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“Are you drunk already?” I asked, picking up her fruity drink and helping myself to a sip. There was no flavor of alcohol at all.
“As I said, I’m a lightweight.”
The other two women nodded emphatically.
I surveyed the choices of containers. “Doesn’t it have to be unbreakable?”
“Preferably, but we can just wrap the whole thing in layers of duct tape afterward to keep it from breaking.” Sybil held up a tape-covered jar, then tried to slam it on the concrete floor. The jar bounced.
I shrugged. Whatever worked. I pointed to the bottle of expired pickles. “That one.”
“Great choice. Mother hates pickles. Done!” Tansy picked it up and handed it over to Sybil with a wide grin. “Do your magic, witch.”
The witch poured out the juice and dumped the two pickles still in the jar into the garbage.
“Don’t you have to rinse that out?” I asked.
“Nope,” Sybil said.
“Mother can smell like pickles for all of eternity,” Tansy said with a devilish smile. “See if I care. Oh, by the way. Can I borrow your cupboard?”
Chapter 18
Eamon
Tansystoppedatthenext display and eyed the curved blade mounted on the wall behind the glass. “Yup, that’s a sword,” she said wryly, digging for her phone in her magical purse, which now held a portal to the wardrobe in my bedroom.
Desmon, the dragon who watched over this entire city and the surrounding territories, owned the museum. Dragons didn’t give a damn about human-drawn lines on a map, though in times of old, many of the countries had been dragon territories to begin with.
The museum was part of Desmon’s hoard. The part he didn’t mind putting on display. The objects he particularly coveted or cherished were hidden away from questing eyes, all except for his mate.
I gathered his mate wouldn’t have agreed to be hidden away from sight forever, though from what I knew of Carly, she wasn’t one to seek fame or fortune. Even at their wedding, she’d insisted on no media or paparazzi and had only invited close family and friends. Desmon warred with both the instinct to show off his prize, and to squirrel her away.
Shelby had made Carly’s wedding dress, and Redrock had played security at the event, so we weren’t strangers to the powerful dragon. If we found the weapon on display, we could ask to borrow it. But still, asking to borrowanypart of a dragon’s hoard was risky business.
With any luck, we’d find the weapon in question here in the museum. If it wasn’t here, then it must mean it was in Desmon’s personal hoard, and it was near impossible to get an invitation for a viewing of that. And we could forget about asking to borrow anything from that precious collection. Not happening!
Sybil’s research had mentioned that the sword had been bought by a collector who matched Desmon’s description at about that time.
Tansy took a photo of the sword in the case in front of us and sent it to Sybil. There wasn’t much detail to go on for our search. I’d picked up sword fighting just for the fun of it, much like I had most of the fighting disciplines, but I was no expert in weaponry. Tansy fared even worse. Every sword looked the same to her. We didn’t know when or where the sword had been made, only when it had come into the dragon’s hands. Or claws.
We moved on to the next display, and Tansy leaned over to read the plaque. According to the inscription, it was a messer, which looked like a sword but was considered a knife.
She exhaled loudly. “Knife? But it looks like a sword to me. Does this one even count?” Then she glanced quickly at the reflection in the metal blade.
I looked over as well, but there was nothing there. She’d been doing that all day, and I couldn’t help but notice that the little stoppered bottle Iris had given her was conveniently worn around her neck—over her clothes.
Was she worried about seeing the old hag? Or was she eager to try her weapon? When I’d first met her, I’d have wagered on the first. But now, I wasn’t so sure. She’d really blossomed and come out of her shell in the past week, as she spent more time honing her skills and making new friends.
“No harm in sending it, too,” I said. It did look like a sword, though a tiny one.
She snapped a photo quickly and sent it before a family of werewolves with school-aged boys, triplets, crowded to look at the weapon. I took her hand and led her over to the bench, away from the flustered mother of three rowdy boys, to wait for a reply.
It was Saturday again, exactly one week and one day since Tansy had arrived at Redrock. I’d chosen the busiest day to visit the museum to avoid drawing attention to ourselves; we looked like just a young couple on a date. A witch on a date with a demon.
Moments later, Tansy’s phone dinged with Sybil’s message, and she opened it. “This is hopeless,” she huffed.
She wore a silk headscarf to cover her hair, something I’d insisted on before we left this morning. Dean, I’d discovered, had been on the streets and down on his luck when Amrita found him originally. Taking over his mind must have been easy, especially with the promise of the good life he was living now. Tansy’s research into the matter had clarified that a host entity still retained some sort of presence. They were able to see, hear and feel, but unable to control the body unless the spirit temporarily relinquished control.
