Dating.Notgetting married. We'd only just had our first official date, despite spending most of our time together since he'd returned to Dead End just after last Christmas.
That feeling ofmineI'd had the day before flitted into my mind, but I decided to worry about that later.
Oh, and Jack was one of a very few living shapeshifters whose other form was a Bengal tiger. Mostly people didn't understand how a couple hundred pounds of human could turn into five hundred pounds of deadly cat—magic was magic, no matter what the scientists believed. Just another example of how our world has turned upside down since the supernatural came out of hiding.
Dead End, though, has known about supernatural creatures since long before they told the rest of the world about their existence. Our little town, population 5,000 or so except when it exploded during festival weekends, was a haven for the misfits of the paranormal world. We believed in "live and let live," and most of us were just as happy to have a vampire or shifter or Brownie as a neighbor as we were with plain-vanilla humans like my aunt and uncle.
I was what you might call vanilla-plus. I was human, but I had a grandmother who was a banshee, so somehow I'd ended up with a "gift" that meant I could sometimes see how people were going to die when I touched them. It's why I never shook hands with customers and why I put their change or credit cards in a little tray for them to take. Once you've seen one stranger's death up close and personal, you never want to go through that again. It had happened to me way, way too many times.
I'd even seen Jack die. Technically, I'd seen his past, not his future, but I'd still had a truly horrible vision of his death. Luckily, he'd come back to life after dying in Sedona, but that was a story that involved Atlantis, Mt. Fuji, Japan, a magic portal, and flying monkeys.
I'm literally not kidding about the flying monkeys. This says a lot about Jack's years as a rebel commander.
In short, Jack's past was… complicated. Even more so than mine.
"Miss? Now that you're done with the criminals, will you ring us up?" A customer held up a ukulele. "Can I bargain you down from twenty-five dollars?"
I blinked and realized I'd been standing there, staring at Jack like a lovesick fool. The gleam in his eyes told me he hadn't missed a moment of it.
Sigh.
"I'll go to twenty if you promise not to play it in the shop." I grinned at my customer to keep from shuddering, so she'd think I was joking.
I never joke about the horror that is ukulele music.
Jack leaned over. "Need help? I see Eleanor isn't here."
I shivered at the feel of his breath on my ear. "Yes, thanks. Also, 'teach him a lesson he won't forget'? What was that about?"
He shrugged, a smile quirking the edges of his mouth. "I was going for bad cop since I knew you'd be good cop and let them off easy."
If they only knew just how bad a cop Jack could actually be, they would have peed their pants.
"Miss?"
I squared my shoulders and turned back toward my customers. "Here I come! Thanks for your patience."
Turns out that a little drama of the crime-and-almost-punishment variety is good for business. I rang up more than six hundred dollars in sales by lunchtime and sold completely out of my entire stock ofDead End Pawnt-shirts.
When a temporary lull hit just after twelve, I glanced over at Jack, who'd been wonderfully helpful all morning. He could be shockingly charming when he wanted to be, especially to small children and elderly ladies.
He leaned back against the wall, folded his arms across his chest, and gave me a startled look after the last customer left the shop. "That woman gave me her phone number!"
"The one in the ridiculously short shorts?" I scowled, feeling a twinge of what I refused to call jealousy. Shehadbeen pretty.
"What? Oh, no." He laughed. "Her grandmother. Apparently I am 'just the thing to take to bingo and annoy the Depends off Ethel.'"
"Ah." I felt the smile spread across my face. "She had to be ninety."
His eyes sparkled. "At least. But she said if she were only ten years younger she'd show me a great time."
"Youarea danger to the bingo set," I agreed, but any amusement I felt faded fast when the chimes over the door sounded and Eleanor walked in, looking like she hadn't slept in a week.
"I'm sorry I'm late," she said, twisting her hands. "I… it's just so horrible. Poor Lorraine. And I tried to call and find out what is happening to her, but nobody will talk to me, and… and…"
She burst into tears.
I hugged her, making soothing noises, and Jack locked the door, flipped the sign to CLOSED FOR LUNCH, and herded us gently to the back room, where he handed her a bottle of water and made coffee.
