Smoke and Mirrors Prologue

Happy new year, everyone!!!

To celebrate the start of 2022, I am going to have Smoke and Mirrors as a serial here on my blog!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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Prologue

The day my life ended, I was standing in line at an antique roadshow thingamajig that I saw an ad for on Instagram.

I fumbled with the hard stone necklace in my hand, tracing the iron lace around the edge. My gaze shifted from side-to-side at the rows of people surrounding me, waiting on other antique experts—or whatever they were called.

To any onlookers who were not familiar with my situation, I would have looked like a normal teen girl who happened to own a nice necklace, which I estimated probably came from the late eighteen-hundreds or so.

But I was all too familiar with my situation, and although I considered myself a pretty normal teen girl, the necklace was, by no means, normal. Somehow, someway, it was special.

And I was here to find out why.

"Tessa Yincovich," called someone ahead of me—an older gentleman with greying, dark stubble around his jaw and neck, and a sort of pointed nose that looked not unlike an eagle's beak. Or a rounded-off pyramid.

I flinched at my name and gripped the necklace tighter in my white knuckles.

My heart felt as if electricity had thrown a lasso around it and squeezed. Tightly. I forced my legs to move forward, but they felt almost weak, in an odd sort of way that meant they were actually ready to sprint at any moment. Funny how the human body worked that way.

A sapphire-blue tablecloth met my gaze as I approached the table. I forced my eyes up to the man.

He offered a polite smile. "Well, hello! It's not everyday that I see young people at these shindigs. Seems people are getting too young to keep carrying on the past anymore. But what can I say? My generation did the same thing. Why, I remember my great-great-great-grandfather—who came over to America on the Mayflower—had an old, Antonio Archer Grandfather Clock made from pure ivory! Pure ivory!"

I anxiously tapped my thumb against the necklace.

I usually tried to be patient in scenarios like this—especially with history. I loved hearing stories about these sorts of things. But not today. Not when my life was on the line.

The man continued for a while longer, frequently changing topics as we spoke, but when he finally paused for a breath of air, I had to stop him. I quickly held up the necklace. "Oh! Your mother sounds just like my mother! Speaking of mothers, that's what mine was! A, erm, mother. . ." I paused and mentally face-palmed myself. Then I pushed the necklace further into his face and said, "My mother gave me this necklace. It was her own, you know. Do you think you can tell me about it?"

He hummed thoughtfully as I placed my clenched hand over the table. The silver chain dangled out of my fist and coiled into a glinting serpent as it pooled against the table. I didn't open my hand until I had glanced around once more to confirm that nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

"I need to know what this is," I explained quietly. Cautiously.

He cocked an eyebrow and gently lifted the necklace with gloved hands. He examined the clasp closely as he asked, "How long ago did she leave it to you?"

"Last week. It was the only thing she left me as a. . . as an. . ." I cut myself off before my voice could break. As an inheritance.

He sucked in a breath. "Oh. I see. You have my most sincere condolences. It is always hard to lose a parental figure. I should know. I lost mine when I was twelve. It was horrible. My father died right after—heartbreak, you know. I was trapped in my bathroom for four days before anyone knew. Thankfully, my neighbor liked to bake a lot and happened to be bringing some cookies over. Found me locked in my bedroom, she did."

I refrained from pointing out that he had just said he was locked in the bathroom, and now had changed it to the bedroom. Most likely his story wasn't even true, but I gave him the benefit of telling a dramatic story anyway.

I bowed my head in acknowledgement of his apology. "Thank you."

He squinted at the piece, holding it up to the light. Silver triangles of light speckled his face, pausing at the obstruction that was his nose. "Any idea where she got it?"

"No, sir. She always wore it—for as long as I can remember she wore it." The necklace had so many memories attached to it. My hand fisted the velvet tablecloth.

"Interesting."

"How so?"

He opened the clasp and squinted once more at it. "The metal certainly feels. . . odd, but most necklaces of value say something on the clasp. This says nothing. And for wearing it so often—you're like what? Seventeen? Sixteen, maybe?"

"Eighteen, actually."

"Pardon me. Still, there's absolutely not a scratch or problem with the varnish and metal. As I said, interesting."

"You don't think I'm telling you the truth, do you?"

"Oh no, miss. I meant nothing like that. I only meant that it's unusual." He squinted again at the clasp and withdrew one of those jeweler's eye thingamabobs that look like a small, short telescope. A part of me wanted to ask if I could try it on, but I didn't out of fear that he would go off on another story of his life. "So you have no idea if it was passed down from a grandmother, picked up at a flea market, or anything like that?"

"No, sir."

He hummed as he removed the eye piece. "Have you had the chain and clasp replaced recently, miss? Or perhaps your mother did, since she wore it so frequently?"

"No. She said it would destroy the. . . the value of it." Her exact words were "Magic", but I wasn't about to go into that.

He sat the necklace on the table and looked down at its many mirrored angles. "You might get fifty for it, if you're lucky. I can't figure out what the metal is, though. Very peculiar. It's light enough to be aluminum, but it doesn't bend or feel like aluminum. I was actually quite surprised by its strength. It might be a blend of metals, but it appears to have too pure a structure for that, so I don't know."

Fifty. No, this was worth more than fifty.

Just then, the door opened.

Now, reader, the door had been opening and closing all day with a steady flow of traffic. But something about these newcomers caught my attention—something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand. They looked ordinary enough, just a group of three women and two men dressed in various t-shirts and jeans, but there was something. . . off. Mom had always told me to listen to that gut feeling, especially when it came to people.

I scooped the necklace up from the table and closed my fist. "Thank you for your time. I have to go."

I stepped further into the crowd of people. There was safety in numbers, right?

I thought I saw a glimpse of one of the newcomers' faces, but when I turned, the face was gone.

My grip tightened on the necklace.

A hand shot out of the surrounding crowd, between some man and his presumable daughter. I saw one newcomer's face, frowning as I jerked backwards.

I had to get out of there.

I turned and quickly paced towards a back door, when one of the men from the group stepped in my way.

I froze and darted to his left. He was blocking the exit completely. As soon as I made it a safe enough distance away, a quick glance to the front door confirmed that a second man was blocking it.

My heart hammered as I followed the main crowd towards an antique display. My gaze constantly shifted over my surroundings as fear coursed through my veins.

What was I going to do? I couldn't leave. I knew what they wanted, but why? Why was it so important to get this necklace? This hadn't been the first time a group of people had tried to steal it. Ever since mom's death, random people I'd never even met had been trying to steal it from me.

I sprinted across the room, dodging people and antique displays. Running through a place filled with expensive antiques was probably not the best idea, but at this point—

"Excuse me, miss. No running!" shouted a worker. I flinched and stopped.

A second hand shot out from the side and tried to reach for the necklace. I felt the mirrored jewel tug against my clenched fist.

"No!" tore itself from my lips as I tried to yank the jewel backwards.

She let go as I was pulling and I stumbled. The necklace fell, but while I stumbled to regain my balance, I didn't realise that it was under my foot.

I felt a crunch under my shoe. My heart shattered with that crunch.

Tears burned beneath my lids as I scooped up the shattered pieces and stuffed them into my pocket. I knew I shouldn't waste the time with such a fruitless act, but I had to. It was one of the last things I had of mom.

The door was now unguarded, so I ducked around the crowd and flew out the door. I didn't stop running until I reached my apartment and stumbled up the stairs to my room.

After changing into my silk ice-skating-hippo pajamas, I pulled the necklace from my jeans pocket that I'd worn at the show and gently placed the fragments on my nightstand. I folded my legs on the bed and tried to piece it back together with a bottle of glue from my drawer, but it was no use. The necklace was nothing but splintered glass.

I tugged my pale-blonde frizz into a ponytail. My stomach rumbled, so I "followed my gut" to the kitchen, where I heated up some ramen. Hey, I followed my gut twice in a day. Mom would have been proud. Well, except for the necklace.

I slid the drawer open for a dishcloth to hold my steaming bowl with, but saw that it was empty, so I started some towels up in the washing machine down the hall, outside my apartment. When I returned, I used a random shirt from my unfolded laundry pile on the couch to hold my bowl with as I sat at the fold-up table in my living-room.

I switched on the tv to an old rerun of Gilligan's Island and began eating my steaming noodles when I heard the door close to my bedroom.

But I lived alone, and the door had been closed.