Dirty Deeds An Urban Fantasy Collection - Faith Hunter Page 0,1

middle of a storm,” I said.

“And I thought you were going on vacation.” He looked me over from head to foot, his clever eyes missing nothing. “Boo Boo. Are you okay? Are you and Ryder fighting? You got the pre-wedding blues? Talk to Uncle Crow.”

Nope. No way. Not going to discuss my love life with a trickster god.

“How about Uncle Crow tells me what he did with the traffic light?”

The corner of his mouth rose, and his eyes curved into crescents. “Why do you think I did anything with it?”

I waved a finger at the impromptu garage sale we were standing in the middle of. “You have a thing for selling off bits of Ordinary any chance you get.”

He made a sound and slapped his hand over his heart. “Wounded. You know I do just fine with the glass shop. This is only to drive traffic to my Blow Your Own Balls class.”

“Really wish you’d rename that thing.”

“No, you don’t.” He waggled his eyebrows, and he was so much my uncle in that moment, so much the man I’d known since I was a kid, that it was everything I could do not to laugh.

“Nice record collection.” Jean strolled over, balancing two Styrofoam cups and a brownie wrapped in a napkin. “Anything valuable?”

“Couple of them,” Crow said, much to the interest of the gray-haired woman who was following Jean back from the snack station and obviously eavesdropping. “If someone had a good eBay shop, they could turn a tidy profit.”

The woman stilled, then hurried back to retrieve her companion, a woman who could have been her sister.

“You sly dog, you,” Jean said, as she handed me one of the coffees. “Look at you driving up sales. Now I know why you put up a whale tent.”

“Oh?” Crow asked, all innocence.

Jean nodded. “They’re buying this stuff hook, line, and sinker.”

“Delaney,” Crow said, “your sister is making me look bad in front of customers.”

“By telling the truth?” I said sweetly. “Also, we’re not customers.”

Crow scoffed, but I was paying more attention to the ladies who had pounced on the boxes of records and started flipping.

“Jim Croce!” the eavesdropper shouted to the other.

“What?”

“Bad Bad Leroy Brown!”

“I have cream for that!”

“Time in a Bottle!”

“Oh, no, dear. You don’t want to put it down there!”

“Croce! Croce!”

“Well, what I do with my crotchy is none of your business.”

“No. The songs! Jim Croce!” She waved the album at her friend who gasped.

“The record player!” Two gray heads swiveled, their eyes glittering with Black Friday glee.

Crow cleared his throat to get their attention and pointed toward the tail of the tent.

“Get it!” one shouted.

“Over there, over there!” the other said.

They were off in a flash, zeroing in on an old suitcase-style record player that sat on a pile of crab traps and rusted Christmas tree stands.

For a second, just a flash, I thought the record player glowed with yellow light, but then the wind whipped, buckling the whale’s tail, and the yellow light—if it had even been there—was gone.

“So, seriously. Where did you get all this?” I asked.

“Is that an accusation I hear in your voice? It sounds like you’re trying to accuse me of something.”

“I can throw you in jail for annoying me, you know.”

“Like you would.”

There was that. I didn’t abuse my station here. None of us on the force did. Upholding Ordinary’s laws meant none of us were above those laws. We followed the rules—all of them, both supernatural and human.

“Theft is still a crime,” I said. “So… maybe you want to just tell the truth here.”

“Storage units.”

I took a drink of the coffee. It was good. Rich. “Whose storage?”

“No one’s.” At my look, he shook his head. “Abandoned. People move out of this town, you know. They stop paying storage bills then their units go up for sale. I’m surprised you didn’t know that’s how it worked. They made a whole TV show about it once.”

Jean snorted, even though her mouth was stuffed with brownie. “Fake TV show,” she mumbled.

“Totally staged,” he agreed. “But all this?” He raised his hands like a king displaying his land. “All of it purchased by me—legally,” he added. “Wanna look around? Maybe you’ll find something to remove that stick out of your—”

“—asshole!” A teen laughed.

Crow’s eyebrows rose, and he pointed over his shoulder at the kid, Keith, a werewolf.

He and the shapeshifter, Fernando, were around the same age. Fernando held a big, old hourglass up and away from the werewolf’s reach.

“I saw it first,” Fernando said. “But for