“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 eyes 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.