"So what's this thing for?"
Jack peered down at the strange carved trinket as he flirted with the cute, deeply tanned girl standing behind the table covered with various items.
"It's been in my family for three generations. Legend has it this amulet has trapped within it a demon that attacked our people long ago. My grandpa won it in a poker bet."
Jack snorted as he looked at the amulet, intricately carved from bone and hung on a thin leather cord making a necklace of sorts.
"How much do you want for it?"
"Well, it's a family heirloom but we've got a bunch of trinkets like that. Twenty bucks."
"Twenty bucks? Jeez Tabitha, you think I'm made of money?"
"Hey, you've been bugging me all morning, least you can do is buy something."
Jack scoffed at that. He'd been trying without much success to score a date with Tabitha since he had moved into the neighborhood six months earlier. She was a senior in high school and he was a freshman at the nearby college. She didn't seem terribly taken with him, although she wasn't unfriendly towards him either.
"Can I at least try it on first?"
"I don't know Jack, legend has it that wearing this amulet can be very dangerous." She was grinning now, teasing him. She didn't believe the old tales her grandmother told anymore than Jack did.
"I'm sure. I'll just try it on for a minute and we'll see if anything happens."
Shaking her head, Tabitha leaned forward and slipped the cord over Jack's head, the amulet coming to rest on his chest.
Jack stood up straight and cocked his eyebrow.
"How do I look?"
"Hmm... not bad. Tell you what, ten dollars, you buy me lunch, and you can have the silly thing."
Jack was speechless for a moment, then grinned.
"I can live with that."
Later at Bill's Pizzeria, Tabitha was inhaling her pizza as she told Jack the story of the Amulet.
"So anyhow, the legend has it that this demon attacked our people years ago, luring young women away in the middle of the night from the protection of the village and then enslaving them. The women found themselves powerless to resist and the demon had the power to make men go to sleep so they could not defend their women."
All this was said in one long sentence as she paused between slices of pizza. It was amazing how the girl could just inhale food like that.