Page 31 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

She was young. Mid-twenties, perhaps. Pretty in a way I registered only generally at first because what struck me before her looks was brightness. She was wearing office clothes that had clearly been assembled with intention rather than money, and she was smiling wholeheartedly, which told me she’d probably been the one who organized the impromptu celebration in the first place.

I might have kept walking.

I should’ve kept walking.

Then she turned her head as she laughed at something the older man said, and the chain at her throat shifted against her skin.

My mind refused the evidence my own eyes were seeing.

The song went on around me, suddenly distant and unbearable.

The pendant resting just below her collarbone was dark with age, scorched on one side, unmistakable in shape even from several yards away.

I froze.

Moira took one more step before realizing I was no longer beside her. “Mr. Virelli?”

I barely heard her.

The necklace.

It couldn’t be. It absolutely couldn’t be, because I’d been looking for years. The surviving descriptions were inconsistent, and the thing had vanished before my mother was born. The odds of finding it here—here, under the fluorescent lights in a midtown law firm—were so ridiculous they insulted probability itself.

And yet…

I knew the irregular darkening near the upper left edge where fire had kissed it. I knew, with the cold instantaneous certainty of recognition, that I was looking at one of the two missing heirlooms that had thus far eluded every search, every inquiry, every paid expert and archive request.

My grandmother had worn it.

“Mr. Virelli?” Moira said again, sharper now.

I walked away from her.

I heard my name, followed by a polite but increasingly concerned “sir?” from someone else. None of it mattered. All that mattered was the necklace and the woman wearing it as if it were merely jewelry, as if the thing hadn’t crossed generations, continents, war, loss, and fire to arrive—somehow, impossibly—at her throat.

I got close enough that there could be no mistake.

The woman looked up. Her smile faltered as I stepped directly into the cluster.

The tall young man blinked at me. The older man still held his cupcake. The candle guttered once in the office air.

I heard myself speak before I’d chosen the words. “Return it.”

The woman stared at me.

I stared right back at the necklace. Her hand instinctively moved toward it, confusion gathering in her face.

Then, distantly, the rest of the room seemed to remember it existed and began moving toward us.

6

QUINN

FOR A BOON, OF COURSE.

“Return it.”

I frowned, thinking he was talking about the cupcake.