Chapter 1
Three years ago
Shanna stared at the shattered whiskey glass on the floor, wondering if this would bring more or less bad luck than a broken mirror.
But what was another seven years for her, anyway?
“You can certainly try,” she murmured at the glass and bent down, carefully sweeping it back onto the tray with a napkin. At least in her little corner of the kitchen, no one had noticed the mishap yet.
“O’Connell!” Maggie’s voice—powerful for her petite build—preceded her before she rounded the corner. “You gotta hurry up or we’ll be in the weeds. We’ve got five minutes for the shots before they serve the chasers, and—oh, shit.”
Shanna didn’t need to understand what Maggie was saying (which was good because half the time, she didn’t) to know what the problem was.Shanna.
It was always Shanna.
She looked up at her boss, trying an apologetic smile. “I’ll be right there.”
With a sigh, Maggie sped off to her next task. “And don’t forget the bev naps!” were her last words before the maze of the hotel’s restaurant ate her.
“Bev naps, bev naps …” Shanna deposited the tray with the broken glass on the counter and turned in a circle. What were bev naps, again? Oh—the little napkins she had to put under every glass. And they were stored … in that overhead cabinet. She opened it and scanned the neatly arranged items: three columns of glass bowls, unopened boxes of half-inch decorative balls whose purpose she didn’t particularly wish to ponder, and, on the highest shelf—Maggie’s beloved bev naps.
Shanna rose to her tiptoes, her fingers barely skirting the plastic wrap of the napkin package. An inch more—she cinched the corner between her fingers—and—
She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d done wrongthistime, but her foot slipped, and the next she knew, the napkins were fluttering around her like banknotes tossed into the air by one of the lucky gamblers outside. Only in this case, nobody but Shanna would scramble to pick them up as they landed everywhere. On the counter. On the floor. On Shanna’s head and shoulders. She blew to get one off her nose, and it slowly sailed down to join the others.
What else did she expect?
She lifted her hand and jingled the silver charm bracelet around her wrist. “It’s you, isn’t it?” she said to the pentacle charm. “So much for balance and protection.”
Well, no use complaining now. She had to get this mess sorted out before Maggie came storming back. Spare napkins would be held in the dry storage, and she had to check on it, anyway. She swept the napkin escapees into a pile and headed for the pantry.
Her phone rang halfway to it. “Hi, Gran,” she said as she picked up. “I’m a little busy at the moment.”
“Oh, no,” her grandmother said. “What did you do now?”
“Why do you immediately assume it’s me?”
“Because it’syou, honey. And because I did a reading.”
Shanna suppressed a sigh and opened the storage room door. Whimpers and a mad scrambling of paws along the floor greeted her, and a small golden fur ball torpedoed itself into her, barely giving Shanna the time to clench the phone between her ear and her shoulder.
“I know, baby.” She kneeled, petted the puppy and kissed his snout. “I’m sorry. I’m almost done, I promise.”
“Oh, I see what kind of fun you’re having,” Gran said in a suggestive tone. “When in Vegas …”
Shanna’s cheeks grew warm. “Gran. I’m talking to Jinx.”
“You brought your dog to your job?”
Guess Gran didn’t seethatfrom the reading.“It’s only for tonight! The dogsitter canceled. I called Mrs. Carrera, but she’s at the hospital with a broken hip.”
“What about your neighbors, that lovely couple?”
“Marlin said he could watch Jinx, and we were all set, but then Marlene went into labor. Three weeks too early. Then I arranged it with Asher—you know, the kid next door—and an hour before I was supposed to leave, the ceiling in my living room started leaking. We think a pipe burst in George’s apartment upstairs, but George isn’t home, and our landlord had an urgent meeting out of state, so nobody can get in to fix it. Gods know if they’ll get to it before the ceiling gets soaked entirely and George’s bathtub falls onto my couch.”
“Do you think that’s likely to happen?” Gran said with a trace of doubt.
Shanna let the silence speak.
