Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952)

by Jacka, Benedict

  But over the years the excitement faded. I learnt the same thing that everyone learns sooner or later: nothing’s any fun if you can have as much of it as you like. When you’re poor money’s desperately important, but the wealthier you get the less it matters. I like money for the freedom and the independence that it gives me, and that works only up to a point—once you’re over a certain limit then getting any richer doesn’t help.

  I also started to feel sorry for the people I was taking money from. The men (and it’s mostly men, though you do get the odd woman) that you meet in a casino aren’t the most attractive guys in the world, but they’re still people and often they’re gambling with money they really can’t afford to lose. I started to go less and less often, and finally I just stopped. I have enough money in my bank accounts—I don’t need to keep stealing.

  So as I went around the tables I didn’t make much of an effort. I played blackjack, and although the table maximum was a thousand pounds I kept my bets small, winning just enough that I’d be able to resupply Luna if needed. As I did I kept an eye on her, watching through the crowd. She’d gravitated to the roulette tables and occasionally I’d see the silver mist of her curse drift outwards to touch the wheel. I could tell she was doing something, though I wasn’t sure what. When the table she was playing at broke up I went to join her at the bar. “How’s it going?” I asked as she ordered.

  “Badly.”

  “How much did you lose?”

  “I don’t want to know,” Luna said gloomily. “About half.”

  “Get anywhere?”

  “Well, every time I sit down at a table, everyone seems to start losing,” Luna said. “The wheel on that last one just came up zero three times in a row. Does that count?”

  The bartender came back with Luna’s drink and she took a sip, turning to look out over the casino floor. I gave her a glance as she did. She was wearing a yellow-gold dress that set off her pale skin, and she had her hair loose around her shoulders instead of in the bunches that she’d used when I’d first known her. It made her look older, more like an adult. She was annoyed, but it was a positive sort of annoyance, the kind where you’re trying to solve a problem. Luna’s come a long way since the day she first walked into my shop. “You look good,” I said. “The dress Arachne’s?”

  “Oh, thanks,” Luna said, looking pleased. “It’s the outfit she was showing me in the spring. She did some alterations for me.”

  “What kind?”

  “The shoes are flat, see?” Luna said, lifting a foot to demonstrate. “And the way the skirt is cut lets me run in it. The purse has got a pouch for my whip, and it’s roomy enough for that pocket kit you gave me.”

  I blinked at Luna. “Well, points for being prepared, but what exactly did you think we’d be doing tonight?”

  “I have no idea. I’m just going to be ready for when the fight starts this time.”

  “There’s not going to be a fight. We’re just here to play.”

  Luna gave me an extremely sceptical look. “I’m serious,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Luna said. “How many magic items are you carrying again?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Like?”

  “Just a few condensers,” I said. “And a feather ring and a decoy. Oh, and some glitterdust. And my gate stones, but I always carry those. I guess one or two others. Maybe three or four.”

  Luna just looked at me. “What?” I said. “Most of them aren’t even for combat.”

  “And you wonder where I’m getting this from.”

  I shook my head. “Whatever makes you happy. I’ll be in the poker room.”

  * * *

  To reach the poker room I had to go through a tunnel of slot machines, their lights blinking blue-yellow-white, but the poker room itself was quieter. A steady murmur of conversation blended with the rustle of cards and the clink of chips, and cheesy eighties music played at a low volume over the speakers. I found a seat at a table and joined in.

  Poker’s a mixture of probability and psychology, and it’s probably my favourite of the card games. Although there are rules on what hand beats what, poker isn’t actually a game of who’s got the best hand—it’s a game of wagering based on incomplete information. If you have complete information (such as by oh, say, divination), then there’s no challenge. So as I started playing I deliberately didn’t look into the future to see what hands everyone else had. It spoils the fun, and it’s harder for me to justify to my conscience. In games like blackjack and roulette you’re playing against the house, but in poker you’re playing against the other customers of the casino.

  An hour or so passed and I settled into the game, slipping into that particular mental zone of focus. New players came; old players left. Luna didn’t call, which I took as a good sign.

  The player opposite me at the table, a balding businessman with a round face, went all in against the scruffy-looking guy to my right. His two pair met a straight. The businessman banged the table, swore in Cantonese, and left. A few minutes later he was replaced by a kid.

  I was the blind on the next hand. The kid raised high, and I folded. Next hand I was dealer. The kid checked, I raised, he reraised, and I folded again. I folded the next few hands, and the kid did the same. Next round I was dealt a pair of queens. I raised, the kid reraised, and I matched him. He called my raises all the way to the river and showed a middle pair. I got back what I’d lost from the earlier fold and some more besides.

  Next round the same thing happened again. The kid kept on raising at me, ignoring everyone else. Sometimes it worked, but he lost more than he won. “Very aggressive,” I said as his single ace fell to my top pair. The kid didn’t answer.

  Two hands later we ended up head-to-head again. “Two players,” the dealer said, laying out the flop.

  “You know, I’m starting to think you’re following me,” I said, glancing at the face-up cards. There was a two, a five, and a nine. My ace-five gave me a pair, and I had position.

  “So this is how you make your money,” the kid said with a faint American accent. He knocked on the table to check.

  I gave the kid a sharp glance. “Depends who I’m playing against.” He was twenty or so, with messy black hair, and he looked athletic and fit. I threw in a chip.

  “Raise of five pounds,” the dealer said. He was Australian, with ginger hair and a beard, and his name tag said BRUCE. He turned to the kid, who matched the bet without looking. The dealer put out another card. It was another two. The kid checked again.

  “Been in the country long?” I said, tossing in more chips. The kid’s accent and body language were close to British, but slightly off.

  “I’ve got unfinished business,” the kid said. He didn’t take his eyes off mine.

  “Raise of fifteen pounds,” the dealer said to the kid. He matched the bet and the dealer dealt out a final card, a seven.

  The kid threw in some chips. “Raise of twenty-seven pounds,” the dealer said to me. I thought briefly, then shrugged and matched the bet. The kid flipped over his cards to show an off-suit six and eight.

  A ripple of laughter went up around the table. The dealer slid out the five, seven, and nine from the face-up cards. “Straight.” He looked at me.

  I shook my head and tossed my cards into the discard. “Nice hand.”

  The dealer pushed the pile of chips to the kid, replenishing his stack. “Tough beat,” the guy on my right said.

  The Romanian man at the end of the table shook his head. “You were lucky,” he told the kid. “The odds were—”

  “I don’t care about the odds,” the kid said, without looking at the man.

  The Romanian looked at me and raised his hands in a what can you do? gesture. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” the kid told me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Have we met?”

  The kid’s e
yes flashed with utter fury. It was there for only a moment, but I’ve seen that look before and it brought me up short. The kid hated me—not just dislike, but bone-deep hatred. He wasn’t here to play. He was here for me.

  I held quite still, looking around me with my diviner’s senses, and felt a chill go down my spine. The room was full of people, but scattered through the crowd were a handful of boys and girls who looked about the same age as the kid in front of me, and they were all watching me. A black girl with a shock of curly dyed-gold hair was glaring at me from the right side of the room, while a boy who looked like he should be on a recruiting poster for the U.S. Army was by the door, watching with folded arms. There was another kid with South American looks standing at my back. He was in position to get me from behind, and as I focused I could feel a faint trace of magic in him, ready to strike.

  “You haven’t even figured it out, have you?” the kid said. His eyes hadn’t left me since he’d sat down.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “The name’s Will,” the kid said.

  The dealer had been looking between the two of us. “Hey,” he said. “There a problem here?”

  The kid—Will—ignored him, keeping his eyes fixed on me. His name sounded familiar, but I had bigger problems to worry about—I was flicking through the futures and I could see that the window for talking was narrowing fast. Will and his friends were about to try to force me to go with them, and if I refused they were going to attack.

  “What’ll it be, Verus?” Will said.

  It didn’t surprise me that Will knew my name. “What do you want?”

  “I think we should take this outside,” Will said, his dark eyes staring into mine.

  “Hey,” another player said in annoyance. He obviously hadn’t figured out what was going on, though from the glances some of the other players were giving they were starting to. “You folding or what?”

  “Sir,” the dealer said politely. “Let’s leave it for after the game, okay?”

  I calculated quickly. The boy behind me was a life-drinker, and he was ready to put his lethal touch into my back. I could probably dodge his first strike, but my position was bad. Packed into the middle of the crowd I had little room to move, and anything that missed me would hit the other customers. On top of that, the poker room was a dead end with only one way out. “You know, I think I’m going to take a break,” I said. I tossed a chip to the dealer. “Fold my hands till I get back, okay, Bruce?”

  “Thank you, sir,” Bruce said, but his eyes were wary. I rose to my feet, keeping my movements slow and easy. Will got up as I started to move, and he and the life-drinker followed me closely out.

  Gold-hair girl and Captain America fell in behind them, giving me looks as they did. The girl looked the more aggressive, but I knew both would hesitate before striking. The life-drinker wouldn’t. I could sense the spell waiting in his hands, cold and hungry, and I knew he was eager to use it. I mentally moved him above Will on the priority list. I’ve been life-drained before, and I know exactly how deadly it is.

  The slot machine tunnel was wide enough for only one person, and as I walked into it the group behind me were forced into single file. That was better; now the life-drinker was between me and the rest of them. As we approached the stairs to the reception area, the doors to the main casino floor swung open and two boys stepped out. One of them was a skinny Indian kid with square glasses. The other I recognised from last night: it was the one who’d been spying on us. He stopped as he saw me, his eyes going wide.

  I halted as well, making the line behind me bunch up. “Will?” the Indian boy said, trying to peer past me. “I wiped the—”

  “Dhruv!” the Chinese kid whispered. “That’s him!”

  The Indian boy froze. “So,” I said to the Chinese kid. “I guess this answers the question of who you’re working for, huh?”

  The life-drinker had been about to push me forward, but now he stopped and gave the Chinese kid a suspicious look. “You talked to him?”

  The Chinese kid looked back and forth between me and the life-drinker. “No, uh—”

  “Hey,” gold-hair girl called from the back. “What’s going—”

  For just a second the group of them were distracted, and as the girl started to say on I whipped my heel up and back, kicking the life-drinker hard and accurately in the crotch. In the same instant I lunged forward off the other leg, sprinting for the two boys ahead of me. Dhruv and the Chinese kid flinched away and I ran between them, slamming through the doors and onto the casino floor.

  Shouts came from the corridor behind, but I had a couple of seconds’ lead and in combat that’s a long time. I had absolutely no intention of fighting if I could avoid it—Will and his friends wanted this fight, and as far as I was concerned that was a good reason to get out of here. I curved around the bar and was just starting to turn towards the stairs when I heard a flurry of footsteps behind me and someone hit me at waist level. We both went tumbling to the carpet, and as I tried to pull myself up I heard a snarl and felt Will hurling himself on top of me with inhuman speed.

  I twisted onto my side and got my leg back just in time. I had one glimpse of Will falling towards me, his eyes filled with insane fury, then I kicked up off the floor, my foot catching him in the stomach hard enough to send him flying. He did a funny sort of flip in midair and came down on hands and toes. Gold-hair girl was coming in after him and she was about to throw a fire spell, but before either could line up on me I pulled a crystal from my pocket and crushed it.

  Mist surged from between my fingers, a dull grey cloud blanketing the area in an instant. I couldn’t see but I heard running steps and I rolled left just in time for Will to miss me, charging blindly through the space in which I’d been. I came to my feet and listened.

  Calls and chatter were going up from all around as the casino’s inhabitants started to notice what was going on. From outside I knew the mist from the condenser would look like a grey cloud about forty feet wide, spread out over the floor and half of the bar. Will had stumbled back out of the cloud and he and his friends were spreading out to surround it. I could sense magic being channelled: time, space, life, fire. Apprentices or adepts? I guessed adepts.

  Will and the others were arguing and seemed reluctant to enter, but even so my position wasn’t great. The mist cloud wouldn’t last forever and if I made a break for it now I’d be run down in the open. I needed to whittle down the odds. Two steps brought me to the bar and I grabbed a bottle of white rum, lifting it by the neck.

  I heard Will’s voice raised above the others. “Bev, burn it!” Fire magic surged and the mist flashed orange-red. The chatter of the casino turned into shouts and screams.

  The flames had run along the ground, a three-foot wall of fire springing up in a line from the caster. A second wall of fire followed and this one came straight at me. I leapt blindly, warned by my divination magic, and felt heat sting my right side as the fire licked against the bar. Glancing through the futures I saw that it was gold-hair girl. She was trying to burn me out, fill the mist with flames, but neither she nor the life-drinker was facing me and I knew they’d lost my position. Definitely adepts. I started running at gold-hair girl, and as she sent a third blast of ground fire I burst out of the mist into the lights of the casino.

  The girl was facing the wrong way and the fire went far to my right; I was already swinging and as she turned, her mouth making a little O of surprise, I smashed the bottle over her head. She stumbled and went to her knees. The life-drinker was next to her, green-black light flickering at his palm, and he had just enough time to take a step towards me before I snapped my other arm out to fling a handful of glittering dust into his face.

  One of the reasons I like glitterdust is that no one takes it seriously—people see the pretty sparkles and think it’s a joke. They change their mind fast when they get hit by the stuff, but by t
hen it’s too late. Glitterdust sticks to whatever it hits and if that dust gets in your eyes you’re blind until you can wash it out. The life-drinker yelled and fell backwards, clawing at his eyes, his spell fizzling out as he staggered blindly into a chair and went over.

  My precognition shrilled a warning and I jumped forward, hearing a hiss as something cut the air behind me. I caught my balance and spun, glimpsing in that moment that a space was opening up as the casino players scrambled hurriedly away. Captain America was facing me with his eyes set and he was holding a sword, a long-handled katana which he was just bringing back after missing with the first slash. I grabbed a chair and as he swung again I blocked it, closing on his outside, but as I did I saw Will come racing around holding a sword of his own and I changed direction to dive back into the cloud.

  The temperature inside the mist was higher now, and I could see a fuzzy glow from the bar; the fire was spreading. With my magic I knew the adepts had congregated again. The life-drinker was still blind, but the fire girl had gotten up and I bit back a curse. She was about to send that ground fire into my hiding place again. The fire was already starting to burn away the mist and I didn’t want to be around when it reached the spirits in the bar. Where the hell did they get those swords?

  The casino was in chaos, men pushing and shoving to get away as the crowd began to panic, the dealers and arriving security trying to maintain order and get out the fire extinguishers. The adepts were between me and the exit, and as the next burst of fire came racing into the mist I vaulted the bar and ran out the other side of the cloud, heading for the stairs up to the balcony.