I glanced at Bill and Boyd, but they didn’t seem to have a problem with him telling me this, and a skein of panic arrowed through my belly. Contribute to this world? Is that what we were doing?
“But you must communicate if you want to live here,” Boyd added after the albino folded, and revealed the final of the three flop cards. My anxiety spiked again. No chance for a straight, but one more spade? Flush. “You have to allow your personal power to be used to fuel this world, or at least wager it.”
Because even if you didn’t lose, I realized as I matched and raised, the interaction kept the others wagering theirs.
Hippie jerked his head back at Mackie. “He was his tribe’s storyteller, so his music is his payment-”
“Except now it is our stories he tells,” the Asian put in sourly. I wondered how long ago he’d thrown in his happiness chip.
Boyd sat up straighter. “Don’t share that with her.”
The albino turned his black eyes on Boyd and flipped him off so closely that Boyd went cross-eyed. “She asked about Mackie. She earned the right.” He turned back to me and smiled. I bet he didn’t get a lot of chances to flip Boyd the bird.
“The songs,” I said, studying each man’s face. “Like the one he began when I came in? That was my song, wasn’t it?”
“The songs are what bind your ass here.” Hippie slumped farther in his chair. “They keep this world going. Once completed, the Mother will know everything about you.”
He said “the Mother” like one would say the Earth, or the World, or God. I swallowed hard.
“When the murder ballad is complete, the poster will be drawn. Your name-your true name-will be printed across the bottom.”
The Asian cut in. “And once Mother knows everything about you-”
“She can draw from your energy reserves at will.” Hippie pursed his lips as he studied his cards, finally folding. “She don’t even have to wait for you to lose, if she don’t want. Basically, we’re all here on borrowed time.”
So our powers literally fueled this world. We were energy. Little power plants with beating hearts. I fingered my chips idly, back and forth, until the one I’d won from the Asian caught my eye. His name was printed on one side, Shen, and his star sign and Zodiac troop was on the other.
“Pisces of Light?” I asked, twirling it absently, noting it because we’d been missing ours the entire time I’d been with my troop. I saw from Hippie’s chip that he was a Capricorn and-
“Damn you!” My chair back and head cracked against the rough wooden floor and my vision went sparkly as Shen’s hands found my neck. Tinkling laughter, feminine and bright and amused, rang in the air.
“That was my secret to tell. My power!”
“Get off of her, Shen!” Bill yelled from behind the bar. “You’re wasting energy. Yours and hers.”
But he didn’t waste any of his in helping me.
“You bartered my power. You rendered it useless!”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” I choked out. Shen squeezed harder. Then suddenly he was gone, lifted so high in the air I was looking directly up at the soles of his shoes.
“She didn’t know, Shen,” Boyd said calmly, and sat him back in his seat.
“I could have won it back! Now it’s null! That part of me is voided out forever!”
“I’m sorry,” I added, sitting up. I really was. I knew how I’d feel if someone had just nullified a power of mine. “I-I’ll pay you back.”
“One of your chips!” he yelled, spittle raining down on me. “My pick!”
“No.” I didn’t want to give him that, but I felt bad about the loss. I looked at the dealer. “Can I give him someone else’s chip?”
Boyd scratched his head. “No one’s ever asked that before.”
“Because no one’s that stupid,” Tripp said, and chuckled darkly.
“No. Hers alone. It’s only fair.” Shen crossed his arms. The other men nodded.
“Fine.” I wasn’t going to win this argument. I’d just have to win the hand. I smirked at Tripp as I found my feet. “Any other ground rules before we resume the game?”
“Yes,” Shen yelled, still angry, though he was already rifling through my chips. He palmed a chip before I could see which he’d taken. Ungrateful friggin’ Pisces. “Keep your hole shut!”
I sat again and counted my powers, unable to figure out what was missing since I didn’t even know everything I’d had, but from Shen’s smug expression, and the sudden interest in his pile, I knew I’d just lost something big.
Preoccupied with this, and really feeling the relentless heat, it was unsurprising when I also lost the next hand. To be fair, it was probably just bad luck-Hippie had the next best hand and he didn’t win either-but Tripp’s satisfied expression as he flipped my two original chips between his fingers irritated me, like he was rubbing raw a patch of my skin. Why couldn’t it have been anyone but him?
“What are you going to do with those?” I asked, wondering what I was missing without those triangles.
“Same as anyone. I’m going to buy something with it.”
I realized then that we were like a bunch of magpies hoarding our goods, scavenging from others, and pillaging whatever we could. Some things didn’t change, I thought, with a slow shake of my head. No matter what world you lived in.
“Bill,” he called out, without looking away from me. “Kindly call up to Solange and see if she’ll accept my company for the evening?”
“Miss Solange hasn’t taken your calls in…a while, Tripp.” He’d barely kept from referencing the time again, and I wondered why. And asking a working girl if she was willing to accept your company? Another mind-boggling, interworldly twist.
“Well, now I have something she might want.”
I swallowed hard. Bill nodded at Boyd. He stared straight ahead at the wall, then his eyes rolled. “Hold, please.”
And those eyes kept on rolling. Actually they spun, tiny globes that refracted light as they whirled faster and faster. His eyelids pulsed with the movement and his lips began to move, almost like an incantation, though from the way they paused-as if waiting for reply-I recognized it as his side of a conversation. Sure enough, a few seconds later the spinning slowed, he blinked his irises into focus, and tilted his head at Tripp. “Go on up.”
The Shadow agent pushed back his chair, and pulled at his belt buckle, though there was no way it could rise beneath the girth of his belly. I clenched my teeth when he resumed flipping my chips between his fingers, whistling as his boots sounded hollowly over the scarred wooden floor. He was moving again in frames, herky-jerky, like a badly cut movie.
“Enjoy your soiled dove,” I snapped.
He faced me without my seeing him pivot. “Enjoy your drink.”
Fear streamed through me, washing right over my face so that Tripp laughed as he headed toward those stairs. I reached out to stop him, but my arm was heavy and he was gone too quickly. Flying up the stairs and whizzing to the right before I could even open my mouth. Oh my God. The drink.
The others hadn’t sped up, I realized now. I had slowed down. I looked down at my still brimming-my ever-brimming-glass.
Solange, I thought as color and light spilled again into the hallway above. Tripp’s shadow elongated, then snapped as the door swung shut behind him. No matter what, I had to remember that.
I didn’t know how long I sat there, staring, but I gradually became aware of everyone watching me. I no longer had any sense of time, but I met all their gazes one by one-Shen’s still-malevolent one, Hippie’s understanding one, the albino, calculating, and finally the dealer’s. Boyd merely gave me a professional nod, his spinning eyes still once again.