Psychic Appeal- Urban Fantasy

Psychic Appeal Part 1

  Author's Note: So you think you want to copy my book. Well, for one I wrote it very early in my career and it's nowhere near perfect. So good luck with that. Second, if you do copy it, I will find out and I will find you and I do have an attorney. Write your own stories! 

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Gold can make you rich, but only if it doesn't kill you first-- something the gossamer-winged pixie fluttering in front me hoped I didn't know.

She had dodged the line for the Salem Witch Museum that often snaked past the entrance, and entered the shop lugging a gold bowl taller than she was and so heavy, she could barely keep herself airborne. With a grunt that sounded more like it belonged to a three-hundred-pound strong woman than the Barbie-sized frame of a pixie, she heaved it up on the counter.

Panting, she said, "How much honey will you give me for this?"

I set aside the antique price guide I'd been paging through, and looked at the bowl. It was pretty and no doubt valuable, but the decorative scrollwork had sigils in it that I recognized as Sidhe. Humans with Sidhe gold never fared well, and, while most people would not have realized the gold was bad news, I knew better. This bowl would kill me if it could.

The pixie, counting on common human greed and ignorance, failed to consider I might not be common. Understandable since humans rarely had any innate magical ability, but I was one of the few exceptions to the rule: I was psychic.

It runs in the blood. My family's roots predated Salem's witch burning days when we escaped the noose by virtue of our genetic second sight. Although I didn't have to use clairvoyance to be suspicious of the pixie. A degree in art history and six years as an antique dealer had given me a keen eye for forgeries, stolen goods, and the people who sold them. Plus, while it was August, she was sweating like she was in a sauna on high.

Looking at her flushed cheeks, the faint gold sheen to her skin, and over-bright eyes, I doubted she had even considered I might be a bad mark. She was obviously honeyed out of her mind, probably hadn't planned much beyond scoring her next hit. The Sidhe had no moral or legal prohibitions against drug use and honey was their favorite recreational drug. One only humans could supply since there were no bees in Fairy. It hadn't taken the Sidhe long to figure out that gold could buy them a lot of honey. The faker the better, at least initially.

Humans wised up once people started going to prison for fraud when their fairy gold turned to dust. There were several deaths too, because, sometimes, Sidhe gold came with a curse. Nowadays, we humans bartered honey in exchange for services like scrying or magical teleportation. It was safer that way.

By current law, I had a duty to confiscate the gold bowl. Same as people with bad credit had their credit cards seized and cut in half right in front of them. But the last thing I wanted was to deal with the police again. The red mark on my wrist still hadn't healed from the last time I'd been cuffed. So I did the next best thing.

With a smile of false regret I said, "Sorry, I don't have enough honey to buy this from you." It wasn't a lie; honey was more than fifty dollars an ounce.

The pixie's lower lip began to tremble, and tears gathered in her eyes. "You don't?" She looked past me to the small bottle of honey I kept on hand for Sidhe customers. Honey had helped me close many a deal, but the bottle was less than a quarter full. Not nearly enough to pay for the bowl. Although, from the desperate expression on her delicate face, if I offered it to her, she probably would've taken it.

"Nope, but I know someone who does." And who would also be happy to turn her over to the police and the Fairy Intelligence Bureau (FIB for short). I gave her directions to Captain Joe's Relics, an antique shop down by the wharf. We were friendly competitors, and he knew enough about my situation to understand why I would send the pixie to him instead of calling the police myself.