by Maher Tegan
Eli grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Because you have work to do, and she’s my mom. If there’s a limited supply of her risotto, I always get dibs, and she’s only counting on me tonight.”
He pulled me into a hug and dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Don’t play with the sharp new toys until somebody’s here with you. Like me. Tomorrow. And also, don’t forget I have to drop my car off to get the oil changed in the morning. You promised to pick me up.”
I frowned and glanced toward the box. I wanted to at least pull everything out of the trunk because I was dying to see what was in it.
“And me,” Jake said, leveling his most serious look at me. “I don’t want you to pull a Dumbledore and get some kind of a curse, and I’m also nosy. I want to help dig through it for the first time. We’ll meet you here in the morning. Say ten? I have something to do first.”
Eli nodded. “Ten works for me. That gives us time to drop the car off and grab breakfast and coffee. Aside from that, my day is a blank slate.” He turned to me. “Meet me at Joe’s at nine.”
“Deal.”
Patience was not one of my virtues, but this time, I had no choice.
Chapter 6
I tossed and turned half the night because I couldn’t get the trunk off my mind. I’d gone back to the shop the night before and cleared all the backlogged pieces so Willow could put them out. When my alarm finally went off at seven, I was already up and drinking my first cup of coffee.
“Holy cow,” a deep voice said. “The Princess of the Night is awake already. Is today the day you’ve chosen for world domination?”
I glanced up from playing Pokemon Go on my phone. My oldest brother Connell paused on his way to the coffeepot to drop a kiss on the top of my head. He was eight years older than I was and by far the most responsible of the six of us. Except for maybe Willow, though she was responsible more because she was OCD than anything else. Her brain simply wouldn’t let her be irresponsible. Connell did it on purpose. He was also my second favorite sibling.
“Hey, brother!” I said, grinning. “I thought you were out of town.”
He shook his head, and a dark lock fell over green eyes that matched mine to a tee. Somehow, everybody but Willow had gotten Dad’s dark looks, and we were all so similar that there was no denying we were siblings. It was one of the reasons I liked to keep my hair pink or purple or blue rather than chestnut. “Nope. Marshall went with him. It’s mostly Victorian stuff.” He wrinkled his aristocratic nose. “Too tame for my blood.”
Though we all played a part in the family business, we each had our own area of interest. Connell’s was the Medieval period with a specialization in weaponry, though he knew a boatload about weapons from just about any era. Personally, I’d studied the Renaissance with a concentration on Colonial America, though I thought the Medieval period was cool, too. I had an ever-changing list of what I’d take if I ever had the chance to time travel back to those periods and could only take ten things with me. It had started with just five, but I’d kept cheating by mentally stuffing extra items in my bodice.
“Guess what we found on our dive yesterday,” I said. Like me, he loved ‘found’ things. As kids, we used to make up stories about different pieces we’d find at the beach, and he’d loved exploring. Connell was the one who’d introduced me to diving, and it was a love we still shared.
“What?” he asked, popping a pod in the coffee maker and sliding his cup under it.
“A trunk.” I started to tell him about it, but his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen and held a finger up as he slid to take the call. It was apparently business because he answered a few questions, then agreed to meet them for coffee.
“Sorry, kiddo,” he said when he hung up. “That was Marley Wilkins. I’ve had him on the hook for a month for a Knights Templar sword, and he’s finally decided to pull the trigger. I’m meeting him before he changes his mind.”
“The one with the sapphire in the hilt?” I asked, excitement coursing through me. That sword was one of the finest, most well-preserved pieces I’d ever seen. The collector in me wept a little at the thought of losing it.
“That’s the one,” he said, dumping his coffee into a to-go cup and blurping some cream into it. “I want to hear about this trunk, though. I’ll stop by the shop later.”
He swept out the kitchen door and into the foyer. When the screen door slapped shut behind him, I smiled into the empty space. I didn’t blame him. The price tag on that sword would make me run out the door, too.
“Wow, do you know how to clear a room,” a gravelly voice said, and I rolled my eyes when Axel, a spotted skunk who’d attached himself to my grandmother decades ago—yes, decades—hopped up onto the chair beside me. Skunks typically don’t live that long, but the best answer I ever got from him about his past was that he wasn’t just any old skunk. That was true. He talked, drank, and was a fair hand at poker. He also had magic of his own, though it was different from a witch’s magic.
“That’s me,” I said, smiling at him. “Miss Congeniality. What’s up?”
He climbed onto the table and grabbed a kiwi out of the fruit bowl. “I’m starvin’,” he said, leaning back on his haunches and taking a big bite out of the green fruit. Juice ran down his black chin, and he twitched his whiskers at me.
Unlike the signature dual white stripes that most people associated with skunks, Axel’s fur was more variegated. He was black, but his stripes sort of ran all over his body willy-nilly, and he was more the size of a large ferret. His bushy tail was black down the bone but fanned out into a fluffy white plume, and he had a dime-sized white dot right between his shiny black eyes. In short, he was cute, and he knew it. He was also sarcastic, catty, funny, and loyal, which meant he fit into our family like a glove.
“Rough night?” I asked, and he lifted a shoulder.
“Not really,” he replied, licking juice off his left paw. “I was down at the Jolly Roger and we played a few hands of five-card.”
The Jolly Roger was a local dive bar. A guy named Bert owned it, and he was known for wings, cold beer, and after-hours poker games that would go all night.
“How much did you get them for?” I asked. Fortunately, Axel had very little use for money, so he usually played for food or booze or random pocket items to hide in his closet stash.
He puffed up a little and flicked his tail. “It started with a free beer and a serving of gator tail, but by the end of the night, he was into me for two bottles of Jamison, three dinners, and several exceptional pieces of sea glass.”
I smiled. Our little skunk did like shiny objects. “Good deal. You know he’s gonna get tired of losing to you one of these days.”
Axel waved me off and tried to grab my coffee cup, but I smacked his hand away. I loved him, but I wasn’t drinking after him. I’d seen some of the stuff he put in that mouth, often from a dumpster. Hard pass.
“Nah,” he said. “I think he likes the company, and it’s not like I’m takin’ him for cash. Most of the time, anyway. What’s on your agenda for the day?”
“I have to take Eli to drop his car off, then we’re going for breakfast. After that, we’re digging into a trunk we found on a dive yesterday.”
His furry little black ears perked. As a scavenger at heart, he was always interested when I found treasure. “What was in it?”
He liked being on the boat and went out with us at least half the time. Given his proclivity for shiny objects, his idea of what was valuable wasn’t always the same as ours, so it wasn’t hard to make him happy.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the coins I’d found the day before. It didn’t have much monetary value, but the sand had polished it to a sheen. It was right up his alley.
“Thanks!” he said, his beady little black eyes glittering as he turned the coin back and forth so that it caught the sun streaming in through the front window. He jumped off the table and ran to his cubby, then returned a few minutes later. “Now back to the trunk?”
I told him the story. Rather than ask a million questions, he went silent, his expression thoughtful. “Be careful, chick. Something about that doesn’t sound right to me.”
I nodded. “I’d already planned on it.”
“I think I should go with you,” he said, his tone laced with a gravity I rarely heard. It wasn’t like him to be serious about anything, but this time, he was.
“Okay,” I replied, “though I’m sure it’ll be fine if you have something you’d rather do.”
He shook his head. “Nope. Nothing I’d rather do than check out a mysterious old trunk full of weird objects that may or may not kill you.”
“C’mon, then,” I said, taking the last swig of my coffee. “We have to meet Eli and take him to—”
He waved a sticky paw at me. “Just tell me when to meet you. I don’t want to run errands and do all that mundane crap. And I’d like to squeeze in a nap.”
“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes as I headed to the door. “Meet us at the shop at ten. That’s when Jake will be there.”
I grabbed my car keys and skipped down the veranda steps to my car, careful not to catch my toe on the uneven century-old brick pavers. Unlike most modern families, we hadn’t gone our separate ways when we’d come of age. There really wasn’t any reason to. Our ancestral home was what would, by most standards, be considered a mansion. Even with all five of us still at home, there was plenty of elbow room in the ten-bedroom Victorian. Eli even had his own room and had always spent almost as much time there as he did at his own home.
I loved my bedroom in particular. It was a turret room that towered high above the rest of the house, so I had soaring ceilings with exposed beams and tall, corner-to-corner windows on all four sides of the room with the ocean visible through one of them. When I was young, Dad would enchant the ceiling to look like a starry sky, and Eli and I would pretend we were on a ship having a pirate adventure, or sometimes we’d pretend we were camping. To be fair, it was as close as either of us ever got to actual camping. We both hated bugs, sand, and the idea of snakes crawling into our sleeping bags or gators grabbing us while we were unconscious—all real threats in Florida.
I smiled at the memories as I drove around the circular drive then down the lane that led me through tall wrought-iron gates. Tall shrubs set behind the spiked fence on either side of the gates offered privacy, hiding the lush front lawn that was shaded by several tall oaks draped in Spanish moss. I loved our home and being in close proximity to my family even if they did make me a little nuts sometimes.
It only took me ten minutes to get to Joe’s. Eli was ready and waiting when I pulled in, and he was in the car and shutting the door before I had time to do much more than wave at Joey, the owner’s son. We’d gone through school together and had even gone on a couple dates.
“Let’s go,” he grumbled. “You can flirt later, Ms. Merry Sunshine.”
I raised a brow at him. “Don’t go gettin’ all snippy at me because you’re hangry,” I said. The man was crankier than a five-year-old when he hadn’t eaten.
He cut his eyes at me. “My expresso machine died this morning, so unless you want to share its fate, feed me and caffeinate me before spreading any more of that disgusting cheer. What’s wrong with you, anyway? I’m usually the morning person.”
That much was true. Usually, I’d have been perfectly happy with a silent ride, but since I’d already been up for two hours and had three cups of coffee, I was awake and past the morning grumps. Plus, I was excited about the box.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, tilting my nose up. “I’m never anything but joy and light.”
He snorted. “Maybe you should let me out. I’d hate to accidentally get struck by lightning meant for you. That would pretty much top my morning right off.”
I gave him a half-smile and flicked my blinker on to pull into the Crow’s Nest.
Thirty minutes later, he was fed, caffeinated, and as ready to face the day as I was. Just as I was pulling onto Dolphin Drive, the street that meandered through Old Town, I got a text from Jake saying he’d overslept and was going to be late.
“I figured that was gonna happen when he didn’t come home last night,” I said. I’d checked his room when I’d gotten up, but his bed had been made. Like me, Jake was not a morning person. If his bed was made at seven in the morning, it was because he hadn’t slept in it.
“I’m not waiting any longer,” Eli said, scowling. “I hardly slept a wink waiting for morning to come. Just because he was out rabble-rousing and couldn’t drag his ass out of bed doesn’t mean that I have to suffer.”
Since I felt the same way, I wasn’t about to disagree. I handed him my phone. “Tell him that from me, too.”
He tapped out the message, then slid my phone back in the console. “There. Maybe one day he’ll learn.”
Two seconds later, my phone rang and I groaned, figuring it was Jake calling to wheedle us into waiting for him. Instead, I hit the answer button on my steering wheel when the marina’s number flashed across the caller ID on my console screen.
“Hey, Tammi. What’s up?” I asked. Tammi was the marina manager and also a good friend of ours. Eli and I were two peas in a pod, but we did have a small group of friends that we occasionally went out to dinner or for drinks with.
“Oh, thank God you answered,” she said, her breathless voice streaming over my stereo speakers. “Please tell me you’re close and that Eli’s with you.”
“I am, and we are,” he said. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“No,” she said, “it’s not. Somebody went through overnight and set all the unattended boats loose. It was windy overnight, so everything down here’s a mess. Larry’s got you on as his emergency contact after Maris, and they’ve already left.”
“We’re on our way,” Eli said, glancing at me with regret.
I sighed. The chest was going to have to wait a little longer.
Chapter 7
I t took us hours to get the Sea Urchin situated because it had drifted into the middle of the marina and its slip had been blocked by several other adrift vessels. Jake came down to help us, but even with three sets of hands, it was still exhausting work. By the time we had her secured, it was already late in the afternoon.
“Phew,” Eli said, collapsing into the passenger seat of my car. “That was a lot like work. I hope the security cameras caught the little punks who did it.”
“Tammi said they were all wearing hoodies,” I replied, “so unless one of them had something unique to identify it, my guess is that they’ll get away with it.”
“Yeah, they’re in the wind,” Jake said, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his grubby tee-shirt as he bent down to talk to us through my driver’s window. “Do you guys still want to go through the trunk?”
“Absolutely,” I said, anticipation pushing away the exhaustion. “And this time, I’m not answering my phone.”
Speaking of, I’d left it in the car while we’d wrangled the boat. I’d lost more than one in the marina and wasn’t anxious to repeat the experience. When I picked it up, the message light was blinking.
“Hmm,” I said, unlocking it and scrolling through them. “I have five messages from Willow asking about the trunk.”
“What about it?” Jake asked. “You didn’t cleanse anything, did you?”
I shook my head, a little spike of anxiety flashing through me. “Of course not. I wonder why she was interested. I figured the backlog of items I cleared for her would have kept her busy for the day.”
“Who knows?” Eli said. “Let’s just get down there. We can deal with it in person.”
In the five minutes it took me to drive from the marina to the intersection of Dolphin Drive and Seafoam Street, I downed an entire bottle of water. The trick to not dying in a Florida summer was staying hydrated. I preached it to every tourist who came through, but it never failed that at least once a week, an ambulance had to cart som
ebody to the urgent care with heat exhaustion if not outright stroke.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I made the turn. The streets were packed with pedestrians, making it hard to navigate the brick-paved street. “There’s not supposed to be a festival this weekend is there?”
He lifted a sweaty shoulder. “I don’t think so, but you never know. He twisted around looking for signs. “There,” he said, pointing to a canvas sign strung between two of the oaks that flanked the sidewalk that led to the center of the park.
“Marauders Bay Jazz Festival?” I asked, frowning. “I thought that was in the spring. Why are they doing it now?” The city hosted about a kazillion festivals, fairs, and charity events throughout the year, so it wasn’t unusual for me to lose track.
“Oh,” he said, leaning back in his seat, “they had to cancel it in the spring because that hydrant broke and flooded the park, remember?”
Boy, did I ever. That day had been a mess. Since it hadn’t been canceled in advance, people had still shown up. They’d tromped across the green and tracked mud into the gallery all afternoon. It had taken three of us to keep the floor clean enough so that nobody would break a neck, but it had ended up being a good sales day. The two sides of having a store in a touristy area.
“I’m gonna go clean up some,” I said. My clothes were sticking to me, and my shirt was caked with crud from the marina. Fortunately, we both always kept a change of clothes there for just such circumstances.
“Hurry up,” he said, crinkling his nose and wiping his forehead on the tail of his Pillaging is my Cardio tank top. “I want to do the same. I feel like a salt block.”
I grabbed my spare clothes and hustled to the bathroom. I’d barely managed to struggle out of my damp shirt when Eli called to me through the door.
“Sage, why is the trunk empty?”
I froze. “What do you mean why is the trunk empty? I didn’t take anything out of it. I didn’t even move it. I left it sitting right where you and Jake put it,” I called through the door. Too late, though, cold raced through my veins and my stomach flip-flopped. I pulled on my clean shirt and rushed out of the bathroom.
