But Wotan cussed for me, more or less, snarling a word in what I thought might be German. And the weirdness of that cut through the fog of anger in my mind.
Because Wotan hated my guts. I couldn’t imagine him being disgusted that I’d lost a hand under any circumstances whatsoever. Not unless some outside force had adjusted his attitude.
I gave Leticia a hard look. It showed her that I’d figured out what she’d done. Looking back at me, she kissed the air.
She couldn’t make both Wotan and me just flat-out fall in love with her. She’d already tried, and it hadn’t worked. So she’d played with our heads in a sneakier way. She made us so eager to knock out the Pharaoh-the opponent she was most afraid of-that we’d attack him recklessly. She figured that either one of us would get lucky and bust him, or he’d eliminate us. Which would be okay, too. It would still put her one step closer to a win.
I considered letting the others in on her secret, then decided not to. If the Pharaoh knocked out Wotan, or vice versa, it would be good for me, too. I started playing more conservatively and waited for the two of them to really throw down.
I didn’t have to wait long. The Pharaoh dealt. Wotan raised, the mummy reraised, and Leticia and I got out of the way.
The flop was the king and ten of clubs and the jack of diamonds. A pocket ace-queen would make Broadway, the nuts. But it was one of those boards where there were all kinds of ways to make a hand and win big. Or make the second-best hand and lose big.
Wotan made a minimum bet, the kind that wants a call or is trying to look like it. I expected the Pharaoh to come over the top, but he just called. I wondered if they were both on draws, or if somebody was trapping.
The nine of spades came on Fourth Street. If someone had a queen but not an ace, he’d just made the second nuts with a king-high straight. Although a club on Fifth Street could still give somebody a flush.
Wotan stared into the Pharaoh’s dry, sunken eyes for a few seconds, then pushed all in.
“I have a decent hand,” the Pharaoh said, finally breaking his silence, “but it would be foolish to risk so much if the rune sword was poisoning one’s luck. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Wotan laughed a short, nasty laugh. “What’s the matter? Can’t sacred Egyptian magic handle anything the rest of us can dish out? I thought that was why you act like you’re better than the rest of us.”
“Do I?” the mummy asked. “Well, in that case, you deserve a chance to give me my comeuppance.” He counted out enough chips to cover Wotan’s bet, which, even though he’d been running hot, didn’t leave a whole lot. Then he stubbed out the butt of his cheroot and reached for the gold case.
“Deal!” Wotan snapped.
“In just a moment,” the Pharaoh said.
Wotan exploded up out of his chair every bit as fast as he’d gone after Gimble. He snatched the deck up off the table, threw the burn card spinning across the felt, and slapped the next one face up on the table.
It was the trey of spades. A blank. Wotan gawked at it like he was going to puke all over it.
The Pharaoh turned over queen-jack off-suit. “I take it you were counting on a club.”
Wotan shuddered. “You cheated.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “You’re the one who dealt the river.” Because the Pharaoh had wanted it that way.
The mummy finished lighting the new cheroot and took a first drag. “Thank you for speaking up for me, Billy. Although actually, I did cheat. But that doesn’t lay me open to any sanctions, as I only did it to counter our friend Wotan’s cheating. May I assume that you did in fact notice something, shall we say, ominous about the sword?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We were all supposed to. Because its actual purpose here tonight was to mask the emanations of the lesser talisman Wotan has inside his jacket. Would you fish it out, my lord? I’m curious to take a look at it.”
“Go to hell!” Wotan said.
“Please yourself.” The Pharaoh looked back at Leticia and me. “At the start of the hand, Wotan tried to use the amulet or whatever it is to influence the shuffle. But precisely because the sword is more powerful, it was able to exert a countervailing influence.”
I grinned. “You controlled the sword?”
“Since the session began.”
“That’s impossible!” Wotan snarled.
The Pharaoh shrugged. “You might want to take a look at it and then see what you think.”
Wotan rushed back to his chair, jerked the sword out of its scabbard, and let out a wordless bellow.
The blade had hieroglyphics engraved on it, like I’d seen in the temple. I had a hunch there’d been a different kind of writing there before, but the symbols had changed.
Wotan trembled. “This was a treasure.”
“Well, it’s nothing but bad luck now,” the Pharaoh answered, smoke coiling from his mouth. “For you, anyway. I recommend you dispose of it as soon as possible, using an appropriate ritual.”
“I’ll kill you for this.”
“Anything’s possible, I suppose. But it won’t be tonight. You’re out, and the rest of us have a game to finish. If you have even the vaguest notion of proper decorum, you’ll shake our hands and join Queen and Timon at the rail.”
‘Yeah,” I said. “Take a hike.”
“Please,” Leticia said. “Unless you feel up to contending with all of us at once.”
Wotan shivered, raked us all with a final glare, spat on the floor, and stalked away to join the spectators.
Given the way I felt about him, it was a kind of a letdown that in the end, I hadn’t been the one to knock him out. But it was also a relief to see him go.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After Wotan left, I looked at the Pharaoh and asked, “How did you do that without him even knowing?”
The mummy smiled. “I told you, my friend, all my secrets are yours for the asking. But only if you meet my price.”
“Sorry.”
“I assumed as much, but it’s still a pity.”
Leticia smiled. “Not for me. The last thing I need is two big, strong men ganging up on helpless little me.”
The Pharaoh chuckled. “Even when I was alive, and people were smaller, I wasn’t considered especially large. And I daresay you were never considered ‘helpless.’”
She smiled that sultry movie-star smile. “Well, perhaps not
As the game got rolling again, the friendly table talk died away. The Pharaoh went back to being a silent, rotten, withered thing. Leticia didn’t frown, squint, or hunch forward-except for that one moment in Rhonda’s store, when I’d forced her to set her love puppets free, I’d never seen her do anything that made her look less gorgeous in any way-but there was still something about her that let you know she was concentrating hard. I probably looked pretty serious myself.
After knocking Wotan out, the Pharaoh had more than half the chips on the table, and he tried to use them to push Leticia and me around. She played back at him aggressively. I didn’t, because I wasn’t catching any cards.
I flashed the Thunderbird to see if there was a magical reason for that. If anybody was cheating, I couldn’t spot it. I wondered if the others meant to finish out the game just playing normal poker. If so, great, just as long as I started getting some decent hands.
Finally I dealt myself the eight and nine of diamonds. I bet, and Leticia called. The Pharaoh sat and stared at us for a while. He was thinking of coming in, too. Since both Leticia and I were already in, there was a good chance he had the right odds. But in the end, he mucked.
