Stolen by You (Fated To Love You)

The only thing I couldn’t compromise on is my desk in the back guest room. It’s a son of a b to set it up and take it down, but I’ve gotten good at it over the years. It’s huge and industrial-looking. It all bolts together, which also makes it easy to move, even if taking it apart and putting it back together is a challenge. If one likes puzzles, and I guess I kind of do, then perhaps it’s not so bad. The desk needs to be strong since I have what Joan, my adopted mother, calls ‘lots of technological crap.’

The other thing I couldn’t compromise on is my king-sized bed. I bought the mattress and split box spring after I got here, as well as a shitty metal bed frame to hold it all together. I had money, and I wasn’t going to sleep on anything dubious. I hate bugs with a passion, so nope, I wasn’t going to take the chance with a second-hand one. I most definitely wasn’t going to dumpster dive for my bed.

Anyhow, I need a photo of the necklace. I have to take one and send it to the client as requested.

I hop off the couch and stalk into the kitchen. The box of cereal is still on the table from yesterday. I pull the necklace out of my pocket, and holy crows and guacamole, is it glowing? I drop it so hard and fast onto the tabletop that if the glass weren’t cracked already, it probably would have. The necklace takes the brunt of the fall just fine. At least, when I carefully poke the stone, which is no longer glowing, it doesn’t appear to be cracked. Thank god. If I damaged this thing, there’s no telling how much it’s worth. I have money, quite a bit of it, but I don’t know if I have that much.

I pull out my camera, but the necklace isn’t lined up properly with the cereal box. I have to pick the damn thing up. My hand will be in the photo, but maybe that would lend an air of legitimacy to it. I hesitantly pick the necklace up.

“Holy jeez,” I curse as the stone lights up. I drop it again, and it immediately becomes dull. It’s like a lightbulb. Maybe it’s touch-activated or uranium glass. I’ve heard of uranium glass glowing before, but it’s not dark in here, and I think that stuff needs a black light.

I don’t want to touch the necklace again because it’s creepy. It’s possessed, and the chances of it needing an exorcism are high. On a scale of one to needs to be exorcised, I’d say it’s time to call a priest. I think it was a priest who did that in a scary movie, but I can’t know for sure because I haven’t watched it in a long time. I’m not much of a TV or movies person.

I lean forward and poke the necklace. When my finger makes contact, it lights up for a millisecond. I poke it again, and the same thing happens. Curious, I end up poking it so many times that it’s like a blinker.

“It has to be heat-activated.” I stare the necklace down. “Are you heat-activated?”

It, being a necklace, doesn’t respond back.

With a heavy sigh, I decide to get this over and done with. The sooner I send the old granny the photo of the necklace, the sooner I get my money. Hopefully, I can also get rid of this thing. It seems more than a little dodgy, and I already have enough dicey things in my life. Maybe it’s uranium glass like I thought before or some kind of alien material harvested from a far-off planet. Perhaps it’s got a tracking device in it that will lead someone horrible straight to my door, or it’s a nuclear object.

Argh, I need to take the damn photo already.

I grasp the necklace, take a photo of it with my hand and the cereal box included, and send it off to the granny. Yes, I had to hack her number too, but I know it’s the right one.

It’s four in the morning, which doesn’t bother me, but I know most people aren’t up at this time, so I sit down at the table to wait. I make sure the necklace is pushed far away from me, coiled into a circle at the far end where it can’t—at least I hope not—do any harm.

After a few minutes of sitting and staring at my phone, waiting for a message that probably won’t come in for hours, I push my chair back and dodge past the decrepit row of cupboards that jut out at an angle since the kitchen is L-shaped. I grab the old kettle, which I also found in the cabinets when I moved in—another dodgy thing in my life—and fill it up with water. Trust me when I say there’s nothing a little bit of bleach can’t fix. I’ve been drinking out of this baby for the past few weeks, and nothing’s happened to me yet.