Night of Jinxes, A Moonlight Dragon Short Story by Tricia Owens

The voice on the phone said, "I'm
going to kill you."
    Considering my phone was currently in
Google maps mode, I was a tad concerned.
    I closed out the map program and
checked to see if I'd somehow turned on the call feature or
accessed my voice mail. The answer was no for both. My phone
shouldn't have spoken to me in that flat, featureless voice and it
sure as hell shouldn't have threatened me.
    "This might be a problem," I mused
aloud.
    I wasn't one to freak out over
nothing. I'd dealt with necromancers, vicious shapeshifters, demons
straight from Hell, and I'd been bitten by a vampire, among other
things. I knew what trouble was and what it wasn't. This wasn't
flashy like the other trouble I'd encountered, but I recognized
that it had the potential to be a serious pain in the butt. And
yeah, maybe dangerous enough for me to fear for my life.
    A few feet away from me, my best
friend Melanie sat in the haunted rocking chair near the door of my
shop. She looked up with interest. "What problem?"
    "Either my phone has suddenly become
possessed, or something in here wants to kill me."
    "I thought something was always trying
to kill you," she offered helpfully. "Or at least curse you in a
nasty way."
    "Well, sure, but this is different.
This sounds sort of personal."
    Melanie scrunched up her nose. When
she did that, she looked very much like the monkey shapeshifter
that she was. "What do you mean?"
    I motioned at the shelves of the shop.
They were packed with all sorts of junk that people had pawned or
sold to me in moments of desperation. Since Moonlight Pawn was
located right next to Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, many of
my customers were curious tourists and gamblers looking to
replenish their bankrolls.
    However since I was a dragon sorceress
on the downlow, my shop attracted members of the magickal community
as well. That meant there were some pretty strange items on the
shelves, some fantastic, some that were more than a little bit
creepy.
    "Most of the magickal items in here
are cursed in passive ways," I pointed out. "Nothing happens until
you interact with them in some way, like when you pick it up or
open its drawer or try to use it." I held up my phone. "The feeling
I just got from this message is different. It knows me and it wants
me, not any poor sucker who comes along. I'm telling you,
Melly—something bad is about to go down."
    Her dark eyes widened and the ends of
her blue dyed fringe nearly poked into them. "Like
what?"
    "I wish I knew." I eyed the inventory
in the shop. "I've had most of this junk for a long time and
nothing's happened. Now, though, I'm wondering if I should mistrust
all of it."
    Moonlight Pawn was situated in a house
that had been converted for retail. My studio where I slept,
showered, and ate was separated from the shop floor by a simple
bead curtain. The nearness was convenient, but there wasn't much
defense against anything, really. I couldn't even stop a
breeze.
    Bothered, I emptied the old hat box I
was holding of its last item: a shallow bowl with a glass lid. The
bowl held a couple of inches of sand. I lifted the lid and lightly
ran my fingers across the sand. Immediately the sand shifted to
form letters that made a word: ASK. Cooler than a magic 8-ball any
day, but I couldn't help wondering if this was the source of the
threat I'd just heard.
    "You think it's that?" Melanie asked,
reading my thoughts.
    I shrugged. "This and five other
things were left on the sidewalk this evening. I hadn't sensed
anything malicious from any of them, but maybe I was
wrong."
    "That's kind of suspicious, isn't it?
Someone just leaving that stuff for you?"
    "Not really. Magickal beings dump
stuff here more often than you know. They don't care about making
money; they just want it away from them." I placed the glass lid
back on the bowl of sand. "Maybe a demon is on the other side of
this, talking back."
    Definitely possible. It was also
possible that the other five items—a mug, a pair of