She drained the last bit of coffee in herDead End Pawnmug and followed me into my back room. It was still a quarter to nine, so the shop wasn’t open, and I didn’t have to worry about customers yet.
I refilled our mugs and pointed to the box of donuts. “I stopped at Mellie’s on the way. Help yourself.”
“I hate to fall victim to the stereotype about cops and donuts, but I see a blueberry glazed,” she said, snagging it.
I took a chocolate frosted with sprinkles and we returned to the counter out front and resumed staring down at the crystal ball.
The crystal ball resumed doing nothing.
“Are you sure it’s haunted?”
Susan shrugged. “It moans sometimes. Mostly when it’s lonely, if my grandfather’s housekeeper, Mrs. Butler, was telling the truth. Never sure about that. She drinks. Not that anybody could blame her, working for him all those years.”
“Your housekeeper is named Butler.” Now she was just putting me on.
“Listen, I know it’s weird. Her husband—hedoesn’tdrink—drove the moving van down here for me.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, laughing. “Well, how does the crystal ball work? I mean, in the movies, the psychic stares into the swirling depths of the ball and sees something that she interprets for the client. Like, ‘you will meet a tall, dark stranger,’ or ‘you will come into money,’ or something.”
We looked down at the ball. No depths, no swirling. It was just a sparkling, transparent quartz crystal sphere, resting innocently on its base. Pretty, but nothing special.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Susan polished off her donut and washed it down with the rest of her second cup of coffee. “That’s fine. I wouldn’t believe me, either. I just don’t want it. Can you buy it and sell it as a paperweight?”
“Don’t be so hasty. Let me have a look.” I cupped the ball in my hands and lifted it to inspect more closely. Tried to lift it, I should say. It took me a second try, after I almost dropped it the first time. “This is a lot heavier than I expected!”
“Eight inches in diameter, forty pounds if you include the base.” Susan peered at the ball, now resting in my hands. “Hey! I think it likes you.”
I didn’t know if it liked me, but the surface of the ball was warming up. Within a few seconds, it heated so much I had to replace it on the stand before it burned me.
I shook my hands until they cooled off and then checked for blisters. “That was unexpected. Why does it get hot when you pick it up?”
Susan ‘s eyes widened. “No idea. It never got hot when I picked it up. Or for anybody else in the family, either.”
“Not again,” I groaned. It wouldn’t be the first magical object to develop some kind of weird attachment to me. The music box that liked to make its opinions known through song—all on its own—still appeared randomly in my life, home, and shop. On New Year’s Eve, it had appeared on the nightstand on Jack’s side of the bed and started playingThe Lion Sleeps Tonight, after which he’d snatched it up, stalked across the room to open the window, and tossed it out into the yard, muttering “Tiger. Not a lion.Tiger.”
It showed up again, not a scratch on it, on New Year’s Day, taunting Jack with a medley of songs about lions that prominently featuredThe Circle of Life.Honestly, after the New Year’s Eve we’d had, it was lucky Jack hadn’t smashed it into tiny musical pieces.
“Tess?”
I blew out a breath. “Sorry. Memories of other magical objects. Listen. I’m not sure I understand this Eeyore thing, but I’ll sell it for you. Maybe some of Dead End’s magic users can look at it and let us know what’s going on with it.”
“The Eeyore thing? They call it that because the crystal ball foretells your future, but only the bad parts.”
This kept getting better and better, by which I meant worse and worse.
“That’s … not exactly the vibe I’m going for here in the shop, Susan,” I finally said. “I prefer more positive, cheerful things.”
She folded her arms. “Like the Christmas tree that kept stealing kids’ presents?”
She had me there.
“Fine. I’ll try to sell it, but …” I trailed off, staring down at the ball, which was finally doing something.
“Is thatswirling?”
“What?”
“Look!” I pointed at the ball. A silvery mist had appearedinside the balland shadows were moving in the mist.
