by Lauren Esker
"Not if I'm a gecko."
"Yeah, if you're a gecko I can throw you off myself." He mimed holding something pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
"Asshole," she muttered. "And here I thought you were hot. Nggghh!" She clapped a hand over her mouth.
"Are you going to be sick?" He took a step away from the bed. His stomach was still having enough trouble handling the rolling of the deck that he didn't think he could deal with that too.
"No," she said between her fingers. "The only spewing I'm doing is the verbal kind. Stupid brain to mouth filter. I hate being drunk." She lowered her hand. "Anyway, that's not the secret I meant. I can't figure out how, but I know you were cheating in there."
His breath hissed out between his teeth, and he was suddenly, coldly angry. "I'm already risking a lot just by having you here. All I have to do is call security—"
"I'll tell them you were cheating and get us both thrown off."
"You can't prove a damn thing!" he snapped, realizing only as the words were out of his mouth that he'd just confirmed it. He never lost his cool like that. His fingers twitched, recoiling from the phantom sting of a wooden switch.
"Hey—" she began, holding up a hand.
"I can't believe you're trying to blackmail me. You've got some nerve, lady."
"Mutually assured destruction," she shot back. "We go forward together, or not at all. What's it going to be? Should I yell for security right now?"
Damn it ... damn it. She might be bluffing, but he couldn't afford to take the chance.
Even a rigged game has a winning angle, his father used to say. You just gotta find it.
She thought she had him over a barrel, so he'd have to find a way to swing the advantage back to his side. Maybe a changeling ally could be useful. And if not, he'd have to find a way to ditch her later, when he could do it without so much risk to himself.
"You must really need that prize badly," he murmured. "What is it for? Is someone you love sick, something like that?"
Her eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. "My reasons are my own. How about you?"
"Same."
"Heh." Her lips parted in a slight smile, revealing even white teeth. "They call you Lucky, right? Are you feeling lucky enough to take a gamble on me?"
"You know my name. I don't know yours."
"Jennifer," she said. "Jen Cho. What's your actual name, by the way? It can't possibly be Lucky."
"Lucky's what they call me. If you're very nice to me, I might tell you what's on my birth certificate one of these days." He held out his hand; she stared at it. "Come on, shake on it. Partner."
Her hands were tiny, but her grip was very strong. "I expected you to put up more of a fight, to be honest."
"I got the feeling it wouldn't do me any good. At least this way I have you where I can keep an eye on you." He smiled, slipping into the easy charm that he knew women liked.
She seemed unimpressed. "Lucky me."
This time his smile was genuine; he couldn't resist. "No, Lucky me."
Her lips parted; there was a quick flash of humor, just as quickly suppressed. "Is this what working with you is going to be like?"
"Hey, you're the one who wanted to partner up." Lucky ran a hand over his face. "I should get back out there, but I also told 'em I was going to grab a bite to eat. Guess I may as well while I'm at it. Are you hungry?"
"Starving," she admitted.
"Right. Stay here."
"Like I'm going anywhere dressed like this," she remarked, and flopped back down.
***
After the door closed behind Lucky, Jen waited a moment to be sure he was out of earshot, then pushed back the covers and sprang, naked, out of his bed. She wobbled for a moment before getting her balance. She was still slightly drunk, but not as much as she'd been pretending.
She did not for a moment trust Lucky's capitulation. There was nothing obvious she could offer him, and therefore, she suspected he was merely playing along to find out what she was really doing on the Fair Lady. Well, that was reasonable enough. It wasn't as if she could claim high motives herself.
But, damn, he was good looking. He wasn't heavily muscled, but she'd never gone for the Jack Ross type anyway; she preferred Lucky's trim grace. She wished she'd been able to appreciate that sleek naked body a little more ... thoroughly. She could still feel the press of his bare hip against hers—
Focus, girl. You have until he comes back to figure out what secrets he's hiding.
There wasn't room in the little cabin to hide much. A closed compartment under the bed turned out to contain a small travel case in dark green faux leather, easy to carry with one hand. It was not locked. Jen unzipped it with care rather than haste, and took a quick look to see if there was any visible order to the contents, anything placed just so to signal the case had been tampered with. There was nothing she could identify, but she still poked delicately rather than indulging in indiscriminate rifling. It seemed to contain a normal array of male toiletries and clean underwear. No drugs, no large amounts of cash, no hidden compartments—at least nothing she could find in a cursory inspection. She sniffed at the bottle of cologne and recognized it as the one he'd been wearing, a subtle, musky scent.
In the room's minuscule closet, she found a black shirt on a hanger, identical to the one he was wearing. She patted it down, finding nothing hidden in the pockets or seams. Beyond that, there were no other signs of occupation in the room, not even so much as a toothbrush in the bathroom. Of course, he'd hardly been here for twelve hours yet, and had spent most of that time in the card room.
Due to the room's small size and the molded nature of the fixtures, it was lacking the usual hiding places she knew to check: toilet tank, drawer bottoms, and so forth. She knelt to make sure there was nothing taped to the underside of the table or chairs. Not likely that he'd bother with something like that, but still, one never knew.
So far, Lucky was the only person on the boat who had pinged her shifter radar. The two of them seemed to be the only shifters aboard. It was now looking very much as if the Dragon's Tears dealers weren't on board, which meant Lucky was her passport to the next stage of the tournament—the only "in" she had.
And what kind of lizard was he, anyway? She'd never seen anything quite like it—
The door started to open. She scrambled away from the table. With no time to get under the covers, she hastily swooned on the bed.
Lucky opened the door, and, just for an instant, froze. Right, she was still naked. And now sprawled on the bed in a way that was giving him an excellent view of—yes. Well. He had better behave himself, she thought, watching him from beneath slitted eyelids.
Unfreezing, he smiled and shut the door behind him. He was carrying a tray, with a package tucked under his arm. "Were you searching my room by any chance, my sweet reptilian guest?"
Jen managed a faint moan.
"Oh, come now, sit up. I brought food. And clothes for you." He tossed the package onto the bed.
She gave up the play-acting, sat up, and unrolled the bundle of clothing. It turned out to be a female tuxedo.
"What is this, exactly?"
"This is what the female caterers and bartenders are wearing. I managed to snitch one in something vaguely your size. Nice, huh?" He looked very pleased with himself.
"Well, yes, if I want to be taken for staff." She shook out the tuxedo top, holding it up to her front. She had to admit he'd managed a pretty good match. The idea that he'd looked at her torso that closely was ... hmmm. Kind of nice.
"You'd rather run around naked?" He set the plastic tray on the table and whisked off the top. Underneath were sandwiches sliced into wedges, and lidded plastic cups.
"I'm just thinking the staff will know each other. Who belongs and who doesn't. I won't be inconspicuous."
"Well, what was I going to do, break into a female guest's bedroom?"
"Don't tell me you haven't got the skills for it."
"I'm a gambler,
not a thief." He handed her one of the bone-colored plastic mugs. It was warm in her hands.
"Oh my gosh, did you bring me ..." He had. It was. Caffeinated ambrosia, nectar of the coffee gods. And hot too. She inhaled the steam in bliss.
"It's terrible," Lucky warned her.
"I don't care. It's coffee. Is there sugar?"
Bemused, he passed her a handful of sugar and creamer packets. "Aren't you going to get dressed? I went to all the trouble of stealing clothes for you."
With a small sigh, she put on the shirt, buttoning it over her breasts. The tails fell into her lap and made her decent, sort of. Then she got down to the serious business of dumping as many sugar packets as he'd brought her into the coffee cup. Absently she munched on a sandwich while she did so.
Lucky leaned against the wall, watching her while eating a sandwich wedge. "You realize there are pants to that tux, right?"
"No point in putting them on. I can't just walk around in this. Especially since you neglected to bring me any shoes." She looked up brightly, energy renewed from half a sandwich and a few swallows of over-brewed, over-sugared coffee. "Let me ride in your pocket."
"As what, my lucky gecko?"
"Sure, why not? Don't gamblers have superstitions? Lucky rabbit's feet and all of that."
"I don't."
"I don't care," she retorted, and slugged down the sugared dregs of the coffee. "Is this all you brought?"
Lucky sighed and pushed his cup toward her. There was no more sugar, so she drank it plain. Ugh, he had a point. It tasted like it had been filtered through a dish towel. But it was still coffee.
Over the rim of the cup, she said, "Give me one good reason I can't be your lucky gecko."
His mouth opened and closed. "Because it's ridiculous!"
"I said a good reason."
He started to say something. Paused. "Okay, fine. At least that way I know where you are."
"You better not double-cross me," she threatened. "If you try to walk out that door without me in your pocket, I'm shifting back and screaming."
"And have them throw us off the boat?"
"Mutually assured destruction," she announced with a toothy smile.
"I should have left you in my whiskey glass."
Jen drained the cup. Feeling much better with a little food and a lot of caffeine in her, she shifted. The tuxedo shirt collapsed around her in folds of white fabric, and she scrambled out of the sleeve. Perched on the edge of the bed, she looked up expectantly at Lucky's looming green and black shape.
He reached down and put out a hand. She scuttled into his palm. She'd done this many times with Avery and her other colleagues at the SCB, but somehow it was a little different with Lucky. More ... charged. Her little gecko feet seemed to tingle where they touched his dry, warm skin.
He tucked her gently into the breast pocket of his black shirt. She scrambled around, getting her bearings, and put her head up.
"Watch the wiggling," Lucky said. "It tickles." He didn't have a particularly deep voice, but it vibrated through his chest against her in a way that she liked.
She had no proper way to respond, and she'd neglected to ask if he knew Morse code, which was her usual way of communicating with her colleagues while shifted. Instead she flicked her tail in acknowledgement.
"I'm so going to regret this," Lucky sighed. He twitched his jacket to cover her. "Let's go play some poker."
Chapter Four
It turned out to be less distracting than Lucky had expected, playing poker with Jen in his pocket. Once they were in the card room, she was very still. He had to glance down occasionally to make sure she was still there. He could just glimpse the top of her little red-spotted green head, the flick of her eyes as she looked around.
With his jacket unbuttoned and swinging open, the pocket was mostly covered but she still had a window to see out. It wasn't likely anyone would look closely enough to notice her unless she moved a lot.
The awareness of her changeling presence dulled quickly. It had been long enough since he'd been around others of his kind that he'd forgotten it worked like this; the quiver of recognition faded rapidly into the background, rather than being a constant irritant. For the most part, he was able to forget she was there and simply play.
He settled into it. This was his element: the smoky air, the murmur of the other gamblers' voices, the familiar weight of the cards in his hands. He didn't need to push the cards much, which was good since it tired him out, and he was already a little worn down from using it earlier. Even unassisted, he was able to play well enough to stay in the game, but not so brilliantly that he'd draw too much attention.
It was impossible to avoid attention as the night wore on, however. From an initial pack of over a hundred gamblers, they were down now to a mere dozen. These were the die-hards, the ones who were evenly matched. People thought of gamblers as adrenaline junkies, but successfully playing poker for large amounts of money took caution. Good gamblers often folded at the start of a hand, unless they had stellar cards. And so the games dragged on and on.
It must be near morning now. Lucky was tired but buzzed. He'd abandoned alcohol and was now prudently sticking to coffee and glasses of water. Between two deals, while no one was looking his way, he held the water glass near his breast pocket so Jen could have a drink. Her tiny gecko head popped out and dipped into the edge of the tipped glass before vanishing again.
What the hell was he doing? he asked himself. He worked alone. Yet he'd recognized a spark of kinship in her—a promise of kinship instantly extinguished once he realized she was one of the other changelings, the non-draconic ones he tried to avoid. He wondered how much that mistaken sense of recognition was currently clouding his judgment.
And ... he felt bad for her. She must have some compelling reason to need the promised reward for completing the tournament, enough that, with no poker skills herself and, he assumed, no money to buy in, she'd taken the risk of sneaking on board. Most people in the tournament were in it for the money, a king's ransom in Dragon's Tears. But that wasn't his read on Jen at all. He didn't think she was driven by mercenary interests, which meant it had to be something else. His best guess was what he'd asked her in his cabin: that she wanted the drug to heal someone who was sick. He was very good at reading people, and she read to him like that kind of person. An altruist. Jen did not seem like the sort who would risk her life for money. But risking her life for other people—yes, he could see her doing that.
Focus, boy.
He began leaning on his luck more heavily as the number of gamblers dwindled further: nine, eight ... It wouldn't do to leave things until the last minute and wash out on a bad turn of the cards. His gift wasn't magic—not exactly. He couldn't change one card into another. All he could do was push at it while the cards were shuffled, so they would fall into a configuration that benefited him at the others' expense. There was still a large element of risk and chance
Dice, now ... dice were pure luck, and therefore child's play for him. He could have cleaned out any casino in Vegas by gentle applications of luck at the craps and roulette tables. With cards, though, even if he pushed hard enough to control every card in the deal—which wasn't really possible; the mere attempt would wipe him out utterly—he still couldn't control the other players' reactions to their cards, and he had to maintain their ignorance of the contents of his hand. He rarely controlled the deal with enough precision to know exactly which cards he was going to get. All he knew was that he'd given himself a good hand. How he played that hand was up to him.
But he was good at it. Luck, talent, and skill—he relied on all three, but skill was the one that made the other two work. Or so his father had drummed into him at an early age, and unlike a lot of the things his father had told him, he thought that one was true.
In the end it came down to just Lucky and a single opponent. Sweat soaked through his shirt, partly from stress but mostly from the effort of pushing the cards on one deal after another.
It was like shoving a great weight uphill.
In his pocket, Jen quivered with tension.
But he did it: the cards fell his way, his opponent shoved all his remaining chips into the pot, and Lucky, with a flourish, turned up his hole cards to reveal three of a kind, the winning hand he'd carefully coaxed out of the cards. His opponent also had three of a kind—queens to Lucky's kings. That one had fallen out much closer than he was expecting.
He shook the loser's hand and, as the other player gathered his things and quietly left the empty card room, Lucky sank back in his chair and let out a slow breath. A part of him hadn't quite been able to believe he'd make it this far, even with all his natural advantages.
Great, Lucado; now there's just the hard part to go.
A subtle stirring in his pocket made him look down. Jen was standing with her gecko hands folded over the pocket's edge, looking up at him expectantly.
"I don't know what happens next any more than you do," he told her. "I didn't even know if I'd get this far. Sorry to break it to you, kiddo, but you didn't exactly attach yourself to a virtuoso. I'm making all this up as I go along."
"Are you, now?" said a husky, carrying woman's voice.
Lucky looked up, startled. For a moment he'd slipped completely, forgotten that despite the room's emptiness, the abandoned tables with cards forlornly scattered, he was neither alone nor unobserved.
A tall woman with close-cropped, steel-gray hair was crossing the room with a firm, rapid stride. She was not dressed like a mobster or a lady of high society, at least not like Lucky's idea of either one; she wore jeans and a crisp white sweater, decked with rhinestones around the neck and sleeves. But from the utter confidence in her bearing, not to mention the two armed guards hovering discreetly at the door, he suspected she was both. The gray hair suggested she was in her early fifties if not older, but she moved with the grace and strength of a much younger woman.
He dropped his glossy facade back into place as if he hadn't just been discovered having a conversation with his pocket, and stood up quickly. "Ms. Molina," he said, wiping his damp palm on his thigh before holding out his hand.