“Oh, those were gems too, just mostly fake ones.”

   This time, Owen frowned. “But where did you get fake jewels on such short notice?”

   I grinned. “Straight from Mama Dee herself.”

   We all sat back down in our chairs, and I told my friends how I’d grabbed a bunch of rings, necklaces, and bracelets, along with an extra black velvet bag, from that wall of jewelry in Deirdre’s closet.

   “Most of it was just costume jewelry,” I said. “Very nice costume jewelry, but still fake. There were a few real gems in the mix, but they were small, poor-quality stones. So I pried them out of their settings and put them in a black velvet bag like they were the real thing. It was good enough to fool Tucker.”

   The vampire might be clever, but he wasn’t a Stone elemental like I was, so he hadn’t been able to hear the stones’ soft, muted murmurs last night, and he hadn’t realized that I’d been giving him a bag full of fakes. That’s what I’d been counting on, and it had worked like a proverbial charm. Tucker might have escaped, but at least I’d kept him from getting his hands on the jewels. It was a small victory, but I’d take what I could get.

   “I just wish that I could be there to see the look on Tucker’s face when he realizes that you duped him and that all he has is a pile of pretty glass,” Phillip said.

   “Me too.” I grinned. “Me too.”

   Everyone fell silent, sipping their coffee and orange juice. Ira was still staring down at all the colorful, sparkling stones spread across the table. After several seconds, he scooped them all up, poured them back into the bag, and held the whole thing over the table for Finn.

   “Here,” Ira said in a rough voice. “These belong to you now. After all, your name is on the deed, just like you said.”

   Finn grinned and started to reach across the table for the jewels, but I cleared my throat and raised my eyebrows. He looked at me, his face creasing into a pleading wince. But I kept staring at him, and he finally rolled his eyes.

   “You know how much I hate being noble,” he whined. “It makes me break out in hives.”

   “Finn . . .” I warned.

   “All right, all right,” he said, dropping his hand and sitting back in his chair. “Actually, Ira, I think that you should keep the jewels. After all, you were the one who loved Sweet Sally Sue.”

   Another thought occurred to Finn, and he brightened. “Besides, this is your home. I bet a couple of those diamonds would go a long way toward repairing the saloon and getting the theme park back up and running again.”

   Lorelei snorted. “And get you off the hook for actually having to pay for anything yourself. Nice logic, Lane.”

   Finn grinned and shot his thumb and forefinger at her. “Bingo.”

   We all groaned.

   Ira set the bag down on the table and cleared his throat. “Actually, I have something for you too, Gin, Bria.”

   He got to his feet and disappeared into his bedroom. I looked at my sister, who shrugged back at me. She didn’t know what he was up to any more than I did. Ira appeared a few seconds later carrying two framed photos. He handed the first one to Bria, and we all leaned over the table to look at it.

   It was a picture of our mother.

   The photo had been taken in the hotel lobby during the holidays, and Eira was standing in front of a Christmas tree, examining one of the snow globes nestled in the branches. She looked young in the photo, probably in her early twenties, and she was smiling with childish delight, her whole face shining even brighter than the lights on the tree. The lovely shot of her was much nicer than the photos I had that showed her with Deirdre Shaw and Mab Monroe. My chest tightened.

   Ira nodded at Bria. “When I first saw you, I thought that you looked like somebody that I’d photographed at the resort, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly who it was or where her picture might be. Then, when I saw Gin wearing that blond wig, I realized that she looked like that same woman too.”

   Shock jolted through me. Bria was the spitting image of our mother, but I’d never considered that I might look anything like her. But Ira thought that I did. That pleased me. That I still carried part of her with me, even if I hadn’t realized it until right now.

   “You never forget a face,” I rasped, my voice thick with emotion.

   “No, I don’t.” Ira nodded at me. “You have her nose and cheekbones. Put that blond wig back on, and both you and Bria could be her twins.”

   “Thank you,” I rasped again.

   Ira nodded and handed me the second photo. “And I thought you might want to see this one too.”

   Once again, everyone leaned across the table to see the picture—of Hugh Tucker.

   The vampire was sitting in the hotel lobby, also during the holidays, given the mistletoe strung up on the fireplace mantel behind him. Tucker was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, talking to someone sitting in a high-backed chair that I couldn’t see. I brought the picture up close to my face, examining every single detail, but there was nothing else to it. Tucker looked young in the photo too, in his twenties, although he had one of those ageless faces that made it hard to pinpoint how old he had been back then.

   “I did a quick scan through all my photos here, and I’m afraid that’s the only shot I have of Tucker,” Ira said. “I’m sorry, Gin.”

   “The vampire’s not important. Not today, anyway.” I set the photo aside and looked at my friends, old and new. “Right now, I’m just happy to be here with all of you.” I paused. “And that we all survived another so-called vacation.”

   Finn lifted his coffee mug. “I’ll drink to that. Cheers, everyone!”

   We all lifted our mugs back to him. “Cheers!”

29

   After finishing our late breakfast, we went to the hotel, grabbed our things, and met back down in the lobby, where Ira had another surprise, this time for Finn—that photo of Deirdre’s ribbon cutting that I’d spotted in the dwarf’s office yesterday.