Fawna took a step nearer. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d say you rate a one. If the Porta-Potties are ten.”
He turned and regarded her with his sky-blue eyes, which looked unreal against his pale skin and black hair. Then what are you doing here? The question lay unspoken between them. But nobody told her where she could or couldn’t go these days.
Especially not a gambler.
His eyes twinkled. “A one compared to the Porta-Potties. Ouch.” With that he turned back and resumed play. The next ring he threw bounced up off a bottle neck. He picked up another, aimed, and threw. Then another. As though he didn’t care that she was there.
Oh, right! He knew damn well that she could see the future of this game if she chose to look. She could tell if and how it could be won. Was this reverse psychology?
Good luck.
She smirked as yet another ring glanced off the bottle. And he seemed to be giving the game his all, too; that made it even better. He would aim carefully, do a couple of warm-up flicks, and then throw.
Actually, something was unusual about the way he was playing—although she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
She narrowed her eyes. If there was one breed she knew, it was gamblers. She’d studied Bobby Barrington and his lowlife friends and girlfriends in the detailed way that the powerless will always come to know those who have power over them.
Something about Simon was off. Well, maybe it was just that he was playing a game that no sane gambler would play.
She moved closer, finishing up her candy bar. For all Simon’s mysterious aversion to her, if she so much as whispered something about the game, something that he could use, he’d be falling all over himself to hear her every golden gospel word, just like Bobby Barrington.
Even as a prisoner, she’d always had that one power over Bobby: that he’d hang on her every word. She’d developed a witchy prognostication style, like she was this badass priestess of the future, describing pictures and making him figure things out. It was one of the few measures of control she had. She liked doing it that way, too, because she really did see the future in pictures, though she’d play it up to make things harder for Bobby, sometimes mumbling so softly that he’d have to lean in as she foretold what horse would win, or the game day final scores.
Bobby had been her jailer and acolyte. He’d worshipped her abilities while he’d confined her and scared her.
Simon threw another ring. It glanced off a lip onto the ground. Very satisfying. She crumpled the candy wrapper as loudly as possible.
Sometimes she would make Bobby lose just to feel like she had power, even if it meant being locked up for a few days without food or TV in “the hole,” a windowless room in Bobby’s mansion. One time she’d made him lose quite embarrassingly, and he’d given her a black eye and a bloody lip. He would’ve killed her if his girlfriend hadn’t intervened.
It wasn’t beyond Bobby to kill his golden goose.
But even on a bad day, Bobby Barrington was better than the B-2 lab of Maxxon Scientific, where she’d been imprisoned in the pre-Bobby years.
Simon and the sideshow hawker had some sort of humorous exchange, and then the hawker handed him more rings, and Simon gave him a line of tickets in exchange.
“This’ll be the round,” Simon said.
Was he talking to her?
He turned to Fawna. “You know it will.”
She just crossed her arms. “Do I?”
He gave her a sly smile, and then resumed his silly game.
Why was she giving this guy an audience to play to? Bobby Barrington always loved an audience. He could have used her to play the stock market, but he preferred to win at other people’s expense, to crow in the faces of the losers or dealers at the Midas Tropicali Casino Emporium. People’s misery excited Bobby Barrington. After stretches of days when she’d behaved, she’d get to stay in the Midas hotel, and on her very best behavior, she was allowed to come out on the casino floors and predict roulette or cards, or even travel to the track to see the horses—under heavy guard, of course. She liked to be out, but she hated seeing Bobby win, hated his mocking golden-boy smile. Early on she’d attempted an escape during one of these outings. It was then she learned how many people guarded her: some visible, and many more undercover.
God, if Bobby knew she was alive, there would be so much trouble.
So much trouble.
Simon started on the next round, his gaze keen. It was interesting to watch him. The fine angularity of his face had something of the jungle cat in it. Sometimes he’d bunch his lips before he threw, which sharpened his cheekbones. Sometimes he’d part his lips ever so slightly, studying the expanse of green bottle necks. Sometimes he’d tilt his head, as if to get a fresh look at the game. As though that would help. His expression when he missed was sometimes scowly, sometimes perplexed, sometimes bemused. He was so stupidly into it.
Ah, that was it! That was what was so strange about the way he played—he was into it. Twelve years of watching gamblers play cards, slots, ponies, dice—the one thing they had in common was a deadness of expression. Oh, they’d animate when they won, but even that animation was joyless,like a jolt of electricity in a corpse. And the second they won, they’d be looking for the next win. You could see it in their eyes.
Simon wasn’t like that. There was life in his play.
“You waiting?”
She gave him a tart look. “I don’t gamble.”
He smiled that sly smile. “Just watch. I’m going to get that moose.” He gestured toward the tent’s interior. She moved up to where she could see the rows of prizes along the far back wall. There were cheap little things you could win for coming close to looping a bottle, and small stuffed animals if you got one ring around a bottle neck. And then, up top, were three grand prizes to choose from if you looped two bottlenecks in twelve tosses: a fuzzy moose, a fuzzy bee, or a fuzzy bear. The games hawker sat in the far corner of the tent, flipping through a magazine under the prize display. Above him, a crudely lettered sign: NO TELIKINETIKS ALLOWED. SUSPICION OF TELIKINETEKS = IMMEDIATE DISQUALIFACATION. NO REFUNDS.
“How does he know if they’re telekinetics?” she asked.
“If he suspects they are, that’s that,” Simon said.
Fawna nodded.
He threw again, favoring the section of bottles nearest to him, on the right side. Missed again. Was this game even winnable?
“No chance he’s gonna think you’re a telekinetic,” she said.
He turned to her, all breezy and debonair, like he knew a wonderful secret. “We’ll see.” And he went right on playing.
Was it winnable? She felt the weight of her phone in her pocket, but how could Monica object to peeking at this? The game was a thing, not a person. Looking at the future of the game was like looking at the outcome of a math problem. Anyway, she had to know. She stared at the field of bottles, the games hawker, let her mind relax into deep sight—just a titch—and followed the tunnels, the snapshots. She saw endless throws, bounces. The glare of the sun, the shift of shadows.
Then she saw it: two rings on the same bottle. Somebody later in the day had won by looping two around the far left bottle, one down from the far corner. She saw the hawker furtively adjusting the bottle to make it not so easily loopable. Angry, angry.
She snapped back and cast her gaze over the shiny field of bottles, and in fact, that almost-back-corner one was angled differently than the rest—you wouldn’t see it unless you knew to look.
Simon had more rings. He threw a few at the middle, but mostly at the near right. The exact wrong corner.
“Sucker,” she said. “You’ll never win.”
“Won’t I?”
“Not like that.”
Slow smile. “Then there’s nothing for you to see, is there?”
She came closer. “I go where I please.”
“Suit yourself.” With great care, he aimed for his favorite area of bottles. He threw the ring, and it bounced o
ff and clattered to the ground. He did it again. Again. She wished he’d look at her face; if he did, she’d smile knowingly, to imply she had seen something significant, that she had an inside track to winning the game. If only he would look at her.
He tossed another ring. Another.
“Well, there is a way you can win,” she said, “but do you think I’ll tell you?”
“I sure as hell hope you won’t.” He aimed another ring.
Just when he was about to make his throw, she leaned in and whispered: “Liar.”
He went still, ring poised between his thumb and index finger, and then he turned to her, coolly, as if to say, Do you mind?
She stretched an upturned palm toward the bottles as if to say, Go right ahead, I’m not stopping you. He watched her some more. It was fun, because now he that she knew a secret that could help him, only she did not care to divulge it. Hah! That was enough to greatly increase her enjoyment. God, what she wouldn’t have done for the chance to taunt Bobby like this.
Simon went back to playing. Fawna crossed her arms as he squandered more tosses.
“Co-old,” she said in a singsong tone. Not that she would tell him where it was hot.
He threw again in the same area. As if she hadn’t told him it was cold.
“Yeah, right,” she said.
He drew a finger across his lips, as if to say, Zip it.
Zip it? She felt the heat rise through her face, clear up to her forehead. She smiled through gritted teeth. “It is winnable, you know.”
He turned to her now, with a strange expression lighting his features. “Oh, I know it is,” he said. “Everything’s winnable.” He said this with a kind of dark relish that made her think of secrets and hidden glitter, and it stirred something inside her, this attitude of his. It was a crazy attitude, because not everything was winnable.
In the long run, nothing was.
“I mean, this game is winnable,” she said, “if you knew what I know.”
“Trot it out to someone who cares.”
“Trot it out?”
“To someone who cares.” And then, overpronouncing, as if for an imbecile, he added, “Meaning somebody else.” With that, he turned his back to her and continued going for the very corner that she’d told him was cold.
Her eyes widened. He would ignore her? Surely Simon was aware of her accuracy. Everybody was. People begged her for news of the future. They railed against what she foretold. They used it, ran from it, built fortunes on it, and freaked out about it, but they never, ever, ever ignored it. She was the high priestess of the future, and the future was not neutral.
Let him get a taste then, she thought. Let him get a taste of what she was, and then she would smash his face in it. She leaned in. “One down from the back left hand corner—”
Simon spun around, regarding her with such disdain that she pulled back.
“Done?” he asked.
“Will wear two rings before the sun sets,” she added. “They could be your rings.”
He fingered the ring, said nothing.
“A lone tilted bottle,” she said.
He watched her coldly. Watching, waiting.
“Now I’m done,” she said.
He sighed a wheezy, somewhat labored sigh. And then he smiled, and again, in that pleasant way that suggested she was an imbecile, he said, “Thank you so much.” With that, he turned, holding the ring in his usual manner, surveying the field of bottle necks with intense concentration.
God, why had she told him? Had he just played her?
Of course he had! He’d done a total reverse-psychology thing. Now he knew, and he’d go for the tilted bottle. Probably win and laugh at her.
Uh. A man like him didn’t deserve inside information from her.
No, she told herself, it was good. Because now he’d have a taste of what she could do, and she’d have the pleasure of denying him when he wanted more. With her teeth clamped onto her tongue, she watched him ready his throw. And then he tossed.
At the same spot he’d been going for all along.
Had he heard her incorrectly? He tossed again. Same place. The ring glanced off and hit the dirt floor.
“Hello?” she said. “One down from the back left corner? It’s tilted in a way that will let a player win.”
A suave shadow of a smile played on his lips, and then he tossed another ring at the usual place, casually disregarding her advice. Oh, he thought he was so funny.
“You’ll never win that way.”
“So you keep saying.” He tossed two more—he really was trying to loop a bottle—you could tell. Just not the one she’d pointed out. And then he was out of rings. The hawker awarded him with a sheriff’s pin. Simon asked for another round, then turned to her, proudly fastening it on himself. Like it proved something. “Sometimes I win against the odds.”
“You didn’t win. And you won’t. Ever. Not like that.”
“But sometimes you’re wrong, aren’t you?”
“I’m only wrong when the currents of fate are altered. That’s not a possibility in a game like this.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He arranged his new set of rings on the ledge.
“It’s already written,” she said.
“Does this end anytime soon?”
“So you’re going to act like you don’t believe me?”
“It’s not about believing. I just don’t care,” he said. “Your predictions are irrelevant to me.”
“You are so full of it.”
He turned to her now. “What do you want? Do you need me to go for it?” And then, in a mocking tone, “Pay some attention to your special place?”
“Shut up.” He was messing with her. “Jerk,” she added. “I’m out of here.” She turned and tromped down the dusty lane to the end of the colorful tents with their wheels and flags and hawkers and players, and clear on out to the musical area where an accordion band played.
He damn well knew she was right. Of course he’d go for the one winnable bottle as soon as she left. He’d walk off with the moose. It’s what he’d wanted.
Gamblers.
She wondered if uber-gambler Bobby had been stabbed yet—that was the future she saw for him. He had this small knife with a green crystal handle that he used for peeling kiwis, often eating them at his personal table in the fancy and lawless private gaming area of the Midas Tropicali Hotel. She foresaw a masculine hand driving that kiwi knife into his eye, saw Bobby live the rest of his life in a prison hospital with his brains scrambled, obsessing over invisible dirt particles. Of course, whenever Bobby had asked her about his future, she informed him that he’d grow old and die a wealthy man in a white stone mansion, always implying that she’d be by his side as his oracle. She’d known better than to tell him about the kiwi knife in his eye.
What she hadn’t been able to discern was whether she herself had died or escaped, but she clung to the idea that she’d escaped.
And she had.
She bought another cotton candy, and soon she was back at the railing overlooking the games midway, surprised to spot Simon still at the ringtoss booth. Why was he still there? He had pretty sad aim if he hadn’t won his moose yet.
His shirt flapped in the breeze, reflecting the sunlight in flashes of brightness where the red silk kissed curves of his arms and shoulders. He’d just gotten a round of rings, and was arranging them in his usual row.
She closed her lips over a fluffy outcrop of candy, enjoying the sweet grit on her tongue.
He threw. She squinted—did she see that right? Had he aimed for his favorite losing corner again? He threw once more and she straightened in surprise. Yes! He was still going for that near corner. Simply disregarding her prediction.
This was something new.
He tossed again. Same thing.
A lot of people didn’t want to know the future; but to know the truth of the future and disregard it? Unthinkable. Especially in a gaming scenario, which was so straightforward.
Yet he disregarded the future anew with his every throw. Defied it.
It was as if he imagined he could smash his own path to the future.
He made another careful toss—at the wrong place again. It was stupid. Ridiculous. Crazy.
And so intriguing.
As though he wanted to slap the future in the face. Slap slap slap. Didn’t he understand he was doomed to fail?
She went down the stairs and wandered closer, watching his throws. It was mad. And glorious. One time, when he came very close to looping one of the near right bottles, excited, icy shivers raced across her back. Was it possible? She stood at the edge of the hoops area, watching, breathless.
What if he looped one? It wasn’t in the future, but what if he did? Or, to loop two? It would mean so many things. It boggled her mind.
Suddenly she wanted to be proven wrong—she wanted it so very badly. It was as if Simon had become David, challenging the Goliath of destiny. As much as she despised Simon, she despised the cage of the future more.
She crept even closer, lingering beside the popcorn cart, forgetting even the cotton candy in her hand. The tension inside her climbed and crashed with his every throw. Maybe she was starting to see his allure.
Again, Simon was out of rings. He spoke with the hawker, who handed him something small and shiny—another little junk prize. Anxiously, she waited for the hawker to hand Simon more rings, too. Maybe he’d loop the bottles on the next round.
They were shaking hands, and she saw he had no more tickets draped around his neck. Simon had run out of tickets. He couldn’t stop playing now!
Then Simon turned, and their eyes met.
It was like a shot of heat into her.
He smiled casually at her. Said nothing.
“Well, well.” She swept her finger around the cone, gathering up the fluffy remnants, trying not to appear foolish.
He tilted his head. “No comment?”
She licked the fluff off her finger. He was out of tickets, dammit.
“No I told you so?”
She shrugged. “Actually, I thought you almost hooked one or two.”
Simon’s eyes shone in a brilliant, crystalline blue. “You know what they say about almost.”
Devil's Luck Page 2