her wallet. “One of the reasons I was keen on coming in today – aside from seeing the two of you and getting back to my job, of course – was that I wanted to buy that onyx ring and matching necklace that came in last week.”
I knew just the set she was talking about, an art deco onyx and silver combination that looked just as stylish now as it would have done years ago. Since Maggie had commented before on liking it, I had made sure to handle it, assuring myself there were no hidden surprises. The onyx and silver had protective qualities and whoever had owned the pieces before must have been pretty happy, because the impressions I received were positive and energetic.
Teag rang Maggie up. With her employee discount, she got a good deal, and it was worth it to see the smile on her face as she tried the pieces on. “I feel so pretty in these I could just twirl!” Maggie declared, then sighed as she glanced down at her crutches. “But not today,” she added ruefully.
“Save the twirling for when you’re all patched up,” I said.
Maggie gathered her things, then preened at her reflection in the window for a moment as she left the store. I flipped the sign to closed and let out a long breath.
“Wow. What a week.”
“No kidding,” Teag said. “Oh, and there was one other transaction today while you were out, but I didn’t want to bring it up while Maggie was here.”
“Sell something?”
“No, but we bought something,” he said walking over to the counter. “A sweet pair of dueling pistols.”
“Please tell me that the owner wasn’t suddenly having bad dreams.”
“Not that he mentioned,” Teag answered. He pulled out a box from below the counter and opened the top. Inside was a pair of expertly-crafted pistols that would have been beautiful if it weren’t for the fact they were made to kill. Charleston had a big problem with dueling back in the 1800s, and a lot of young men died. These pistols looked like they had seen plenty of use.
“What made him sell the pistols?” I asked.
“Said he needed the money because his son’s going to college.”
I frowned. “How did you set a price? Normally, we’d have the gun appraiser take a look at them.”
Teag shrugged. “He told me what he wanted for them, and at that amount, we’d make a profit even if they turn out to be reproductions.”
I’m always in favor of an honest bargain, but something about the man’s story didn’t add up. If the buyer were anybody but Teag, I’d be concerned that the pistols might have been stolen, but Teag was good at running a check for something like that. Then I let my right hand hover over the box, and drew back right away.
“They’re Spookies, all right,” I said, using our term for an item that was magically dangerous. Even that brief contact gave me a single, searing image of a man in a long dark coat fighting for his life, flares of sickly green light that could only have been magic, and an awful sense of finality that told me the original owner of the guns had not survived the battle.
“Let’s put them back in the office,” I said, rattled a little from what I had seen. “Were you able to get any provenance on the pistols?” I asked, as Teag closed up the box and carried it to the back.
“A little,” he replied. “He said they belonged to a man named Josiah Winfield, back in the 1850s. I got the feeling from what he said that Winfield was kinda like a private investigator, hired to look into problems. Anyhow, the seller claimed that a lot of tall tales got told about Winfield, like stories about him fighting off warlocks and vampires.” Teag raised an eyebrow.
“That’s why you bought them,” I said. “Winfield was probably working for the Alliance. Want to bet he knew my ancestors?”
“I figured Sorren would know something about Winfield, probably even worked with him if Winfield was legitimate.”
“I’m still wondering about the timing,” I said. “It seems like too much of a coincidence for the pistols to suddenly show up now.” I texted Sorren a quick message about the pistols and Winfield, curious to see what he would say.
“I thought the same thing, but the old guy who brought them in never let on if something had spooked him into selling,” Teag said. Most people who sell magically-charged objects