City of Souls

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.

The men below stared at me with hollow eyes, envy warring with their curiosity as they wondered which woman-Diana or Solange-I’d go after first. Mackie remained slumped over on his piano stool, and from this angle I could see the layer of dust coating the instrument, the keys, and even the wide lapels of his dark jacket. The whole room, I thought, looked like a living museum, a reenactment of the Wild West where visitors could pay to walk into the past. The difference? Those people paid with coin, not power…and they could walk back out into their proper reality whenever they chose.

Bill, ever solicitous, nodded up at me, and Boyd remained granite-faced while puffing on his pipe. I’d drawn the attention of the other half-dozen dealers, and returned their nods as if doing nothing more than taking in the scenery. In reality, as I regained my strength, I surveyed the room like a map.

The most direct path to the poster board was through the center of all those dealers. I counted the steps it would take me to get from the stairs to the wall of lanterns, then did it again from the poster board across the room. If I could risk the energy, which seemed unlikely since I’d barely made it up here, that would be my next stop in looking for Jacks. I shuddered, though, as my gaze fell on my poster. Its half-inished state made my features appear erased rather than the reverse.

That was a worry for later. First Tripp, my powers…and Solange.