Night of Jinxes, A Moonlight Dragon Short Story

by Tricia Owens

  "I don't know," I muttered. "It sounds like it's coming from everywhere. From—" I swallowed, "—multiple things."

  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