Page 1

1

T ess

Something strange was happening in my pawnshop.

And if you knew anything at all about Dead End Pawn, you’d understand that it took a lot for me to label something “strange.” If it wasn’t a mutant zucchini plant, a gift-stealing Christmas tree, or a dream catcher that only caught nightmares, I wouldn’t bat an eye at it.

This, though?

This was weird.

Mr. and Mrs. Frost, who’d seen a combined hundred and eighty years on the earth, were in my shop, which was normal.

They were looking at my small selection of antique weapons: also, normal.

But they were dancing the Foxtrot while they looked, which was definitely not.

Granted, Mrs. Frost was seeing much better after a friend from Atlantis had healed her cataracts, and Mr. Frost got around easily these days with his new hip. But dancing?

Dancing the Foxtrot?

In my shop?

Nope. Definitely weird.

Also, I couldn’t figure out where the music came from.

Dancing Cheek to Cheek ?

“I take five minutes to make a cup of coffee, and you two turn my shop into a dance studio,” I called out, smiling. “You’re great, too. Nigel should ask you to give lessons.”

Nigel the ogre ran a dance studio just outside of town with his dangerous wife, Erin, who was a river nymph. He’d had to tell her she couldn’t drown the students when they misbehaved, but after that, things went fine.

“Tess! Make that infernal disco ball stop playing this music, or I swear I’ll shoot it with my crossbow when I get a chance,” Mrs. Frost shouted at me. “I love Doris Day, but I don’t want to hear this song one more time!”

“Oh, no,” I groaned, looking up. The disco ball hanging in the center of the shop was the last thing my best (and only) employee, Eleanor, had bought before she got married and left on her honeymoon.

Until today, it had seemed to be a perfectly normal, overly large, tacky disco ball. I should have known better. The seller took way too low of a price for it. Granted, Eleanor was a brilliant negotiator, but this had been really low.

“Let me grab my stepladder, Mrs. Frost.”

“My bladder is none of your business, young lady,” Mr. Frost said sternly.

“I didn’t—” I sighed and went to get the ladder. Between the loud music and the fact that the Frosts preferred to live life “on the edge”—also known as without their hearing aids turned on—it was a conversation I couldn’t win.

When I trudged back out, lugging the only ladder tall enough to reach the ball, the music had changed. Now the Andrew Sisters, one of my Aunt Ruby’s favorite groups, were telling us about the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.

And the Frosts were jitterbugging.

Really, really slowly.

If you’ve never seen two ninety-plus-year-old people jitterbugging, I don’t recommend doing so before you’re had your first cup of coffee of the day.

“Tess!”

“I’m coming, Mrs. Frost!”

My boyfriend Jack Shepherd, who was in his human shape instead of his alternate, and fluffier, Bengal tiger shape, walked through the connecting door between my shop and his office and rushed over to take the ladder for me.

“Thanks!”

“What’s happening?”

“Cut in, young fella!” Mr. Frost shouted. “I gotta rest my old bones, and I don’t think that dern thing will let us stop dancing any other way.”

Jack blinked and then looked between me, the Frosts, and the sparkling, rotating, music-playing mirror ball. Then he groaned. “Not again.”

“I know,” I said sadly. He loved me, and I loved him, but sometimes I wondered how long he’d stick around, considering all the shenanigans that seemed to happen around me.

He grinned at me. “Cut it out.”

“What?”

“Negative thinking. We’ve survived too much over the past year and a half to let a little disco ball get to us.” He took a step forward to put the ladder beneath the ball.

And that’s when he started jitterbugging.

“I didn’t know you knew how to jitterbug,” I said, admiring his form while being completely astonished by it.

“I. Don’t,” he ground out. “ Tess !”

Epiphany struck, and I ran to the back and grabbed a pair of noise-canceling earplugs I’d found the other day when I was cleaning. Stuffing them in my ears as far as they’d go, I raced back out to the shop and stumbled to a stop.

Mr. Frost, Mrs. Frost, Jack, Jack’s grandfather, and Jack’s grandfather’s lady friend were all now dancing the Twist. To The Twist .

Millie—also known as Dr. Millicent Hernandez to her history students at the University of Central Florida—threw her head back and laughed. She said something, but the earplugs did their job, so I didn’t hear her.

I dragged the ladder over, climbed up, and found the switch on the side of the heavy ball. The moment I toggled it off, everyone stopped dancing. Since the ball stopped sparkling, rotating, and vibrating, which I guess meant it was no longer playing music, I took a chance and pulled one earplug out—blessed, wonderful silence.

After I climbed down, Jack headed for the back with the ladder, and I rushed over to the Frosts to be sure they were okay.

“That was wonderful!” Millie said. “I love Chubby Checker!”

“Who?”

Jack’s great-great-a-bunch-of-greats grandpa, Jedediah Shepherd, grinned at me. “Even I’ve heard of Chubby Checker, and I was stuck inside a statue for three hundred years.”

He was, long story, but I didn’t have time for Chubby Checker right now. I rushed over the Mrs. Frost, who brushed off my concern and glared at her husband.

“The first time I met you, you were dancing the Twist to that song with that floozy Nancy Joy Neederhouser.” She handed me the giant tote she was using for a handbag and rummaged around in it. “Where is my crossbow?”

“Now, Mrs. Frost,” I said soothingly. “You know?—”

“Don’t you ‘Mrs. Frost’ me, young lady! She was the only girl in town wearing go-go boots !”

“That floozy!” Jack said, back from putting the ladder away. He smoothly stepped between Mrs. Frost and Mr. Frost, who was making good use of his new hip while he rushed to the door.

Jack held out his arm. “How about a hand to the parking lot, Mrs. Frost?”

She transferred her glare to him. “Don’t you dare treat me like an old lady! I don’t need your help.”

Jack looked wounded. “I was asking you to help me . And then I thought I’d butter you up on the way to the car, so you’d make me a batch of your famous walnut-chocolate-chip cookies.”

Tiny Mrs. Frost was no more immune to Jack’s charm and rugged good looks than any other woman in town. She looked up to meet his gaze—he was four inches over six feet, so she had to look way up—and started laughing. “Fine, but don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, tucking her hand under his arm and winking.

When they walked outside, with Mrs. Frost talking a mile a minute about the floozy, Jed and Millie walked over to me, still smiling.

“That was quite a blast from the past. It’s never boring when I visit Dead End, that’s for sure,” she said. “Did the disco ball actually make us dance?”

I noticed she and Grandpa Jed were pretty cozy. She’d first met him when she asked if she could interview him as a fascinating subject for an academic paper. Other than vampires and certain other beings who’d eat you if you tried to interview them, Jed was one of a very few humans who’d lived in Florida three hundred years ago and could tell historians what life was really like back then.

Then she’d written a book, and they’d gone on tour together, and there was even some talk of Jed consulting on a few projects in Hollywood. So, we hadn’t seen much of him since the time he brought a live turkey to Thanksgiving, horrifying my vegetarian little sister, and he ended up in the washing machine.

The turkey, not Jed.

“We’re in town and wanted to invite you and Jack over to the house for a barbecue tonight,” Jed said. “You don’t have to bring anything but yourselves. We’ve got the food covered.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Where have I heard that before?”

Millie looked confused.

“Ask him to tell you about Leroy and my Thanksgiving dinner,” I said dryly, amused to see Jed’s cheeks flush.

Back in the eighteenth century, women didn’t tease men, evidently. Jed was still getting used to it.

Jack finally walked back inside, but he looked oddly perplexed. When I gave him a questioning look, he shook his head, so I figured I’d get the scoop later.

“Tess was telling me about Thanksgiving and Leroy,” Millie said.

“He’s doing great. Still living it up with the Faeries in my backyard,” I told them, enjoying her startled reaction. “Yes, all the wild stories Jed tells you about Dead End are true. Probably understated, even.”

“I was just inviting you and Tess to a barbecue,” Jed told Jack.

If you saw them in the same room, you couldn’t miss that they were related. Jack was a few inches taller, with thick, wavy, bronze hair, where Jed’s hair was the same bronze but streaked with white. Strong, masculine features on both men framed emerald-green eyes that usually sparkled with good humor and always shone with intelligence.

When they were tigers, their eyes shone amber gold.

“Meat cooked outside. What’s not to like? Tess, do we have anything else going on?”

It still amazed me that our lives fit together so well. “No, I just need to go home and feed Lou. Are you sure you don’t want me to bring anything?”

“Well, if you have a spare pie sitting around, I wouldn’t say no,” Jed said, giving me a big smile.

I had to laugh. “Spare pie? Sitting around? With Jack in the house? Nope. But I’ve got some fresh-baked lady fingers. I can whip up a tiramisu.”

Jed paled. “You … you bake fingers?”

You’d think nobody would ask a question like that.

In Dead End, you’d be wrong.

“It’s the name of a kind of cookie,” I explained. “What time?”

“Whenever you want to stop by. We’ll eat around seven. Your Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike will be there, too, with Shelley.”

I hugged Jed, but of course didn’t touch Millie. I didn’t want to know how she was going to die, especially since she might be part of the family soon. They left a few minutes later, and Jack and I chatted about what to do with the disco ball without coming to any decisions.

Somebody would want it.

I could always find buyers for the enchanted objects, no matter how much they annoyed me. That’s why my interest was piqued when Joe Bob Turner walked into the store with a large, badly wrapped package in his hands and a sheepish smile on his face.

“Joe Bob! How are you? We haven’t talked since you tried to rob my store!” I grinned at him, but then an angry tiger, albeit still in human form, growled.

“He did what ?”

Oops.