Page 24 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

My pulse jumped with interest.

“You found something weird,” I told Max.

I turned the box over carefully. No maker’s mark or obvious hinge damage. It was old and grimy, though, and faintly singed at one corner. I scratched lightly with my nail in a spot where the finish had gone dull. It was cream underneath the grime, and I doubted it was paint.

“Oh,” I said very quietly.

Ivory.

Illegal to sell in plenty of contexts, morally complicated in all of them, and exactly the kind of thing that turned up in old New York apartments after decades of being passed through generations and estate sales. That little box alone was worth far more than whatever Octavia usually charged for the odds and ends I dug up.

My thrifter instincts and my Catholic-guilt-adjacent ethics activated at the same time, which was enough to exhaust me.

I didn’t open it, partly because the case itself was already enough to make my brain light up like a scoreboard, and partly because Max had chosen it. I would have bought whatever he’d marked as long as it didn’t contain live bees.

“All right,” I said to him. “Let’s see how much damage this does.”

Octavia looked up from rearranging a tray of bracelets and immediately clocked both my face and what was in my hand.

“What have you found?” she asked.

“Potential trouble.” I set the box on the glass counter between us.

Squinting, she picked it up and examined it, then set it down with a shrug that nearly gave me heart palpitations.

“How much?” I asked, trying for neutral and landing somewhere around controlled hope.

“Three dollars.”

I gaped at her. “Octavia.”

“Quinn.”

“You can’t sell this for three dollars.”

She glanced at the box, then back at me. “Everything in this store is three dollars until I decide it has emotional significance.”

“It’s ivory.”

“I know.”

That stopped me. “You know?”

She made an impatient little sound. “Sweetheart, I’ve been buying dead people’s things since before your parents knew each other. Of course I know.”

“Then you absolutely cannot charge me three dollars for it.”

She crossed her arms over her brocade jacket and leaned back like an auntie preparing to win on principle. “I absolutely can, because I said three dollars.”

“Octavia…”

“I have the right to assign whatever value I want to anything in this store, and I value that at three dollars… for you.”

I looked at the box. Looked at her. “Octavia.”

Her eyes softened, but only a little. “You told me what it was. If you were looking to take advantage, you’d have kept your pretty mouth shut and floated out of here feeling victorious. Instead, you tried to give me more money. That means you get grandmother pricing.”

“You’re not my grandmother.”