HOPE SUNKEN TREASURES

HOPE

SUNKEN TREASURES

I circled behind the store to a parking lot filled with compact rental cars and minivans with out-of-state plates. A narrow gravel path ran between the lot and the store.

I walked between the two minivans nearest the shop, my apartment key in hand, as if I was preparing to get into one of the vehicles. The solid wall of the store was broken only by a glass door that had probably once been a secondary entrance, dating from more prosperous days when the shop owned the parking lot. It was now blocked by a rack of cheap sunglasses.

Hoping to get a peek inside, I slipped to the front of the vans. As I reached the fence, I had a mental flash—a “light pop” like a camera flash had gone off. I backed up a few steps, then approached again. Sure enough, in the same spot, everything went white.

Sunken Treasures souvenir shop was protected by a spell.

About a year ago, while doing a job for the council, I’d realized I could detect security spells. With Paige and Lucas’s spellcasting help, I’d learned to figure out exactly what kind of spell I was detecting. Like having an error box pop up on your computer screen—all you see at first is a basic warning message, but the details are there if you have the know-how to find them. Paige’s analogy, not mine. Deep in my brain, a racial demonic memory knew what the spell was. And soon I had it: a perimeter spell to warn of one specific type of intruder—supernaturals.

A souvenir shop protected by a witch spell to detect supernaturals. Was the shop owned or staffed by a witch? Or was it part of the test—so someone would know when a recruit entered the store and could swoop in and make things very difficult.

Damn.

I idly watched a group of teens saunter through the lot. As one tossed a souvenir bag to another, I got an idea.

I FOUND MY target easily enough: a boy about thirteen, still young enough to be on vacation with Mom and Dad, but old enough to escape them when he could. He stood outside the T-shirt store, reading the off-color slogans.

As I approached, his face reddened as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“Hey,” I said, flashing a big smile. “Do you have a second?”

“Uh, sure.”

I motioned to Sunken Treasures across the road. “There’s something in there I want to get for my boyfriend, as a joke, but I’m, well, kind of embarrassed to buy it. It’s a shell with a woman in a bikini on it.”

To an adult, this would seem strange. But to a thirteen-year-old, all adults are strange, their motives inexplicable. I described the shell and gave him a twenty, with the promise of another when he returned.