Wild Card (Etudes in C# Book 1)

by Jamie Wyman

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked, searching the three creatures for some hint.

  Puck walked to me, his steps light and graceful. “Well,” he said, “when Eris put a soul into the pot, I had just intended on killing the poor mortal and taking the wind out of Eris’s sails. I attended the little soiree at Caesars intent on it. But, then…” He clicked his tongue and another wicked grin split his face. “Oh, but then I saw you. And when I heard it was your soul—back on the market after all this time—well, Cat, I was just thrilled! It’s not often in my line of work that one gets to reclaim what has been lost.”

  With these last words he cast a stern, pointed look at Dahlia. Like thunder, my own rage rolled in my ears.

  “Naturally,” Puck continued melodiously, “I had to make sure you hadn’t depreciated in value during your stay with that jealous hag you call a mistress. And, oh”—he laughed, bringing his hands to his mouth in an expression of glee—“you are so much more than I expected! Like a fine wine, you’ve matured superbly.”

  “What did you do to my head?” I roared.

  “I had to test you, mageling. I just went into your mind and had a bit of a stroll. Taking in the sights of all your fears.” He looked Marius up and down and rolled his eyes with distaste. “Your desires. All of the deepest emotions, the most potent of buttons I can push once you are in my employ.”

  “I will not be your pawn,” I growled.

  His lips formed a thin, knowing grin. “In the end, you will still serve the Fae.”

  The whisper, a haunting echo of his words beneath the Giving Tree, sent shivers through me. My belly heaved, and I thought I might fall to my knees.

  No. I would not give him the satisfaction.

  “I’m sorry to see you’ve been unbound,” he said. “A lot of work into conjuring that spell. We’ll have to take care of it after you come home to us.”

  I shot a hard look at Dahlia. I was surprised to see she would not meet my eyes. She laced her fingers together and stared at the ground.

  “You?” I asked.

  Heat rushed up my cheeks. My thoughts churned, understanding bubbling as tears filled my eyes. “Oh god,” I said, “you knew?” Her silence confirmed it all, and I nodded. “You knew what I was, even though I didn’t.”

  Dahlia refused to look up, though I saw her eyes flicker guiltily to one side.

  “And you laid that binding on me. I thought it was Eris, but…you?” I stalked toward her, simmering. I remembered how it had felt to choke the life out of her. Tendons popping, I clenched a fist and stopped just out of arm’s reach. “As if you hadn’t done enough to make my life hell, you cast a fucking binding on me?”

  “To be fair,” Puck said casually, “she did it under the direct order of her queen.”

  “Why?” I snapped, whipping around to face the Sidhe Lord. “Why would Mab or Titania give a shit about me?”

  He shook his head, his features darkening. “You foolish, short-sighted mortal. You can’t even see it, can you? The way you’re being used? Behind the scenes, your mistress and those other thieves I call kindred are plotting. I know. It’s what we do. We are creatures of habit, and immortality has given us time to hone our various crafts.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense” I said, frustration roiling in my voice like thunder.

  “Of course you don’t. You don’t see all of the cards, and you don’t know all of the rules. Now, I can’t see exactly what their game is, but I know when I’m being played. And you can tell your mistress, satyr,” he hissed, “that it won’t work!”

  Reaching into the deep pockets of his purple coat, Puck retrieved the poker chip.

  “Take it,” he said, flipping it through the air. “Take it back to your lady and tell her that I approve of her wager. But whatever she and those other scoundrels have planned, they will lose. My hand is strong,” he said. “I’ve already won the game. They just don’t know it yet…. This will all be over in a matter of hours,” he said. “With the flip of a card, Dahlia’s mistake of losing you will be fixed, and we will carry on with you where we left off.”

  Puck returned to his throne. “I’ll see you soon.” He winked and the garden disappeared. The creeping ivy vanished, replaced with graffiti and piss stains. We had been dropped in a dark alley of Dumpsters and trash bins.

  “Well, that was weird,” Marius said.

  I glared at him. Even though I’d been yanked out of Puck’s illusions, I still felt the Giving Tree spearing me, still felt the sting of the satyr’s hands over my body. Fresh in my mind, he’d pawed at me and my body had responded with need. I knew none of it had been real but I still shuddered with too-solid memories.

  I needed clarity. I needed to shove all those damn lies out of my head and purge these phantom sensations. It never happened. I was not executed in the faery tree. I did not kill Dahlia. And Flynn! With a surge of relief, I realized Flynn had never abandoned me. These fledgling abilities of mine were as intact as the friendship. I couldn’t fathom how Marius could be so calm and collected.

  And Marius. He and I had never actually…

  Then a horrible thought crossed my mind. Had Marius seen it all?

  Had he seen me wrap myself around him? Had he felt my lust as I dove into his kisses? Worse—had he been a willing participant?

  I took wary steps away from him and leaned against the brick wall of the alley. Holding my aching head in my hands, I kept my eyes trained on the ground.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “What do you mean what happened? You were there.”

  “Marius,” I snapped, “just tell me what happened. The Fae did something to my head, and I’m trying to work it out, all right?”

  “Fine.” He sidled over and put his back to the wall beside me. “You told Dahlia to take you to Puck, there was a flash of gold light, and then you started screaming like someone killed your puppy. What the bloody hell was that all about?”

  All of it had happened in an instant?

  “You didn’t…? You weren’t bound in handcuffs?” I asked.

  If he lied, his relaxed face gave nothing away. “Handcuffs? No. Although,” he added with a grin, “I’m not adverse to the idea in proper company.”

  My stomach turned with a nauseating mixture of relief and anger. I’d been spared the humiliation of the satyr knowing what I’d seen, what I’d almost done with him. But I’d seen it all with such crystal clarity that I’d never be able to slough it off. The physical sensations of spike and sex dissipated like the memories of a dream, but I would never forget what Puck had forced me to see. I would never forgive myself for the way I’d reacted in those illusions.

  The events were false, but my feelings had been all too real. Whatever Puck conjured came from honest places in my mind and heart. I looked at Marius, and even without the lenses of Puck’s dream I caught myself wondering, if I reached out now, would his kisses be so delicious?

  I recoiled from that line of thinking, from the revelation there: I wanted Marius. Puck pulled it out of my mind from where I’d hidden it, and he’d forced me to admit it to myself. I now had to face the fact that I’d been stupid and careless. I’d gone against my better judgment by offering myself to Marius. I’d given up and let him use me. I’d been weak and had to be bailed out by someone stronger. I’d caved and cowered like a wilting flower. And I’d killed Dahlia.

  Dahlia.

  Rage, white and hot, flared in me as I thought of what Puck revealed: the binding had been her doing. For eight years, I thought I knew all of the ways Dahlia had complicated my life. Now, Puck had taken my idea of the truth and shattered it like a mirror. As if he’d tossed it into the air, the shards fell to create a new picture, a new truth. What I saw there was uglier than I’d imagined.

  It wasn’t until that moment that I realized just how fucked I was.

  And it was her fault.

  “She did it again,” I snarled through my teeth. “That fucking bitch, she did it to me again.”
I growled in frustration and kicked at one of the trash bins, sending refuse rocketing down the alley.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Marius asked.

  “Dahlia is the one who bound my powers, Marius, or did you miss that part of the conversation?”

  “So? I still don’t see why you’re so—” He stopped talking. His eyes went out of focus as he began to think it through. “Wait,” he said, “you said ‘again.’” Marius’s fingers danced over his lips. As he paced back and forth I waited with dread for him to puzzle it out. “And Puck. He said he’d replace it when you came home. You belonged to the Fae before Eris, didn’t you?”

  I couldn’t look at him. I stared at the ground, eyes brimming with tears.

  “Wait a minute, I’ve almost got it,” he said. “Yesterday…yesterday you said Eris won your soul after you’d been a git and fallen in love with the wrong person.”

  My whole body burned with shame. Of all the people in the world that I didn’t want to know what I’d done…

  “Dahlia,” he whispered. “It was Dahlia, wasn’t it?”

  My shoulders shook with quiet sobs as a wail of anguish mutated into a hiccup and died in my throat. I thought I’d known humiliation before. Marius had saved my life. He’d seen me drunk and disarmed. He’d seen my panties! But now…now Marius knew my darkest secret. He could see me for the idiot I was.

  “Bloody hell! It was Dahlia!”

  “Yes,” I moaned. “It was Dahlia.”

  I wanted nothing more than to slink away into one of the trash bins and let someone carry me off to the dump where I belonged.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Scar Tissue”

  I met Dahlia at a roulette table, I told Marius. There was something about her face—with her high cheekbones and canted eyes—that had seemed so exotic. Madame Butterfly meets Cleopatra. I know now it was her fae heritage, but at the time I was blissfully ignorant of things like gods and faeries.

  When a round of bad bets cost me the last of my bank, she offered me a drink to take the edge off the loss. She hooked me by flashing a smile that went all the way to the corners of her painted eyes. It made her all the more radiant.

  The proverbial one thing led to another. A cocktail at the hotel bar turned into shots at a nightclub down the Strip. Drinks moved to a crowded, sweaty dance floor. Hips had churned along, grinding to the bass beats, and arms had wrapped around soft curves. Touching led to kissing, to teasing, and to a night drowning in desire.

  When I fell for Dahlia, I’d fallen hard. I went back to her place and made her my new home. I dropped out of school to dive into a relationship with her and live the carefree life Las Vegas offered. It was exactly the kind of reckless thing you do when you’re nineteen.

  One night, as we lay in bed together, I basked in more than sexual afterglow. I’d never felt that depth of affection. Dewey-eyed, taking in the beauty of her dark skin against my alabaster flesh, I told her I loved her. But that wasn’t enough. A simple, “I love you,” couldn’t contain my feelings, so I poured my emotions into this grand metaphor.

  “Heart and soul, I’m yours,” I’d said.

  To me, these words conveyed magnitude. But, to a faery, it was a binding agreement. I’d given myself willingly—albeit ignorantly—and Dahlia had accepted.

  We’d been together for seven months the night everything changed. As I usually did, I met up with her at one of the bars at the Bellagio. The slump to her shoulders had told me she’d been having a run of bad bets.

  Sliding onto the barstool next to her, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Cat, I—I haven’t been honest with you.”

  Of course, I feared the worst. Or what I’d thought was the worst: infidelity.

  “I’m…” Dahlia had looked around to see if anyone listened and leaned in close. When she spoke again her voice had been low. “I’m one of the Fae.”

  Her admission had thrown me off. Relieved that she wasn’t cheating on me but still confused, I’d snorted with nervous laughter. “What, like Tinker Bell?”

  “Fuck Tinker Bell!” She’d knocked back a shot of Jack and turned to me, her honey eyes glazing with the drink. “You know those books you like with the vampires and the faeries in Louisiana?” When I nodded she’d added, “Like that kind of faery. It’s real.”

  I laughed. What else would I do in that situation?

  “Funny,” I said. “I’ve never seen you leave a trail of pixie dust on the pillow.”

  “Cat, I’m serious,” she’d pressed.

  The tension in her jaw and the fire in her stare had given me pause. I looked long and hard, studying her to find the joke, but I’d found nothing except her pain.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  She’d reached out one perfect finger and traced it along the rim of her empty glass. Frost spread down in delicate crystals, gorgeous fractal pictures as fine as her eyelashes.

  My mouth sagged in surprise and awe.

  “Oh shit. You mean it, don’t you?”

  I drew my hands down over my face and put my elbows up on the bar. A faery? I thought. What did it even mean? Why was she telling me now, of all times?

  “So, does this change anything? With us?”

  Dahlia had flagged down the bartender. “Can I get another shot and a Rusty Nail for my lady here?”

  She stayed mute until the bartender delivered our drinks. She’d knocked back the shot, and worry had twisted my stomach to see my carefree and bubbly Dahlia wilting with anguish.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

  She pulled me into a fierce embrace, her well-manicured nails damn near clawing me. When she pulled away, she stroked my cheek with her petal-soft hand. Her face had fallen. “Cat, you have to understand that I never meant for it to happen.”

  “What?”

  “Do you remember the night you told me you loved me?”

  Of course I had, and I’d said as much.

  “You said you were mine.” Her voice twisted with sadness. “Heart and soul.” A single crystalline tear traced down her perfect cheek. “I lost it, Cat. I bet with your soul, and I lost it.”

  “Wait. My soul? How can you…” I’d groped for words and just settled on an exasperated, “What?”

  “Bargains made with my people are lasting. That night…” She’d paused, eyes losing focus for a moment. “You gave me ownership of your soul, Cat. I got in deep in a poker game, and I threw your soul into the pot. I thought I had it. Four queens! You’d think four queens would win! But it didn’t. I lost, and now she owns you.”

  I had been too stunned to be angry, too worried to feel anything clearly.

  “Who?”

  “A goddess. I have to take you to her tonight.”

  That had been my breaking point. I’d gulped down my drink. “Dahlia, what the hell are you talking about? Faeries? Souls? Goddesses? I’m an atheist, for Christ’s sake!”

  Her flawless face had turned to a stony mask. “Not for much longer.”

  Grabbing her bag from the bar, she stood up and swept away. I followed in her cold wake as we walked down the Strip in silence. She led me to the penthouse of a casino where we met a woman sitting in a sparsely decorated office.

  Craggy, ugly, and bony, the stranger radiated jealousy and prickly judgment. I’d known her for a bitch the second I laid eyes on her.

  For protection, I drew closer to my lover.

  “Dahlia, is this her?”

  “Yes, Cat. This is Eris, the Greek goddess of Discord.”

  I’d read the Iliad and the Aeneid in high school. I’d heard the myths of Eris and her fucking apples. But those were stories!

  I burst into a giggle fit. “Right. Okay, Dahlia. I don’t know what this is all about, but you got me. So, who are you? And what’s going on?”

  Eris’s lips had split into a grin I would come to loathe. “I like her. Headstrong, lovely, and reckless. Hers is a spirit of fire. Well done, Dahlia.”

  The
faery had hung her head.

  “Um, thanks?” I’d said irreverently.

  “An excellent soul to add to my collection,” Eris had said. “Yes, I can think of several fun things to do with you.”

  I’d narrowed my eyes. “Look, I decide who I do fun things with. And you’re not on the list. Dahlia, who is she? Really,” I added. This wasn’t funny anymore.

  “The keeper of your soul,” Dahlia said out of the side of her mouth.

  “I don’t have a soul.”

  “Oh, no?” Eris asked.

  “Cat,” Dahlia said, her voice rising with warning. “You don’t know everything.”

  “No, Dahlia,” Eris had said, “I’m interested to hear what she thinks. Go on, Cat.” She’d said my name with explosive consonants that somehow mocked me. “Please, illuminate me as to how you don’t have a soul.”

  She might as well have asked me to explain why an apple was called an apple. Why was blue blue?

  I stammered a bit. “That’s it. I have no soul. When I die, I die. The end.”

  “You think so?”

  Then I found myself dangling upside-down over the city. Hundreds of feet above the Strip, I kicked and squirmed, suspended from nothing more than a whim.

  “What the fuck?”

  Eris stood beside me in midair, finger crooked like a hook. “You still think you have no soul?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Look,” she said. She pointed a long, bony finger to a nearby block of windows. I’d fallen to the floor, and my hands had gone to grip at my throat in the international symbol for, “Oh shit! I can’t fucking breathe!”

  Dahlia hadn’t moved. She’d stood idle, her stare cold and distant.

  “Do you see?” Eris asked. “Do you begin to understand, you foolish mortal?”

  “What the hell? What is that?”

  “Still think you have no soul?”

  “Stop this!” I screamed. “Stop!”

  And then I was back in my body. As I lay there on the floor, writhing and gasping for my life, the bullet of reality hit me between the eyes.