Blind God's bluff

following night.

That gave me a chance to check that Pablo had made it to the hospital and was going to be okay. It also gave me time to take A’marie to lunch at the Columbia, with its glazed tile, slender pillars, and all-around Spanish decor, and watch people wait on her for a change. She wore her curls fluffed up to hide her horns, tinted glasses to hide the silvery flash of her eyes, baggy pants, and regular-looking shoes. She still attracted her share of second looks, but only because she was cute.

As she ate her last spoonful of flan, I said, “I kind of feel like I owe you a car.”

She frowned. “I don’t.”

“Well, anyway, I’m planning on getting you whatever you’d like. But just in case it turns out that I can’t, we can at least do this.” I slid a manila envelope across the tablecloth.

She undid the clasp and looked inside at the spare keys and the title to the T-bird.

“There’s some stuff in the trunk,” I said. “Not much. Family photo albums. My dad’s toolbox. A couple medals they gave me in the Army. I don’t expect it to mean anything to anybody but me. Toss it if you want.”

“What is this shit?” she asked. “You promised you were going to win!”

“I said I thought I could, and I still do. I’m sure as hell going to try. But Timon’s going to show up with his own bag of tricks, so nothing’s for sure.”

“Even if he did beat you, it wouldn’t mean you’d die!”

I shrugged. “But it might. He’d definitely rather kill me than lose. So I was even thinking, you could get in the car right now and drive. Then, whatever happens, you’d be out of it.”

“While you and the others would still be stuck in the middle of it. Do you think I’m the kind to run out on my friends?”

“No. I was pretty sure you’d say what you just did. But-”

“Just drop it, before I get really mad at you!” She flipped the envelope and hit me in the chest. “If you’re so worried about me, just make sure you do what you’re supposed to!”

“All right! I’m on top of it!” I smiled. “And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re going to be here.”

I paid the tab and then we strolled around Ybor, browsing through little art galleries and music stores, and looking at the flash art on the walls of the tattoo parlors. I was just trying to have a nice, relaxing afternoon, and she was trying to help me. Afterwards, I dropped her off at her ratty little apartment and went home to mine.

Where, despite my attempt to unwind, I had so much trouble falling asleep that I almost popped a couple of my dad’s leftover Ambiens. But I was afraid they might slow me down in dreamland, too. So I settled for a beer, kept my eyes shut, and finally drifted off.

The next thing I knew, I was standing on the fifty-yard line of Raymond James Stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Bucs. Timon’s power had pulled me to where I was supposed to be.

The lights blazed down, and the stands were full. But none of those sixty-five thousand people was moving or making a sound, and I was pretty sure that if I got close enough, I’d see the same few faces repeated over and over. They were puppets like the ones Timon had used to create his parade.

And when they suddenly started cheering and applauding, the cannons on the steel-and-concrete pirate ship boomed and fired confetti and soft-rubber footballs, and the PA system started playing “The Hallelujah Chorus,” I knew he was making his entrance. Sure enough, he floated down out of the sky with his arms outstretched and his filthy rags fluttering.

“It’s kind of sad how you get off on it,” I said. “Considering that it’s really just you cheering for yourself.”

Timon smiled a crooked yellow smile. “I want you to remember that it really didn’t have to be this way. All you had to do was accept my friendship.”

“It isn’t friendship when you get to boss me around.”

“It can be and it will, once I wring the human out of you. And I’ve figured out how. When I have control of you, I’m going to make you do things to A’marie and Victoria, too. Eventually, you’ll start to like it.”

“That could never happen.”

“Nonsense. Of course it can. You have a shadow self, remember? I glimpsed him myself when you needed him to kill Wotan. We’ll call him out to torment and finally murder the ladies. We’ll feed and exercise him until he’s a much bigger part of you.”

It nearly got to me. Then I realized that even if he could and would do it, it was still more trash talk, meant to put me off my game.

I grinned back at him. “If you think Shadow would ever like you more than I do, then you really don’t understand him. But it doesn’t matter anyway. You can’t make me do shit unless you win. And that’s not going to happen.”

“I’m eager to see if you’re right,” the Pharaoh said.

Timon and I turned. The mummy was standing right beside us. In the real world, he had some new bandages, but the ones wrapped around his dream self were all old and brown. The breeze played with the loose ends and the smoke from his cheroot.

“You made it,” I said.

“Of course,” the Pharaoh said. “I would have gotten here sooner, but to monitor the action effectively, I had to establish my presence all along the course.” He raised his arm to look at the gold Rolex wrapped around his stick of an arm. “It’s nearly midnight. Would you care to evoke your vehicles?”

“Sure.” I drew a shiver of power up from the center of me, told myself the T-bird would be there when I turned around, and sure enough, it was, porthole hardtop, shark fins, Raven Black paint, and all.

I could have gone with something modern. Something with ESC, NOS, a turbocharger, or maybe even seatbelts. But the T-bird was fast, and I was used to it.

And besides, it wasn’t real. It was a piece of my magic, and I figured that because of that, whatever felt right, was.

Timon raised his arms over his head, and the crowd in the stands went nuts again. I cringed at the extra eye-stinging stink that drifted out of his armpits. Even the Pharaoh took a small step backward.

Streamers of silvery light whirled up from the ground. And kept rising and spinning, until they made a tower of glow way too tall to be a car. Then the turning slowed to a halt, the light clotted into something solid, and I broke out laughing.

Because Timon had created a contraption like Robosaurus, Megasaurus, or Transzilla, with big, blue, triangular window eyes, serrated steel jaws to chew up a car, and enormous pincers to grab hold of one and lift it up for the bite. It probably breathed fire like the originals, too. Still, it was crazy to think the huge, slow-moving toy could do anything to me. I’d be out of the stadium before Timon could get it turned around to threaten me.

He gave me another nasty smile and said, “Remember that you laughed.” Then he soared up into the air and climbed inside the metal monster’s head.

I got in the Thunderbird, started it up, and revved it a couple times. Beside me, Timon gunned the dinosaur nonstop, and the roar all but drowned my engine out. He fired jets of flame, too, and the reflections splashed across my hood.

Then the Pharaoh pointed at the pirate ship, and all the cannons shot at once.

I yanked the shifter down into Drive and hit the gas. The wheels spun, but I didn’t move. The ground beneath the car had been solid when I got in, but now it was mud. Because, as A’marie had warned me, anything can happen in a dream.

The mechanical dinosaur rolled through the start of a turn that would end with me in front of it. Fortunately, the turn was wide and slow. Because, while anything could happen, apparently not everything could. Some stuff had to follow the rules of the waking world, or the dream wouldn’t have any shape or meaning.

I rocked the car, a burst of flame flickered over the passenger side, and then it finally lurched up out of the soft spot in Reverse. Cutting ruts in the turf, I maneuvered around the mud, aimed at the gate, and then noticed everything else that was happening.

The cannons on the pirate ship were shooting nonstop, while the PA system blared “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)”. The T-bird and Timon’s robot were running around on the big Bucs Vision screens. Any of that could have been distracting, but the real problem was the spectators streaming onto the field and running straight at me.

They weren’t real people, and even though it made me squeamish, I was willing to run over them. But that