Next, I'd be talking about my feelings. My fellow soldiers in the rebel army would have laughed their asses off at me.
I studied Tess's gorgeous face and grinned.
Nah.
They'd be jealous.
I jumped in the truck and followed her to her pawnshop, and then I crossed over to her car, pulled her out of her seat and into my arms, and kissed the breath out of her.
When I finally let her go, she blinked up at me with a beautifully dazed look in her eyes. "What was that for?"
"For luck," I said, my voice suddenly raspy.
Must have breathed in some dust or something.
"I'll be back by lunchtime, okay? Call me if anything weird or unusual happens, please," I said. "Anything at all."
Tess laughed. "Jack. This is Dead End Pawn. It would only be unusual if something weirddidn'thappen."
She had me there.
I kissed her again, handed her the donuts, walked her to the door and made sure the shop was Fae-free, and then we locked the jeweled box in the vault. My skin stopped buzzing the minute the steel door shut, and I blew out a sigh of relief.
"Take care. Call me if that thing does … anything."
She nodded and gave me a nudge toward the door. "I will. The box is definitely causing my head pain, because I feel better now that we've locked it up. It doesn't make sense at all."
I didn't know what to say, and I hated feeling helpless, so I just hugged her.
She hugged me back. "Go. I have work to do."
I went.
As I drove to my place, I caught myself grinning. The town might be in danger of destruction, but my girlfriend wasamazing.
I blinked.
I had agirlfriend. For the first time in my life, I had an actual girlfriend—and someone was threatening to blow up her life. A low roar filled the car before I even realized the sound was coming from my throat, and I made a simple vow:
Not on my watch.
18
Tess
After we locked the box in the vault, and Mr. Overprotective satisfied himself that no deadly Fae warriors were hiding out in my shop, he took off to go check on Jed, and I got to work. The GYSTers would come in any minute, and I had what might be my very last day in the business I loved staring me in the face.
"Wewillsolve this," I muttered, putting the donuts and napkins on the sparklingly clean glass countertop near the cash register. "We will. And I'll stop talking to myself like a crazy person and get busy."
But even as I worked on my opening chores, my mind ran through a litany of everything I'd need to do if the Fae queen destroyed Dead End in a few short days. The problem was, my brain kept stuttering at the overwhelming impossibility of the task.
Basics: My family, friends, and cat. Our ancient horse, earless goat, and other farm animals. If we all got out safely, nothing else really mattered, or so I tried to comfort myself, but the truth was far more difficult. There was no way to evacuate the town with everything that was important to me.
My house, that I'd worked so hard to afford, renovate, and maintain; furnishing it over the years with carefully selected and refurbished finds from flea markets and garage sales and items from the shop, too.
My business, where I'd worked since I was not much more than a kid. The inventory, the building itself—the thought of insurance refusing to cover what I'd spent my adult life building was devastating. How could I recover from that? I had a little in the bank; a bit of a cushion since I'd sold a rare magical toy a while back, but nothing like enough to start a new business somewhere else. I'd have to go back to working for other people.
And how to explain my "gift" outside of Dead End? I'd taken it for granted for so long, because here people knew about me and mostly just thought of me as another quirky resident of the quirkiest town in America.
