Eyes of Midnight by Shanon L. Mayer

Author:Shanon L. Mayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shanon Mayer

13

“Do you carry any artifacts?” A young-looking man with dark brown hair and vibrant blue eyes caught Wendi’s arm as she walked through the shop.

“A few,” she responded automatically. “What kind of artifact are you looking for?” She carefully removed her arm from his hand, not wanting to offend the inquiring customer.

“It’s an old family heirloom,” he explained, tucking his thumbs into his belt and smiling at her. His smile was charming, even if there was something about the man that disturbed her. Everything about him screamed a combination of powerful, possibly magically-augmented charisma and danger. Most commonly attributed to charlatans, it was not a combination that Wendi found appealing. “It’s a drinking horn,” he continued. “Made from the horn of a unicorn. It’s set into a pewter base that has four large garnets set into it.”

Wendi shook her head slowly. “I haven’t seen anything like that come through here.”

“Please,” he reached for her arm once more, but she moved out of the way before he could touch her. From the corner of her eye, she spotted Crucian moving closer to intercept the eager young man and escort him out if necessary but Wendi waved a hand for him to be patient. Just because she didn’t like the man, that didn’t immediately mean that she couldn’t do business with him.

“It was stolen from my family a number of years ago,” he explained, tucking his thumbs back into his belt. “So when I heard that you guys carry a lot of unusual and unique items, I wanted to come see for myself.” He grinned at her again. “I had hoped that whoever had stolen it from us may have sold it to you.”

“I haven’t seen it,” Wendi repeated herself, “but I’ll keep an eye out for it.” Even as she responded, she ran a mental checklist of everything in the illicit goods section of the store, already knowing that they had nothing like what he was describing in stock. Wendi had never even heard of such an item.

“Wonderful!” The man beamed at her. He explained which inn he was staying at in Three Rivers and requested her to send word to him if she heard anything about his family heirloom. Wendi agreed to do so, with absolutely no intentions of following through on such. The man was either a confidence man or a charlatan of some other variety and she had no inclination to get caught up in whatever scheme he was trying to pull. His story of being in search of a family heirloom sounded just a little too easy and Wendi had spent just a little too much time around thieves lately to fall for his words so easily.

“While I’m here,” he said as he turned to leave, “I don’t suppose you have any unicorn horns by themselves, do you?” he looked back at her and smiled. “My mother was devastated at the loss, so if I can’t find the horn, I’d like to be able to remanufacture it if I could.

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