hairier than it had been before, and, rasping, his nails cut scratches in the metal.
Since he had his back to me, I couldn’t see most of what was happening to him. Still, I agreed with the Tuxedo Team. I didn’t want to go near him, either. So I looked around, found a cart loaded with desserts, and pegged a little dish of banana pudding at him.
It splashed between his shoulder blades. Some of it spattered his long black hair, and some of it, the jacket underneath. A vanilla wafer stuck for a second, then dropped off. He froze.
“Hey, Shaggy,” I said. “You might want to stop and think about what you’re doing.”
He shuddered, then turned around. Whatever he’d been a second before, he was human again now. But his eyes were totally red, and his lower lip was bleeding into his beard. I had a hunch his upper teeth had cut it when they were growing into fangs.
“What?” he said.
“You run off into the night chasing her, and you might not make it back by midnight.”
He laughed. “How about a prop bet? I say I can bring her back in fifteen minutes tops.”
“Don’t tempt me. Because I know you’re this mighty hunter and everything, but how do you think she got hold of the knife? How do you think she made it out the door without any of the kitchen staff noticing?”
He frowned. “You think she had help?”
“I think the Pharaoh and Leticia both understand how much it pisses you off to have a victim escape. So why not use her as bait to sucker you out of the hotel and into a trap?”
He hesitated. “You just want to save her.”
“That doesn’t make me wrong.”
“If you thought I was really running into a trap, you’d just stand back and let it happen.”
“No. Because
He shivered. “I suppose that once I’m master of these lands, I can hunt down the girl whenever I want.”
“That’s the spirit.”
He raked the kitchen workers with his glare, and some of them flinched. “And when I’m master, you’ll pay for your carelessness. I’ll carve the blood eagle into each and every one of you.” He spat some of his own blood onto the floor, then stalked back toward the dining room.
The space was quiet while everyone gave him time to get out of earshot. Then a scrawny, redheaded, freckled teenager-one of the Old People who just looked off in a way you couldn’t put finger on-murmured, “Screw you. Screw all you lords.”
“Now that,” I said, “is
“A’marie said we had to. It would freak you out if we didn’t, and then you’d do something crazy. Something that could wreck the plan.”
“I was working up to it,” I said.
“But it wasn’t just that,” said a fat woman with a long, dangling nose like a baby elephant’s trunk. “Nobody
“I know you don’t,” I said.
I shook hands all around, then made my own way back to the dining room. I didn’t want Timon to start wondering what had become of me.
Wotan wasn’t there. Maybe he’d gone to take his anger out on some more furniture. Leticia smiled at me and said, “Chivalry will be the death of you yet.”
I shrugged. “There are worse ways to go.”
After that, I did my best to convince Timon that I wasn’t really slipping back into my old insubordinate ways. It had only been a momentary relapse. I guess it worked. He bitched for a while, but then told me to forget about it, finish my supper, and get some rest.
Leticia and I were in our seats at ten to midnight. Davis wheeled the Pharaoh in a minute later. Wotan stalked in just as the grandfather clock started to strike. He still had the sword. He unbuckled the belt and hung it over the back of his chair.
I soon decided the others agreed with me that the game was likely to end tonight, and it was time to get serious. Leticia threw off sexual heat like a bonfire. It was hard to look at her or even hear that purr of a voice without remembering how it had felt to have her pressed up against me with her tongue in my ear. I did my best to remember that she was the one who’d had Vic kidnapped and roughed up, too.
To give him his due, Wotan was about as manly as manly gets, so I assumed he was feeling the pull as much as I was. But you couldn’t tell it by looking at him. His face was like stone-well, hairy stone-and his stare bored into the rest of us like a drill. The sword was just the toothpick through the olive in the intimidation martini.
Unless, of course, it was something more.
I flashed the Thunderbird, and then I felt the hungry, hating spirit in the blade. It wasn’t really doing anything at the moment, but it ached to hurt anyone and everyone who wasn’t Wotan.
I imagined a wall between it and me, and then it was just an old sword again. Which gave me hope that if Wotan tried to use its power-whatever it was-against me, I’d be able to block that, too.
What didn’t make sense was that if a beginner like me could sense the sword’s magic and shield himself against it, Leticia and the Pharaoh probably could, too. So what was the point of bringing it at all? I guessed Wotan simply figured it was worth a try. Or else he’d meant it when he said he just liked wearing it around.
Unlike the other lords, the Pharaoh wasn’t making any big, obvious effort to distract or spook anybody. But he’d gone quiet, leaving behind the gentlemanly chitchat from previous nights. That was enough to rattle you all by itself. Crazy as it sounds, when he was talking about Django Reinhardt’s guitar playing, or telling a story about the Battle of the Nile, you almost started to see him as a regular person. Now, all of a sudden, even with the head brace and wheelchair, he was creepy and mysterious again. Real old and real dead.
I kept flashing the Thunderbird from time to time, but nothing else changed. Except for Leticia’s sexual magnetism, nobody seemed to be using magic yet.
I watched her and the Pharaoh play a hand. I was pretty sure she flopped a pair of kings but didn’t improve after that. At the end, there was no ace on the board, but there was the possibility of a straight. The mummy raised, she folded, and he flipped over ace-rag. It was the first time he hadn’t made another player pay to see his cards.
Leticia smiled. “Nice hand.”
The Pharaoh didn’t answer, and that annoyed me. Leticia and I already had to put up with Wotan’s sneers and insults. We didn’t need another rude asshole at the table.
Later on, the Pharaoh pushed me off a hand, and once again showed the bluff. Leticia gave me a sympathetic smile. He’d bullied both of us now, and rubbed our noses in it.
“If you keep doing that,” I told the mummy, “you’re going to get caught.”
He didn’t answer me, either, just blew the blue smoke from his cheroot in my direction.
By bailing on the hand, I’d given him the chip lead, and afterward, he started playing even more aggressively. Any time that Leticia, Wotan, or I were in a hand, it was usually against him, not one another. And he usually won them, too. I flashed the Thunderbird, but it still didn’t show that he was using any magic. It was even more annoying to think he was beating us on the square.
He made trips on the river and took another piece of poor Leticia’s stack. His crumbling lips smirked.
Damn, but I wanted to wipe that look off his face. I kept my eyes on him, watching for a tell, and eventually I spotted one. He hadn’t had one before, but he hadn’t had the head brace, either, and maybe it was as uncomfortable as it looked. At any rate, when he bluffed, he twisted his head inside it, just the tiny fraction of an inch that was all it would allow.
I was eager to use it against him, and got a chance about fifteen minutes later. He raised, and tried to twist his head. I only had a pair of eights, but I was sure I had him beat. I started to push all in, and then some lingering trace of caution told me not to risk my whole tournament on my read. I just called. He showed me a pair of tens and took down the pot.
He’d created a bogus tell and set me up. I clenched my jaw to hold in the “Shit!” that wanted out. It would only make me look weak, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
