Retribution (Haunted)

Retribution

Retribution

By Gail Z. Martin

            I should have known, when I saw the silver hip flask, that it was going to be trouble.

            “Hey Cassidy!” Teag Logan called out as we unpacked boxes from our most recent auction adventure. “Take a look. This is a real beauty!”

            I glanced up from the box I was unpacking, and saw Teag hold up an antique flask. It had the clean lines of an Art Deco piece, and I wondered what long-ago bon vivant had tucked it into a coat pocket. “That should sell quickly,” I said. “It looks like something out of a Roaring Twenties bootlegger movie. Can you tell if it’s more than what it seems?”

            For anyone else, a question like that might have referred to a feature that would make the flask more valuable. But not in my world. Teag knew what I really meant was, Does it have any bad juju that’s gonna knock me flat on my butt?

            I’m Cassidy Kincaide, and I own Trifles and Folly, a 300 year-old antique and curio shop in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina. The shop has been in my family almost since Charleston was founded back in 1670. And although most people just think of us as a great place to find beautiful and unusual antiques, the truth is a little more complicated. We exist to find dangerous magical and supernatural items and get them off the market before anyone gets hurt. Most of the time, we’ve been successful. On the rare occasions when we weren’t, history chalks the damage up to natural disasters.

            I’m a psychometric, someone who can ‘read’ the history of an object just by touching it. That comes in handy for what we do, but it can also make for unpleasant surprises. My gift is the reason Uncle Evan left me the shop and how I inherited the job of getting magically malicious objects out of circulation. Teag is my store manager, and he’s got some pretty cool magic of his own. Sorren is my business partner, the store’s real founder, and a nearly six hundred year-old vampire. Nothing about Trifles and Folly is business as usual.

            “I think we might have a ‘spooky’,” he replied. “I’m picking up bad vibes, and I’m not nearly as sensitive as you are.”

            “I’ll check it later,” I said. “Do we know anything about it?” I stood up and stretched, slipping a piece of my strawberry-blonde hair behind one ear. With blue eyes, freckles, and pale skin, my Scots-Irish ancestry is apparent to anyone who lays eyes on me. Only thanks to the hot Charleston sun, and a day spent canvassing yard sales, I was decidedly pink from the sun even though it was autumn.

            The boxes had been delivered from the auction at the Legacy Hotel, a long-shuttered landmark that had once been a Prohibition-era speakeasy. “There’s nothing unusual other than the flask obviously belonged to one of the Legacy’s customers,” he remarked.

I looked down at the half-emptied box I was working on. “Put it aside and I’ll have a look once I finish this box.”

            I turned back to the box and was about to lift out the next bundle when I froze. “Hey Teag, I need your help with this,” I called. “I’ve got another ‘spooky’.”

            A ‘spooky’ is what I call an item that gives off a dark psychic resonance. It may have had a tragedy associated with it, or it might possess dangerous power of its own. Those take special handling, and often, I hand them off to Sorren to get rid of. ‘Sparklers’ have a touch of supernatural power, but aren’t usually dangerous. We check them out thoroughly, and decide how to handle them on a case-by-case basis. The truly harmless pieces we’ll sell to discerning buyers, and anything questionable Sorren takes care of. ‘Mundanes’ are non-magical items, and they go on sale in the front showroom.