Blind God's bluff

CHAPTER TWELVE

I had a hard time making out the shape behind the car. It was like it was made of glass, and on top of that, my eyes just wanted to look someplace else. I had a hunch that an ordinary human, with no mojo inside him, wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

“Do you see that?” I wheezed, stretching out my arm.

A’marie looked where I was pointing. “Yes,” she said, sounding surprised. “I think it’s Sylvester.”

Now that she’d suggested it, I thought she might be right. The figure was big enough, and had a round-shouldered, slouching shape to it, like an orangutan.

“What’s he doing here?” I asked, just as the giant raised his arm and waved.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Did you tell anybody where we were going?”

“No.”

“Then I really don’t like this.”

Sylvester beckoned for us to come on.

A’marie frowned. “I know what you mean. But I’ve always gotten along with Sylvester. I don’t know of anybody who doesn’t. He’s… gentle.”

He hadn’t looked all that gentle fighting for beads in dreamland, but I guessed that hadn’t been his fault. Besides, all our stuff was in the Mazda.

“Okay,” I said. “But have the pipes ready. They’re our only weapon. And be ready to run back to the water.”

Panting like we had asthma, we waded up onto the sand. Water trickled down from A’marie’s soaked clothing.

As we got closer to Sylvester, I could see him more clearly. I had a hunch the charm he was using wasn’t actually supposed to hide him from other Old People. It wasn’t strong enough for that. It was only meant to keep humans from spotting him. He needed something like that to move around in broad daylight.

He was dressed in a denim shirt, jeans, and a white kerchief with a gold pattern in it knotted around his neck. He needed a cowboy hat to go with the rest of the outfit, but that, he didn’t have. His shaggy brown hair covered his face like a hood, although I could make out the gleam of eyes behind it, and the Bluetooth jammed in his ear.

He let us get within a few yards. Then he brought up the hand that had still been dangling behind the Miata. The one with the Remington Model 870 in it. The shotgun looked like a toy in his grip, and I noticed someone had cut away the trigger guard. Probably because his thick, crooked finger wouldn’t have fit through.

“Shit!” I said. “I knew it.”

“Move away from him, A’marie,” Sylvester said. His voice was deep-not kraken deep, but still-and even in a tense situation, the words came out slow and almost sleepy. “I got no reason to hurt you.”

“You don’t have a reason to hurt me, either,” I said. “I’m on your side. I’m going to help you.”

“It’s true,” said A’marie. She hadn’t shifted away from me. I gave her a little nudge, but she still stayed put. Maybe because she was afraid Sylvester would fire as soon as she moved.

“No, it isn’t,” Sylvester said. “He came into my dreams along with Timon. From now on, there’ll be two of them torturing us in our sleep.”

“I can see how it looked that way,” I panted, “but you’ve got it wrong.”

“I’m not letting it get any worse,” Sylvester said. “Not when I can shoot and get rid of you and him both. Move away, A’marie. One day you’ll thank me.”

“You don’t want to do this,” said A’marie.

“I don’t want to, but I’m gonna.” Sylvester’s voice was a note or two higher. He was getting upset, which I was pretty sure made it unanimous. “And if you want to stand with an outsider, then you brought it on yourself. One.”

“All right!” A’marie scrambled away from me. “Do what you want to him! Just don’t hurt me!”

Her sudden one-eighty must have startled Sylvester as much as it did me. Because he didn’t shoot, not that instant. His head twisted back and forth, trying to keep track of both of us.

A’marie ripped open her shirt, popping off the little pearl buttons. She pulled out the pipes and raised them to her lips. Water dribbled out the ends as she started to blow.

I sensed right away that it wasn’t going to work, because the notes didn’t sound like before. They were shaky and thin. She didn’t have the wind she needed.

And sure enough, the magic didn’t grab hold of Sylvester. After another instant of confusion, his eyes locked on me.

I dropped, the Remington boomed, and the blast flew high over my head. Sylvester wasn’t much of a shot. Unfortunately, with everything else he had going for him, he might not have to be.

The 870 went shuck-shuck as Sylvester worked the pump. I wondered if I could make it back to the water with him blasting away at my back. I glanced back the way A’marie and I had come, then swore.

Because Sylvester had a partner blocking the way. For an instant, he was transparent and hard to make out, too. Then he snapped into focus, and I saw the big black snake from the dream parade, and the hole in the sand where he’d buried himself and waited for A’marie and me to pass on by. He had a headset and a white and gold scarf, too, but the really impressive accessory was the contraption strapped on lower down. It was made of jointed wood like a marionette, and it gave him a pair of artificial arms. Each three-fingered hand had a pistol in it.

By the time I looked back around, Sylvester was aiming at me again. I dropped the crap in my hands and scrambled in what I expected to be a futile try at dodging. Then A’marie threw her goggles and clipped Sylvester on the side of the head. It didn’t hurt him, but his hand jerked, and the next blast flew to my left.

He bared his teeth in a snarl and worked the pump. I thought the shuck-shuck noise sounded different, which didn’t stop me from scurrying as the Remington swung back down. But when Sylvester pulled the trigger, nothing happened. Something was wrong-my guess was, the spent shell hadn’t been ejected-and the gun was jammed.

I’d caught a break, and it would have been the perfect moment to rush Sylvester and lay him out cold with one awesome punch. But only if I’d been in range, he hadn’t outweighed me by at least three hundred pounds, and the snake hadn’t been coming on fast with his own guns. I straightened all the way up, rushed to A’marie, and we ran on together, parallel to the edge of the bay.

Sadly, that plan had its own problems, since each of us was barely able to breathe. We’d only gone a few yards when A’marie staggered to a stop and gasped, “Go. They don’t want me.”

“Hostage,” I said. I meant they’d make her one and use her against me. I just didn’t have enough breath left to get it all out. She scowled and jerked her head in a nod to show she understood.

Just then, the shotgun spun between us. I guessed Sylvester had gotten frustrated trying to unjam it-either he didn’t know how, or his Hickory Farms beef-stick fingers couldn’t manage it-and thrown it like a rock.

Maybe I could unjam it, and turn this mess into a whole different fight. I staggered after it, and A’marie followed.

Behind us, metal groaned and rattled. I glanced back just in time to see Sylvester heave the Miata over his head and toss it.

I lurched around, lunged at A’marie, grabbed her, and spun both of us to the side. We lost our balance and fell. The convertible crashed down just a couple yards away. The noise nearly stunned me all by itself, and greenish bits of broken window peppered us.

“My car!” whimpered A’marie.

“Sorry,” I said. I tried to stand up and didn’t make it. Dark spots floated at the edges of my vision.

A’marie and I couldn’t go on like this. We wouldn’t make it. The magic from the green pills wasn’t a sickness or a poison. But it was messing with our bodies, and I hoped that meant Red’s power could get rid of it.

I turned myself into him and gave A’marie and then me a jolt of his mojo. It worked. I inhaled, and the air filled my lungs like it was supposed to. But afterward, I didn’t have to send Red away. He disappeared on his own. Because the mojo tap was empty.

A pistol banged. The snake had decided he was near enough to start shooting. I realized I no longer knew exactly where the shotgun had fallen. I looked around and couldn’t spot it.

I jerked A’marie to her feet, and we ran away from the water. Meanwhile, Sylvester-who maybe wasn’t much of a runner-shambled toward a green pick-up. The cab had such a high roof that it had to be a custom job.

A’marie and I found ourselves in a tangle of narrow streets lined with businesses like machine shops, used car lots, and used furniture stores, plus a bunch of little houses. Even though I’d spent my life in Tampa, I couldn’t remember ever being in this neighborhood, and wasn’t sure which way to run.

Not that I exactly wanted to run. I’d hiked from one end of Afghanistan to the other, but that had been in boots. The pavement was chewing up my bare feet. I couldn’t imagine that running was lot of fun for A’marie, either, with her soaked clothes slapping and weighing her down.

Tires squealing, the pick-up raced around a corner. For a second, I thought A’marie and I might catch another break. Sylvester didn’t drive any better than he shot, and the custom truck was top heavy. It looked like he might spin out or tip over, but then he straightened it out and kept coming. The snake leaned out the passenger window and fired a shot.

It didn’t come anywhere near A’marie and me-he would have needed a lot of luck to hit one of us with the pick-up swerving around like it was-but it got us moving again. We ran between a little seafood joint-a handwritten sign offered crab roll baskets and grouper sandwiches-and a place where you could rent to own a washing machine, refrigerator, or TV.

I thought about ducking into one of those businesses, but didn’t. It might only get us cornered. And I guess that if I’d learned anything, it was not to involve ordinary human beings in Old People business.

Tires screeched off to the left. Sylvester was heading for the next street over to cut us off. A pistol banged. I turned around and saw the snake slithering toward us. He’d gotten out of the truck to follow us. I guessed he was a big believer in boxing people in.

A’marie and I ran left, where the concrete-block rent-to-own place cut off the snake’s line of fire. “We just have to keep moving till we shake them off our tail,” I panted.

“We can try,” said A’marie, puffing the words out one at a time between her short but quick steps. “But Epunamlin-the snake-is a good hunter.”

The bastard was fast, too. No matter how many times A’marie and I turned corners, he kept catching up enough to take another shot. Even using pistols, there was a good chance he was going to hit us eventually.

Looking down the space between two buildings, I saw a bigger used car lot than the ones I’d noticed before. Lines of sedans, SUV’s, and trucks sat under strings of flapping plastic pennons. There was a trailer at the back, and a yellow Mustang was “Today’s Special.”

The place gave me an idea. Well, the start of one, anyway. I led A’marie in that direction, and hoped Sylvester wasn’t waiting to run us over as soon as we charged out onto the street.

He wasn’t, although the screech of rubber sounded too damn close as he took a corner somewhere off to the right. A’marie and I staggered onto the lot and hunkered down behind a Chevy Tahoe.

“Now what?” she asked.

I struggled to come up with Phase Two. “Once you catch your breath, do you think your music could put a hex on both of them?”

“And make it stick for more than a few seconds? I don’t know. They’re both powerful in their own ways.”

I peeked around the edge of the SUV just as Epunamlin reached the other side of the street. His tongue flicked in and out of his mouth a couple times, and then he stopped where he was. Somehow he could tell A’marie and I had stopped running, and he was waiting for Sylvester to show up before he moved in for the kill.

“Okay,” I said, “then we won’t count on it to last for more than a moment or two. But tell me you have something sharp.”

“My horns?”

“No offense, but I’m not sure they’ll do the job.” Which meant I was going to have to drag somebody from the normal world into my problems after all. “Stay here.”

I ran for the trailer. Using the cars for cover, I kept low. But I had to come out into the open to get to the door. Epunamlin spotted me as I scurried up the three wrought-iron steps. A shot punched through the window on my left, making a hole and a spider web of cracks.

I hustled through the door and yanked it shut behind me. The salesman behind the desk had his eyes and his mouth open wide. You couldn’t blame him for being startled. First a bullet whizzed out of nowhere into his office, and then a crazy guy wearing nothing but swim trunks followed it in a split second later.

The salesman had a letter opener on his desk. I grabbed it. I looked around for another object like it and didn’t see one.

“They don’t want you,” I said. “Stay inside, stay low, and you’ll be all right.”

I threw open the door and dived back out. Epunamlin tried to draw a bead on me, and then thought better of it. Probably because right about then, Sylvester’s truck pulled up, and the weeping willow man climbed out.

I crouched back down beside A’marie. “What are we doing?” she asked. Her voice was tense but not panicky, and she’d caught her breath.

It only took a few words to explain, although with Sylvester and Epunamlin moving in on us, it felt like it was taking forever. When I finished, A’marie said, “Be careful.” She put the pipes to her lips and started playing.

I sneaked away. Sylvester and Epunamlin stopped where they were. The big guy stamped one foot like a trick horse counting, and the snake swayed from side to side and waved his pistols around. I still hadn’t had a good enough look at them to know what kind they were. Something that didn’t hold many more rounds, I hoped.

Unfortunately, the magic only kept Epunamlin and Sylvester trying to dance for a couple seconds. Then, just like A’marie had expected, they shook it off.

“Darn it!” Sylvester shouted. “Stop it, A’marie! We still don’t want to hurt you!”

A’marie did stop playing. “You don’t want to hurt anybody!” she yelled back. “You’re not a killer! Just calm down and let us talk to you!”

Sylvester looked at Epunamlin. “You know why we’re doing it,” said the snake. His baritone voice almost sounded prissy, like he’d learned to enunciate perfectly because he was afraid that if he didn’t, humans-and near-humans-wouldn’t be able to understand him at all. The sunlight gleaming on his black scales made him look as wet as A’marie. “And I am a killer. Just help me catch him, and I’ll take it from there.”

Sylvester’s mouth tightened under the mask of hair. “Okay,” he said.

“Good man,” Epunamlin said. “You swing left and I’ll go right.”

I’d figured they’d spread out to search. I actually wanted them to. But it still made for a nerve-wracking game of hide and seek. They hunted me along the rows of cars with prices and messages like “Cold Air” and “Super Clean” painted on their windshields, while I tried to maneuver around behind whichever one I could. My mouth was dry with knowing that Sylvester was tall enough to look over the cars. And though Epunamlin generally crawled with his head and about a yard of scaly body raised-maybe to keep his wooden arms from banging and scraping along the ground-all he had to do was dip down to peek underneath.

But like I said before, I’m sneaky when I want to be. Eventually I made it to Sylvester’s six, then straightened up and rushed him, charging down the space between an F-150 and a Civic.

Sylvester heard me coming and pivoted too soon. But A’marie blew a trill on the pipes, and that froze him for the instant I needed. I jumped like I was dunking, ripped the white and gold kerchief from around his neck, and backpedaled, crouching back down as I put space between us.

The eyes behind the coarse, dangling hair opened wide, and then he hunkered down, too. I grinned because it meant I was right.

I’d guessed that he and Epunamlin weren’t wearing identical neckerchiefs because they had the same fashion sense or belonged to the same Scout troop. The scarves were the charms that made them invisible to normal people. And now that Sylvester had lost his, anybody who drove or walked by could see him.

He started after me. I draped the scarf over the point of the letter opener. If I jerked it down hard, the point would pop through.

“I’ll do it!” I said. “The humans will put you in the zoo!”

“Just stay down!” Epunamlin said. “I’ll get him!” He was somewhere behind me, and close enough that I could hear him even without the use of Sylvester’s Bluetooth. As I glanced around, he slithered into view an aisle away, but with a clear line of fire from him to me. He pointed the pistols.

With the Honda on one side of me and the F-150 on the other, I didn’t have a lot of options when it came to dodging for cover. I threw the letter opener and neckerchief into the cargo bed of the truck, then grabbed the sidewall and heaved myself in after them.

I didn’t exactly stick the landing. I thumped down hard. But I didn’t break anything, so I snatched up my stuff again and jumped off the other side.

Then it was back to playing hide and seek, or maybe it was more like tag. Whatever it was, Epunamlin made me feel like I’d lost my touch. He was more careful than Sylvester, and kept checking his six. Twice, I started creeping up behind him, only to have him look around. Then the guns spun toward me, and I dived for cover with not an instant to spare.

I struggled to think of a way to get him. Then I spotted the Coke can some litterbug had tossed on the asphalt.

I picked it up, crouched behind a truck tire, and waited. Sylvester yelled, “What’s going on?” Apparently he was upset enough that he’d forgotten he was wearing the Bluetooth, and I doubted that Epunamlin appreciated having that shout suddenly boom into his head. But he had better sense than to respond to Sylvester to say so, or to say anything and give away his position.

Luckily, when he got really close, the whispering sound of his coils slithering on the pavement was just loud enough for me to hear. I threw the can, and it clanked down a couple aisles away.

Sometimes the oldest, simplest tricks still work the best. When Epunamlin crawled into view, his attention was focused in the direction of the noise. I let him keep moving for another second. That hid the front half of him behind a Kia Sephia, which I didn’t like, but it also put me more or less behind him instead of off to the side.

I rushed him. The twisting S curves of his tail nearly filled the narrow lane between two rows of cars, and I almost tripped over it. But I saw I was about to set my foot wrong and managed to hop over that particular section of rippling, scaly reptile.

Maybe I made noise doing it, because Epunamlin started to twist in my direction. But by then I was within reach of his scarf. I jerked it away, ran on past him, then lurched around. I showed him that I had both neckerchiefs ready to stick on the end of the letter opener, and he aimed the pistols at me anyway. They were vintage Lugers, which only have an eight-round mag. I would have sworn he’d fired more than sixteen shots at A’marie and me, but maybe it had only seemed like it. One bullet seems like a lot when it’s flying at you.

“Don’t do it!” I gasped. “It won’t stop me from tearing the scarves. Maybe you could sneak away. But the big guy? Not a chance.”

Epunamlin stared at me. When I described him before, his headset, scarf, and puppet arms may have made him sound goofy-looking. Up close, he was anything but. I could feel the cold determination in the lidless, slit-pupiled eyes, and, long as it was, his body looked thick and solid with muscle. It was easy to imagine him blowing me away, then swallowing the body whole and crawling around with a Billy-shaped lump in the middle of him.

“You aren’t as clever away from the poker table,” he said at last. “After I shoot you, Sylvester and I will simply drive away.”

“A’marie!” I yelled. “Hit it!”

To my relief, the horn of Sylvester’s pickup blared. She’d managed to sneak around to it while its owner and the snake were focused on me.

“It will only take her a second to trash the ignition,” I said. “Then you and Sly over there will go down in Old People history as the dumb-asses who tipped off the human race that your kind are real. Is that what you want?”

He kept staring. The snake face was impossible to read.

“You better hurry and make up your mind,” I said. “The cops are going to show up soon.”

“How do you wish to proceed?” he asked.

“Give me the Lugers.”

“So you can shoot me?”

I gestured with the letter opener. “This isn’t much of a knife, but if I’d wanted to, I still could have jammed it into Sly’s neck. And yours. But never mind. I probably wouldn’t give me the guns, either. Just drop the mags, and get the rounds out of the chambers.”

He did, and I sighed and started to relax. That was when something jerked tight around my right ankle and jerked my leg out from under me.

As I fell, I saw how he’d looped the end of his tail around under the parked cars to sneak it up behind me. Then I banged my head on a fender, and it clacked my teeth together.

Epunamlin dropped the Lugers, lunged at me, and reached with his wooden hands. I had a hunch it was to lift me up to make it easier to wrap his tail around me. I screamed, stiffened my hand, and stabbed my fingertips into his eye.

He let out a rasping screech and jerked backward. The grip on my ankle tightened to the point of agony for an instant, but then loosened. I kicked free and floundered backward.

Epunamlin didn’t follow. He stayed where he was and clapped one hand over his eye.

“Are we done now?” I panted.

“Yes. I think you scratched the brille.”

“The what?”

“The membrane that covers my eye. It hurts. I need to see my vet.”

I smiled. “Well, if you’ll just stop being an asshole, we can take care of that.”

We collected Sylvester, told him the fight was over, then hurried to the truck. A’marie climbed out of the cab, and Epunamlin looked her over with his good eye. “What was she going to use to incapacitate the truck?” he asked.

“She was supposed to have a screwdriver or something,” I said. “But I didn’t see one during the second I was inside the trailer. You just have to give us credit for having the right idea.”

Sylvester gave A’marie a hangdog look. “I really didn’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“Sylvester,” she said, “you wrecked my car.”

He broke down crying. She sighed, hugged him, and told him it was all right. Epunamlin and I traded looks of disbelief.

Then we hurried them through their Dr. Phil moment, and we all piled into the cab. With the modifications, Sylvester’s king-sized seat took up most of the space, but there was room for the rest of us if we didn’t mind the squeeze. Figuring that if he and Epunamlin still meant to kill me, there wasn’t much I could do about it now, I gave back the scarves. They tied them on, and I wondered which was really less conspicuous, a truck with a weeping willow man for a driver or one that looked like it was driving itself.

We got out of there before the cops showed up and had a chance to take a look at either. Then I explained my plan.

No one else who’d heard it had offered to put me up for a Nobel Prize, and Sly and Epunamlin were just as unimpressed. The snake started to tell me everything that was wrong with it, and I cut him off.

“Tough,” I said, “it’s what we’re doing. And I do mean we. Because I’m drafting you.”

They thought about it for a second, and then Epunamlin said, “Agreed. We believed our moment had come, and perhaps it really has. Just not quite the way we imagined.”

“Great. You can celebrate making the team by explaining how you tracked us down. I’m guessing the Pharaoh. White and gold are his team colors.”

“Yes,” Epunamlin said. “He told us he’d found out you and A’marie were sneaking out together during the day, so he had his servant plant a transponder on her car.”

“Then he gave you the receiver and the matching scarves,” I guessed, “along with a pep talk about how if you just killed me, it would get rid of Timon, too.”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Are you mad at us?” asked Sly. He sounded like a little kid despite his deep, slow voice.

I sighed. “I probably should be, but I’m not. How would I even know I was in hobbit land if somebody wasn’t trying to kill me, or mess with me somehow?”

“‘Hobbit land?’” repeated Epunamlin. “Are you an admirer of Professor Tolkien’s oeuvre?”

“Sure,” I said, stretching a point for the sake of male bonding. “You?”

“There was a time when I considered changing my name to Smaug.”

I didn’t tell him I didn’t know who that was.

Sylvester dropped A’marie and me off in the alley, and we sneaked back into the Icarus the same way we’d gotten out. She begged a passkey from another member of the Tuxedo Team so I could get back into my room.

“Well,” she said, “I need to change, too. And then spread the word.”

“I really am sorry about your car,” I said.

“It wasn’t in the best shape,” she said. “But it was the nicest thing I had. But if you can make this work, it’ll be worth it.” She took my hand, gave it a squeeze, then left me standing beside the service stairs.

I groped my way up and made it back to my room without anybody else trying to whack me. I showered the smell of the bay off me, dressed, and took a couple of my Tylenol 3’s to kill the ache in my head and feet. I could have asked Red to do it. By then, the mojo tank was filling up again. But I was liable to need it for other things.

When I was ready to go out, I had to decide who to track down first. I decided to let anger be my guide and find the Pharaoh.

I found him playing billiards.

The pool, snooker, and billiards room, with one table for each, was on the first floor, and candle-lit like the rest of the hotel. The Pharaoh looked better than the last time I’d seen him. Somehow he’d reattached his head and leg, or Davis had done it for him. Fresh bandages, looking very white on top of the dirty, ragged old ones, wrapped the joins. He also had a steel head brace, and extra plastic splints to immobilize the leg. He was sucking on a cheroot and sitting in a wheelchair.

That all makes it sound like he shouldn’t have been able to play. But magic made his cue float around and shoot on its own. As I came in, he made a semi-masse.

When he saw me, his shriveled lips quirked into a smile. “Billy,” he said in his high-class, jolly British voice. “Would you care to join me?”

I glared at him. “Listen, you son of a bitch.”

That brought Davis surging up out of his chair. But the Pharaoh lifted a hand to signal him that he didn’t need to kick my ass just yet.

“I take it that you not only survived your encounter with Epunamlin and Sylvester,” the mummy said, “you prevailed on them to disclose who set them on your trail.”

“Bingo,” I said.

“Then let me offer my sincere congratulations. I found myself quite uncharacteristically ambivalent about dispatching them in the first place. But it’s pointless to play unless one does one’s very best to win. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Here’s how it is,” I said. “You can take your best shot at me. But when you put somebody else in danger, that’s over the line. If you do it again, I’ll find those special jars of yours, break them, and piss all over what’s inside. Are we clear?”

“Entirely,” the Pharaoh said. “If I apologize, and agree to your stipulation, can we put the incident behind us?”

I hesitated. I still had mad in me that wanted to come out. But I realized that, like most of the time at the poker table, there was no advantage in letting it out. “I guess.”

“Then, assuming you care for the game…?”

I picked out a cue from the rack. Since I was more used to pool cues, the shorter, lighter stick felt a little funny in my hands. I chalked it and lined up a shot.

“Did all of Timon’s servants survive the encounter?” the Pharaoh asked.

“Everybody’s fine,” I said. I shot, then smiled when my cue ball clacked into his and the red ball, too. Maybe I wasn’t as rusty as I thought.

“That’s all for the best,” the Pharaoh said. “I don’t suppose I’d look like an especially gracious guest if I were getting my host’s subjects slaughtered willy-nilly.”

“Probably not.” I used some outside English to make another shot.

“Where exactly did they catch up with you?”

I grinned as I bent back down over the table. “What you really want to know is why I left the hotel.”

“True. Can you blame me? I know Timon must have explained that you’re safer here, yet you persist in slipping off anyway. You decamped with the little horned nymph again today even though rumor has it that she played you false yesterday. To say the least, it’s curious.”

“Oh, not really. I like fresh air, and she’s hot.” I hit his cue ball but missed the red ball by a quarter of an inch. “Your turn.”

His stick floated around the table, then swung down and lined itself up for the stroke. “You realize,” he said, “I can simply ask Epunamlin or Sylvester where you went.”

“Sure,” I said. “Good luck with that.”

He tried a kick shot. He clipped the red ball but missed my cue.

I had a tough leave, but I made my shot anyway, just barely grazing the second ball.

As I straightened up, the Pharaoh said, “We could start a real game, and play for the answer to a question. You already know what I’d ask, and I daresay you can think of something to ask me.”

“I can think of a bunch of things,” I said. “But I figure that a guy who can move a cue with his mind can move the balls, too, and that just might explain this little hot streak I’ve been on. But I like the way you let me miss one shot, and just barely make another. You didn’t oversell it.”

He laughed. “You continue to impress me.”

“And just think, I’m saving all my best stuff for the poker table.”

“I have every confidence. But seriously, have you thought about the future? More specifically, have you thought about the implications of what happened after I caught your astral body in my snare?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The cleaving into five. I suspect that it marked you, and that whenever you work magic now, particularly when you’re improvising, you tend to achieve your effects by drawing one of the five souls to the forefront.”

Just like I’d told Timon. Jesus, this guy was sharp. “Okay. So what?”

“So nothing bad, I assure you. You’ve set your feet on a noble path. But it is your path now, and Timon, powerful though he is, can’t teach you to walk it all the way to the end.”

“But you could.”

“Yes. Unlike anyone else you’re ever likely to meet.”

“So I need to throw the tournament to buddy up to you.”

The Pharaoh stubbed out the butt of his smoke in a cut-glass ashtray. “You have an unfortunate tendency to put things crudely. But yes, of course, that is what I’m proposing.”

“Sorry,” I said. “If you want to win, you’ll have to knock me out the old-fashioned way.” I leaned my cue against the wall and went back out into the hall.

Where I needed to fix my expression and body language. I’d wanted to look tough for the Pharaoh’s benefit, but now it was time for something different.

So I imagined myself back in Georgie’s coffin. Back running with Epunamlin’s Lugers cracking behind me. Back reeling through the dark, endless house with the floating skull snapping at my back.

Either I’ve got a good imagination or I’d just gone through too much shit in too short a time, because it almost worked too well. I started panting, and a shudder ran through me. I even felt like I might start crying.

But I made myself take slow, deep breaths, and after a few seconds, I managed to dial it back. Then I only looked like a guy suffering from panic attacks, or at least I hoped I did.

I climbed the marble stairs to the mezzanine. Gaspar was outside the door to Timon’s hideout. When he saw me coming, he said, “Here he is!”

“Get him in here!” Timon snapped.

When I stepped through the door, I saw that he once again had a deck of cards scattered across the table, along with an assortment of drugstore reading glasses. The irises were mostly distinct from the whites of his eyes, and the pupils were pretty round, though still not the same size.

I could tell he was relieved that I’d turned up, which meant he still couldn’t see well enough to play poker. But he was getting there. I needed to wrap up the game while he still needed me.

But I’d suspected it might well end tonight anyway. One reason poker tournaments don’t last forever is that the blinds get bigger as you go along. That means you reach a point where you can’t afford to sit and wait for premium cards. My opponents and I were going to have to play more starting hands and get aggressive.

Timon sniffed, pulling in my scent, and the wet sound yanked me back from thinking about the game to the here and now. I hoped that wallowing in some of my nastier memories from the past couple days had left me smelling scared.

“I’m here,” I said sullenly, trying not to seem too much like a beaten, broken man. He was more likely to buy my act if I appeared to be trying to walk and talk like my same old insolent self, but the damage showed through underneath.

“Please sit,” he said, waving to the chair across the table. I hesitated like a dog that’s scared its master will hit it, then did as ordered. I tried not to wince at a whiff of sour BO.

“I didn’t necessarily expect you to be out and about early today,” he continued. “But when the afternoon was well underway, I sent Gaspar to check on you. And then, when he reported you missing, I had to hope our little lesson in respect hadn’t rattled you so much that you’d run away.”

I sighed. “That wouldn’t have been very smart, would it?”

Timon smiled. “No, it wouldn’t.”

“I was just walking. I needed to clear my head, and I… I didn’t trust myself to drive.”

“You really shouldn’t have left, but never mind. I understand you were upset.”

“I need to know that stuff isn’t going to happen anymore. Not if I do what you say.”

“You have my word. I didn’t enjoy doing it this time.” Maybe, but his little smirk said otherwise. “Embrace the role that fate has assigned to you, and I won’t ever have to do it again.”

“I’ll do whatever you need.”

“Good. And there’s no need to sound so depressed about it. You’re going to have a wonderful life.”

“Yeah, well… when I was trying to get my head together, I tried to see the up side. And I admit, Monte Carlo was pretty amazing. To go to a place like that whenever I want, to go anywhere and do anything I want… you were right. I do want to learn.”

Timon smiled a yellow-toothed smile. “Splendid! I can’t promise to teach you to do everything I can do as well as I can do it. You’d have to be born to it. But I guarantee that at a bare minimum, you’ll learn to bend dreams to your own purposes whenever I welcome you in.”

“Can I start right away?”

He hesitated. “If we’re going to work on your magic, perhaps we should stay focused on the waking world for now. That’s what might help you at the table.”

“I know, but… last night, I saw a lot of the stick. I feel like now I need a little more carrot. It might settle me down. Which will definitely help me at the table.”

“Well, all right. I suppose a few minutes won’t hurt. Have you ever been hypnotized?”

“No.” I hoped I wouldn’t end up quacking like a duck.