris in a factory. It made me imagine an old French guy using his bare hands and a chisel to chip this thing out of a huge block of stone. Maybe he lived above a cancan show.

  "Where'd you get it?"

  "My little sister likes to travel and she picked this up for me in Europe. No idea where, though."

  "And you're trying to sell it?" I gave him a dubious look. "Won't your sister be mad?"

  He grinned carelessly. "She won't even notice. She brings home so many souvenirs I don't think she even remembers that she bought this for me." He patted the statue again. The way his arm momentarily blocked the sunlight made the topaz eyes seem to blaze brighter and then dim. "This doesn't fit in at my place. A little too Hunchback of Notre Dame for my tastes. Doesn't match the whole retro thing I've got going on in my bachelor pad." He grinned, which made me think he'd mentioned the bachelor pad deliberately. Real smooth, buddy.

  I had to look to Melanie after he said that, and as I expected, she was giggling silently behind her hand. It was a miracle she wasn't sprouting her monkey ears.

  "Is there anything you want to trade it in for?"

  I motioned vaguely at the contents of the shop, though I figured if the gargoyle wasn't his thing then not much in Moonlight would be either. Ever since I'd taken over running the place, the inventory had begun skewing toward the strange and unusual. Magick called to magick, apparently, not that everything in here was related to magick. Tourists did manage to wander in here every few days and pawn their watches and empty money clips in exchange for more gambling money.

  He gave the inventory a cursory look and then shook his head. "I think it's best if I lighten my load. I'm kind of a minimalist."

  A little embarrassed, wondering if he thought the cluttered shelves of Moonlight reflected my personal tastes—like maybe he thought I might be a hoarder—I took another look at the gargoyle to determine what I'd pay for it.

  When I picked it up, I was surprised by its lack of weight. That made sense since he'd said his sister had brought it home from her travels. I turned it over but I didn't see any makers mark on it to indicate who had made it or when.

  As I held the thing, I felt an itch along my shoulders. It wasn't exactly unease, but if I'd felt it in a dark alley I would have called forth Lucky, just in case. I put the gargoyle down and the feeling went away.

  "I can give you twenty for it," I eventually told him. "This isn't exactly an in-demand item."

  He rubbed his chin. "How about twenty and you let me give you my digits?"

  Normally, a guy talking about 'digits' would have put me off, but a glance at Melanie reminded me that online dating was so far proving to be a bust. Eventually I was going to be fifty and wondering what had happened to my love life.

  "Okay," I said with a lop-sided shrug that probably looked like I'd just experienced a seizure.

  Be cool, Anne, be cool, I told myself as I withdrew a twenty from the till and wrote up the receipt. I could feel Melanie staring holes in the top of my head.

  "Hang on to this," I told him, handing the money and receipt to him, "in case you change your mind and want to buy it back. I'll charge you the same price I paid for it."

  He took the receipt. "I won't want it back. It's better with you." His grin made my palms sweat, though I wasn't sure if it was from nervousness or discomfort.

  I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear because I remembered reading somewhere that playing with your hair was a woman's way of projecting interest. It was probably an article written by a man, but whatever. "I'm Anne, by the way."

  "Christian," he said. "Do you mind if I add my number to your phone now?"

  "Oh, yeah!" I pulled out my phone and pulled up the phone book.

  I looked up in surprise when he gently took it from me and winked. "Just in case you're shining me on," he teased as he began punching in his info. "I once had a girl order a pizza while she was pretending to be putting in my number."

  "As much as I like pizza, I wouldn't have done that to you."

  He laughed. "Thanks, Anne." He handed my phone back. "Call me."

  I tried to smother my skepticism as he walked out, but I caught myself watching him through the front glass windows as he turned and headed in the direction of Fremont Street.

  "Holy hell," Melanie s
aid distinctly. "Could that guy have been any sexier? I'll answer my own question: no!"

  "I don't like redheads," I muttered, but my gaze jumped to my phone and my stomach flip-flopped at the sight of his name in my contacts list.

  "You'll make an exception for this one or I'll smack you upside the head, Anne."

  I smiled at my best friend's passion. Then my eyes fell on the gargoyle again.

  "Anne Moody...today you'll meet the love of your life..."

  "...too bad he'll try to kill you."

  The cameos in the case were all looking up at me from their velvet beds with nasty little smiles on their pretty Victorian faces.

  Mean girls, each and every one of them. But were they only being catty, or were they foretelling the future?

  "Huh, that's weird."

  I looked to Melanie, who was staring at the gargoyle statue.

  "What's weird?" I asked.

  She pointed at the gargoyle. "I could've sworn that thing just blinked!"

  Chapter 2

  Thirteen hours later, I was still thinking about what Melanie had said. The gargoyle wasn't alive, of course. She and I had stared at it for a solid thirty minutes and only succeeded in drying out our eyeballs. But the feeling that had risen in me when she'd said that it had blinked still clung to me hours later: the sense that my life had just taken a strange turn.

  Not that anything was obvious so far. Moonlight had so far fielded the usual mix of curious tourists looking for bargains and dead broke gamblers looking to sell. And then there were guys like the one who walked in the moment I yawned. He was an anomaly.

  "Give me something lucky," he demanded as he stopped on the other side of the counter.

  I didn't roll my eyes—even though I wanted to—because this was Vegas; superstition was woven thickly into the magickal fabric of the city. Good fortune could be as much about luck as it was the conscious aligning of magickal energies. With the Oddsmakers in control, Las Vegas was one of the most powerful magickal cities in the world. The Oddsmakers decided who won and who lost in gambling, sports, and, some claimed, the game of life.

  I smiled the vacant smile of retail. "A lucky charm, you mean?"

  The man nodded emphatically. His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of B.O. and cigarette smoke. It was a good guess that he'd just spent the previous ten hours gambling at a table or on a slot machine. He also possessed that faint but unmistakable aura of desperation that told me he was losing his ass and had no idea how to pull himself out of the tailspin. No idea except shopping for a lucky charm, anyway. That's when you knew you've really hit bottom.

  "Fucking dealers are taking all my money," he muttered. "Casinos cheat, I tell you."

  "Uh huh." I'd heard variations before and no amount of my insisting casinos wouldn't risk losing their gaming licenses could make a guy like this feel differently. "Luckily for you," I said, my smile now mischievous, "I happen to have quite a few lucky charms."

  There was one other person in the shop, an older woman with light red hair, but she seemed content to browse. I led Mr. Big Shot Gambler to a glass display case that held all the junk that people pawned en masse when they'd run out of anything more substantial to sell. I looked over the collection of fountain pens, money clips, gold nugget key chains and other gift items before opening the case and pulling out a black velvet tray.

  "The man who brought this in only wanted to pawn it, not sell it, so it might not be here for long," I said as I picked up a silver-plated pin depicting a pair of wings with a skull in the center. "The reason he wants it back, and the reason it's lucky, is because this survived both an airplane crash and a motorcycle accident."

  I turned it over.

  "You can see on the back where the metal melted. Right here. That's from the plane crash. The plane caught on fire. And this scratch here is from when the man was struck by a car while he was riding his motorcycle. He survived both incidents with only minor injuries."

  Mr. Big Shot Gambler looked skeptical. "If it saved his life, why the hell did he pawn it?"

  "I guess he figured life might not be worth living if you owe forty grand to bookies. He pawned just about everything he owned to pay off that debt."

  "So this piece of garbage will save my life but it's useless when it comes to gambling." Mr. Big Shot Gambler crossed his arms over his chest. "Stop wasting my time."

  I didn't lose my smile. I had another ace up my sleeve. I replaced the pin and the tray in the case and reached for something else. I placed a pair of cheap, plastic red die on the counter along with a bright yellow plastic disk with a dial that spun to show numbers in a small window.

  "You want gambling luck, there you go."

  "What's so lucky about dice? I can get them for a buck in every souvenir shop in town." He sneered at the plastic wheel. "And where'd you get that? Out of a box of Lucky Charms?"

  It was Cap'n Crunch, actually, but I doubted he'd appreciate the delicious differences.

  I called forth my magick. Lucky appeared in the shop, but only in his weakest incarnation, so that his passing felt like the air conditioning had just kicked on. "Watch."

  I rolled the dice across the countertop. They came up double sixes. I rolled again. They came up a four and a one. "Normal, right? No tricks?" When the man nodded, I handed him the wheel. "Turn it to a number."

  Since the toy was designed for a child's fingers, he was awkward as he slid the dial so the 7 showed in the little window.

  I rolled the dice again, but this time with Lucky tagging along. He gave them a nudge. The dice turned up a five and a two.

  "Do another number," I said.

  He dialed an 8. I rolled two fours with Lucky's help.

  "Again," he ordered, moving the dial to 2.

  I rolled Snake Eyes: one and one.

  I now had Mr. Big Shot Gambler's attention. "How did you get this?"

  "The person who sold it to me turned religious and renounced gambling, but she wanted someone who was down on their luck to have it. Someone who needed it." Laying it on a bit thick there, but this guy wasn't the type to appreciate the subtle approach.

  "I need it." He was already reaching for his wallet.

  "The wheel is two hundred dollars," I told him, straight-faced. I'd seen the TAG Heuer watch on his wrist. He wasn't broke yet, just stupid.

  He hesitated, but not for long. "You take Amex?"

  I smiled. "With ID? Absolutely."

  Once paid, he hustled out, plastic decoder wheel clutched in his hand, ready to bankrupt the nearest casino. I couldn't help laughing beneath my breath as I pictured him turning the little yellow wheel at a craps table. I had yet to see anyone behave rationally when it came to gambling.

  Come to think of it, that applied a lot to magick, as well.

  I checked out my other customer, the red-haired woman. She was watching me. Had she overheard my sales pitch? I couldn't tell from her enigmatic smile.

  She said, "This is contaminated, you know. Or did you know?"

  Her condescending tone set my teeth on edge. I sighed beneath my breath before plastering a fake smile on my face. "Contaminated, you say?"

  I came out from behind the counter and joined the woman where she stood in front of the floor to ceiling shelves that I privately called the Wannabe Witch section.

  I considered witches and warlocks to be the chefs of the magickal community. To perform magick they followed a recipe, using all sorts of weird but natural ingredients (they were big shoppers at farmers markets and Whole Foods). Their method was to stir everything up, chant a bit, and then serve it, both magickally and metaphorically.

  Without grimoires, cauldrons, magick stirring spoons and the like they were fairly normal people. They were good for sales. I made sure the Wannabe Witch's section was always well stocked with magickal paraphernalia for them. Sort of like a mini Williams Sonoma for Witches.

  "This here," she pointed at a mahogany stained wicker dog bed that sat beside a three-footed cauldron.

 
The bed wasn't supposed to be in that section. Someone must have accidentally kicked it in front of the shelves.

  "It's a dog bed," I said helpfully.

  "It's a bed for a werewolf, however a common dog has lain in it, which is why I said it's contaminated." She gave me a haughty stare, demanding an explanation.

  The woman was old enough to be my mother but she'd had a lot of work done and probably could have passed for my sister—my sister with the forehead that refused to move and who no longer possessed nasal labial folds. But I knew better than to write her off as rich and superficial.

  "I never said anything about a werewolf—"

  "Come now," the woman said, smiling indulgently at me. "You know and I know that it's the selling point of this mangy thing. It's why you've priced it at a hundred dollars. It's why you sold that man a plastic toy for two hundred."

  I smiled and shrugged. She had me there. Werewolves were rare these days—domesticated wolf shifters were now the norm—so anything associated with them carried a nice price tag. The woman must indeed be a witch, or something magickal, but I didn't like drawing attention to people like her—like us—not only because it was rude but because most tried to hide their identities from the Oddsmakers.

  "There's not much I can do to remove the dog scent," I said. "This is a pawn shop, and, well, everything is understood to be sold 'as is'."

  "Hmmm."

  After some dramatic hemming and hawing, she eventually wrangled a twenty percent discount from me. I carried the werewolf bed to the counter along with a doll I was super happy to get rid of because every day I found it magickally pinned to a different wall of the house, porcelain feet together and arms spread to the sides like it was being crucified. Creeped. Me. Out.

  "That's an adorable brooch," the woman remarked as I rang her up.

  I touched the enamel panda pin that I always kept sitting atop the register. "Thanks. My mom gave it to me when I was little." I treated it as a sort of good luck symbol to ward off would-be thieves and overly annoying customers. Clearly it was hit or miss on the latter.

  "You're descended from dragons."

  I felt my hackles rising at the casual comment. I studiously kept my eyes on what I was doing.