“What happened? You see something?” Joe asked excitedly.
“No—no . . . nothing,” Nat lied. For a moment, the casino had disappeared and through the hole in the stone, all she could see was blue water, shimmering and clean. She peered into it again. There it was. Blue water.
That wasn’t all. Upon closer inspection she saw there was more, an image of a charted course, a jagged line between obstacles, a way forward, through the rocky and whirlpool waters of the Hellespont Strait.
The stone contains the map to Arem, the doorway to Vallonis, the voice murmured reverently.
This was why the voice had led her to New Vegas, to the Loss, and to Joe. It had facilitated her escape, it had brought her freedom, and it was relentlessly pushing her forward.
Come to me.
You are mine.
It is time we are one.
“There’s nothing,” she told Joe.
His shoulders slumped. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s just a fake.”
She closed her fist around it, unsure of what would happen next, afraid of what she’d do if Joe asked for it back and hoping that he wouldn’t.
She stared down the casino boss. The monster in her head was seething. What are you waiting for! Take it and run! Kill him if he stops you!
“Give it to me,” she whispered, and somehow she knew he would do as told.
Joe flinched as if she’d hurt him. “Keep it,” he said finally, and walked away from her quickly.
Nat leaned against the wall in relief, glad for Joe’s sake that he had given it freely.
Later that evening she was awoken by the sound of a scuffle. Joe lived two rooms down from her, and she heard them—military police? Casino security? Bounty hunters? Whoever had come had kicked open his door and was taking him from his bed. She heard the old man begging, screaming and crying, but no one came to his aid. No neighbors dared to peer down the hallway, no one even asked what the matter was. Tomorrow no one would talk about what happened either, or what they had heard. Joe would simply be gone, and nothing more would be said. She huddled in her thick blankets as she heard them tearing his room apart, throwing open closet doors, upending tables, looking . . . looking . . . for something . . . for the cold blue stone that she now held in her hand?
If they had found Joe, it wouldn’t be long before they found her as well.
Then what? She could not look back, she had nothing to go back to, but if she kept moving forward . . . She shuddered, and her mouth tasted of ashes and cinder.
She held the stone in her hand. The map to Arem, doorway to Vallonis.
From the window, she saw them take Joe away in a straitjacket, and she knew what awaited her if she stayed. They would send her back to where she came from, back to those solitary rooms, back to those dark assignments.
No. She could not stay. She had to leave New Vegas, and soon.
What are you waiting for?
4
HIS MOTHER HAD BEEN A SHOWGIRL. One of the prettiest in the business, his dad had liked to say, and Wes was sure he was right. Dad had been a cop. They were good people, fine citizens of New Vegas. Neither of them was still alive, each succumbing to the big C years ago. Cancer was a disease that was a matter of when, not why, and his parents had been no exception. But Wes knew they had died long before; they were empty shells after what happened to Eliza. His little sister whom no one could save.
He had his parents to thank for his good looks and his sharp wits, but not much else. As Wes walked away from the four-star meal, he was angry with himself for turning down Bradley’s offer, but angrier that it was the only avenue open to the likes of him. He could starve, he had starved before, but he hated the boys going hungry. They were the only family he had left.
When he was little, his mother would make him tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. It didn’t happen often—she worked late nights and wasn’t usually awake when he was home from school. But once in a while, she would appear, last night’s makeup faint on her cheeks, smelling of perfume and sweat, and she would turn on the stove and the smell of butter—real butter, she always insisted they save up for it—would fill their small house.
The sandwich would be gooey on the inside and crisp on the outside and the soup—thin and red—was tart and flavorful, even if it was from a can. Wes wondered if he missed his mother or those sandwiches more. She had hid her disease from them, beneath the makeup. She had worked until the end, and one day, had doubled over, vomiting blood backstage. Dead in a matter of days.
Dad had tried to keep it together for a while, and his girlfriends—cocktail waitresses with outlaw accents, the occasional lap-girl from the clubs—(his mother would never have approved, she was a performer, a dancer, not a cheap grab-and-grope-girl) had been kind to Wes, but it was never the same.
When his father died in hospice, a shriveled twenty-nine-year-old man, Wes was orphaned.
He was nine years old and alone.
The world had ended long before the snows came, his father liked to say. It had ended after the Great Wars, ended after the Black Floods, the Big Freeze only the latest catastrophe. The world was always ending. The point was to survive whatever came next.
Wes had promised his boys work, had promised them food, had promised them they would eat tonight. He had also promised himself he would never go back there, never do anything so stupid and dangerous again. But there he was. Back at the death races, so named because to drive one of the beat-up jalopies in the game was to risk everything. The tracks ran through the carcasses of old casinos on the street level. The cars were patched-up wrecks with souped-up engines, although once in a while they were able to find an old Ferrari or a Porsche with an engine that could still zoom.
“Thought you said you were done,” said Dre, the gangster who ran the track, when he saw Wes.
“Things change,” Wes said grimly. “How much?”
“Ten if you win, nickel if you place. Nothing if you don’t.”
“Fine.” He’d always been good at being fast. He could drive fast, he could run fast, he even talked fast. In a way, it was a relief to do something that came easily to him.
Wes got in a car. No helmet, no seat belt. No rules except to try to stay alive, to try not to crash into one of the walls, or into the glass panels, or to flip off the ice onto another car. The cars were named for the great racehorses of old. Ajax. Man o’ War. Cigar. Barbaro. Secretariat. He looked up at the boards that would broadcast the race to the OTB network—his odds were low and he felt gratified at that, that the bookies remembered him, that they bet that he would live. When the checkered flag was raised, Wes revved up the engine and flew down the course.
The course took him past the city’s relics, the Olden Ugg, Rah’s, and R Queens, ending on the corner where the neon cowboy waved his hat.
There were a few cars ahead of him, and Wes decided to keep up with the pack, make his move on the final round, best not to be the lead car—somehow the lead always ended up in fourth place. Finally, it was time. Only one more car in front of him. The yellow flag was flying, meaning to use caution; the ice was probably more slippery than usual. He slammed the gas pedal and muscled his way to the lead. The other driver saw it coming and tried to block his way, but his wheels slipped on the ice and his car slammed against Wes’s, sending both of them against the wall. Wes’s car scraped the ice on its right wheels, and flipped up once, twice, and he hit his head on the roof and fell back to his seat with a crash. The other car was a fireball at the end of the lane, but since his own car was still running, Wes gunned the engine and the car reared up and shot across the finish line.