Page 65 of The Little Shop of Curiosities Cursed Object 1, The Music Box

“Oh, you brought Prickles.” Chan blinks in surprise. I walk past her and roll my eyes. “Fine, you can both help,” she mutters sullenly.

“Dusty’s here too,” Tristan adds as she closes the door behind us and leads the way into her living room. “So what’s the probl–” Tristan breaks off in shock, his mouth falling open and his eyes widening.

“Wow,” I mutter. “That’s–” I blink, at a bit of a loss for words.

“That’s really ostentatious, even for Chan,” Dusty states as she stands beside us with her hands on her hips, her lips pursed thoughtfully. She tilts her head back and looks up at a bloody enormous painting.

It must be nearly three metres high including the elaborate thick dull-gold frame. The whole thing’s so tall it reaches all the way to the ceiling in Chan’s tiny flat, and that’s with it being propped at an angle. I can’t imagine how she got it through the doorway.

The painting itself is really dark, full of deep, muted colours. It portrays two men…kind of…wrestling? I think. They look like they may be naked, and one has got the other in a kind of wrestling move, bent over in front of him.

“Why does it look like he’s giving him a blow job?” Dusty squints.

The three of us tilt our heads simultaneously as we study it.

“Where did it come from?” I frown. “It’s not really the sort of thing you’d find down at Tooting market.”

“Where did it come from?” Chan replies, her voice rising in clear annoyance. “Where did it come from?”

She spins around and grabs the TV remote to flip the TV on. The screen freezes and pixelates for a moment when the lights flicker.

“Stupid fucking storm,” she mutters as the picture resumes, and she changes it to the news channel.

“Paris is in uproar tonight with the apparent theft of a painting from the Grande Gallerie of the Louvre. The painting itself, named Hercules and Achelous, was painted in the early part of the seventeenth century by Italian artist Guido Reni. Police are baffled as to how the piece of art was removed from the wall of the Gallerie without tripping any alarms or registering on the security cameras…”

We stare at the picture of the painting on the screen and then back at the one behind us.

“Oh my god,” Tristan breathes. “That’s the real thing?”

Dusty whistles. “It’s probably worth millions.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” I offer. “While I’ll admit I’m curious as to how it ended up here, I doubt the authorities will think to look for a three-hundred-year-old painting in an ex-council flat in Shoreditch.”

“What I want to know is how the fuck did it get here?” Chan snaps. “This isn’t the bloody Thomas Crown Affair.” She glares at me as if this is somehow all my fault. “All of a sudden all this weird crap just keeps appearing in my flat or in my dressing room at the club.”

“Weird crap?” I repeat. “Like what?”

“See for yourself.” She indicates a pile of objects stacked on the armchair next to the painting, and I lean down and start rooting through the items.

“Oh.”

“Oh, what?” Chan scowls.

“This.” I lift a dirty-looking cloth. Made from dark, coarse material, it’s about the size of a beach towel, and it looks as if it’s been used to wipe the floor and then plug a leak.

“That appeared on my bed a couple of nights ago.” She wrinkles her nose. “It smells like my grandmother, all stale and musty.”

“I think it’s a Tibetan death shroud,” I murmur in fascination as I study it closely. “It has very distinctive stitching, see?”

“I don’t even like cross-stitch.” She throws her hands up in exasperation. “And what the fuck was it doing on my bed?”

“These date back to roughly the second century, and they were considered incredibly powerful. They were laid over the dead to protect them from evil spirits.” I set it aside carefully and pick up an Egyptian amulet. “Wow, an Egyptian funerary amulet.” I turn it over in my hand. “Roughly between 186 BC and 90 BC. They were used for a similar purpose, to offer protection on the journey to the Underworld. This craftsmanship is gorgeous,” I whisper reverently, eyeing the inlaid gold and lapis lazuli.

“How do you know so much about history?” Dusty asks.

“I don’t.” I chuckle. “But I do know about powerful magic shit.”

“Never mind that,” Chan interrupts. “I want to know where they came from. And I don’t mean the country.”