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“I’ll see what I can do.”
I spent the rest of the day in the penthouse eating, sleeping and checking on Rafe every twenty minutes, until the human nurse they had doing the day shift started to get a little snippy. I knew how he felt. By nightfall, I’d swum until I was pruney, done my nails, eaten all the ice cream in the fridge and played twenty games of poker with Sal, all of which I’d lost.
That was despite Billy Joe stopping by for a draw and giving me some free advice. I should have known better than to listen to him. He was stuck looking twenty-nine for the rest of his ghostly life because that’s what he’d been when a couple of cowboys who he’d cheated at cards shoved him in a sack and dropped it in the Mississippi.
By the time the sun started toying with the horizon, I was bored out of my mind and it was getting harder and harder not to focus on the upcoming meeting with the Circle. I’d gone to the last one in good faith, unarmed except for a bracelet they hopefully didn’t know about. But the idea of showing up like that again wasn’t appealing, especially now that my ward was on the fritz. I needed a few surprises of my own, and I wasn’t going to get them here. Besides, the guards were really starting to freak me out.
Marco swaggered in a little before sunset. I assumed he was making a point about his power or something, because a couple of the guards sneered at him. They’d been up all day.
“I need to go shopping,” I told him.
“I ain’t hanging around no lingerie section while you try stuff on,” he said bluntly.
“We’re shopping for weapons,” I said, grabbing my purse.
“What kind of weapons?”
“Nasty ones.”
And for the first time ever, I saw Marco smile.
Chapter Sixteen
“That’s not something you see every day.”
I had my head inside a large trunk and didn’t bother looking up. The observation could have applied to almost any of the items in the back room of the pawnshop. Unlike the front, which catered to the casual visitor with the requisite DVD players, camcorders and cases of mismatched jewelry, the back was stocked with items for the supernatural population of Vegas. But since the salesman had made the comment, I assumed he was referring to the two huge thugs who were lounging by the door, looking bored.
I shot them a narrow-eyed look, and Marco blew me a kiss.
Smart-ass.
Between one blink and the next, Marco was beside me, the old salesman dangling from his meaty paw. The guy looked terrified, his reading glasses sliding to a precarious position on his bulbous nose. “Hey!”
“He was reaching for you,” Marco said, and forced the man’s hand open. I don’t know what he’d expected to find, but he looked slightly disappointed at the sight of a small tape measure. Not enough to release the guy, though, who was rapidly turning a worrying shade of puce.
“Yeah, because he planned to measure me to death.” We were obviously going to have to have a talk about the difference between “maintaining security” and “being a dick.” Marco just stood there. “Marco! Put him down!”
“Sure. Because I like the idea of returning to Lord Mircea with your mangled body draped over my arm. If I’m lucky, he’ll just kill me.”
“You’re already dead.”
“There’s dead and then there’s dead, princess,” he said seriously, but he did set the old man back on his—rather shaky—feet.
“As I said, that’s a rare find,” the salesman said, adjusting his cloths. It took me a moment to realize that he was referring to the small brooch Francoise was holding. “The stones are blue when inert, but they turn orange if a malevolent spell is cast on the wearer.”
I regarded it with a frown. It reinforced my belief that there was some law requiring magical jewelry to be extraordinarily ugly. But Francoise was nodding slightly, so despite appearances, the thing actually worked.
I’d asked her to come along to vet the merchandise and because I’d come armed with only my own paltry bank account. It was necessary for my pride and what was left of my independence, but it severely cramped my purchasing power. Still, if anyone knew how to get a deal, it was Francoise. She had a gift.
“Can it prevent a curse?” I asked. I could live with a little ugly for that kind of protection.
“Alas,
no. But it will tell you what spell was used, which as you know is the trickiest step in removing it.”
“It’s not quite what I had in mind.”
“Are you sure? Because I think I have the matching necklace as well; it glows when the person who cursed you comes within a dozen yards. I could give you a good price for the set.”
