brain could not be functioning properly; there was no way hell he could be…trapped in a crate?
“Jonah, do you have to cuss all the time? You know I don’t like to hear it. You could say the same thing without using those words,” Natie said. Since her eyes never left the article she was currently reading, she didn’t see Jonah flip her off.
“I don’t like to hear you complaining all the time, but that doesn’t stop you,” Jonah responded.
Becki groaned inwardly. The constant bickering between Natie and Jonah were about to get on her very last nerve. If she had to watch him flirt with one more waitress, counter worker, or tourist, things were going to get ugly. He was definitely not the kind of person she would have picked for Natie, but Becki would tolerate him because she loved her sister.
Natie’s dad had married Becki’s mother when the girls were five years old. From that day to this, the Stephens Girls were a sight to behold and double-trouble when they needed to be. Becki wasn’t sure how much more of Jonah’s obnoxious behavior she could tolerate before he got an up-close introduction to TROUBLE…in all capital letters.
Royce was a person of process. He needed to think things through from the beginning and then figure out how to get out of this mess. He couldn’t just burst out of the crate like a bimbo popping out of a lifesized birthday cake at some old geezer’s ninetieth birthday party.
Royce tuned out the bickering still going on between the two lovebirds and got down to business.
The Secret Council of Elders had contacted Royce and his Special Ops Team to recover a set of missing coins. Arimus, the Chief Elder, had explained that the coins were originally Merlin’s, who had “spelled” each of them centuries ago. Unfortunately, the coins had been stolen by Pierce Regan, a rogue warlock, who had then disappeared. Pierce had eventually double-crossed the wrong immortal and met a gruesome end. At some point, the coins had been separated and fallen into circulation among the general population.
The coins should have been easy to locate and recover. Merlin, fearing they might someday fall into the wrong hands, had built in a failsafe. He had hidden a unique frequency in each coin as he created them. The hidden frequency should have functioned similarly to a modern day “homing beacon”. However, because Pierce had been a trusted friend to Merlin he knew what measures to take in order to avoid discovery. After stealing the coins, Pierce had “cloaked” them all by wrapping each coin separately in a spell crafted specifically to suppress the unique frequency Merlin had so carefully woven into each one.
Witches, working for the Council, had been trying to lift the “magic cloak” for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, the task had turned out to be very difficult, almost impossible. Recently, however, they had been receiving intermittent signals from the coins. The Council had decided it was time to turn the reins over to their Special Ops Team. That was where the story ended, according to Arimus, the Council leader.
However, it was beginning to appear that a few pertinent details might have been omitted during the briefing. It seems that someone or something else had also taken an interest in coin collecting. Royce would be clearing up that situation with Arimus… just as soon as he got out of the damn box.
ART, otherwise known as the “Artifact Recovery Team” was Royce’s baby. They had successfully tracked one of the coins from Italy, to Savanna, and finally to Charleston, South Carolina. Royce had then simply walked into an antique shop and casually purchased the priceless coin for a bargain price of two-hundred dollars. The owner of the antique shop had discovered the “rare coin” while cleaning out her brother’s apartment shortly after his death.
“The circumstances surrounding my brother’s death were a little sketchy,” she had confided to Royce. Evidently his body had been found in an alley, riddled with puncture wounds and deep gashes. The authorities suspected his injuries were sustained as a result of an “animal attack”, but Royce had other ideas as to what might have caused Allen Baker’s death.
Royce had expressed his sympathy at her loss, purchased the coin, and then asked the shopkeeper to wrap it in one of her small velvet pouches “to prevent it from being scratched”. He was somewhat amazed at how easily this coin had been recovered.
Pocketing the coin, he mentally drew a hash-mark; one