He walked over and patted my shoulder. "Mayhap you should be the one to sit and rest, sweet girl."
I just stared at him. "Jed? Is that really you?"
Jack, Eleanor, and Susan walked back into the shop, all of them wearing the same expression of shock I guessed was on my face. Because Jed no longer looked like an old, old man, as he had when he'd walked into my shop maybe fifteen minutes before.
He didn't even look like the fit man in his sixties who'd stepped out of that statue the night before.
No, this Jed looked like Jack's brother. Maybe a slightly older brother, but … brother.
The gray had vanished from his bronze hair. The lines around his nose, mouth, and eyes: gone. Even his posture had gone from stooped and shaky to strong and confident.
"The box did this?" I looked at Jack for confirmation.
He nodded, his eyes never leaving his grandfather. "The box did this. He picked it up, and it just sort of blasted him. We could see the glow of the magic spill out of it and surround him like an aura."
"Well," Susan, who'd been uncharacteristically silent through all this, said. "Not all of us. I didn't see any visible magic, but I could feel the burst of power. Eleanor?"
Eleanor, who was trembling, nodded. "Yes, No. I mean, no, I didn't see it. Yes, I felt it. Tess, I think I want to go home now."
"Yes. You should. Thank you for today."
"I'll be back tomorrow."
"No," I said, retrieving her purse when she was on the verge of leaving the shop without it. "We won't be open. And we won't be doing inventory or anything else. I'm going to be working on this dagger full-time until we can solve it or are forced to give up. You and Bill should prepare, just in case."
"Yes," she said, staring at Jed. Eleanor put up with a lot of shenanigans in my shop, but she'd clearly had enough magic for the day. "Prepare. Bye, Tess."
I hugged her, hard, not knowing when I'd see her again, or if she'd ever again laugh and banter with customers in my shop.
If I'd ever even have a shop again.
She hugged me back, finally snapping out of the weird trance that Jed's transformation seemed to have caused. "You and Jack will solve this. I know you will," she said fiercely. "And if you need any help at all, you call me. Okay? Promise me you will."
"I will," I promised. "Now pack up. Go stay with Win or something. Just until this is over."
Win was Bill's daughter who lived out of town, and she and Eleanor liked each other a lot now, after an initial misunderstanding involving a Jeep and a boa constrictor.
"Maybe. Call me." With one last hug, she was gone.
I turned around and faced the sheriff and the Shepherds. "Okay. Is this box a fountain of youth, and it doesn't matter that the queen is going to blow the town up, because we'll become billionaires using it to make rich people young again? Or, like everything else involving the Fae, is this a falsely gilded deceit that is going to blow back and bite us in the butt?"
Susan started laughing. "You do have a gift for words, my friend. I'm voting for choice two."
Jack held up two fingers.
After a long moment, Jed sighed. "Two. Definitely two."
Dang.
"You know what always helped in my day?"
We all looked at Jed.
"A hearty noontime meal. Who can save the world—or even the town—on an empty stomach?"
"I'm out. Too much to do for lunch," Susan said, and she took off.
"I'm not hungry," Jack said mildly, staring at me again.
