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Something had changed them. Maybe, because of the tragedy, they had always been imprinted with strong emotions, but it wasn’t powerful enough to manifest. What could have possibly happened to juice them up? I didn’t know, but I figured Sorren might.

The shop door opened, and a bike messenger leaned into the shop. Teag signed for a package, and he brought the small box over as I finished my coffee.

I frowned. “I wasn’t expecting anything. Who’s it from?”

Teag looked at the return address. The handwriting was barely legible and the ink had smudged. “I can’t read the name, and I don’t recognize the address.”

That wasn’t unusual. Trifles and Folly had a whispered reputation as the place that would take haunted heirlooms off your hands. Once or twice a month, we would get unexpected packages in the mail or find boxes dropped off by the front door, and most of them contained items their owners no longer wanted to deal with.

“Let me open it – just in case,” Teag said. He cut open the packaging to reveal a plain cardboard box.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this one Cassidy. You getting anything?”

I nodded, holding my hand several inches above the box. “Definitely a spooky – maybe more. Be careful.”

Teag used a pencil to flip up the lid of the box. Inside was a man’s plain silver wedding ring.

Reflexively, I backed up a step.

“Well?” he asked.

“If you could smell magic, that thing would be a tuna sandwich that had been locked in the trunk of a car during a heat wave,” I said. I swallowed hard. “There is no way I’m touching that – not without Sorren.” But I did let my hand hover over the open box. Even at a distance, the images were so powerful they threatened to overwhelm me.

Whoever wore the ring had been terrified, running for his life. Only he couldn’t outrun the shadows, and something in the shadows was bad. Very bad. Even though he wasn’t completely sober, he could feel the evil. It let him run, for a while. Like a cat with a mouse, it toyed with him, enjoying his fear. And when it moved in for the kill, there was nothing he could do about it. It started tearing his skin off his body, then pulling off limbs, knowing all the while just what to do so that he didn’t die too quickly. It liked his screams.

“Cassidy!” Teag’s voice wrested me away from the vision. I realized that he had physically moved me away from the box, putting himself between me and the table.

My breath was ragged and I wanted to throw up. “That’s got to be from one of the murdered men,” I said, trying to stop my stomach from lurching. Teag guided me to a chair. “Why would anyone send us something like that?”

Teag brought me a fresh cup of coffee and then typed the return address from the package into his cell phone. “Nothing,” he reported. “Probably an empty lot.” He paused. “I can talk with the messenger service. Someone ordered that delivery, and it must have been paid for. I’ll see what I can find out.”

I drank the last swallow of coffee, just as the phone rang. Teag went to answer it, and held up the receiver. “It’s for you.”

I drew a deep breath, set aside my mug and took the receiver. “Cassidy?” the caller asked, so breathlessly I couldn’t quite place the voice.

“It’s Debra Kelly” the caller said. Debra was one of several interior designers who sourced unusual items from Trifles and Folly for their clients. She sounded flustered. “Cassidy, you’ve got to help me. I’m in a heap of trouble.”

Chapter Four

MY SURPRISE MUST have shown in my face, because Teag looked at me questioningly, and all I could do was shrug.

“What kind of trouble, Debra?” I asked.

“Rebecca’s blaming me for making her B&B haunted. I sold her a number of items that I bought from your store, and now she swears she’s being overrun with ghosts.” She rattled off a list of items. I remembered all of them and none were even sparklers, let alone spookies.

I frowned. “What makes Rebecca think the inn is haunted?” Drea’s story about the shadow men came to mind immediately.

“I swore I wouldn’t tell you, because she wants you to come and see for yourself.”

“Okay. Give me that list again.” Teag shoved paper and pen in front of me while I wrote down the items.

“I’m sorry, Cassidy,” Debra said. “Some B&B owners would love to be able to claim that they’re haunted. In fact, I thought Rebecca would actually have liked to have a resident ghost from some of the things she said.” She paused. “I think something scared her enough to change her mind.”

“Sounds like it.” Teag was looking at me with his head turned to one side like a confused puppy. “What does she think I’ll be able to do by coming out there?”

“I don’t know. But I think she’s hoping you can make her problem stop.”

“Why not just return all the items?” I said, cringing as I spoke. That would be a big hit to this month’s revenue. Bye-bye eating out; hello macaroni and cheese for supper. Every night.

“She likes the items,” Debra replied. “She would just like the bad ghosts that came with them to leave her alone.”

“I promised her that I would come, and I’ll be there,” I said. “But I’m not sure what I can do other than remove the items. We could offer her store credit.” At least store credit wouldn’t take money out of my bank account.

“Keep that as Plan B.” Debra was beginning to sound perkier. “I’m glad you’re taking this seriously.

Good luck going out there.”

I didn’t doubt that the ghosts were real. I figured I’d need all the good luck I could get. “Thanks. I’ll let you know what we come up with.”

I hung up the phone and stared into space for a moment, trying to figure out how the shipment for Rebecca had gone so wrong. Then I realized that Teag was standing in front of me, snapping his fingers, waiting for me to come back to myself. “Cassidy? Are you in there? Yoo-hoo, Cassidy?” He was grinning, but I could see the concern in his eyes.

“Rebecca must really be freaked out to have gotten Debra that upset.” I pushed the list of items toward Teag, and he frowned as he examined them.

“None of these were spookies,” he said, glancing down the list. “I remember selling these to Debra. I packed them myself. You and Sorren had already been through them and cleared them.”

I chewed on my lip as I thought. “Do you remember where any of the pieces came from? Did they all come from the same seller?”

“I’ll check the records, but I don’t think so. I know that the vase came from an estate sale, and the lamp was from a nice couple who downsized to a smaller house. I’ll see what I can find out about the others.” He headed off like a man on a mission.

I went to the back and poured myself another cup of coffee, thinking as I added the creamer and stirred it into the dark liquid. Somehow, perfectly normal items were turning into ghost-attracting menaces. Someone had mailed us a ring from a man who had been gruesomely murdered. Shadow men were turning up outside old houses. This sort of thing just wasn’t normal, even for us, and we stretched the definition of normal way beyond the limits of the dictionary.

It’s just like with the opera glasses, I thought. Almost as if something activated their spookiness like turning on a light switch. But how? I went back through the list Debra had shared with me, wondering how such normal pieces could possibly generate a dangerous supernatural vibe.

A tea set? Well maybe, if the previous owner had choked to death on a scone. I remembered at least one of the vases Debra had bought. If someone had used the vase as a murder weapon, it would have shattered, so that was out. I came up with even fewer ideas for the lamp, and none at all for the picture frame.