Missing Reels Read Free

counted out the register and saw how low the day’s take had been. It was after eight and the sales probably weren’t going to get any higher.
    She dreaded the looks of the couple poring over the low-slung case at the end. The woman was wearing a tight leopard-print dress, and leopard-print clothing was a sure sign of a mean disposition. The man was wearing a rumpled, untucked linen shirt that looked expensive but was all wrong for September. But when the woman gave a snappy little wave—I’m not a cab, thought Ceinwen—there was no choice.
    “I want to see that,” said the woman, tapping one brown-polished nail against the top of the counter. Oh goody, a glass tapper.
    “Earrings? Bracelet? Necklace? Pin?” She forced a smile.
    “The earrings,” said the woman, in some sort of accent. “No, not those.” Tap, tap. “Those. No, in the back. The back.”
    “The blue ones,” said the man.
    She whipped out the velvet tray and set the earrings down. The woman picked up an earring, said something to the man in whatever language she spoke, and put it down. “No, I don’t like those at all. They look cheap.”
    “Maybe,” said Ceinwen, “if you told me what you’re looking for, I could suggest something.”
    “I’m going back to Italy tomorrow,” said the woman. “I’m going to a party this week and I want something new.”
    La. Dee. Da. “That sounds wonderful. Where in Italy?”
    “Modena.” Spoken in a slow, bored drawl that meant, of course, you’ve never heard of it. This was basically a dare.
    “Oh, just like Mary of Modena.”
    The man took his eyes away from the case and looked at Ceinwen. The woman said, “Who?”
    “James II’s wife. He was king of England. Mary was a princess from Modena.”
    “I know James II.” She sounded irritated. “I don’t know his personal life.”
    “She was Catholic,” said the man, “just like James.” He had an accent too, British from the sound of it. “Bedwarmer affair. Mary helped get him chucked out.” Definitely English. He was looking at Ceinwen in that annoyingly surprised way English people always did when an American said something intelligent.
    “The English,” said the woman, suddenly flirtatious. “Always persecuting the Catholics. Even the English Catholics.”
    “Oh yes. We’ve suffered.”
    Oh please. The man kept glancing at her, maybe wondering if an American who’d heard of Mary of Modena should be a museum exhibit, so she couldn’t check her watch to see how much longer she had to suffer along with the downtrodden Catholics. “Let’s move down here and see what we’ve got.”
    Another case, more tapping, more picking up and discarding, more Italian, more opinions—too old-woman, too flimsy, too heavy. One more case and one more set of taps. “Those.”
    “She needs a little more info, love,” he said softly. Maybe he was trying to be nice. Longish hair and some lines on his face. Probably too much sun. English people were bad about that.
    “I’m pointing at them.” If nice was the idea, what was he doing with this woman? She was tapping at the back of the case. Ceinwen’s eyes followed the nail. Oh no. Not those. Please not those.
    “Which color?”
    “The silver, with the enamel.” Those. Goddamnit. She had put them on hold two weeks ago, waiting until she had the money, and in two more weeks they could have been hers. Lily had put them back in the case, and she’d been running around so much, she hadn’t noticed.
    “They’re a hundred.” They were more expensive than most of the other jewelry, and sometimes people recoiled from paying that much in a store that sold old clothes.
    The woman rolled her eyes, said something in Italian, and then, “We don’t care about the price.” Ceinwen took the earrings out slowly and set them on the counter. No velvet. Maybe they’d look worse that way. And they wouldn’t look good on this woman, either, not with that olive skin and long narrow face.
    “Now those I