by Emma Savant
I clutched at Brendan’s arm.
“He’ll live,” Brendan said, jaw tight. “Probably.”
13
I grabbed Brendan’s hand and dragged him to one of the chairs at the edge of the room. I downed my drink, the fairy dust tingling through my veins with a jolt of energy I didn’t need anymore.
“Stay cool,” Brendan warned me in a low voice.
I nodded tightly. We couldn’t draw attention to ourselves. But that game back there—
“That was vile,” I whispered. “Did you hear them laughing?”
“That’s the game.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Now you know what we’re dealing with,” Brendan said. His gaze darted around at the room behind us. He leaned back in his chair and sipped his drink like he was in the middle of a relaxing night out; his eyes were the thing that gave away his nerves. “If we’re even barking up the right tree here.”
Mesmer did seem like my mystery wolf’s kind of game. I couldn’t forget the feeling of his tongue against my face.
“We need to get more information,” Brendan said. “Let’s circulate. We need to know who the owner of this club is. I doubt most people here will know whether he’s a werewolf or not, but a name will give us something to go off of.”
There was a second bar in the gaming room, so I ordered another club soda, this time with a shot of dragon tears. A tall man standing farther down the bar nodded at me, and I offered a slight smile back. Seconds later, he was at my elbow.
“You look a little young to be here,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “You look a little old to be hitting on me.”
He wasn’t that old, maybe only in his early thirties, but the response was enough to make him laugh.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“I’ve already ordered, thanks,” I said. The bartender handed me my drink, and I tossed him a couple of coins, enough for the drink and a tip. I winked at the man next to me. “Maybe you can get the next round.”
“Are you here to play or watch?” he said.
“Watch.” I swirled my soda, and a burst of steam from the dragon tears erupted as the bubbles fizzed around in the glass. “Heard this was the spot for mesmer, and I came to see if it was true.”
“Happy with what you found?”
“I don’t know if happy’s the word,” I said. “The game is vicious.”
“The game is as vicious as the stakes are high,” the man said. “No risk, no reward.”
“Do you play?”
“No,” he said, grinning wryly. “I’m not crazy. I’m here for the poker and the women.”
I rolled my eyes at him. He smirked.
“And I have to say, while the poker is average, the women are excellent.”
I laughed. “Wow. Wow.”
“Too much?”
“By a mile. But I admire your effort.”
I raised my glass, and he clinked it. I took a drink. The hot dragon tears burned all the way down.
“How long has this place been open?” I said. “I just heard about it, but it looks like I’m the last one.”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. I only heard about it a week ago myself.”
“Who runs this place?” I asked. “Guy’s got guts to run mesmer games in sight of that many people.” I nodded toward the other room; the pulsing lights illuminated a crush of dancing bodies.
“Oh, they’re not,” the man said. “Anyone who came here just to dance doesn’t know the gaming room is here.”
I watched the dancers for a moment, and realized he was right. Their gazes never landed on anyone in this room, even out of idle curiosity. Several people even stood at the top of the shallow flight of stairs with their backs to us.
“Wall glamour?” I said.
“Most likely.”
“Lucky I found my way in.”
“Lucky you had someone who trusted you with the directions,” he said.
Which begged the question, who had trusted Brendan with the directions? And why?
I smiled up at the man. “I’m going to go catch the start of the next mesmer.” I gestured with my drink toward the table, which had attracted a cluster of people so thick that I couldn’t see the table through them.
“Catch you later?” he said.
“Maybe.” I tossed him a smile and left for the table. I didn’t really want to see the snakes attack again, but it was clear that the mesmer game was the highlight of the night, and anyone who knew anything was likely to be either watching or playing.
A beautiful woman with a buzz cut and earrings that dangled almost to her shoulders stepped aside to let me in front of her.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I’m tall,” she said with a shrug. “Always end up blocking people.”
The dealer set up the table for the next round. Seven people sat around it, some looking nervous, others stone-faced.
“You seen a mesmer game before?” the woman asked. “You’re clutching that glass like you’re trying to break it.”
I laughed and tried to loosen my grip.
“Just caught the end of the last game,” I said. “It’s so much more intense than I’d imagined.”
“It’s not for the queasy, that’s for sure.”
“How long does it take people to recover from the snakes?” I asked. “The last guy I saw looked like he was about to die.”
“They always do,” she said. “The pain only lasts a while, though, and the pot’s usually big enough that it’s worth the risk.”
“Do you play?”
“I did once.” She grinned. “The rush is something else.”
“Of playing or of getting bitten?”
She laughed. “Playing. I’ve never had the bite.”
The first player rolled her die, then requested two cards from the dealer’s deck. She guessed wrongly, and the black snake held her gaze for a long time before slithering back to its moat.
I leaned back. “How does the snake decide whether to attack?”
“It’s a contest of wills,” the woman said. “The snake’s eyes are hypnotizing. You have to hold on to yourself and not give in long enough for the snake to get bored.”
“How do the snakes know what to do?”
“Oh, I have no idea. You’d have to ask the dealer. She’s the only one who can control them. I think the club owner bought the snakes from a trainer originally. Had to import them from overseas.”
“Do you know the club owner?” I asked, trying to sound impressed instead of suspicious.
She shrugged one shoulder and looked back toward the table, where the next hand was beginning. “Not personally. I chatted with the dealer about him a few nights ago. He’s a private guy. I was hoping to meet him tonight, but he’s recovering from a cold, and I don’t think he’s here.”
My heart sank. I nodded at her and turned my eyes—if not my full attention—back to the game.
I watched the next few rounds and tried to make my own speculations as to the cards in the players’ hands. I knew my tarot deck inside and out and could usually make a fair guess at the cards in someone else’s hand when I was on my own. It was a simple enough divination exercise, and one that all the young Daggers played when we’d first sharpened our skills.
These cards, though, felt entirely impervious to my intuition. The gold backing had something to do with it, and I suspected everything on the table was imbued with spells to prevent the players from engaging in any sort of psychic cheating.
After a few hands, someone touched my elbow. I glanced back to see Brendan and made room for him to slip in beside me.
“Anything?” he murmured.
I shook my head almost imperceptibly and cut my eyes at him, warning him to hush. He fell silent, and the game played out in front of us. The white snake locked eyes with the fourth player, and their heads swayed back and forth in a perfect mirror image for a moment before the snake turned around. The crowd on every side of us
exhaled as one.
“Can I refresh your drink?” he said after a while, once my glass was almost empty.
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “I need to use the bathroom.”
We carefully disengaged ourselves from the crowd around the mesmer table and went back to the bar. I really did have to use the bathroom, so I left him to order our drinks with a firm reminder that I was on club soda only tonight. When I came back, he had found a table in a corner, hidden from the view of the rest of the room by a full poker table.
I slid into the seat opposite him and immediately noticed the impatient light in his eyes.
“What did you learn?” I said as quietly as possible.
14
He looked out at the room as if we weren’t having a conversation at all. His lips barely moved when he replied.
“Owner is definitely a wolf,” he said. “I can smell them everywhere.”
“He’s sick tonight,” I said, obscuring my mouth with my glass. “Dealer might know his name.”
“I’d rather not ask her.”
“Agreed.”
Brendan pulled a pack of playing cards out of his jacket pocket. He shuffled them.
“Do you know how to play Cerberus?”
“What self-respecting Glim doesn’t?”
He dealt my hand of seven cards, and I glanced over them with one eye while keeping the other on the people in the room around us. The mesmer table was still crowded, and a group of people at the poker table next to us were chatting amiably.
“They’re wolves,” Brendan said under his breath, his lips again barely moving.
I glanced sharply over at them. I caught the hints immediately—the subtle tension in their shoulders, the way their eyes seemed to take in everything, and the slight deference they all paid to one of the group, a woman whose posture was slinky and tight all at once.
“Pack you know?” I said, playing my first card.
He shook his head. I’d been playing Cerberus since I was a child, and that made it easy to put only some of my attention on the game while reserving the rest for the conversations at the table next to us.
At first, they were just talking about the game and a girl one of the guys had been pursuing. It felt pointless to sit here and eavesdrop if these wolves—assuming Brendan’s nose and my eyes were even right—were only having an ordinary conversation. But when I suggested that we circulate and try to pick up more information, Brendan shook his head.
“A good hunter needs patience,” he said softly. “I thought a Dagger would know that.”
“Knowing something and having the gift of sitting in one place are two different things,” I muttered. I laid down my final card. “I win.”
“Too bad we didn’t place bets before this round,” Brendan said. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a few small coins. He tossed a couple of copper ones onto the table.
“Comets?” I said. “Come on, do you want to give us away as total amateurs?” I added a few nickel stars to the pile.
“Some of us are broke trying to take care of our families,” he said.
I pursed my lips, then gave him a handful of stars and one silver moon. It was a lot of cash for me but would barely let us pass as people who belonged in this environment.
“So generous of you,” he said, and I got the impression I’d wounded his pride.
I rolled my eyes.
“You can give it back later,” I said. “Assuming I don’t clean you out.”
He added a couple of stars to the pile.
Halfway through our next round, right after the mesmer table exploded in cheers and screams, Brendan’s eyes twitched and his shoulders tensed. I strained to hear the wolves’ conversation over the cacophony.
“… bamboo forest right in town,” one of the men was saying. “There’s prime meat.”
“Faeries or elves?” a woman asked. “Or naiads? Love me some fresh naiad.”
I cringed inwardly but took care to not let it show on my face. I tossed down another card, and so did Brendan.
“Humdrums,” the first man said. “Family-owned business.”
“Boring.”
“They have kids.”
A ripple of interest passed through the group, and my stomach lurched. I looked sharply up at Brendan, but he was careful to keep his focus on the cards in his hand. He laid one down, very precisely.
“Your turn,” he said, voice steady.
I drew my next card and made a show of rearranging them.
“When are you going?” one of the younger men asked.
From what I could tell out of the corner of my eye, he seemed to be one of the lower-ranking members of the group. He was eager, overly so, and the others barely acknowledged him.
“Yeah, when are you going?” someone else echoed. The first man ignored them and studied the cards in his hand.
He pushed some chips to the center of the table.
“Friday,” he said without looking up. “Few of us are going to check it out.”
“Who are you taking?”
“Dunno,” the man said. “Guess it depends on who’s nicest to me.”
The group laughed, and they moved on to other topics. Brendan and I continued our game in silence. After a while, a few other people joined the group at the poker table, and one of them approached us.
“Mind if we borrow this chair?” the man asked, his hand already on the back of the empty seat at our table.
I tensed but smiled up at him.
“Go for it,” I said.
He thanked me, and then his gaze caught on Brendan, who was carefully examining his cards.
“Hey, I know you,” the man said.
Brendan looked up, then quickly back down. “Don’t think so.”
“I do,” he said. “Smell you, too. You’re Wildwood pack.”
Brendan’s jaw tensed, but he offered the man with a friendly smile. “Yeah, sure am. You know us?”
The man held out a hand. “Burnside pack,” he said. “Good to meet another wolf.”
Brendan shook his hand, and I couldn’t help but admire how calm he seemed.
“I’m not familiar with you guys,” Brendan said.
“Pack’s new,” the man said. “But everyone will know us before too long.”
Someone behind him hollered at him to stop dawdling and bring the chair over, and the man immediately called back, “Don’t rush me. There’s another wolf over here.”
Brendan’s jaw clenched, but it was too late to get away. The others’ eyes were on us in an instant, and a woman on the other side of the table leaned forward.
She narrowed her eyes, and the tip of her nose twitched. “You’re the Wildwood alpha.”
The man who’d been talking to us turned back around and looked at Brendan in surprise—and, I thought, with a little deference.
“You’re the alpha?” he said. “Should have said, man.”
Brendan shrugged. “Naw, it’s no big deal.”
“You should join us,” the woman said. “You and your girl.”
I couldn’t decide whether to bristle or be flattered at being considered Brendan’s “girl.” Brendan shook his head, smiling.
“We don’t want to intrude,” he said.
“No intrusion,” the woman at the end of the table said. She had to be their alpha; they all fell to silent attention the instant she opened her mouth. She waved at us. “Come on, it’s nice to make new friends.”
There was tension in the way she spoke. Brendan’s foot nudged mine under the table. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but when it came to my role in this encounter, I didn’t need telling: I had to smile, be friendly, and shut up whenever possible.
The wolves made space for us, and Brendan packed up his cards, moving slowly and deliberately enough as to make it clear that he was coming over because he wanted to, not because he’d been commanded. As a non-wolf and non-alpha, I had less clout and less to prove, so I quickly dragged my chair over and joined the
group.
“You’re not a werewolf,” one of the women said cheerfully. “What are you, sweetie?”
“Witch,” I said.
“Me, too,” a different woman called from across the table. “Before I was turned.”
“I’ve always wondered about that,” I said with a bright smile, silently praying this was acceptable small talk. “Do you stay what you were before after you get turned? Or does the wolf take over everything?”
She didn’t seem offended by the question, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m still a witch. With extra instincts and appetites. But the wolf is strong,” she added. “It’s hard not to identify with it first.”
“Your man going to turn you?” the woman next to me asked. She spoke like this was a rite of passage in every werewolf relationship, like being transformed into a monster under the full moon was the same thing as getting engaged.
“He’s not my man,” I said. “We’re just friends.”
A chorus of giggles met this pronouncement. The wolves who were actually playing resumed their game as Brendan joined us, and the rest of us continued to watch and chat. Everyone seemed amiable enough, despite the occasional ribbing from the Burnside wolves about how much better they were than the Wildwoods. The conversation stuck mostly to safe topics like sports teams and people’s hobbies, but I could feel the eyes of their alpha on me.
It felt like hours before Brendan finally stretched and stood, announcing that we had to head out. The wolves protested as sincerely as a group of strangers could do, and the alpha placed a hand on his arm. She was focused on him, so I dared to get a good long look at her. She was tall, with layered dark hair and skin almost as pale as a vampire’s. She had a strong chin and sharp cheekbones, and her eyes seemed to catch everything.
“Do you have to leave so soon?” she said.