The villain known as Mab was happily chatting with an official-looking older woman.
Beyond that, Miu and Kit were engaged in individual sales.
Miu was responsible for haggling and Kit was on mental sweep duty. Her power was dialed up to ten percent, and she casually monitored the store as she worked.
This was temporary. They’d need to hire more people soon. They were far more busy than he had expected.
It’d only been two weeks and they were drowning in merchandise and money.
“You the antiques and memorabilia guy?” came a man’s voice in front of him.
Felix nodded and didn’t bother looking at the person. “Yep. Put it right here,” Felix said, indicating the counter in front of him.
He didn’t lift his eyes, ask for a name, nothing. He didn’t care to meet another person, hear another sob story, get told another lie.
Everything and anything someone could do to get him to pay more.
I can only imagine Kit’s life now. Always knowing the other person’s thoughts.
Looking up across the room at the mind reader in question, he caught her staring at him.
Probably pissed this guy off and that got her looking this way.
He gave her a lopsided grin and turned back to his counter. The man had put a torn-up baseball covered in signatures on it. It looked like it’d been roughed up pretty bad.
Felix picked it up and activated his power.
Name: Historical Signed Baseball
Created In: 2001
Appraised Value: $40.00
Created By: *Truncated for size limits
Actual Value: $50.00
Condition: Extremely Damaged
Asking Price: $100.00
Durability: 13/100
Mint Price: $42,000.00
Cost to Repair: 1,150 points
“It’s the game-winning ball from the first all-Beastkin team. It was the last time an all-Beastkin team was allowed as well. Everyone signed it, including the coach. This is the ball that drove in the last run,” said the would-be customer.
“Do you have a letter of authentication and ownership?” Felix set the ball down and looked up at the customer finally.
He was interested in this item. It would be easy to repair and resell at a much higher price. These are the kind of items he was looking for. Waiting for.
They didn’t pop up often, maybe once every few days, but he’d found a few. Most didn’t have as much of a resale value as this one did, but they added up.
“I have ownership papers, but no authentication,” admitted the man, now unable to meet Felix’s eyes.
He looked ordinary, everyday. See them one minute, gone the next.
“I’ll give you one hundred for it,” Felix said. Reaching under his counter, he pulled up an electronic pad that he used for sales forms.
“Done.”
Felix nodded his head with a grim smile.
Miu was due to make a trip to the other side of the city and sell all of their antiques, memorabilia, and other items to collectors and museums. It was how they’d really started pulling in the money. Everything else they simply repaired and resold here.
The buyers had been hesitant at first, having everything appraised and certified.
Now they paid out the requested amount and had the appraisal and authentication done afterwards.
Felix wanted to preserve that mentality, so he made sure nothing ever went over to them at an incorrect price or listing.
He’d take care of this fixer-upper beauty tonight and add it to the shipment with his notes on the expected price.
Felix’s phone started buzzing on his work desk. He sighed audibly, working through the purchase entries for the day on his virtual work screen.
Andrea slammed bodily into his desk in her haste to get to his phone. She groaned in pain and held up the phone to her eyes.
Felix looked up at her with a small smile over his virtual workspace.
“Well, Miss Beastkin secretary? Who is it?” Felix asked. She was cute in an adorably dense way. Always happy, and sometimes said the most profound things.
“I’m your secretary? That’s great! What’s my salary?” Andrea said, bouncing from foot to foot, her ears twitching back and forth. “I promise I’m worth it, whatever it is.”
Felix chuckled and reached out to take his phone from her hands and flipped it over.
“No-Name.”
He tapped the accept button and held it up to his ear. “Good evening, No-Name. How are ya?”
Wedging the phone between his ear and shoulder, he went back to work.
Or tried to.
“What are my duties as your secretary? The only thing I know about them is they usually sleep with their boss. Wait, do I have to sleep with you?” Andrea asked, scratching her head.
Felix frowned and looked back to Andrea.
“I catch you at a bad time, Hoss?” No-Name said, amusement clearly in his voice. “I can call back later after you’ve worked out your job duties with your secretary.”
“Unnecessary,” Felix said.
“But why not? I mean, I don’t think I want to, but maybe I do? I’ve never been propositioned before. Oh goodness, it’s warm in here. I should go talk to Lily about my promotion. She’ll know what to do,” Andrea said with a squeal, then skittered off.
Dashing out of the office, she bounced off a crate, apologized to it, and kept on running.
“She’s excitable,” No-Name said.
“Yes. She is. It’s cute. Like watching a baby bird trying to figure out how to fly.”
Felix looked back to his work, then saved and closed the program.
“So what’s up?” Felix asked
“Big auction coming up. Lots and lots of supers. No previewing this time, though. It’ll be as is, as seen. Most powers will be a guess,” No-Name said.
“That’s… odd. What’s the deal?” Felix asked, leaning back into his chair. Felix hesitated on calling on anyone else. Then he reached over to the intercom and thumbed it twice in rapid succession. “Hold on a second. I need to get a pen and paper.”
Felix muted his phone and set it down on the desktop. Pulling out some paper and several pens, he then waited.
Kit and Lily came into his office at the same time. With a gesture at the chairs in front of the desk, they seated themselves.
He’d long gotten used to the idea of them being his “Intelligence Center.”
Between the two of them, they had enough intelligence and experience they could give him advice. Advice that would be better than his natural decisions.
He was smart enough to know they were smarter than him.
“No-Name has another auction coming up. He was just starting to give me the details. Was stalling for time,” Felix explained. He pulled off a single sheet of paper from the pad and set it in front of himself and took one of the three pens.
Kit and Lily looked at each other, then back to him.
Apparently I’m the only one with a bad memory.
Felix popped the mute button again. “Sorry about that. Alright, so you said that you won’t even know what powers they have, but it’s a big auction. Why the lack of info?”
No-Name chuckled and the sound of a chair creaking could be heard over the line. “Funny story for another time. The short and sweet version will do for now. A bunch of Dudleys and Snidelys teamed up and launched a coordinated attack on our glorious leader. They were defeated without fatalities on either side. Now we have something like… four hundred of them up for grabs.”
“Got it. That’s quite a few. You were pretty accurate on the sale price last time around. What are you thinking this time?” Felix asked.
“Not really sure. Since the powers are all going to be a guess, based on what our people saw during the battle, it could be high or low. Might be dirt cheap, might be astronomical. Sorry, Hoss, not a lot of knowledge here.”