Jordan steeled himself. One last deck that he had touched lay in the basket. He must not go beyond that. He needed a big finish.
He won moderately, allowed himself to be bid up, then dropped out of a hand Luis won. Luis had just enough chips remaining to stay at the table. Carroll was in a good position to see everything except the dealer's hands and Marion's. Now was the time for Jordan to strike.
He used a tiny trickle of power to cause the ace of hearts to be ignored, then to stick to the underside of Marion's arm as she leaned over the table to watch. She never noticed. It was prepared.
Jordan went up against Len, knew this was the hand he wanted. Perfect. He went all in against Len, who had no choice but to match him though he still had a stack of chips in reserve. Straight. Straight flush. When Len won the next hand, Jordan showed that his hand would have won but for the missing ace, which Marion was holding.
"There's no way to assume you would have been dealt the ace of hearts," she protested.
"There certainly is no way for me to have been dealt the ace of hearts if you were concealing it, madam," Jordan said.
"You think I did that on purpose?" she asked, with horrified realization. "I would never cheat."
"Sure looks like it to me, lady," Luis said.
Jordan turned to the dealer. "This game is a farce. I believe that I would like my money back. Who knows how long this has been going on this evening?
"How long what has?" Len demanded. He was not the openly emotional person his wife was, but he flared like an ember that had been poked. "Are you calling my wife a cheater?"
"Since you won on a hand that depended on the missing card your wife was holding, I would call it collusion," Jordan said, his eyes burning. "I want my stake returned to me."
Len lifted his chin pugnaciously. "You can't have it. I won that money! You lost it. That's poker!"
"Gentlemen!" the dealer said, looking terrified. She held up her hands. "Please, give me a moment."
The young woman retreated to the end of the room with her cell phone. She spoke in low tones at length to the person on the other end of the line. Her eyes filled with tears. Jordan heard her voice break. She wiped her face before she returned and managed, with some effort, to regain her composure.
She sat down at the table and smiled at them.
"Would you like to take a break, madam and gentlemen?" she asked.
"I think that would be a good idea," Marion huffed. Her pale cheeks sported red spots over the cheekbones. She sprang up and marched as far away from the others as she could and stood glaring at them. Len joined her. He could not look at anyone. Jordan stood with Carroll and Luis by the window. The dealer remained at the table, guarding the cards.
Within minutes, a well-dressed black man named Jerome arrived. He went to the dealer's side. The girl blurted out her story in a whisper. Jordan, the only one who could hear, was impressed by her accuracy and powers of recall.
Jerome was of interest. Jordan felt dragon blood in him. He hoped that his own dragon blood was concealed enough by strong magic not to be detected outright. Jerome left the table and came toward the men with his hand out.
"I am sorry you folks didn't have a good a time as you should have," he said. "It seems clear that the, er, friendly nature of the game was ruined. I've thought about it hard, and I think that the only fair thing to do, folks, is to return your original stakes to you. With a 10 percent premium, on the house. What do you say?"
"But I won that money fair and square!" Len said. "I should keep it."
"I beg to differ," Jordan said, coldly. Inwardly, he was shouting for joy. "I want satisfaction. I did not know I would be sitting down with practiced con artists."
"I been playing with these people a long time," Luis said, sneering at Len. "I don't like cheaters. I don't care what you think you can get away with. I'm in for your deal, Jerome."
"Thank you, Mr. Serafina," Jerome said. Carroll murmured that he agreed, too. Jordan, with a great show of reluctance, nodded his consent. Jerome took the money out of the bank under the table. The dealer handed him her notebook of the original stakes. Jerome counted it out to them, then added extra money from his own wallet.
Jordan accepted forty-four thousand dollars, then peeled off a pair of hundreds and put them down in front of the dealer.
"No reason for you to take a loss because of them," he said, tilting his head toward the unhappy Canadians.
"Yeah, good idea, Jordan," Luis said. He added a couple hundred of his own. "Buck up, sweetie. You didn't do anything wrong. C'mon and have a drink with me, Jordan. You, too, Carroll. I know a place with the best cocktails."
"Thank you," Carroll said. His smooth forehead displayed one horizontal fold of pleasure at having the money he had lost returned. "You're on."
It was the fairest outcome. No one was happy with the arrangement but Jordan, and that glee was entirely inward. No one was at a loss except for the house, but they all felt as if advantage had been taken of them. The three men gathered up their belongings and went to stand in the elevator bay. The suite door stood open only yards from them. Luis shook his head with disapproval as he punched the DOWN button.
As they waited, with his heightened senses, Jordan listened to Jerome. The black man had held back the Canadian couple for a private chat.
". . . I am sorry to tell you that under the circumstances, you won't be admitted to another game in our operation."
"But we came here to play poker," Marion insisted.
Jerome was patient and polite, but obdurate. "I suggest you try the casino, ma'am. I have no way of knowing for sure what happened here, but it just can't happen again. I appreciate that you came to visit us today. I'm very sorry."
"I'll report you! What you're doing is illegal!"
"Hypocrite," Luis muttered. "She was okay for it to be illegal when she was winning."
Jerome knew it, too, but he didn't throw it in her face. "The cops know about us, ma'am. But go ahead if you want. We can file countercharges. I have witnesses. What would you like to do?"
Marion didn't say another word. She stormed out of the suite with Len in her wake like an unhappy water-skier. She paced back and forth at the edge of the elevator bay. Jordan felt the tension in the air as thick as honey. The Canadians found it too uncomfortable to wait with the others who had accused them. Marion threw open the stairway door and stomped down. Len, with a glare at Jordan, followed her out.
Jordan assumed that McCandles would ensure that none of the five players would ever meet again over a table, but how many of them would return to play again in a McCandles-sanctioned game? Few, he was sure, if the conversation over cocktails with Carroll and Luis was anything to go by.
After an hour in a quiet club on Royal, he left the two men still commiserating, and returned to the Royal Sonesta.
His colleagues glanced up as he appeared in the doorway of the Mystic Bar. He spotted their energy signatures at once and made his way to them.
"How did it go?" Rebecca asked.
"Perfectly," Jordan said, with a smile. He raised a long finger. The cocktail waitress bustled toward him, the tiny tray balanced on her hand. "It was almost too easy."
Once he had given his order, he gave them details of the game. "I had hoped for a better opponent, but it didn't matter. The outcome was all that counted. Too bad that Griffen himself did not come."
"We have not caused enough trouble to bring out the man himself," Peter said.
"Soon enough," Winston Long said. "But we want to bankrupt him first, then disgrace him. If players believe that they are coming to games where they will deliberately be fleeced, he will lose all his business. Then we can retake this city."
The waitress placed a brandy glass in front of Jordan and withdrew discreetly. Jordan raised it to each of his colleagues.