1
Tess
A wild-eyed elf ran into my pawnshop, threw a bag of donuts at me, and started shouting:
"Tess! Santa Claus is in a fistfight at Mellie's Bakery!"
Nobody can say we don't have Christmas spirit in Dead End.
The elf wasn't an actual elf—theyprefer to be called Fae, and I hadn't seen a human-sized one ofthosesince we gave a Fae queen the key to the city in November. This elf wasn't a Keebler elf, either, which was too bad, because it was ten o'clock, and I'd love a few post-breakfast chocolate-covered cookies.
No, this was my friend Lauren, who owned and ran Lauren's Deli. She wore a Santa's helper costume in green, red, and white stripes, complete with a triangle-shaped hat and curly-toed shoes. She'd dyed her hair candy-cane red, with the corresponding white stripes, which looked kind of cool on her spiral curls. My long, normal-red hair, blue jeans, and Dead End Pawn sweatshirt suddenly felt boring in comparison.
She'd even sprayed silver glitter on her dark brown cheeks, because Lauren was definitely a person who seriously committed to a role.
I took in this North Pole sartorial splendor with just a glance, because my brain needed time to catch up to "Santa Claus is in a fistfight."
"Okay. But why are you tellingmeabout it?" My pawnshop was clear out on the outskirts of our quirky little town of Dead End, Florida, population 5000. We could all fit in a single cruise ship, in other words, if anybody in town trusted cruise ships.
Town motto:Your neighbors are weird. Get over it.
Not the closest place to either the bakery or the sheriff's office.
She paused, looking puzzled. "Huh. I don't really know. While I was there, I got you some donuts, though. I know the sheriff is out of town, and I just … I guess I'm used to you and Jack being sort of unofficial problem solvers this past year."
While Jack Shepherd—shapeshifter, former soldier, current private investigator, and my new boyfriend—and I had been in the middle of more than one mystery during the year, it hadn't been by choice. Things just kepthappening.
"When Susan is out of town, Andy is in charge. Did you call him?"
She shrugged. "I'm sure somebody did. Anyway, it was pretty crazy, even for Dead End."
Since the shop was in an afternoon lull and empty of customers, I waved Lauren to follow me to the back room, where I started coffee.
"Thanks for the donuts! Gingerbread?"
She grinned. "Is there any other kind in December? I already ate two, so the two in the bag are for you. I need to stop my daily donut run, anyway, or I won't fit in this costume anymore."
"You look great," I said, admiring her generous curves. "If anybody can pull off an elf costume, it's you."
She glanced at the small mirror on the wall and smiled. "You're not wrong. I thought the striped hair might be a bit much, but it's Christmas, and—"
"It's Dead End," I finished, handing her a mug of coffee.
"Thanks! Oh, is this the new shop logo? It's so cute!"
My little sister Shelley had helped design a logo for the shop, with a picture of our mascot, a somewhat beat-up taxidermied alligator named Fluffy, surrounded by the shop name Dead End Pawn. The tourists who escaped Orlando and traveled a little south to explore the "real Florida" loved buying Dead End Pawn merchandise. It still surprised me, but I was more than happy to provide shirts, tote bags, mugs, and whatever else Shelley could dream up.
Being a new business owner meant I had to focus on the bottom line. Especially since I'd had to discontinue selling the unlabeled potions left over from my former boss's tenure—it had hurt; they were pure profit.
Turnonewoman's prize show cat into a ferret, and you'd think the world had ended.
It had been onlytemporary, after all. And not my fault that the National Cat Association judges didn't let Zanzibar compete in the annual championship. All the other cats had gone after the ferret, who'd been lucky to escape unscathed.
Jack, who was a Bengal tiger sometimes, had laughed his head off when he'd heard about it.
"Tess. Cats are predators. They would have seen the ferret as an intruder in their territory."
Whatever. Not my fault. There had been a warning on the potions case, after all:
