Pentacle Pawn Boxed Set

by Amanda Hartford

  Clayton chuckled. “No idea, but I’m guessing you’ll have a front-row seat when the curtain goes up.”

  ♦

  I didn’t see much of Asia the next week, but Barry brought me up to date on her progress. He had decided to take a month off the rodeo circuit to help her get her brewery open.

  They made an odd couple with her towering a foot above the top of his Stetson, but the little cowboy was smitten. He’d found his dream girl. She was rich, gorgeous, and she was about to open a microbrewery that sold the only beer in the world that let you sober up instantly and never gave you a hangover.

  When I stopped by the new brewery on my way into work one evening, I found Barry hard at work, nailing together the bandstand.

  Through tall plate-glass windows behind the bar, I saw Asia in the back room, supervising her crew as they assembled her steampunk brewing room.

  “This is amazing,” I said as I walked toward her between two rows of truck-sized stainless steel vats.

  “Pretty cool, huh? Give me a minute.” Asia climbed a set of open metal steps that took her to a platform between two of the tanks. “Have these thermometers been tested yet, Hank?” she asked her foreman. He joined her on the platform, and they studied something on his clipboard before she came back down the steps and joined me.

  “It looks complicated,” I said.

  Asia nodded. “There’s a lot to learn – but if we get this right, we’re going to have something very special.”

  I walked with her back to the bar area, and she poured us each a soda.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” I said.

  Asia made a face as I nodded toward the knife on her belt. “You got the test back.”

  I nodded. “Now, you understand: it’s possible that the blade and the wooden fittings could be hundreds, even thousands of years apart, right? They weren’t necessarily made at the same time.”

  Her eyes were dark. “But?”

  “The good news is that the scabbard is exactly what you said it was. It was carved from amboyna wood. Unfortunately, the wood dates to the 20th century.”

  “So it’s a fake.”

  “More like a replica. I’ve done little research, and it looks like the design of the scabbard and hilt are very much the way they would have looked five hundred years ago, so maybe the blade would test out to be in the right time period. We have no way of knowing until we try it. I’ve seen this sort of thing before; it’s not uncommon for parts to be replaced over time. Whoever made this did a pretty good job of re-creating the original, like maybe they had at least pieces of the first one to use as a pattern.”

  Asia was not happy. “But any magic...”

  “Would have been in that original piece of wood. I’m sorry.”

  Asia took the little knife from her pocket and studied it.

  “I hope you didn’t lose too much money on the deal,” I said.

  She shook his head. “No, I’m good,” she said thoughtfully. She ran her fingers along the curve of the scabbard. “It’s too bad, but I like it anyway. It’s a nice souvenir either way. I’m still happy to have it.”

  It was time to change the subject. “So, how long until you open?”

  Asia smiled. “If Barry has his way, we’ll be open tomorrow.”

  “He’s stuck on you, you know.”

  “I’ve tried to tell him how it is, but he thinks he can change my mind.”

  I got an image of Barry riding an enormous magical bull down the middle of Scottsdale Boulevard, controlling the beast with his will alone.

  “Good luck with that,” I said to Asia as I took my leave.

  Chapter Nine

  John was home alone when Penelope made her move.

  Edgar saw her first. I’d gone grocery shopping – even witches have to eat, you know – and John was snoozing on the chaise lounge out on the patio. Edgar was hanging out with him, munching peanuts from the tin cup I’d wedged into his manzanita branch and mumbling happily to himself.

  Suddenly, Edgar came to full alert and blasted off of his perch. Edgar’s dramatic exit awakened John, who sprang to his feet and watched the bird as Edgar soared down to the courtyard.

  I think, in his head, Edgar was playing his game. Which one like? he asked himself as he flew around in a wide circle, scanning the pedestrians by the pool, in the parking lot, on the canal bank. And they all belonged – except for one.

  Edgar spotted Penelope as soon as she got out of the cab. He perched in one of the big palo verde trees that flanked the driveway entrance and watched her walk past the doorman, bold as brass. As soon as she was inside, Edgar shot back up to our balcony.

  John had not seen what Edgar had seen – the angles were wrong for him to have noticed Penelope emerging from the taxi – but something was clearly wrong. Edgar didn’t have enough human vocabulary to explain what he had seen, but he gave it his best shot.

  “No! No!” he cawed at John. He cocked his head expectantly.

  John didn’t get it.

  “No!” he cawed again and banged his beak on the branch three times. “No Maggie!”

  The game, John thought; it’s that stupid game he plays with Maggie. What was Edgar trying to tell him?

  “Which one like?” he ventured.

  Edgar ruffled his feathers and settled firmly on the branch, ready for his first question.

  He never got to answer.

  John heard a crash behind him, and through the connecting glass, he saw the reinforced front door of our condo disappear in a blast of orange smoke. Penelope stood in the demolished doorway.

  “Where is she?” Penelope demanded, looking straight at John.

  ♦

  I have no idea how Edgar found me, but when I came out of the grocery store, he swooped down and landed on the end of my shopping cart. He opened his wings to their full width, making his body as big as possible, and shrieked at me.

  “No! No!” he cawed and banged on the wire three times.

  I’d never seen him behave like this.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I felt foolish, knowing he couldn’t possibly answer – but, hey, that’s what you say.

  Edgar ruffled his feathers and rasped “No!” at me again.

  Something had happened. Edgar and I had only two points of reference: the shop and the condo. Pentacle Pawn was closed until this evening.

  I had to get home.

  ♦

  “... And then there was this crazy woman, just standing there in the smoke,” John explained, shaking his head.

  “Are you okay? Were you hurt?”

  He gave me a sly grin. “Not likely.”

  He was right; I wasn’t thinking straight. John is, after all, a ghost.

  I looked around the ruined living room. There had been a terrible fight in here. The couches were overturned, and the top of the marble coffee table was broken in half. The floor-to-ceiling bookcase lay on its side, its shelving split and my books scattered across the floor. A scorch mark ran the width of the wall where the widescreen TV used to be. The French doors were shattered, so I could hear Frank muttering to himself on his perch out on the balcony.

  “She wrecked the place,” I said.

  “No – I did that.” John looked sheepish. “I sort of went full poltergeist on her.”

  I realized that John had never seen Penelope before. “How did you know who she was, anyway?” I asked.

  “She looked like your friend Lissa,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders. “Besides, who else is going to break down our front door in the middle of the morning?”

  My home had been invaded, the man I love threatened. I was struggling not to break down into tears.

  “Relax,” John murmured. “She’s gone now. I took care of it. Whatever she was after, she didn’t get it.”

  John cradled my cheeks in his hands and kissed the tip of my nose. His fingers and lips were cold.

  His lips were cold? My eyes went wide.

  John took my hand
s. I could feel his fingers entwine with my own. I could feel his arms as they wrapped around me.

  John was back, in body as well as in spirit, and I had Penelope to thank for it. Blessings come in the strangest ways, I thought, as my husband kissed me.

  ♦

  Mark, Barry, and Alex came to the condo for supper that night. Mark brought takeout from the barbecue joint, and we ate on paper plates out on the balcony since my dining room table was now in three pieces and my good china was smashed on the kitchen floor.

  “It’s time we play offense,” Mark said. “We have to take the game to them.”

  Barry grinned around a mouthful of barbecued beans. “Sure, coach.”

  “Mark’s right,” I said. “Penelope has destroyed my shop twice, and now she’s trashed my home. I’m done remodeling.”

  John sat back in his chair, holding a barbecued rib under his nose and inhaling deeply. He took a tentative bite, and his face lit up. “So, what’s the next step?” he asked as he chewed.

  “We need to set up an around-the-clock watch for Maggie until we catch Penelope,” Barry said.

  Alex was shaking his head. “We need to find out what she’s after. It may not be about Maggie, at all. Maybe this wasn’t an assault. Maybe it was a kidnapping.”

  Mark was nodding along. “The last two times she’s come after Maggie, Penelope was after something in the vault at Pentacle Pawn. She needs Maggie to help her get down there. So, what does she want this time?”

  I thought of Lissa’s wedding present, and said so. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “She had to know Lissa would leave it with me for safekeeping. So why hand it over in the first place?”

  John turned to me. “What else is down there in your vault?”

  Mark and I said it together: “The puzzle ball.”

  I began to understand the scenario as it really had happened, and I explained it to my friends gathered around the table as I worked it out.

  Emil had walked down my alley on his own because Penelope somehow convinced him to meet her at Pentacle Pawn. They didn’t have an appointment, but he didn’t know that, nor did he know that Penelope and I have a history. I guessed that Penelope promised to buy the dragon puzzle herself at a premium price. Judging by the speed at which Emil and his sister had worked their way through the family fortune, he would not have been able to resist. When he came to retrieve the puzzle, Penelope was waiting in ambush.

  Knowing what I knew now, I could picture what happened. Emil walked up to the door, not paying too much attention to his surroundings because he felt safe here, just as I had done. It would’ve been simple for Penelope to lay whatever curse or incantation she used without ever stepping from her sniper’s lair at the end of the alley.

  Penelope had a win/win here. If Emil’s body were to be discovered before I arrived to open the shop for the evening, the cops would be called, bringing an ambulance and a whole circus of flashing red lights. Emil’s body would be hauled off to the coroner, where his death would be assigned to natural causes, and I'd be answering a lot of awkward questions.

  It didn’t work out that way; I got there first. But Penelope still had her win. Emil was still dead. My evening was still shot, and Penelope was still free to go about her business.

  I understood now why Emil’s body was dumped at the foot of my door. It was a declaration of war. Penelope knew I would never call local police to the alley shop. She knew I would take action myself, muster my forces, and change the rules of engagement. She was counting on it.

  While Mark and I were doing Penelope’s work for her, making sure that Emil’s death passed the inspection of the coroner, Penelope was ransacking Emil’s house.

  She probably been there many times; after all, Violet and Emil were old family friends. I was pretty sure that Violet had consulted Penelope as she was researching the puzzles, meaning that Penelope knew about the old manuscripts and the journals. Now, she had both physical objects and the documentation within her grasp. Penelope was looking for Violet’s books, trying to find the spell or incantation to control the dragon puzzle.

  What she didn’t know was that Violet’s library was still at the closed-up mansion in Beverly Hills, awaiting the slow dispensation of the lawyers. She was a couple of weeks too early.

  “I still don’t understand,” John said. “She already has the big one. What does she need with the little one?”

  I finally knew what Lissa’s wedding present meant. “Mark,” I said, “the large puzzle ball is made of dinosaur bone, right?”

  He nodded. “But the little one...”

  I waved him off. “Hear me out. The bone in Lissa’s wedding present: did you ever figure out what kind of animal that came from?”

  I could see him putting it together. “It’s not bone, is it?” he asked. “It’s fossilized. That’s why it’s so heavy.”

  It was my turn to nod. “I think it’s the same material that the larger puzzle was carved from. Penelope took it from that ossuary. She realized the safest place to hide the stolen property was in my vault, so she gave it to Lissa – knowing Lissa would insist I keep it safe for her.”

  John piped in. “So, when Penelope came looking for you here, it wasn’t an assault. It was a kidnapping. She wanted you to let her into the vault so she could retrieve both the dinosaur bone and the smaller Dragon puzzle.”

  “Right,” I said. “But what’s she going to do with them?”

  ♦

  Around nine, everybody drifted away in pairs toward the parking lot. I saw Barry stop in the kitchen before he left to have a private word with John.

  Barry leaned back against the tall kitchen island, his elbows on the countertop like it was some old-time saloon. “I think I’ll hang out for a few days, just to keep an eye on things.”

  “I’ll buy the beer,” John said.

  Barry tipped his hat. “’ Preciate it.”

  They shook hands as Mark shouted that it was time to go.

  Alex was the last one to leave. John watched from the balcony as I walked Alex down to his car.

  “We need to talk,” he said, leaning against the door of his canary yellow Lamborghini.

  We did, indeed.

  “I’m so sorry for all this,” he started. “It’s my fault that she...”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said. “Just exactly how did Penelope get away from you?”

  He studied his shoes. “I fell asleep. It’s as simple as that. We were at my house in the Superstitions. I thought I had everything locked down tight: wards on all the doors, a perimeter incantation, all the usual stuff, plus some spells I haven’t thought about since college. I thought once I had her out of the city...”

  “You didn’t higher any additional security? I’d have thought you’d at least have a few guards.”

  Alex shook his head. “You don’t just call up a rent-a-cop service to deal with a witch with Penelope’s talent. They wouldn’t have a chance. It takes someone skilled in the craft to go nose-to-nose with her, and people have lives. Barry’s got a ranch to run; Asia spends half the year in Europe on her modeling career. Besides, Penelope is my problem.”

  “Alex, we all...”

  Alex sighed. “I really thought I had it covered. It wears on you, you know? I was her full-time caregiver as well as her jailer. Days turn into months; months turn into years. I guess I let my guard down. I must’ve dozed off. When I woke up, she was gone.”

  I could see the exhaustion in his face and in his body. It must’ve been horrible.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right,” he said. “Whatever it takes.”

  I watched Alex’s Lamborghini glide out of the parking lot.

  ♦

  Orion is a tracker, the best in the world. He honed his skill ages ago as a young man on Santorini, and he’s updated them over the years to include technology. He was on the hunt for Penelope.

  I learned this from Lissa, who called to let me know that their hone
ymoon was still postponed. They were staying another month at the mansion on the mountain, courtesy of Mark, so that they could help in the search for her mother.

  I was grateful, but it made me sad to think that their happy ending was postponed yet again.

  “He’ll figure it out,” Lissa said. “He’s very good at what he does.” She wasn’t gushing about it as I would’ve expected a few years ago. She sounded like a wife who was proud of her husband.

  Lissa had come a long way, but we all still had a long way to go. I felt better with Orion in the hunt, but nobody was safe until we put an end to this, once and for all.

  Chapter Ten

  THE CIRCLE

  My friends and I aren’t all witches, but each of us has something magical that he or she brings to our common cause. And so, before we are tested, we gather to draw strength from each other and affirm our mutual will.

  Witches have always gathered in high places. In the bad old days, they sought out remote woods where they would not be discovered by those who meant them harm. Our problem is different. We live in a major American city, where getting off by yourself is something of a challenge. Still, we manage.

  Stella dropped me at sunset at a trailhead in the Scottsdale McDowell Sonoran Preserve and headed back to pick up Daisy. “Trailhead” sounds like something you’d find in a national park far from civilization, but the preserve is a 30,000-acre protected desert habitat within sight of downtown. It’s enjoyed by hikers, bikers, birdwatchers, equestrians, and the occasional witch.

  I’d hiked this trail many times, and I knew a secret. Where the public trail forks at the top of the ridge, there is a boulder. Most people stop and rest there before they continue on, east or west. An initiated few who arrive after the park officially closes at sunset slip behind the boulder, out of sight from the ordinary world, and follow a goat trail over another low rise. Just below the saddleback, on the far side of the ridge, is a circle of ten stones, each the size of a steamer trunk.

  The sun was down by the time I made it to the stone circle, but the plateau shimmered in the triple-digit heat. The spring wildflowers were long gone, but the desert was still alive. For the coyote, the owl, the bobcat: this was their hunting time. My friends and I were guests here. We would be respectful.