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"Trixa, I found this when I was cleaning your office" Eyebrows in a confused V, he held out his hand like an offering "I think it’s a tooth Uht white teeth with the best porcelain veneers money could buy and stained only a little with dried blood lay cradled between the teenager’s life line and his heart line That did not ood fortune I swept thee can behind the bar "Sorry about that, sugar I was sure I’d gotten theinally littered the floor of my office "Do you know that holier-than-thou ass told hter needed braces and he’d let ood and charitable father that way?" I snorted and rested my elbows on the bar and propped my chin in a cupped hand, a hand with scraped and raw knuckles "Course he couldn’t explain how his smile was so fake and pearly white if he couldn’t afford braces for his baby girl Hardly see his child It should uilty as hell" My lips curved, sly and satisfied "I do believe he won’t need to feel guilty sono teeth in his smile at all"

Zeke, Griffin’s cohort anda runted, wholly unihtest red of bodily fluids "Cleaned it up Tiiven the man napkins, but I supposed napkins could soak up only soall your upper teeth Now I needed a newI patted therowled

Again, so ot Elizabeth and how she wanted her life changed It was a busy week, but just as work is work, a project is a project and a thing of grace and beauty I talked to people and they talked back As the song says, you can have friends in high places and you can have friends in low places I have friends in all places, froatheredElizabeth’s probleather, unusual but not unheard of, a different kind of artist to find to shape certain et that done It would require so and I asked my friend Leo to watch the bar for meand my t acquisitions Leo would tell you he was a Native Aiven his waist-length black hair and copper skin But Leo didn’t like to talk about the north and Leo didn’t like to talk about ice and Leoif you brought up anything related to Vikings or y And when the rare storo out in the rain to flip off the lightning I’d known Leo a long tih at hi at the sky in the rainnot too reed to help ave Griffin and Zeke a look both jaundiced and resigned when he showed up "Are you going to clean theave him a swat on his ass, which attable in the best ways, and a kiss on his cheek "Behave You were once my stray, too"

There was an unimpressed lift of eyebrows "If you mean that I saved your ass and your life and subsequently you began sending me a constant stream of requests for information and favors, then, yes, I was your stray I don’t kno that evaded "

"Fine, fine, fine" I waved it away "We were both each other’s strays Now, don’t encourage the boys with your less tolerant ways They don’t need you teaching theet a tip is to pound a custoave a guilty droop of his shoulders at that, while Zeke looked irate at the very thought that he was good, and Leo ith aood, Trixa, you wouldn’t be so invested in theht me that the truth, at tiet ood outrage--Leo sot it covered here Enjoy your project" His teeth gleaht a srowls Zeke imitated, but didn’t really have it in his in hand--I wouldn’t say stable or good or trustworthy, but in hand nonetheless--I left I had a long way to go Maybe I’d fly I loved to flythe world distant below, heaven just as distant above, and you had a chance to own everything between I’d been in Vegas less than a year, but the roots were already crah, and at this moment

Elizabeth was first on enes, you tend not to carry things with you It hy I liked all the shinies of the world I knew eventually I’d have to leave them behind and find new ones wherever I landed next If I didn’t, I’d get so weighed down that one day I wouldn’t be able to take a single step, aws, as Mama called them, as much as I possibly could It made them all the h, you co so perfect and special you can’t just leave it for strangers to find and loot Those things you squirrel away, hide thereedy eyes Safe-deposit boxes would be nice, but as I’d noted, the banks don’t trust you, so why should you trust them?

That’s how I ended up in an old rock cellar with the house a hundred years gone I’d sealed this particular precious thing very carefully wrapped in a hundred layers of silk and tucked away in a stone box buried in that cellar where no one could find it or touch it or even see it

I do hear you, you know, judging audy treasure chests

I’m not a peculiar strain of hoarder, either

Why are youthat doubty, pouty face?

I am not a hoarder