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“She’ll make a good addition to our haul,” the giant said in a gravelly voice. “Throw her in back with the others.”
The drug they’d slipped into her drink began to cloud her head like a heavy fog descending on a valley. Her friends had left her to hit up the new club down the block. No one knew she was missing. They’d never find her.
“Don’t worry, pretty thing,” the giant said, stroking her face with his huge index finger. “We’ll take care of you. We take care of all the girls that work for us.”
They threw her in the back of the truck, slamming the door behind her. As the truck began to sway down the alleyway, she peered into the darkness. Five sets of eyes stared back at her – reflecting the same fear boiling beneath her skin.
Chapter One
The fire breathing toad ga
ve one last belch of acrid smoke before hopping into the mess of boxes in the storage room. I jumped in after it, careful not to squish it. The last thing we needed was for our storage room to go up in flames. Ancient parchment and wooden artifacts didn’t hold up well against fire, no matter how magical they were.
“Do I have to remind you, Mr. Jones, that this is a museum? Not a zoo?” I said through clenched teeth.
Mr. Jones held the empty toad cage and laughed, his bulging belly bouncing up and down. “My dear, this is a supernatural museum and that is a supernatural toad. He belongs here as much as anything.”
Shaking my head, I kept silent. Mr. Jones had acquired the toad on his latest expedition to Egypt. Along with it, he’d found a staff that was enchanted to find gold, the mummified head of an Egyptian magician, and a wooden flute that could send anyone into a coma with its lullabies. I didn’t mind dealing with his crazy and dangerous items, but animals were another thing altogether.
“Watch it, he’s going for the magic books,” I yelled, spotting the tawny rough backside of the toad squeezing between two overflowing bookshelves.
A wisp of black smoke trailed into the air. The toad was gearing up to let another belch loose. He’d nearly singed me earlier when I discovered the empty cage on my way to grab another bag of souvenir plastic shrunken heads.
After my encounters last month with my brother Nicky and his demented Gorgon friend, Theo, I was a little fire-shy. My friend Angel had healed me well enough, but once in a while I still woke up screaming from my nightmares, thinking that I was on fire.
The toad popped his head out from behind the bookcase and I snatched him up. Juggling his squishy little body like a hot potato, I shoved him into Mr. Jones’ cage and slammed the door shut. The toad croaked and stared at me with one beady eye, smoke leaking from his lips.
“Take that,” I said, dowsing him with the remaining water in my coffee mug.
The water hit him with a sizzle. With his flame extinguished, the toad wiggled under a plastic rock in his cage and buried himself in sand.
“Well, that’s no fun,” Mr. Jones pouted. “It’ll take him at least a month to get his fire burning again.”
I smiled in victory. No toad was going to burn down my Arcana Museum of Supernatural and Occult.
Technically, I was only its curator and Mr. Jones was the owner. But I had plans to change that. My tiny savings account was growing each month. Soon, I’d have enough saved to approach Mr. Jones with a proposal.
If he allowed me to buy in and partner with him in owning the museum, I’d take it to the next level. We’d create interactive displays. Draw more people off the streets. Have special exhibits once a month for extra expense. It was all outlined in my proposal. Now, I just needed to get the courage to present it to him.
“Listen, Mr. Jones…”
He flew past me, depositing the toad’s cage haphazardly on a shelf, and plucked one of his Egyptian parcels off the floor. I followed him through the storeroom, putting the cage on more solid ground and righting a tower of boxes he nearly sent tumbling to the floor.
“Can’t talk now, dear.” He ran a hand over the thick gray beard that jutted from his chin. “We have a special visitor coming this week. Must get the museum ready. Our best displays out.”
I nodded. On the rare occasions Mr. Jones was in town, he was always entertaining someone at the museum. He’d grown up among the rich and haughty of Arcana. His friends frequently visited, dripping in furs and diamonds.
I wasn’t sure how a disorganized and down-to-Earth human like Mr. Jones kept such dazzling company. It might have been his vast bank accounts – at least that’s what Angel and I suspected. How else could a sixty year old man afford to go gallivanting around the world, collecting rare objects for a museum that barely stayed afloat financially? He had to be loaded.
Following my boss out of the storeroom, I froze. The museum lobby tilted and spun, sending me straight to my knees. In a blink, the displays vanished and in front of my eyes was a dark street. I recognized the splitting headache and the taste of metal in my mouth. It was another vision. This was the clearest one yet.
A young woman swayed toward me, glossy black pumps on her feet and a leather jacket hanging off her shoulders. She dug in her purse, bright red nails disappearing in the black bag. I wasn’t sure how she was still standing on those heels. From the looks of her, she’d had one too many to drink that night. In another hour, she’d probably be draped over a toilet, regretting her life decisions.
Behind a parked Chevy Cavalier with a dent in the side appeared a man with a hood pulled over his head. He watched the young woman pass him, her attention locked on the contents of her purse. The street around them was abandoned. The streetlight above had busted, leaving the street blanketed in darkness. I knew the moment he pulled the switchblade from his pocket, that girl was in danger.
“Watch out!” I yelled.
But just like in all my visions, my voice went unheard.
