“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean anybody got arrested.” The taxi pulled into the parking lot of a place called the Lane amp; Harvey Doctor’s Walk-In Clinic. I paid the driver, and Vic and I got out.
It took us a few minutes to get checked in. She didn’t have her insurance card, and I didn’t have insurance. But cash took care of that, too.
We filled out our paperwork, turned our clipboards back in to the front desk, and settled down in the waiting room with the rest of the walking wounded. The TV droned through a loop of info about cholesterol and fibromyalgia while children whined and fidgeted. A nurse bellowed a patient’s name every couple minutes.
Eventually, Vic said, “Okay, monsters are real. Succubi and magic spells are real. What does it have to do with you?”
I looked around. Our fellow patients were busy with their own conversations, their smartphone games, music, or videos, or their misery. So I explained, although for some reason, I downplayed A’marie’s part in the story.
When I finished, Vic said, “You haven’t changed.”
“Did you catch the part about the magic powers?”
“You haven’t. You’re just as reckless as ever.”
“I didn’t know you’d get pulled in.”
She glared at me. “And if it were just you who got hurt, that would make it all right?”
“It would make it a risk worth taking.”
“Well, you took it and you won. You got your money and cleared your debt. Now you should get away.”
I sighed. My ribs gave me a twinge. “Probably.”
She studied my face and found a tell. “But you won’t. You’re going back.”
“Yes.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
That was when it hit me that we’d had this talk before, or versions of it anyway, and I’d long ago run out of ways to try to make her understand. Hell, maybe
“Of course,” she said in the scornful way that, at the very end, I’d come to know and hate. But a few seconds later, she surprised me. “I know you didn’t have to come after me.”
“Sure I did. It was my fault you were in trouble.”
“Not exactly. And I walked out on you. And I should have let you know about your dad.”
I sighed. “He begged you not to.”
“You understand, it wasn’t that I stopped caring about you. It’s just… that wasn’t the life we were supposed to have.”
“Or who I said I was going to be.”
“Yes,” she said, and then the nurse yelled her name. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand, then got up.
And as I watched her walk away, something loosened up inside me. I’d known we were over, and thought I was okay with it. But now I really was.
I got my turn next. I told my doctor I’d been in a car crash. She didn’t believe a word of it, but didn’t argue, either. She just X-rayed me, taped my ribs, and gave me some Tylenol 3’s.
When I came back out into the waiting room, Vic was there ahead of me. I got the receptionist to call us another cab, and then we sat back down. The TV told me I should get a colonoscopy at age fifty, so that was something to look forward to.
“What did your doctor say?” I asked.
“I’m all right,” Vic answered. “He told me to go home and rest. And then I wondered, can I even do that?”
“If you aren’t going to talk about-what did you call them? — succubi.”
“Leticia could still try to use me to get at you.”
“I don’t think so. The lords don’t make the same move twice. It costs them style points. Or maybe it’s just boring.”
She shook her head. “My God.”
“I know it’s weird.”
“It’s more than weird! It’s horrible! How do I go back to a normal life knowing what I know?”
I took her hand. “You go back because your normal life is just as real and important as you thought. Your family’s real. Your friends are real. Your school and the kids are real. It’s just that the world has this… other layer to it. And it’s scary. But you don’t ever have to deal with it again. Think of it like, I don’t know, starvation in Africa. Bad but far away.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ll try.” And something in her face told me she was going to be okay.
She kissed me goodbye like a sister would before getting out of the cab. I watched her until she got inside the apartment we’d shared, then told the driver to take me to the Icarus.
I wondered how I was supposed to focus on poker after the day I’d had, then realized that, with Vic safe and nobody waving guns at me, I actually felt okay. In fact, I was looking forward to playing.
But first things first.
The cab dropped me in front of the hotel. I walked over and checked Dad’s T-bird. It still looked fine with the red light of sunset reflecting from the windows. There hadn’t been any tickets, vandalism, or break-ins. Glad that somebody, or some magic spell, was looking out for it, I headed on into the hotel and up to the desk.
The clerk was a guy with an Abe Lincoln beard and pointed steel caps on his oversized knuckles. He tried to keep it from showing in his face, but I could tell he knew someone had tried to take me out of the tournament and was sorry I’d made it back.
“Yeah,” I said, “I love you guys, too.”
“Lord Timon has been asking for you all afternoon,” he replied.
“Then he can go on asking a little longer. Where is she?”
“Uh… who do you mean, sir?”
I stared at him the way you stare down an opponent at the poker table. “Is that really the way you want to play it?”
He lowered his eyes. “I think she’s in the service area.”
He was right. A’marie was in the kitchen, where the cooks were bustling around preparing tonight’s buffet. She was spooning globs of whipped cream on top of some kind of parfait. Her face turned funny when she saw me coming. It was like she was scared and relieved at the same time.
“Time for your break,” I said. I took her by the forearm and led her to the start of the dark, dusty section where she’d hidden the finheads. “Now hand it over.”
Unlike her buddy out at the desk, she didn’t try to play dumb. She reached inside her tuxedo jacket and brought out the handkerchief with the drop of my blood.
I stuffed it into my hip pocket. “Now the pipes.”
She blinked. “They’re all I have from my family.”
“At this point, do you think I give a rat’s ass?”
She brought them out.
I reached to take them, and then, like somebody flipped a switch, I was just sick of the whole situation. Even with a damn good reason, it was just no fun being mad at her.
“Never mind,” I said. “Keep them. Just don’t use them on me anymore.”
She tucked them away. “Thank you.”
If I was going to go soft, I might as well mush out completely. “Have you heard from Georgie? How is he?”
“He’s all right. The Ones Who Linger are almost impossible to kill. I guess that if Death decides he doesn’t want you, it’s hard to change his mind.”
“Good. I’m glad he’s okay.”
“I’m glad
I snorted. “Said the woman who helped bury me alive.”
“I know it must have been awful, but I swear, it was to keep you safe as much as anything. Did you rescue
