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T ess

Wednesday: Wedding minus 10 days

I t’s not every day that a woman needs to turn down six different wedding dresses before lunch.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Quindlen! It would be an honor to wear your dress. But since I’m several inches taller than you, it wouldn’t quite work out. Anyway, I couldn’t possibly hurt Aunt Ruby’s feelings by choosing anyone else’s dress, you understand. Yes. Thanks for calling, and thanks so much, again.”

I hung up the phone and sighed. Eleanor, my best (and only) employee, freshly back from her honeymoon, paused in her glass polishing and laughed. “I remember that dress. It was one giant ruffle, from top to bottom. You’d look like a meringue in it!”

Not that she could talk. The bridesmaid’s dress I’d worn at her wedding was one giant pink ruffle, and I’d looked like Little Bo Peep threw up a bottle of Pepto Bismol on it. Sadly, my Aunt Ruby was able to get the stains out from the unfortunate incident at Eleanor and Bill’s reception.

“That’s six. Six people calling to offer me their dresses to wear at my wedding. Who knew so many Dead Enders held on to their clothes that long?” Even as I said it, though, I realized I should have known. Who better than a pawnshop owner to know exactly what kind of stuff people hoard in their closets, attics, and basements? Without them, I’d be out of business.

But.

I wanted to wear a brand-new wedding dress that I picked out on my own. Something that fit me perfectly and makes me look like a fairy princess. Well. Not an actual fairy princess—the Fae were inhumanly beautiful, and I could never look that good.

But I’d do my best to come close. I wanted Jack to be stunned when he saw me walk down that aisle.

“Oh! The aisle. That’s another problem.”

Eleanor’s mouth fell open. “You still don’t have a venue? Your wedding is in ten days!”

“We tried! But with not even two months to plan, plus the guest list keeps exploding … it’s almost impossible to find someplace big enough to fit us all. It looks like the wedding is in the church, and the reception is in town square.”

“Why did you pick a date so soon?”

I sighed. “It seemed like a good idea. I didn’t want wedding planning to eat up years of my time. And Jack wants us to be married sooner rather than later, since he’s still uneasy about Uncle Mike’s reaction to us living together. Tiger-skin rugs still get mentioned.”

But then I smiled. “Most of all, though, we just want to be married because we love each other.”

Eleanor understood, being a new bride herself, so she just smiled and continued cleaning glass. Since we weren’t busy with customers, I picked up the duster and got to work. Some people might take a week or two off before their wedding, but those people might not run a business and have bills to pay.

My pawnshop was on the small side, but it was all mine, and I kept it sparklingly clean. People are more likely to want to shop in a place that’s spotless. Sunny, too, so I washed the big front store windows every Monday and cleaned every day. I used to come in and do it on Sundays, my one day off a week since the shop was closed, but finally decided it was overkill.

Life was too short for me to work seven days a week. I was even now in the process of deciding whether to close on Monday, too. Mondays were never busy, except for the tour bus, and I could ask them to stop by on a different day.

Before we could discuss the venues any further, Mr. Volkov, the elementary school bus driver, walked into the shop with one of his champion show dogs. He’d shown all over the country, even at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York, and his Borzois had won many awards. To me, they looked like fluffy greyhounds—Borzois originally came from Arabian greyhounds crossed with thick-coated Russian dogs, according to the American Kennel Club (yes, I crush trivia nights)—and I always wanted one when I saw him with any of his dogs. My cat, Lou, might not appreciate it, though, and I wasn’t home enough to be a good dog owner.

But maybe one day.

“Hi, Mr. Volkov! Who is this beauty?” I put the duster down and walked over to the gorgeous dog, waiting for permission to pet her.

“This is Anastasia, and she loves a good scratch behind the ears, like most dogs,” he said proudly, beaming at me.

“Cats are the same way,” I confided, thinking of Lou and Jack, my fiancé, who took on the shape of a quarter-ton Bengal tiger sometimes.

They say people come to resemble their dogs, and it certainly held true for Mr. Volkov. He was a tall, lean man with bushy black and gray hair and a thick beard. I could easily imagine him wearing a Cossack hat and coat and riding across the mountains in eastern Europe. Today, though, in deference to the June heat, he wore khaki cargo shorts

and a blue T-shirt that said:

My dog is smarter than your honor student

I guess since school was out, he didn’t have to worry about outraged parents at the bus stops.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Volkov?”

Anastasia pushed her sleekly muscled body closer to give me more access for ear scratching. “Aren’t you a sweetie?”

The bus driver blinked, a dark flush rising on his cheeks. “Ah … you’re a sweetie, too, but aren’t you getting married?”

I realized he thought I’d been talking to him and bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Oh, no. I mean, thank you, but I was talking to Anastasia, although you’re quite handsome, too.”

Eleanor grinned and rolled her eyes. “Standing right here, if we’re all giving out compliments. What brings you in, Sergei?”

“Well! That I should bring you this horrible …” he said, then muttered something in Russian that, by the look on his face, I was perfectly happy not to be able to translate. He pulled something out of his shorts pocket and smacked it down on the flat rubber mat I kept on the glass counter for just such occasions.

We’d had to fix or replace one too many cracked counters before I finally had the rubber mat epiphany.

“This! I want you to buy this from me!”

Eleanor and I looked down to see what looked exactly like a dog collar.

“It’s a dog collar!” he shouted.

“Okay,” I said cautiously. “Please don’t shout, Mr. Volkov. I see it’s a dog collar. We don’t normally take?—”

“It’s an enchanted dog collar.”

Oh, no.

I took a step back. My recent encounters with a magic disco ball and a magic mirror had left me feeling wary.

“What does it do?” Eleanor asked, taking a step back herself.

“It’s supposed to make the dog quit barking,” Mr. Volkov huffed. “Anastasia barks at everything. Other dogs, cats, squirrels. The delivery drivers. The wind! Imaginary noises! It’s too much. My brain hurts. A man at our last dog show sold me this collar and said it would make a dog stop barking. He showed how it worked on his dog, who also was barking, barking, barking. Put the collar on and BOOM!”

Eleanor and I jumped.

“Boom?” I asked, almost afraid to know the answer.

“Boom! No more barking.” He scowled at the collar. “But I try it on Anastasia, and it does not work. I think, ‘Tess might buy it,’ since you buy magical objects. I paid too much to throw it in the garbage.”

I sighed. “I’m kind of at my fill with magical objects, Mr. Volkov. I’ve had some problems with them recently, and with the wedding?—”

“It doesn’t make the dogs stop barking,” he interrupted me, leaning forward. “It makes them talk.”