City of Souls Page 12

  Yeah Jo, I thought, turning the caustic strength on myself. A daguerreotype. One to reveal a person’s internal landscape. It’d captured everything differentiating me from other agents, yet at the same time everything that added up to make anyone a fully functioning, healthy human being. And it was all stacked in front of me, ready to be parceled out in quantifiable bits. My hands began to shake.

  Other than the full smile again splitting Tripp’s face, a singular question sat in the gaze of every other player, as well as Boyd’s assessing gaze. It was the same one, I thought, looking down at my chips, that I needed to ask myself.

  Which power would I sacrifice first?

  Boyd doled out the pocket cards, a face card and a nine, then smiled around his pipe. “Ante up.”

  At Boyd’s left, Tripp opened the pot. He had dozens of chips stacked before him, indicating his skill.

  Next came the black man, who stacked and restacked his chips before matching Tripp’s bet. A soul chip for a soul chip.

  My turn, then. So what essential part of me, what vital aspect that made me super, should I wager first? I was sure some people would be happy to see my sarcastic nature gone, but since it was oft-used, I’d rather keep it. What might affect me least? I clinked them in my hand for a good minute, but nobody rushed me.

  I chose one of the triangles. I didn’t know what they were, but I had three others left in my stack.

  The Asian and the albino—which sounded like a poor title for a spaghetti western—had already chosen their chips and pushed them forward. Boyd presented the flop. Tripp frowned and folded outright, while the black man matched the blind. I didn’t like the ace showing, but one more jack and I could have three of a kind. Not bad for a first hand.

  Boyd flipped again. No help. A ten. Again the man to my right raised. The hand could go either way, but I couldn’t win if I didn’t play, right? And that’s why I was there: to heal Jasmine, win freedom for my city, and bring to life the fourth sign of the Zodiac so my troop could get back to their regularly scheduled superhero programming. I threw in a portion of my speed.

  The Chinese guy folded, the albino sipped nervously at his drink. I mentally dismissed him and focused on the black man while Boyd flipped the last card. A jack. I began to relax, but caught my opponent smiling as he raised again. Damn. Did he have a jack too?

  I curled up the edge of my cards, peeking again at the nine. Fighting the need to swallow hard, I called again, giving another triangle, this one without a line parallel to the base. Boyd snorted as soon as I tossed it in the pot, which had me rethinking the move, but the chip was released. It was too late.

  As I’d anticipated, the albino folded. Boyd tapped the table. The black man turned his cards. There was the last jack.

  But his other card was a seven.

  I had won.

  I wiped a hand over the back of my neck, sighing as I raked the chips toward me. I’d won back all that I’d risked, and even had buffer chips for the next round. I took a fortifying sip from my glass, noting thankfully that it seemed to stay cool in the cup. Tripp was watching me hungrily, though whether it was due to my drink or my luck, I didn’t know. I just tilted my cup in his direction before sipping some more.

  “Wow. Haven’t had my ass handed to me by a woman since I was on the bayou.”

  I shot a sidelong glance at Shaft. “You’re from the South?”

  “With this accent, where else? And it’s not like everyone here doesn’t already know that, so y’all can’t barter with it.” His laughter boomed, and the men joined in, so I knew I was missing something. At least their movements and words were a little more up to speed. They’d been obviously messing with me before, a group of friends ganging up on a dupe.

  “Well, I didn’t know. I’m from…” I was going to say Vegas, but remembered they might not know that. “A transient town. You could have relocated.”

  “Maybe,” he said, as if he couldn’t remember. “Which lantern marks your entrance?”

  “That…one…” There were eight lanterns, all evenly spaced across the wall, all with identical frames, powder coat finishes, and evenly burning flames. I know the lantern, Diana had said. But I didn’t.

  The black man rattled his chips. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  They all laughed again.

  And How do I get out of here? suddenly rose to the top of my question list.

  Boyd dealt again. When it came my turn to sweeten the pot, I threw back the albino’s chip. He was annoying me the least.

  “You get to ask your question too,” Boyd said, puffing lightly at his pipe, though his eyes were assessing.

  I rattled my chips—my strengths—still thinking about that. Discovering a way out of here was clearly important, but I wanted to find Jaden Jacks now. To do that, I’d have to eliminate the men in this room, one by one. So, with a glance at the motionless piano player, I sipped at my drink. “What’s Mackie’s deal?”

  Diana had said he might know who Jacks was, so I’d start with him.

  The black guy’s eyes went wide as he risked a glance at the pianist. He quickly looked away, though Mackie hadn’t even twitched.

  “Mackie ain’t exactly one of us…but he’s not one of them either.” He jerked his head toward the dealer and Bill. Just as I’d thought. Working for the house. Boyd smiled unapologetically, and I wondered if they were tulpas like Skamar and my father. “He’s reportedly the last of the Nez Perce. Hear of them?”

  Not in recent years, of course. The Nez Indians had tribal lands north of Nevada, dating back five hundred years, but like most Native Americans, they’d been displaced. Had that resulted in Mackie’s relocation this far south? And when? Because though I’d yet to fully see his face beneath that bowler, it looked like brown parchment had been fisted around his neck. I realized I was looking at a piece of living history.

  Well, living-ish.

  “He’s been here the longest,” the black man went on, throwing down a chip, still in. I’d have asked his name, but knew he wouldn’t say, so I silently named him Hippie as I added my bet to the pile. “Nobody knows anything about him, beyond not to touch his piano.”

  “And that he keeps a knife on him at all times.” This from the Asian, who didn’t seem to have issues with revealing information that wasn’t about himself. He continued play as well. “They say it’s where he keeps the last ounce of his soul, transmogrified in the blade. He’s been hanging onto it by refusing to say anything. Refusing to move unless he has to. Refusing to give up knowledge or energy or anything that will contribute to this world.”

  I glanced at Bill and Boyd, but they didn’t seem to have a problem with him telling me this, and a skein of panic arrowed through my belly. Contribute to this world? Is that what we were doing?

  “But you must communicate if you want to live here,” Boyd added after the albino folded, and revealed the final of the three flop cards. My anxiety spiked again. No chance for a straight, but one more spade? Flush. “You have to allow your personal power to be used to fuel this world, or at least wager it.”

  Because even if you didn’t lose, I realized as I matched and raised, the interaction kept the others wagering theirs.

  Hippie jerked his head back at Mackie. “He was his tribe’s storyteller, so his music is his payment—”

  “Except now it is our stories he tells,” the Asian put in sourly. I wondered how long ago he’d thrown in his happiness chip.

  Boyd sat up straighter. “Don’t share that with her.”

  The albino turned his black eyes on Boyd and flipped him off so closely that Boyd went cross-eyed. “She asked about Mackie. She earned the right.” He turned back to me and smiled. I bet he didn’t get a lot of chances to flip Boyd the bird.

  “The songs,” I said, studying each man’s face. “Like the one he began when I came in? That was my song, wasn’t it?”

  “The songs are what bind your ass here.” Hippie slumped farther in his chair. “They keep this world go
ing. Once completed, the Mother will know everything about you.”

  He said “the Mother” like one would say the Earth, or the World, or God. I swallowed hard.

  “When the murder ballad is complete, the poster will be drawn. Your name—your true name—will be printed across the bottom.”

  The Asian cut in. “And once Mother knows everything about you—”

  “She can draw from your energy reserves at will.” Hippie pursed his lips as he studied his cards, finally folding. “She don’t even have to wait for you to lose, if she don’t want. Basically, we’re all here on borrowed time.”

  So our powers literally fueled this world. We were energy. Little power plants with beating hearts. I fingered my chips idly, back and forth, until the one I’d won from the Asian caught my eye. His name was printed on one side, Shen, and his star sign and Zodiac troop was on the other.

  “Pisces of Light?” I asked, twirling it absently, noting it because we’d been missing ours the entire time I’d been with my troop. I saw from Hippie’s chip that he was a Capricorn and—

  “Damn you!” My chair back and head cracked against the rough wooden floor and my vision went sparkly as Shen’s hands found my neck. Tinkling laughter, feminine and bright and amused, rang in the air.

  “That was my secret to tell. My power!”

  “Get off of her, Shen!” Bill yelled from behind the bar. “You’re wasting energy. Yours and hers.”

  But he didn’t waste any of his in helping me.

  “You bartered my power. You rendered it useless!”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose!” I choked out. Shen squeezed harder. Then suddenly he was gone, lifted so high in the air I was looking directly up at the soles of his shoes.

  “She didn’t know, Shen,” Boyd said calmly, and sat him back in his seat.

  “I could have won it back! Now it’s null! That part of me is voided out forever!”

  “I’m sorry,” I added, sitting up. I really was. I knew how I’d feel if someone had just nullified a power of mine. “I—I’ll pay you back.”

  “One of your chips!” he yelled, spittle raining down on me. “My pick!”

  “No.” I didn’t want to give him that, but I felt bad about the loss. I looked at the dealer. “Can I give him someone else’s chip?”

  Boyd scratched his head. “No one’s ever asked that before.”

  “Because no one’s that stupid,” Tripp said, and chuckled darkly.

  “No. Hers alone. It’s only fair.” Shen crossed his arms. The other men nodded.

  “Fine.” I wasn’t going to win this argument. I’d just have to win the hand. I smirked at Tripp as I found my feet. “Any other ground rules before we resume the game?”

  “Yes,” Shen yelled, still angry, though he was already rifling through my chips. He palmed a chip before I could see which he’d taken. Ungrateful friggin’ Pisces. “Keep your hole shut!”

  I sat again and counted my powers, unable to figure out what was missing since I didn’t even know everything I’d had, but from Shen’s smug expression, and the sudden interest in his pile, I knew I’d just lost something big.

  Preoccupied with this, and really feeling the relentless heat, it was unsurprising when I also lost the next hand. To be fair, it was probably just bad luck—Hippie had the next best hand and he didn’t win either—but Tripp’s satisfied expression as he flipped my two original chips between his fingers irritated me, like he was rubbing raw a patch of my skin. Why couldn’t it have been anyone but him?

  “What are you going to do with those?” I asked, wondering what I was missing without those triangles.

  “Same as anyone. I’m going to buy something with it.”

  I realized then that we were like a bunch of magpies hoarding our goods, scavenging from others, and pillaging whatever we could. Some things didn’t change, I thought, with a slow shake of my head. No matter what world you lived in.

  “Bill,” he called out, without looking away from me. “Kindly call up to Solange and see if she’ll accept my company for the evening?”

  “Miss Solange hasn’t taken your calls in…a while, Tripp.” He’d barely kept from referencing the time again, and I wondered why. And asking a working girl if she was willing to accept your company? Another mind-boggling, interworldly twist.

  “Well, now I have something she might want.”

  I swallowed hard. Bill nodded at Boyd. He stared straight ahead at the wall, then his eyes rolled. “Hold, please.”

  And those eyes kept on rolling. Actually they spun, tiny globes that refracted light as they whirled faster and faster. His eyelids pulsed with the movement and his lips began to move, almost like an incantation, though from the way they paused—as if waiting for reply—I recognized it as his side of a conversation. Sure enough, a few seconds later the spinning slowed, he blinked his irises into focus, and tilted his head at Tripp. “Go on up.”

  The Shadow agent pushed back his chair, and pulled at his belt buckle, though there was no way it could rise beneath the girth of his belly. I clenched my teeth when he resumed flipping my chips between his fingers, whistling as his boots sounded hollowly over the scarred wooden floor. He was moving again in frames, herky-jerky, like a badly cut movie.

  “Enjoy your soiled dove,” I snapped.

  He faced me without my seeing him pivot. “Enjoy your drink.”

  Fear streamed through me, washing right over my face so that Tripp laughed as he headed toward those stairs. I reached out to stop him, but my arm was heavy and he was gone too quickly. Flying up the stairs and whizzing to the right before I could even open my mouth. Oh my God. The drink.

  The others hadn’t sped up, I realized now. I had slowed down. I looked down at my still brimming—my ever-brimming—glass.

  Solange, I thought as color and light spilled again into the hallway above. Tripp’s shadow elongated, then snapped as the door swung shut behind him. No matter what, I had to remember that.

  I didn’t know how long I sat there, staring, but I gradually became aware of everyone watching me. I no longer had any sense of time, but I met all their gazes one by one—Shen’s still-malevolent one, Hippie’s understanding one, the albino, calculating, and finally the dealer’s. Boyd merely gave me a professional nod, his spinning eyes still once again.

  “Ante up,” he said in an elongated drawl that had to be put on. The sound emanated as though from a tunnel. I wavered in its wake.

  11

  It was all so obvious now. It was a bar, the heat was unbearable, and the bartender had offered the first one “on the house,” presumably to get me hooked. I realized from the way my fellow players watched me that they’d each come to these same conclusions, and that none of them were fighting it. I can do this, I thought, trying to shake my head of the drink. I succeeded only in making myself dizzy.

  With Tripp gone, I starting winning easily. I had to be the most “sober” person at the table, though every time someone sipped from their eternally full glasses, every time they licked their lips or swallowed hard, I greedily followed the movement. Even the wasteful beads of sweat on their foreheads were suddenly as enticing as a cold spring in summer. I quickly grew a begrudging respect for Tripp. I was dying of thirst, and I’d only been fighting it for…how long?

  But I was also cleaning up at power poker.

  Shen finally had enough.

  “Why don’t you go up where you belong,” he spat when I raked a pile of chips toward me that included his sense of smell. He bet that power instead of the one he’d taken from me, which told me how valuable mine was, and that I definitely wanted it back.

  If possible, my movements slowed even further because what Shen meant was up with the whores. Too bad for him I hadn’t handed over the chip containing my temper, because I’d had far less to drink than he, and had the reflexes to prove it. Yet even before I could swing, Boyd was pushing me back into my chair. The effort it’d taken just to get up drained me.

  “That�
��s the second fight you’ve been involved with at this table today!” He shook his finger in my face like he was scolding a child.

  “He insinuated I was a whore!”

  Boyd’s eyes did a full rotation. “He insinuated you were a woman, though it’s hard to believe given your color.”

  “You can go upstairs at any time,” the albino said, finally revealing the source of his obvious resentment. “Not like us.”

  “How about another drink to calm yourself, sweetie?” I turned at the voice that bloomed beside me, and Bill gifted me with that deadly hot smile. Yet it was the sweet-smelling liquor in his hand that had my heart racing. Light refracted off the gold liquid, and sweat poured down my face.

  God, I wanted it. Even knowing what it was and did, I couldn’t help it; I was literally dying of thirst.

  I reached for my bag, and the wallet inside. Xavier’s money was still in there. If I could go upstairs—get away from these men and heat and drink long enough to clear my head—surely this Solange woman would accept a pile of bills as payment for those chips. I’d make the trade and find my way out after that. Maybe I’d be strong enough to play Shen for my last chip, though more likely I’d have to leave it. I knew not to chase my losses.

  But my wallet wasn’t there. I emptied the entire contents of my satchel onto the table, not caring that I was holding up the game, that Shen looked like he wanted to lunge at me again, or that Boyd was nervously eyeing his felt. I’d had the money when I entered…

  My gaze rose slowly to the top of the staircase. Diana, who’d bumped against me at the bar, was there, smiling. And fanning herself with a small stack of bills.

  Pushing from the table, I fumbled at my belongings as she disappeared from sight. I had to go up there, and not merely for money. Whether I learned Jaden Jacks’s secrets or not, I wasn’t leaving pieces of myself lying around this so-called Rest House.

  Though my trek to the staircase was almost painfully slow, no one tried to stop me, and I was steadier when I hit the second floor landing. Aged floorboards creaked beneath my weight in the silent, empty hallway. Tired and on edge, I wiped the back of my neck, trying to recall a time when I’d been so exhausted. Not to mention this afraid of the heat. I looked down at the saloon, and the red door with its glowing frame. I’d grown up in the desert, and knew its dangers, but this was different. It was as if fire was being held back behind it, and chasing me up the stairway too.