Night of Jinxes, A Moonlight Dragon Short Story (4 page)

Jesus, all these things had been
cursed and I'd slept peacefully just a few yards away?

And then I heard a sound that really
worried me: the tinny tinkle of a music box. The door to space had
opened on its own right here in my shop.

"I have to stop this," I told Melanie,
"or we're both going to end up circling Jupiter." White-faced, she
didn't argue.

I ran to the closest window and yanked
off the sheet. Light poured into the shop. Melanie did the same
with the other covered window, though she yanked so hard on the
sheet she didn't pull the tacks off but just ripped through a
corner of the sheet. I didn't care. She could have blasted a hole
through the front door with a shotgun so long as we got some
sunlight in here.

The laughter stopped. The arm
immediately shrank back and disappeared into the shadows of the
shelves. No more blood poured from the vase and the cool,
otherworldliness of space no longer felt present.

"That wasn't fun," Melanie declared in
a shaky voice. She shivered as she folded up her sheet and dropped
it on the haunted rocking chair.

"No, and it wasn't helpful, either," I
muttered.

Annoyed, I chucked my sheet through
the bead curtain, making them slap this way and that. Through their
swinging lengths I caught sight of the hat box that I'd placed back
there last night. I'd hit it with the sheet, upending
it.

And revealing the sigils drawn in
blood on the bottom of it.

I slapped my palm to my forehead.
"Seriously? I am an idiot."

~~~~

I called up my neighbor across the
street, Orlaton, a kid who knew too much about the occult for it to
be healthy. I described the sigils and he cheerfully informed me
that the curse on the box was non-specific; it would be content
with attacking anyone.

Since I had no way of knowing if
whoever had left the box had known about the sigils, I was unable
to say whether I'd been targeted or just been unlucky. Either way,
I burned the box up using my dragon.

"You must feel better," Melanie said
later.

I snorted. "Now that I know I live in
a house of horrors?"

"Yeah, but you've been living here all
this time and you've been okay."

"True." And that was the crux of it,
wasn't it? My life was doomed to be filled with monsters, jinxes,
shapeshifters, and other unmentionables. There was no point in
wishing for anything different. Not while I still ran Moonlight
Pawn.

"You up for scary movie night on
Friday?" my best friend asked as she stepped out into the vicious
Las Vegas sun.

"Only if I can record your reactions
while you're watching," I said with a leer.

"Anne!" she yelped. She spun around in
a circle like a dog chasing its tail. "Now I'll always be worried
that I've got a ghost behind me."

"Maybe she'll become your new best
friend."

"I don't need any more! Argh, Anne,
you're so mean!" But she giggled as she ran through my yard and out
to her Prius.

I stood in my yard and waved as she
drove away. But was it a trick of the light, or had I seen a pale
head sitting in the backseat of her car?

The End

Read more from Tricia
Owens at
http://www.triciaowensbooks.com

Moonlight Dragon
series

Descended from
Dragons

Hunting Down
Dragons

Trouble with
Gargoyles

Forged in Fire (coming soon)

Rise of the Dragon (coming
soon)

Night of Jinxes, short story