“Bye!” She turned and skipped lightly across the parking lot toward the school.
When she reached the sidewalk in front of the office, the janitor turned and caught sight of her. He smiled at the little girl. But when he glanced up and saw me, his smile vanished. As soon as the door closed behind Lily, he started toward me with a determined stride.
I stepped out of the truck and waited, curious to see what he wanted. I also wanted to ask him about Mrs. Gonzalez in case it hadn’t been someone wholookedlike him with her, butactuallyhim.
When he reached my truck, he scowled at me and clenched his fists. “Who the heck are you, and what were you doing with those kids in your truck? You’d better tell meright now, or my first call is to the sheriff.”
4
Tess
After I rang up the last customers from the Monday visit from the Golden Years Swamp Tours bus and gave Mr. Holby his fifty-dollar tip in a small envelope, I smiled as they headed back outside to the tour bus. Once a week, the GYST tour came by my shop in between other adventures on the continuing mission to save the grandparents of theme-park-obsessed tourists from one more day of roller coasters and gift shops.
Of course, technically, you could consider Dead End Pawn to be a kind of gift shop, but I prided myself on having better prices, less merchandise made of plastic, and a considerably more interesting inventory than anything Orlando offered.
After all, you couldn’t find taxidermied animals who occasionally came to life and chased each other around just anywhere. Or—I shuddered and glanced at the crystal ball I’d put on a high, high shelf behind the counter—a bad-fortune predictor.
I’d easily cleared five hundred dollars from the hour-long visit, which was going to help pay the bills this month. December hadn’t been as great as usual, considering the dueling Santas and threat of murder by corporate conglomerate.
But January, so far, was looking up.
Now that the shop had emptied, I realized that my stomach was empty, too. I hadn’t eaten breakfast, and whether it was the most important meal of the day or not, it was definitely noticeable when I missed it. I checked my phone to see if anybody had found Granny G., but no luck.
Eleanor was due in after lunch, but I was on my own until then, so it looked like another protein bar meal.
Yuck.
Unless I wanted to eat the glossy green zucchini on the plant Ollie had given me. I considered it—even raw zucchini had to be better than protein bars—and turned to look at it. The pot sat right where I’d placed it, on the far end of my sales counter, but the plant was … different.
I blinked.
I must not have been paying attention to the plant, what with the crystal ball’s death forecast going on because I’d been sure the plant, though leafy and healthy looking, had only had one zucchini on it.
Now it had three.
Three full-sized zucchinis, so it wasn’t like they’d been camouflaged by the leaves.
I laughed and shrugged. Great. I’d make zucchini bread. Not noticing fruit—zucchini was technically fruit, like tomatoes, and yes, I’m a killer at trivia—was very low on my to-worry-about meter for the day.
Jack was leaving to deal with something dangerous.
Granny G was missing.
I had a scary crystal ball in my shop. Was it even ethical to sell something like that?
I sighed. All this on an empty stomach was messing with my GYST-induced good mood. I ducked into the back to grab a fake-chocolate protein bar and a glass of water and had just returned to the shop and taken my first bite when the door opened again.
I smiled and waved at the woman who entered and then turned away long enough to choke down the nasty mouthful and wash it down with a drink of water. I really, really needed to hire another part-time employee, so I could eat lunch regularly.
“Hello,” I said brightly, turning to find that a man had joined the woman in the shop, and oh, holy movie star, he was seriously gorgeous.
And I could tell he knew it, too, when he bowed extravagantly and flashed a smile that must have cost thousands of dollars in orthodontia and teeth whitening.
“Hello, my darling Tess. I’m so glad to finally meet you!”
I blinked, momentarily blinded by all that dazzling, toothy brilliance. He was maybe my height, five eight, maybe early thirties, and he had curling, thick blond hair with sun-kissed highlights. His brown eyes danced beneath strong brows, and he had a perfect nose and sculpted mouth. He wore blue jeans, a black turtleneck, and a black leather jacket.
I’d been thinking about gorgeous people before, and now I was faced with a supermodel. Wow! Maybe the manifesting thing was helping me for a change.
