Page 57 of Up in Smoke

Inside, I found a pair of guns, the kind I expected in the East, brand new and ready for duty. I whistled. “These aren’t antiques.”

“Nope, those aren’t antiques. These aren’t even Colts, but that box makes a damned good disguise for what they are.” Sandro lifted out one of the weapons, turned it over in his hands, and smiled. “Frankie liked you a lot, Jade. These are Glock 19s, and they’re a popular firearm because of their ease of use, reliability, and availability of parts. They’re accurate, they can take a beating, and ammunition is simple enough to get, although I bet there is ammunition in these boxes somewhere. What I want to know is when she got this. And if she got it when you were shot, who does she know out of quadrant that could get her this?”

“What are we going to do with guns?” I whispered.

“Conceal and carry them, of course, and when we aren’t confident in our ability to conceal them on our person, we’ll conceal them in our house. I have poems for that. But I will say this much. Assuming there’s ammunition in here, I’m going to be taking you a decent hike away from Tulsa and teaching you how to use this.”

“You know how to shoot a gun?” My mouth dropped open.

“Everyone in my family does, Jade. If we can’t protect ourselves with our magic, then we can defend ourselves in other ways. Honestly, I usually don’t carry when in the Alley; I’m better than any gun, but I think I may make an exception. Few here expect a gun.”

“I certainly hadn’t,” I said in a wry tone.

“I have every intention of finding who shot you and make certain it doesn’t happen again.”

“Don’t kill him,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I want to pop him in the mouth, that’s why you can’t kill him. After I’ve popped him one good, then you can do whatever you want with him.”

Sandro sighed. “You’re going to insist, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I lost my spleen to that bastard, so the least I should be able to do is try to bust up his mouth with my fist.” I huffed, dug through the box, and set all the presents aside to discover some boxes marked as ammunition. Each box had a hundred bullets, and there were at least ten boxes. “I guess we have a thousand bullets at a minimum to work with, Sandro.”

“Well, that’s going to be a good start for teaching you how to shoot a gun.” Sandro leaned over, pulled up one of the boxes, and revealed a second layer. “Apparently, she thinks we need a lot of bullets. That’s a ridiculous number of rounds. Maybe three or four layers judging from the height of this box.”

I dug in to discover there were four layers of bullet boxes in the bottom. “Four layers.”

“Well, I’ll be concealing that for certain. Any imprints on the guns?”

I touched the weapons, and when nothing happened, I shook my head. “I guess that’s a secret that went to the grave with Frankie.”

“Not necessarily. I’ll just email my mother with the serial numbers on the guns and find out where they came from—and have her pay the previous owner a call. Sometimes, complicated problems have simple solutions.”

“You can do that?”

“Yep. We’ll need to register you as the owner of the guns, so it’s actually required. And since you should have the complete will, we can make sure the inheritance is legal.” Sandro sighed. “However much I want to go through the rest of this, it’s late, we should get some rest, and I’ve at least half an hour of work tonight to make sure nobody bothers your inheritance. The last thing we need is Mansfield realizing you’re armed on top of dangerous.”