Wings Over Bedlam

With that, we left the Ladies’ and got down to business. We snagged a couple of walking-around drinks from one of the side bars and made the circuit again, playing the ‘bad influence’ card. We’d both pretty much loaded up on sparkle-stuff again (really, now that I think about it, this stuff being hot is the ONLY reason why Stavrel would have these stalls here), and I’d picked up a NetPlex (hey, I enjoy good personal electronics as much as Ace does!), the latest CineSpex™, a $500 wallet (I tell you, the leather was as soft as butter!), a high quality pocket multi-tool (it’s a guy thing), two $3.5K gold pocket watches with chains, a few chain ornaments AND a $5K Rolex©, oh, and that letter opener that Tinjo spotted, when I saw the first iceberg in our little ocean cruise. “Oh crap.”

“What’sa matta?” Tinjo asked. I subtly jerked my head in the direction of the golden gate. There, standing with a group of new arrivals, looking sort of like something that just stepped out of an old cartoon, was an anthroform horse, specifically, a tawny palomino with long golden blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, who was standing up on his hind hooves and was wearing a nicely cut evening suit. In other words, it was Ed ‘the Horse’ Post, the Bijou’s resident war hero. Ed is a Caprine, like Jogun, only he’s got a major case of what’s called ‘Theriocephalism’, which is MedGeek for ‘he’s got a head like an animal’. Most of the ‘Returned Races’ (where we were all this time, who knows?), have a few cases. Weres more’n most of the others, but even Avians got a bird-head here and there, though just normal heads with beaks are a little more common. Ed got the ‘Minotaur’ deal, only instead of a bull’s head, he got your basic horse’s head. Which happens more in Asians than other races, but still, Ed’s the only horseface in Bedlam, so he’s ‘The Horse’. What a shock. Ed grew up tough- hey, with a head like that, it was either get tough or let people hitch you up to a wagon- and the second he graduated from high school, he joined the Army. He did two hitches, but when he came out, he very pointedly didn’t say anything about what he did in the service. There are three kinds of guys who won’t bend your ear about what they did in the Army or Navy: paper pushers, Spooks, and Special Forces. There’s no way that they made The Horse a paper pusher, and he wasn’t in long enough to be a Spook. So, the generally accepted wisdom in the Bijou is that Ed spent his fair share of time jumping out of planes doin’ things we don’t need to know about, and WAY more’n his share of time training under conditions that would make JOB weep.

The betting is running pretty 50/50 as to whether Ed fought for the Chinese or the Indians in the Big Brawl. Tons of Special Forces types went on ‘sabbatical’ and headed north to Canada to hire on for ‘Security Services’ that provided ‘Security’ for the Indians. And just as many went south to Mexico to do pretty much the same for the Chinese. It was a huge mess, either way; damn, I am so glad we didn’t get directly involved in that.

After he mustered out, The Horse came back to Bedlam (hey, it’s not like there was a lot of the Atlantic Seaboard left to head out to) and did the ‘I’m out of the service, so NOW what do I do?’ thing for a bit. He got a few offers to, ah, ‘apply his military expertise within a civilian context’, and he’s been pretty much doing that, while he figures out what he’s gonna do for real. Leastways, that’s what he says. The point being, that the Horse is your basic freelance tough guy. He’s a right guy, as legbreakers go, but there’s no way that he’s got the gelt to hang out in places like the Apex on his own dime.

“Oh Crap! The Horse!” Tinjo gulped, “What’s HE doin’ here?”

“Working,” I said with a ‘DUH!’ The Horse was there with five others, two guys who were pretty plainly muscle, two more guys who could be players, either partners or a boss and his main guy, and this one Marilyn Monroe-wannabe blonde in a long draping red strapless ‘Gee, I never saw this in ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’’ dress, complete with the pink opera gloves. The blonde gave me the creeps for some reason. She was just a little too… oh, I dunno, too ‘oh, aren’t I just too sexy and fabulous for a loser like YOU?’ She just grated on me as she stood there simpering. Then she ‘walked’- or should I say slithered? Literally, folks. She was an ophidian, and her long tail showed out from the back of that long draping dress.

Yes, I have a problem with Ophidians. Hey, I’m an Avian, I have a problem with snakes. It’s hardwired in. And, NO, I’m not proud of it, and I try to work past it. Hey, Felix Weiderman is an ophidian, and, well, we don’t exactly get along, but we both make an effort to not get up in each other’s face. Hey, we both know that it’s not the other’s fault, and Felix is a reasonable sort- for someone who drags two-thirds of his body length across the ground.

“Fuck,” Tinjo said, but I don’t think that she was reacting to the blonde as she wriggled off. She had her iCom out and was about to make what I was guessing would be an all-associates call-out.

I snagged her hand before she hit the contact button. “No.” she gave me a ‘huh?’ look. “If they’re setting Jack up, we gotta assume that they’ve hacked his iCom, and if they’ve done that, then all our iComs are compromised. You find Denmar and have her warn Ace; I’ll find Leo and have him warn Bats. Then you find Jack, and I’ll try to find Lucky. We shut down the spang-hunt and settle for what we got.”

“But Jack-”

“We talk it out with Jack over Dinner and the Show.”

“But the Horse-”

“We don’t know that The Horse is here for US. Besides, if they were setting us up, they’d be pretty stupid to use a cannon we know by sight, right? And they’d be even more stupid to use a hitter who’s as recognizable as Ed is, right?” I jerked my head in the direction of the gate, where The Horse and Jogun were giving each other the Big Guy Stare Down. The Horse has maybe two or three inches on Jogun, but Jogun’s broader in the beam than Ed is, and, like I said, Jogun was wearing body armor under the monkey suit. “Besides, none of them are packing heat. Remember those security scanners we walked through? Odds are that Ed’s just doing Worf duty.”

“Worf duty?”

“Yeah, he’s the big threat that anyone who tries to pull anything has to take care of first; he takes the hit so his backup can take out the threat.”

“Yeah, Jinx, but still, Jack’s gotta hear about this.”

“Agreed, but we play it cool and round up the crew on the QT first. Then Cap’n Jack makes the call. That way, if it goes tits up, we can blame it on him.”

Tinjo gave me an odd look. “Does that glamour make you smarter?” That wouldn’t sting so much if it weren’t for the sneaking suspicion I’m getting that she might be right.

“Use your iCom to locate Denmar and Jack, and then shut it down,” I said, using mine to locate Jazz. “If we can use them to locate each other, so can the opposition. Frack. Lucky’s already off-line. We’ll just have to wing it. Oh, by the way, what table does Jack have? I want to order before I log off, so we can eat before the show.”

Tinjo gave me another off look and then skittered off to find Denmar. I found Leo in the Kilimanjaro Room- or, maybe I should say I found Jazz, ‘cause she was absolutely ruling the scene. The Kilimanjaro is the Apex’s disco, and Jazz was bopping around the floor, totally on fire, with the spotlight and every eye on her. I found Bats standing on the sideline, watching her with a ‘what’s going on here?’ look on his face. I tapped Bats on the elbow (I couldn’t reach his shoulder, not without being obvious) and gave him the VitIntel. He shut off his iCom and told me he’d meet us in the Everest Room- when he could pull Jazz off the floor without causing a scene.

Okay, Lucky was being a pain, but still, he was a bud (sort of), and I owed it to him to not leave him hanging when things might be shifting into ‘oh shit’ gear. He wasn’t in the Matterhorn Room, or anywhere else on the Third level. I don’t know why he’d head down to the Second or First level, but hey, this is Lucky we’re talking about here. I had checked out two of the lower rooms, when a voice over my shoulder almost made me jump out of my skin, “Looking for someone?”

I turned around. “YOU!”

Flynn grinned at me. “Well, you did promise that you’d look me up, once you cooled down.”

“NO, I said that I might look you up,” I hedged. Actually, I have no idea what I said. But that never slowed down any of the girls that I dated, so why should it slow ME down? “Just at the moment, I have to find Chumley, that lox I think you called him.”

“Oh,” he pouted, “And I thought that you had taste!”

“And I do!” I assured him. “I just have to tell him a little something, and then I have some friends that I’m joining for the show. But,” I adjusted the fit of his lapels slightly (no, I have no idea why; I just saw it in some movies, and it seems right for the moment), “where will you be after Jett Adore finishes her show?” I smiled at him encouragingly.

“I can respect a girl who honors her commitments,” he said pleasantly. “Just remember: you’ve just made a commitment to ME. Look for me in the Quiet Nook.” The Quiet Nook was one of those little side bars, where people could actually hear each other talk.

“It’s a date,” I purred. “But in the meantime, you wouldn’t have any idea where Chumley got to, would you? The idiot’s turned off his phone, and I can’t find him!” I finished muttering under my breath, “This is the last time I go on a mercy date, no matter where it is!”

Flynn racked his brain. “Have you tried the casino? It’s shielded against transmissions, for obvious reasons.” Like people signaling each other tips, or using a remote computer to rig various games.

“Casino?” I said ingenuously. “This place has a casino?”

“You gamble?”

“No.” I flashed a wicked grin. “But I DO play poker.”

“You’re bluffing,” he grinned back at me.

“Only at the card table, never in my personal affairs.”

“What say we get together over the card table, and see what I can bluff you out of?”

“mmayyyybe,” I drawled, “Just remember the first rule of the casino.” He raised an eyebrow. “No checks. Just cash. The Quiet Nook, after the show. Be There.” With that, I sashayed off. Then it hit me that I’d had just had more fun flirting with Flynn than I’d had on my last three real dates.

I waved that off. Well, let’s face it- Lucky would head straight for the casino the second that he slipped the leash. He probably figures that he can pull some variation on the gambit that it doesn’t matter how much he loses, as long as he wins occasionally. Which sadly hinges on him winning at least one time in seven, but Lucky’s luck at cards is on a par with mine at love. I could go get him in the casino and drag him out, but that struck me as counter-productive; we’d only draw attention that we really DON’T need to ourselves.

Oh well! Lucky is always carping about that he can handle himself and that we make a big deal out of nothing, when we say that he’s disaster prone. Let’s see how long it takes him to scream for help.

Just as I was internally justifying playing the ‘cold-ass bitch’ card to myself, I felt a cauld grue run down my spine, like Lucky’s patron saint was chastising me for leaving him to his richly-deserved fate. I carefully looked around and that icy chill turned into a block of ice in my stomach. Walking his way through the silver gate like he was the archangel Michael come to kick Lucifer out of heaven, was a tall thin hatchet-faced man with a trim salt-and-pepper beard wearing an old-fashioned black suit and a look of disdainful authority. He paused to let his two overgrown thugs, wearing matching black suits, catch up to him and nervously tug at the sixth finger on his left gloved hand. He looked around the lobby and overlooking me (thank you God!) he turned and went through the golden gate up to the top level, and barely even acknowledging that the door king was there, went up.

Jeez Louise, Six-Fingered Staretski!

Six-Fingered Staretski is a Named Wizard. And by ‘wizard’, I don’t mean that he’s just a magician; I mean that he’s a mage with power, and he knows things, like Glyphs of Power and True Names of Personages and heavy duty stuff like that. He can do, right off the cuff, things that I would need to study a month for, killing a ton of pixie dust and off at least three goblins to TRY. Six-Fingered Staretski has come through the Bijou a couple of times in the past few years: he did not leave joy, goodwill and glad tidings in his wake. He seems to respect Dr. Gabriel, the Bijou’s sort-of-Wizard-in-residence-kind’a, but who can really tell with wizards? Most Wizard-level mages, like Dr. Gabriel, or Granny Winters or Nick Scratch or Dr. Saturday or Suzy Midnight or Jake the Ghoul, all operate using a ‘persona’, y’know, like performers have a ‘Stage Persona’ that’s nothing like their real personality? Well, Wizards have entire looks and acts that they hide behind, so’s the others don’t know who they are or where they live or nothin’. Not Six-Fingered Staretski. He’s just out there bein’ his own bad self, which is pretty intimidating, when you think about it. The word is that Staretski is a front man for some big-time cabal of even more powerful wizards, which is why the other street-level wizards watch their Ps and Qs around him.

Then again, now that I think about it, the bit about fronting for even more powerful wizards could just be a mind-shuck, and his ‘Six-Fingered Staretski’ act could just be an act, like Nick Scratch or Granny Winters. I mean, you do not get to be a name wizard in this town by being simple.

As Staretski disappeared up the stair, the floor let out a collective breath of relief, and my heart started beating again. The only good thing about being anywhere near Six-Fingered Staretski is that I have absolutely nothing that he wants.

Like a lot of people, I waited a good five minutes before going up stairs, just in case. When I got to the Everest Room, I was quietly gratified when the room maitre ‘d told me that my party was waiting, and they’d been holding my order of Cornish Game hen for me. Nice to see that someone’s on the ball!

Jack had a great table that was close, but not too close to the stage. He had a bottle of a very expensive looking white wine on a cradle on the table. Tinjo was flirting happily with Jack, coyly feeding him hors d’oeuvres. So, despite her worries in the powder room, it was funtime in TinJack Land. And since it was funtime… I cleared my throat theatrically, and gave Jack a kiss on temple. I swear, Tinjo growled at me as I snuggled up against him and dangled one of the gold watches in front of him as a gift. Jack was feeling so good that my Cornish Game hen had arrived before it clicked with him that he’d kissed the neck of a guy. Tinjo managed to keep a giggle at Jack’s expression in when he realized (barely).

Jack gave me a ‘ha, ha, very not-funny’ scowl and quickly got off that topic. “So, Wings, Tinje tells me that you been warting up again. So Ed the Horse showed up; so what? He’s professional muscle. He’s probably bodyguarding some guys having some sort of meet in those private rooms that Stavrel charges two arms and a leg for. Besides, with these disguises that you whipped up, the chances of him recognizing any of us are pretty much zilch.”

“Yes, but the only reason that Six-Fingered Staretski wouldn’t be able to see through these disguises is that he had his eyes closed,” I pointed out.

“Six-Fingered Staretski?” that knocked some of the sass out of him.

“Newsflash, Fearless Leader: when I was looking for Lucky, I saw Six-Fingered Staretski come in.”

“Yer sure that it was Staretski?”

“He came in with everything but the ‘Darth Vader’ march playing in the background.”

“Wings? Is Staretski really that powerful?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But, Jack, the real thing about Staretski is his bit where he’s supposed to be untouchable, because he’s connected. We don’t know that he’s really that well connected. We don’t know that he’s really got some cabal of wizards backing him. And even if he does, we don’t know that those wizards are as connected as Staretski makes out. They could exist, they could not exist, they could be pumping up their own rep by having a *ahem!* ‘known’ badass like Staretski fronting for them. How do you really know, until you call Starekski’s bluff?”

Tinjo let out a tisk of disappointment. “Yer overthinkin’ it again, Wings. Staretski’s connected. We know this, ‘cause of what Dr. Gabriel did when Staretski came into the Bijou, Dr. Gabe’s turf, and sicced those creepy shadow-things a’his on poor Mr. Jacobs. Dr. Gabe made Staretski pay Mrs. Jacobs the were-gelt, but if Staretski weren’t seriously plugged in, then Dr. G would’a just squished him like a bug!”

“Yer wartin’ up again, Worry-wart,” Jack grinned. “So Staretski’s here; okay, that’s a deal, but not a big deal. If Staretski was gaming us somehow, we’d never see him comin’. Wizards can just ghost in like shadows, y’know and just pop out’a left field. But you said that he just came in, all big’n bad, and let EVERYONE see him. I’ll lay you odds that he did that just to put the wind up Stavrel’s ass, so he can put the screws to him. Hey, that might be why Stavrel’s pulling this whole scam, to get shuck of Staretski; he makes off with a few MIL, but Staretski gets to take this glitzy nightclub, so’s he won’t work that hard tryin’ to track Stavrel down.”

I looked Jack hard in the eye and asked, “Jack, who are you doing business with?”

Jack paused, gave me a ‘huh?’ look, and said, “You don’t know, and it’s best all around that you don’t.”

“Jack,” Tinjo said with a tart smile and an ‘I’m your girlfriend and I own a piece of you’ edge to her voice, “who’re you doin’ business with?”

Jack wilted a bit and admitted, “I’m not really sure.”

“WHAT?”

“Look, the guy I cut the deal with is just a cut-out, he don’t really know who he’s workin’ for either.” Tinjo and I shared a ‘Mother Mary, full of grace, we are SO SCREWED’ look. “Hey, I am NOT stupid!”

“Keep sayin’ that, Jack, maybe someone will believe you someday.”

“I told the front guy that this job was too big for my usual crew, but I knew a crew of out-of-towners, four guys, who were lookin’ to pick up a stake for when they hit Philly on their way to see what they could scare up in the Big Apple recovery scene. Four Pounders. With the mask spell that Wings put up, these guys will assume that you two, Denmar and Leo are just some local broads that they picked up. So, if it goes screwy, they’ll come lookin’ for four pounders who’re on their way to the City of Brotherly Love. Not eight local birds.” Jack grinned at us, like he’d solved everything.

“And what if their plan needs four dead bodies?” Tinjo sniped.

“I got that covered.”

“What if Staretski’s involved? Your plan wouldn’t fool him for a second!”

“CHILL, Tinjo,” I cut in. Jack gave me another ‘huh?’ look. “It’s not as bad as it might be. I don’t think that Staretski’s involved. First of all, it’s not his style. Second, Jack’s right; if Staretski was gaming us, he’d come out of the clear blue at us, not announce himself the way he did. And third, I don’t think that Staretski’s planning to pull any major moves here. Staretski’s too far off his turf to make any serious trouble.”

“Like THAT would stop him?”

“Tinjo, I think that Staretski has a Chthonic bias-”

“Cha-WHAT-ic?”

“Chthonic. It means ‘of the Earth’, like dirt, soil, the ground? It also involves darkness, cold, death, fear, the Undead, matter, stability, and according to some, money. It’s one of the primal forces of magic. Y’know those shadow-fiends that Staretski used like attack dogs on Abe Jacobs? Check it out, they didn’t just roar up and tear Jacobs apart. No, first they spooked him, then they chased him, but it was only after he’d completely lost it that they actually attacked. I was there. I SAW it. They were feeding on his fear. So, darkness, cold, and fear: the shadow-fiends are chthonic. Given his… chilly… personality, I’d say that Staretski has a chthonic bias as well. And, according to the magic chat rooms that I’ve been cruising, Caprines also have a basic chthonic orientation, like we Avians have an Olympian connection. Caprines don’t do very well high up like this. Or, at least they’re stronger. It’s called ‘the Anteaus Principle’; the further away from the ground they are, the worse it is for them.” I paused. “I don’t know how Jogun copes…”

Jack gave me a disbelieving look. “You’re saying that you think that you can take Staretski, just because we’re sixty stories up?”

“Hell No!” I said, shocked that Jack would even say something like that! “Not just ‘No’, but HELL NO! Staretski’s a Wizard! I just dabble! I just think Staretski’s most likely first move would be to sic those shadow-fiends on us. We’re high enough up that I should be able to repel the fiends while the rest of you get away. And I have some packets of alchemical powders, so we’re not completely helpless. But the main thing will be to GET OUT as quickly as we can. Just keep Staretski’s goons of me and-”

“Goons?” Tinjo gleeped, “Staretski’s got goons?” ‘Goons’, at least in the way we’re using it, mean guys who’ve had minor spooks ‘grafted’ into them somehow, making them bigger, tougher, stronger, more aggressive, ruthless and totally loyal to their master. And yet, for all those benefits, you don’t hear about guys lining up to be turned into goons.

“Staretski had two big guys with him. If they aren’t goons, then we should call the zoo, and tell them that two of their orangutans have escaped.”

Jack gave me another hard look and asked exasperatedly, “What has gotten INTO you tonight, Wings? And what’s with the funky accent?”

“What’s the matter with my accent?” I demanded.

“You sound like one of them Quaker Hill girls!”

“Hey, you leave her alone, Jack!” Tinjo snapped.

Jack went ‘HER?’, but he was feeling too good to get into that. He very pointedly changed the subject. Looking around at the other tables, he asked, “So, Wings, did you find Lucky?”

“No. I tried looking for him with his iCom, but either the idiot turned it off for some reason, or he’s in the casino. And you know Lucky- he never even heard of a card game that he didn’t like.”

“Poor Sap,” Tinjo and Jack said in chorus. “Wait a minute,” Jack continued, “why would Lucky being in the casino mean that you couldn’t find him?”

“ah, Jack? The casino’s signal shielded? You know, to keep people from cheating by having a friend peek at the other players’ cards, or sneaking a really powerful computer with an odds-factoring or card-counting program?”

“The Casino? Is signal-shielded?” The look on Jack’s face would have been hilarious, if not for the fact that we were all on the spot.

“Jack?” Tinjo asked in that tone that said that she was this close to clobbering him, “By any chance did your fool-proof plan for gettin’ out of this somehow involve having a computer- like that computer visor that Ace damn near sleeps with on- inside the casino?”

Jack tried to pull his cool back around him like a sweater, but it didn’t quite come off. “Nah. Just a Plan D that I didn’t really wanna pull anyway.”

Tinjo and I shared an ‘Oh God, we are SO screwed’ look. Excluding Jack and focusing on Tinjo, I said, “Okay, we need an exit plan. We still go with the exchange, it would cause too many problems if we didn’t and, hey, we need the money! But we need a way to get out of here, when things go belly up.”

“IF things go belly up,” Jack corrected me, looking a little miffed.

“WHEN things go belly up,” Tinjo corrected him. “You got anything, Jinx?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s very basic, very simple, very barebones, but it should work.”

“Simple is good,” Tinjo assured me, “Simple works. You takin’ notes, Jack?”

Jack just gave us the ‘not-funny ha-hah’, and I continued. “Friday, when I salted the goblin in here, I landed on one of the upper balconies and snuck in the hard way, ‘cause I figured that they’d have Pigeon Baffles on the dining terraces.”

“Well, sure, every place that has balconies and like that has Pigeon Baffles these days.”

“To keep out pigeons and other riffraff with wings- like US,” I nodded. “But get this: I planted the can on the dining terrace of the Olympus Room- and I spotted that they’re using an old Wayland-Yutani™ screen.” Both Tinjo and Jack gave me ‘and your point IS?’ looks. “The newer systems both keep things in and out,” I explained with a grin, “but the old systems only work ONE WAY: they keep things OUT. There’s nothing keeping anything IN.”

Jack perked right up. “You mean, we can just LEAVE?”

“Sure! Leo’s wearing his ‘keep up’ Sportwingz™ just in case, so that shouldn’t be a problem. There are some killer updrafts around this building; we catch one of those and we are OUT OF HERE! And it’s too cold and blustery out tonight, so I doubt if there’ll be anyone out on the balcony to see us leave. And, I’ve got a few powders that should help, and the air elemental, just in case. Heck, I even brought along some Bouncie-balls®.”

“You brought along Bouncie-balls?”

“Hey, when you need a Bouncie-ball-”

“-you NEED a Bouncie-ball,” Jack finished for me.

“BUT, I can only swear to the terrace on the Olympus Room,” I warned them. “Each terrace would have its own screening system; they might be W-Y screens, they might not.”

“And checking out each and every terrace and finding their control panel would just be asking for someone to spot us and ask awkward questions,” Jack mused. “We could just pop open the hatch and switch off the screen, but that would be like leaving graffiti sayin’, ‘we were a bunch of Avians and we left THIS way’. Our big ace-in-the-hole is the fact that nobody knows that we’re Avians, and the guys that we’re dealin’ with think that we’re a crew of out-of-towners. We blow the fact that we’re Flyboys, and the rest of it sort of falls apart. So, we gotta split out’a the Olympus Room.”

“Yeah, but all of us running out onto the Olympus Room’s terrace and then disappearing? Won’t that pretty much be the same thing?” Tinjo pointed out. “I mean, we could just go one or two at a time, and hope that nobody gets caught, but-”

“NO,” Jack said, brooking no guff whatsoever. “We don’t DO that. Period.”

“He’s right, Tinge,” I said grudgingly. “There are things you just don’t DO to your crew. Not even Lucky. Leaving anybody behind is just not in the cards. Besides being a punk move, it’s a stupid move: if anyone of us gets caught, we’re all as good as rumbled. We either all get out clean or we all start running as fast as we possibly can. For once, the right thing to do IS the smart thing to do.”

Jack nodded with a smug ‘see what I gotta put up with from this woman?’ smirk. “Okay Wings, yer on a roll; any ideas?”

I thought hard for a moment, and the penny dropped. “Yeah. Dig it: there’s an emergency stair that opens onto the terrace. It’s alarmed, so when we go out onto the terrace, we push open the door, so they’ll assume that we went down the stairs to get away, instead of over the ledge. And if you’re being followed and you need to get fancy, you head downstairs and go into that stairwell- it’s along the north-east side of the building- and go UP, instead of DOWN. Since the logical assumption is that you’re going down, as to get out of the building, that’s the way they’ll go. And, of course, there are all sorts of twists and tweaks that we can come up with as the situation calls for it.”

Jack raised both eyebrows with appreciation. “Not bad…” he admitted. “A little rough around the edges, a little stiff… but it works, and that’s what’s important.”

“Ah!” I sighed blithely, fanning my face, “Praise from the master! But I won’t let it go to my head, rally I won’t!”

“Jinx, if you shove that stick back up your ass when you go back to bein’ Wings, I’ll break it over yer head,” Tinjo smirked.

“BUT I still think that yer both making a big deal out’a nuthin’,” Jack continued as he regally poured himself a glass of the white. “The big threat is Staretski, and he’s not gonna pull anything here t’night.”

“OH?” Tinjo challenged him, “WHY?”

Jack just kicked back, smiled, and pointed at the stage.

The house lights went down and the stage lights went up. A figure in a sleek long black strapless dress, lace shawl and red satin opera gloves slinked up to the old-fashioned standing microphone. You could tell that she was lovely, with large twinkling blue sloe eyes and smirking luscious red lips (despite the fact that you couldn’t see her face through that thick veil on that wide-brimmed hat that she always wears). We applauded and she blew us a vivacious kiss.

Suzy Midnight has made the scene.

Suzy Midnight is not merely a Named Wizard of no small power and wisdom; she is not merely the undisputed queen of St. George’s Square and immediate environs. Suzy Midnight is the coolest of cats, the hippest of hipsters, the swinging-est of swingers, the rockingest of rockers, the jazziest of jazbos, the wittiest of wits, the trendiest of setters, the movin’est of shakers, the tastiest of makers, the leadingest of lights, the bonniest of vivants, the highest of lifers, the most bemusing of muses, the most cultured of pearls, the Innest of the In Crowd, the Furthest of the Out there, the Belle of the Beaux Arts, the Beau Ideal of the Slightly Surreal, the Mary Poppins of Pop Culture, the Phantom of the Rock Opera, the Fairy Godmother of Organized Art, the Keeper of the Keys to Stardom, and a Whiz of a Wiz if ever a Wiz there was.

Suzy is an artist in the volatile medium of artists and the good life. When the cultural elite scattered from New York City right before the mega-tsunami hit, most of them either headed north to Boston or south to Philadelphia. But Suzy somehow shepherded a carefully selected assortment of top names, unappreciated geniuses, undervalued craftsmen, diamonds in the rough, promising newcomers and like that in the various arts, and- far more importantly- also an equally carefully selected and talented assortment of managers, agents and other artistic enablers to Bedlam. Take this seething mixture, shake vigorously with terror and loss, add a dollop of money (Suzy won’t say where she got it, and nobody asks) and pour into the St. George’s Square area, where the rents were cheap (then). Result? A minor golden age that made people forget all about that ‘La Vie Boheme’ thing in the Bijou.

This minor golden age went a long way towards smoothing out the fiscal train wreck that losing much of the Atlantic Seaboard that way caused in the economy. Well, at least here in Bedlam. You should see what the other Bethlehem, the steel town, is like! Ewww! Since then, Suzy Midnight has been the Queen of the Scene. She is a blithe spirit, who pourest fourth her full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. That’s her story and she’s sticking to it. Suzy’s ability to gauge the potentials of an artist, project, group or scene are nothing less than (what else?) magical. When Suzy Midnight tells a director to replace the headliner with some fresh-faced hick from the sticks, that kid may go out there a youngster, but she comes back a STAR! When Suzy Midnight tells a painter in watercolors that he’d do better in oils, he flushes the watercolors. When Suzy Midnight tells a serious actor that he has the chops for comedy, he starts practicing his pratfalls. If Suzy Midnight tells a restaurateur that he’d do a better business just around the corner and down the street, then lease or no lease, he MOVES!

On the flip side, if Suzy Midnight says that you’re over, you’re over, and you’d better just pack it in while you’re ahead. And it’s no use trying to buck her, let alone get one over on her. All the named wizards have stories about them; it’s sort of their nature. Dr. Gabriel stories are cryptic, Six-Fingered Staretski stories are scary, Granny Winters stories are eerie, Jake the Ghoul stories are creepy, and Nick Scratch’s are just gruesome. But Suzy Midnight stories? Suzy Midnight stories are… amusing… Dig it: If you cross Suzy Midnight, not only will you fail, not only will you go down, not only will you be humiliated, not only will you know that it’s all your own damn fault, but you’ll have to listen to the excruciating details being read aloud in court while you’re being arraigned. And you’ll have to listen to your defense lawyer break down laughing as he’s trying to defend you. You’ll go to jail knowing that the stories will circulate while you’re inside and take on lives of their own. And when you get out, you’ll invariably be introduced with ‘Hey, you know that story? Well THIS is the poor schlub who-’

The point of all this being that it was almost a given that Midnight Suzy would be here tonight. The Apex is THE place to be (this month); where else would Suzy be? And Staretski’s just the kind of guy who, if he could get Suzy Midnight under his thumb, would, and he’d let everybody know that he had her that way. But he hasn’t. He’s sixty stories up, and in the place of power of another Named Wizard; if Staretski doesn’t mind his manners, then he isn’t wise enough to be a Wizard.

Suzy Midnight smirked at us and brought a cigarette to her lips, ignoring her veil. Hey, Smoking Laws are for ordinary mortals, not Suzy Midnight. She took a deep inhale and blew out a plume of smoke that turned into a swarm of fireflies that danced off into the darkness. Gripping the standing RCA ribbon microphone with a hand that was oddly unencumbered by a cigarette (what? Don’t you know there’s no smoking in nightclubs anymore?) Suzy greeted the crowd with a voice that was like honey on velvet, with just a splash of whiskey. She gave call-outs to the brightest lights and kidded her favorites. “But you’re not here to see little ol’ me,” she teased us, “you’re here to see JETT ADORE and the HOPELESS ROMANTICS!” The red curtain parted, revealing the band and Jett stepped forward, looking every inch the rocker chick in black leather jeans and a sleeveless white turtleneck, with her mop of tousled black hair tucked under a baggy denim flat cap, and her trademark 12-string electric guitar slung around her neck. Jett reached for the mike, but Suzy kept it long enough to add, “Jett’s going to play something new that she’s been working on, a little number called ‘Bedlam Nocturne’, that she’s going to record just as soon as she can get into the studio.” Jett startled and looked at Suzy like she didn’t know what she was talking about. Suzy kissed Jett on the cheek, set a cigarette lighter-sized recorder on the stool, and melted into the darkness just outside the spotlight. I fumbled for my iCom and set it to record (like a dozen other souls in the room); this was classic Suzy Midnight.

The word was that Jett was suffering through a hideous case of writer’s block, caused by a nasty romantic snarl, and either helped through it or crippled by slugging down a LOT of drugs and booze. She hadn’t been able to play anything that her fingers couldn’t already do on automatic for months. But now her thimble-covered fingers stampeded across those 12 strings like a herd of wild horses, and danced like the first day of Mardi Gras. It was a raw twangy sound that was a little skiffle, a little more rockabilly, a dash of acid, a hint of metal, and touch of jazz, but mostly pure ol’ raunchy ROCK! The drummer caught the backbeat and battered his skins like hail on a tin roof. Their melody man put aside the clarinet that he’d been holding for a sax and started to wail. Then the keyboardist and the base man and the side man caught the wind that was filling Jett’s sails and away they went.

Classically, nocturnes are slow, moody pensive pieces; Jett’s nocturne was a clattering run down city streets on a hot summer night, when the crowd of strangers does a dance of invitation and intimidation, a mad dash through traffic, chasing down life with equal parts hope, rage, joy and desperation, looking frantically for a dream in the vile intimacy of a dark alley. It was a Rhapsody in Blue for Bedlam, an ode to the City of the Mad, where you don’t have to be crazy to live here (but it helps). You couldn’t listen to it and not want to drag yourself through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, an angel-eyed hipster burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

After that, Jett launched into a classic woman’s lament, wondering how such a complete and utter piece of shit rat bastard could love her so tender, and how her foot itched to kick him out the door, even as her lips ached for one more kiss. Then she gave a harrowing description of how it felt to stand on a stage and be applauded when you know in your heart of hearts that you’re a total phony and poseur, dancing in Buddy Holly’s stolen shoes. Then she sang about how it feels to touch the very heights, but only just touch them, and then know that it’s all downhill from here, I fear (it’s all downhill from here, my dear). One man in the audience broke down crying (“I think I hit a nerve,” Jett cracked) She railed against the cruelty of the rich and powerful; she bemoaned the paradoxical futility and necessity of idealism; she gloated over trivial triumphs; she speculated on her chances with a new lover; there, right before our eyes, she embodied the Eternal Angry Teenager that IS Rock’n Roll.

She was rocking, but no roll lasts forever. After a little over an hour, she finished up with a Wagnerian crescendo that would have left her fingers bleeding, if not for those thimbles. Then she was finished, her energy and inspiration spent, she stood there drenched in sweat, and all that we could give her was applause. Jett looked out numbly at the audience, as though it was just now penetrating that we were real, and not a part of her fever dream. Then she spotted the recorder on the stool, and she dived for it like she’d been poisoned and that was the antidote. Hey, there’s no way that she could possibly remember all of that!

But Suzy’s red-gloved hand darted out of the darkness and snatched the recorder, just before Jett could reach it. In the gloom just outside the spotlight, you could just see Suzy Midnight’s mocking face (or at least the veil) giving Jett a ‘naughty naughty’ look, and her red glove wagging a finger. And that’s Suzy Midnight all over. Miss Suzy gives freely, with an open hand; but with the other, she demands her due, and that hand is made of iron, albeit clad in a glove of silk. Jett was gonna have to make some serious concessions to get that recorder, and there was no way that anyone who’d made a recording of their own (which probably would have been a much lower quality recording anyway) was gonna cross Suzy. Not so much that they were afraid that she could mess them over (though, God knows she could), as it was that they were afraid that Suzy might simply pass them by, when it was THEIR turn up on a stage with nothing to offer. People are afraid that most wizards, like Nick Scratch or Jake the Ghoul, will show up and piss on their parade; with Suzy Midnight, they’re afraid that she won’t show up, and there won’t BE a parade.

Wouldn’t you just know it? It’s both a definitive Suzy Midnight moment, AND an iconic moment in Rock history, something that’s gonna put the Apex on the music map for a lot longer’n it’ll really be open, and I’m there to see it- AND I CAN’T TELL ANYBODY ABOUT IT! NO bragging rights! NONE!

As I remembered that I’d only picked at my Cornish Game hen and went at it, the Hopeless Romantics dragged themselves off the stage. Hey, rocking that hard for a solid hour is hard work, mack. The house band took the stage, and they opened up the mike for anyone who wanted to try their luck, following up after THAT. Surprisingly, the game hen was pretty good, even if it was a little cool. It was a shame that the subtle savory taste was totally ruined by the bad taste that I felt in my mouth as that snake bitch in the red satin dress slithered up and took the mike. She gave the band a selection, and then turned to the audience. “HI,” she breathed, “I’m Lorelei…” And, seriously folks, it’s not a race thing, it’s a simple matter of common decency and taste, but I wanted to smack the bitch. Hell, Joe DiMaggio would’a smacked the bitch.

She launched into a set of lounge standards, and I gotta admit, she DID refrain from using ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’. And she could actually sing. Most Ophidians can. Not as well as Avians, mind you, but better than the run of the mill Pounder. And she was really working that dress with her snake hips.

Still, I DO think that she is in dire need of being disabused of the mistaken notion that her shit don’t stink.

She finished her set and slithered off the stage to healthy round of applause, which wasn’t bad, considering what she’d followed.

Then, out of left field, Denmar bustled up to our table and grabbed me by the hand. “C’mon, Tinge! It’s OUR turn!” I was halfway through pointing that Tinjo was over there, when Denmar yanked me out of my seat and practically dragged me up to the stage, with Tinjo skittering along after us, not quite getting what Denmar was up to. When we got up there, Denmar told the band, “Play ‘Angels dancing in the storm’.” Fortunately, the band’s playlist was pretty damned comprehensive, ‘cause ‘Angels dancing in the storm’ doesn’t get a lot of play. It’s a song that broke into the Top Ten for, like, ten minutes, about ten years ago. Tinjo and I know the words because Denmar loves this song. Or, more accurately, she loves what that song could have been; she thinks that the band that made it popular butchered it, and she’s been trying out variants on us ever since.

As we stood side by side clustered around the mike, looking out at the audience, my sole thought was, ‘this is gonna be a total disaster’. It’s not that I can’t sing, it’s just that, ‘Lorelei’ is obviously a trained singer, and we’re, well, NOT. And we’re singing a creaker like ‘Angels dancing in the storm’. This was gonna give the guys a club to beat me over the head with, like, FOREVER.

And then the magic hit us.

As it probably had for Jett Adore, the music just sort of slipped out of us and blew us along like a powerful wind (and for Avians, that’s a mighty potent analogy). Denmar sang the main part, but it wasn’t the treacly, vapid song that had made the rounds, it was the song that Denmar had been trying to dredge out of her unconscious for years, changing the words, cadence, phrasing and rhythm to turn it into an epic in rhyme. Tinjo set up a keening descant, and I started scatting a counter-beat, but it all just framed Denmar’s words. The band caught the tempo and started running with it. It was… it was like those few times in choir, when we lost ourselves in the hymns. It started like dancing in the clouds, but it ended like riding a thunderstorm.

The song ran its course and the audience applauded, but we still had the juice going. Denmar ran through a coy, playful, kittenish rendition of ‘Little Me’, with Tinjo and me backing her up. Tinjo tore it up with her big, brassy rendition of ‘Let’s Mix It Up!’ that was an open invitation to a flirtation or a dance, or a screaming argument, or a rumble, six of one, half a dozen of the other, and just fine by her, whichever way. Which would explain a lot about Tinjo’s relationship with Jack; an explanation that, all things equal, I was happier not having. When my turn at the mike came, I gave them a sultry smoky, purring version of ‘On the Prowl’ that divided the audience: half the men wanted to have me; the other half were scared to death of me. Half the women hated my guts; the other half wanted to BE me.

We got a much bigger applause than Lorelei did (tho not as big as Jett had gotten; I mean, get real), but we decided to obey that ancient Show Biz dictum: ‘Leave ‘em while you’re looking good’. Still, now I have a clue as to why, despite all the tsuris involved in Show Biz, performers keep jumping through hoops to get on stage in person. We stepped down from the stage jazzed on the applause and buzzing with the magic, which is my only excuse. Suddenly Suzy Midnight steps up and shakes our hands, one by one. “Lovely, absolutely wonderful!” she gushed, then she looked me straight in the eye, “Like Angels in Choir,” she purred like she was hinting at something. My buzz died like she’d swatted it as I felt her press something cold and hard into my hand.

I looked into my hand, and there was a large, square-cut green transparent stone that was just slightly too large to fit in the palm of my hand. It couldn’t be an emerald! It was too BIG! An emerald that size could buy this Building, all 60 stories of it! I looked up to ask Suzy what she thought she was doing, but she was already gone, like she’d melted back into the shadows. Goddamn Wizards!

I looked around for Suzy, but all that I saw was a small selection of eyes that weren’t watching me with appreciation. I had that prickly sense of danger that a gazelle feels when it gets wind of a lion. For some reason, Suzy Midnight had put me on the spot. I stepped up behind Tinjo before she could get to Jack’s table and whispered in her ear, “Tell everyone to stay the frack away from me. I’m on the spot. Don’t have time to explain. Just go through with the buy without me. I’ll get back to you once I’m off the spot.” Tinjo stiffened for a moment, but then she nodded. But then, Tinjo always was quick on the uptake. I walked past her, fished my bag off the back of my chair and sashayed right out of the Everest Room.

Hey, if you gotta go down, go down as a class act.

I almost instinctively sought refuge in one place that I knew those guys wouldn’t follow me: the Ladies’. Once I had some breathing room, I looked closely at the stone. It was huge. It was perfect. Why the hell had Suzy Midnight foisted this thing off on ME? After a minute to get my cool back, I fished out my iCom and used Ace’s Traumacheck add-on. It was an emerald all right: a SYNTHETIC emerald. And my good eye told me that it had a definite magical presence. But it couldn’t be an alchemically made emerald. This thing was too perfect; it had to have come from a lab. It was worth maybe a grand or two, just for the size. But synthetic corundum has little commercial value, and absolutely bupkiss magical value. Don’t ask me why, natural rubies, sapphires and emeralds have all sorts of magical properties, but synthetic ones are for crap. One guy online at the mage sites I subscribe to claims that it’s ‘cause they’re not ‘born of the Earth’, and all that hoodoo boo-hoo. Of course, there were magical gems of all sorts that were created when the big ones, like Yellowstone, Lake Toba, Valles Caldera, Long Valley or Mt. New Madrid blew and they’re God’s Own powerful, but…

Oh. Of course.

Suzy Midnight is handling just such a gem, and it is JUST this big, and all the predators are sniffing after it. So Suzy gets this gem (don’t ask me where, don’t ask me how), places some spell or another on it, makes like she’s slipping it to a convenient mule (that would be ME) and she’s counting on me to distract the people sniffing after it while she… does… whatever.

Gee Thanks, Suze. Yer a Peach. (sarcasm alert! sarcasm alert!)

No… wait a minute… that wouldn’t slow down the real heavy hitters, like Staretski, not for a second. It might do against the second-and-third tier players, the jackals who don’t really expect to take the big prize, but hang around to see what crumbs they can pick up after the big boys are finished. Not that I can afford to sneer at them, but at least it’s not the sure death sentence that I’d been thinking it was. So, Suzy’s looking to narrow down the level of interference, and not making her real big play. My problem is that the way that Suzy Midnight’s got this rigged, they’re expecting something sneaky and subtle from me. No matter what I do, the first thing any nut hard enough to be in this scramble will do is check my purse. And from there, it starts at ugly and goes straight to painful and gets much, much worse past that.

Trying to simply SELL it to any one of them is something that I wouldn’t do on a BET-

Bet?

I felt a pussycat smile stretch across my face. Maybe Tinjo’s right? Maybe this glamour does make me smarter?

First, I shifted a few select packets of alchemical powders from my purse to the stuffing in my *ahem!* ‘cleavage’, just in case I needed them quick. Then I gathered myself and headed out the door. Just as I was going out, this sleek, glitzy looking blonde in gold lamé came in. We crossed briefly at the door, but I managed to get out, just as recognition registered with the blonde. She started to react, but I was out the door and under full steam in the direction of the Quiet Nook before she could think of anything.

The Quiet Nook was just that, with just enough room for a cramped counter, a row of stools, one single booth in the back, and just enough room to squeeze by to get to the booth. Flynn was at the very end of the bar, but not sitting in the booth, busily checking his iCom. “Well, hello there!” I greeted him. “I’m not interrupting anything important, I hope?” And to my own amazement, I discovered that I was a trifle miffed that Flynn was taking care of his own business, and not waiting breathlessly for me to deign to spend time with him.

He shut down the windows on his iCom and tucked it away. “As a matter of fact, yes, very important. Vital, urgent, life-or-death business. But I’ll gladly put it aside for you.” He wrapped one arm around my waist.

“oooh!” I cooed, “Well played sir, well played!” I melted into his grasp, mostly to make sure that he didn’t accidentally bump his arm into my sheathed wings.

“So, you’ve taken care of all your obligations for the evening?”

“All but ONE,” I waggled a playful finger in front of his nose. I’m enjoying this way too much. “I still have to find Chumley and give him a message.”

“I thought that you dropped him.”

“I’m just dropping off a message from friends,” I assured him. “The problem with having standards is that they take so much effort to keep up. But consider the alternative: if you don’t, you become just another slob like… well, Chumley. So, I drop a word in his ear, and then I drop it altogether. If he’s not in the casino? Well, then I’ve done all that could reasonably be expected of me. So, you know where this casino is?” I finished with a smile.

Flynn held up a finger, and fished out his iCom. “In that vein, let me finish this up, and I’ll be right with you.” He swatted a few files around, and locked a few things down and then tucked his iCom away. Then he pulled out his key card and tapped it on the bar, ordering a ‘Blue Russian’. The barman poured him a straight-up vodka in a bluish glass, and charged his card. Then Flynn walked me over to the wall next to the booth, which opened up.

“I take it that you’ve been here before,” I noted.

“I don’t make enough to be a regular,” he said ruefully.

The panel opened up into a spiral staircase, and despite the fact that I would have sworn that Stavrel had milked this snob factor ‘one more level to go’ crap for all that it was worth, he’d managed to create a context for yet another floor, which somehow he’d managed to finesse into the building plans. Despite myself, I was rather impressed with his ingenuity. Not his honesty, but his ingenuity. In keeping with Stavrel’s pretensions, the casino was all done up in white marble, with a decided lean towards the ‘Monte Carlo Belle Epoch’ look over the ‘Las Vegas Post-Modern’ look. There were no windows, and long tables were lined up more or less against the wall for the dealer games, and there were several round tables in the general center of the room, with craps tables at either end of the center, and a roulette table. Really! Roulette isn’t gambling; it’s an elegant way of emptying your wallet on the table and telling the croupier ‘help yourself’. There was a sideboard with foods and a bar, just so the gamblers wouldn’t have to leave the tables long enough to come to their senses. If they could, they would have passed along chamber pots.

I spotted Lucky at the Blackjack table, and from the looks of him, he was busily soaking up the bad luck of the other players. I told Flynn that I’d be right back after I cleared my conscience and headed over. I managed to catch Lucky just as he had run out of chips and was heading over to the chips vending machine to mimic digging himself even further into debt. “Lucky, you missed Jett Adore, AND a chance for some major bragging rights. Ask around later, you will hate yourself. Now, you have a choice: you can either stop playing, or lose your chance to actually make money.” I gave him the bare bones description of the situation, and then headed over to the chip vendor. Hey, I’d done my duty as I saw it; now Lucky was on his own, God help the poor chump.

I got 30 grand worth of chips and a Long Island Iced Tea, and wiggled over to Flynn. “Well! That’s over, so let’s see whether you live up to your PR.”

“Are you talking about my Print campaign, my billboard campaign, my TV campaign or my Online campaign?”

“Oh, definitely the Print campaign- hackers made a mess of your website, and whoever wrote your jingle should be shot for mutilating a Jazz standard. But the shots of you in those Speedos? Rawr!” I handed him 10 grand worth of chips.

“Color me impressed!” he said looking at the heaping handful of credit. “Am I supposed to consider myself a kept man?”

“Crayon yourself gullible,” I reposted, “These are on Chumley’s card.”

“Well then, I consider this payment for services to be rendered later,” he said with a suggestive leer.

“Oh? You do windows?” I replied with a puckish smile.

“I do EVERYTHING,” he answered with a wolfish grin.

“Let’s go play poker,” I said with a wry smile. “Anyone who bluffs as well as you do should do well… if only at the poker table.”

“She thinks that I’m bluffing,” he chuckled to himself.

“HE thinks that he’s winning,” I chuckled to myself.

We made our way to one of the tables with a few open chairs and settled in. I gleefully lost five grand and made it back again, just to get the feel of the cards. Then I noticed a change in the roster. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, especially as I not only expected it but was actively counting on it, but I only really picked up when I saw that ring. I was watching the cards being shuffled, and the ring that the guy handling the cards was wearing. It was a large square cut ‘emerald’ set in a silver ring. Oh, and it was magically active. It was smaller than the ‘emerald’ in my hot little hand by several magnitudes, but other’n that, it could have been cut from the same stone. Well, if the chunk of synthetic corundum I had had been real, anyway…

The guy wearing it was a reasonably good-looking guy with dark hair and certain wolfish air that probably got him over a bit. He noticed me noticing him, and he gave me a wolfish leer, like to say, ‘now the games begin for real, little girl’. Putz. The very fact that he was at this table, drooling for a jumped up piece of glass said that he wasn’t a real wizard; he either had just ‘graduated’, or he was still a dabbler like me. Anyone with any real jazz would have figured Suzy’s switch out by now. He had to be an out-of-towner; nobody local would be fool enough to be flashing that kind of jazzed-up spang like that, and expect people to be intimidated by it. Hell, I’d better get that little bauble away from him; all for his own good, y’understand. Hey, there are some MEAN people out there, and they might hurt that poor boy for it! It’d be an act of mercy, honestly!

I checked the rest of the players, and the roster- and the tenor- of the table had changed. Three of the seven players (including Flynn and myself) had been replaced by new players: ‘the Green Lantern’, a pudgy black guy, and a thin, rather pale guy who was wearing a nice evening suit, but somehow managed to make it look like tweed. The tweedy guy, who I tagged in my mind as ‘the Professor’, didn’t look anything like a hard boy, but he had backup. HARD backup. The pudge didn’t need backup. He was roly-poly, but he wasn’t soft. He was a pretty hard nut all on his own. And beyond that, there was a small, but intent circle of spectators watching the table.

Flynn had taken in this change in the weather, and had the look of a man trying to remember if he’d managed to sneak that holdout past security or not. Then there was something off to the side. He swore softly and with real conviction. “Damn. Jinx… I hate to do this… but I got a… prior commitment to honor. I have to go.”

Well THAT was a stroke of luck! “Not to worry, Sweetie,” I purred. “The boys here will make sure that nothing bad will happen to me. Isn’t that right, guys?”

The Professor and the fat man made noncommittal noises of agreement, and ‘Green Lantern’ grinned and grunted, “Sure! We’ll take good care of the little lady… heh heh…” Okay, that bit of smarm just washed away any guilt that I might have felt at putting GL through the ringer. Flynn gave the boys a steel-hard glare, handed me his chips, and got up.

I watched him join a couple of other guys and they left the casino together through one of the several exits. The second that the door closed behind them, I laid a hand down on the deck in the pudge’s hands and said, “Okay, now that that’s over, let’s get down to some real poker, shall we?” I took the deck from Pudge and shuffled vigorously. “The game is 5-Card Showdown; nothing wild, no draws, no charm school special rules crap.” 5-Card Showdown is a variant of Stud that comes and goes and has a bunch of different names. You’re dealt five cards, four face-down, and one face up. You turn over your hidden cards in rounds, with betting just before each round. The trick, as with so many poker games, is to figure out whether the other guys are bluffing you or finessing you into betting more. It’s a simple game, but I figure that I’m going to get ‘reamed’ (as though losing this mineral hot potato was getting reamed), and I’m not that good, so I decided to go with a game I understood, just for appearances sake. “The buy-in is 20,000 dollars.” I put the emerald on the table. “My Buy-In.”

The boys gave each other cagy looks, and the two survivors of the original game made ‘too rich for my blood’ noises and left the table. Their places were immediately taken by a guy in a blinding white evening suit, and by another, less flamboyantly dressed guy whom I recognized as one of the two players I’d seen come in with ‘Lorelei’ and The Horse; I also recognized his backup as one of the hard boys who’d come in with Ed. Another guy, who was traveling with that glitzy blonde in the gold lamé, the one who’d tried to beard me in the Ladies’, tried to take Flynn’s seat, but I snarled him off.

Chips were thrown in, and away we went. I amazed myself by not only not losing the emerald with the first hand, but raking in another 50 grand over the 100 grand ante. Of which I lost 75, but not the emerald, in the next hand; Pudge hauled that money in, and looked forward eagerly to the next hand. I might have done better on that hand, but I was busy dealing with the fact that the cards had somehow been marked by invisible glamours. I had to fold early, before I tossed the emerald into the kitty, and lost another 20 Gs. Still, I managed to get rid of the markings when I cut the deck for the next hand.

That hand was dealt by ‘the Green Lantern’, who gave me another ‘gawd, I wish I could just kick him in the teeth and get it over with’ smirk. But that bit him in the ass; I was watching him, so I caught an invisible pulse on that ring of his. When I got my hand a king was showing, and he had a brother and three 7s in hiding. Girly glamour or no girly glamour, I did NOT squeal with glee. The squee I made was purely internal. Hands like this don’t come along very often in no-draw poker, and I’d just been dealt a hand that I could beat GL to death with. Of course, I had to be sure that GL wasn’t the wiseass marking the cards, so I checked them out with my Good Eye.

They weren’t marked.

They were completely defrauded!

Somehow, he’d wrapped them up in a masking effect that completely changed the faces of the cards that I’d been dealt. What I really had was a stinkin’ pair of 7s and a king, which was an okay hand for Showdown, but nothing like that lovely, delicious Full House. It occurred to me that a full house was almost exactly the hand that I’d deal a sucker, if I wanted them to bet the house on that one hand. The fledgling sorcerer in me was twitter-pated with admiration for GL, what with him being able to pull off a masking that complicated on the fly; the Poker player in me wanted to take him out behind the tanning shed and whale the tar out of him for dangling a bogus Full House in front of me. I’ve never even SEEN a tanning shed, let alone been out back of one, but I STILL wanted to take him out back the shed and whale the tar out of him! I know, I know, it doesn’t really matter; the real point is to pretty much give away this bogus emerald, so these assholes will get off my case. And GL would probably do a bang-up job of acting as a decoy. But between that attitude and this dirty trick, there is NO WAY that I am giving him the satisfaction of winning over me. I mean, he’d dangled a full house in front of my nose, and just snatched it away! Playing hardball or no hardball, there are things that you just don’t DO to a poker player!

Okay, the obvious thing was that ‘Green Lantern’ was trying to sucker me into playing a full house when he had ‘painted’ himself a four of a kind or a straight flush. But he had to know that I’d screwed up his ‘marking’ gambit, so there’s a good chance that he has a backup plan ready. Okay, so he’s being subtle; when the opposition is being subtle, it’s time to be straightforward. Unexpected, but straightforward. I hailed down a waitress, ordered a glass of water, and gave her my key card, with orders to bring me 100 grand in chips. As she bustled off, I snagged another waitress and asked her to see if Jogun could spare me a few moments of his valuable time.

From there, the play was like one of those gambling fantasies that you have while you watch a movie with big-time rollers. For three hands, I kept the emerald off the table, and let GL sweat out trying to get me to put it on up as a wager. The other players were also getting skretchy. Finally, Jogun came strolling up and recognized me. Genially, he asked if I’d hooked up with ‘that young man’, and I replied that I was wondering if he’d seen Flynn anywhere around lately?

‘Green Lantern’ snapped that he thought that we were there to play POKER, not have a gab-fest! The others agreed with him, but they all clammed up when I put the emerald on the table. Dramatically, I took the deck and thumped it down in front of GL, sort of saying ‘put up or shut up’. Jogun must have picked up on the rather nasty turn that this ‘friendly game’ had taken, and sort ‘stood guard’. He stood back, but shot this flinty look at the other players’ backups that this was HIS club, and he wasn’t standing for any unruly behavior. From any of ‘em.

GL dealt me an 8 of clubs on the up, and filled the edges of a straight flush with the 9, 7, 6 and 5 of the same on the down. The only thing that beats a straight flush is a higher-ranked straight flush. Son. Of. A. BITCH! This is probably the only time that I’ll ever see a straight flush from this side in a paying game, and it’s a fake! Damn, this pissed me off even more than the full house!

GL himself was showing a 7 of diamonds, and so on around the table. I’ll spare you the details; I’ve never heard a game retold that was half as much fun as playing it yourself. Let’s just say that between GL and myself, we bumped up the betting sky high. On top of the emerald, I put the better part of 50 Gs in chips on the table, and GL matched me. The others tried to keep up, but it was hard; one at a time, they dropped out of the bidding, leaving it to ‘Green Lantern’ and me. I had most of my ‘straight flush’ showing, and GL was showing what might be a four of a kind, or a full house or just three wise men. I gave GL’s green ring a significant look, and took the long dangling jade earrings from my ears and held them up, silently offering them as a bet. GL grinned and slipped the ring from his finger. I tossed my earrings on the pot, and GL threw in his ring.

GL turned over his hole card, making his full house. “Make your move,” he said, being all badass. I looked at my hole card, which had somehow mysteriously turned from clubs to a spade, knocking it down from a straight flush to just a straight, which a full house beats without raising a sweat.

“Okay,” I said simply, taking a drink from my water. Then I dipped a hollow plastic stirrer into the water, reached over and used it to slash a single drop of water onto GL’s cards, laid out in front of him. The full house ran off the faces of the cards like a chalk drawing in a stiff rain.

I’ll give GL this: he recovers fast. He snatched at his ring to get it back, but I beat him to the punch. And the ring. Jogun was right there, pulling GL out of his seat by the collar of his jacket. GL’s backup reacted, but they backed off as the rest of the players- or, more accurately, their backup- backed Jogun’s move. Jogun quickly patted GL down and put a gold pocket watch with some very suspicious ‘charms’ on the fob chain, what I think was GL’s charm blade, and a small soft leather pouch which I’d bet was his ‘gris-gris’ bag or ‘medicine pouch’ down on the table, along with GL’s money clip and what was left of his loose cash. “How’d you know?” GL asked in a gulp, looking more spooked of me than he was of Jogun.

“What?” I jeered, holding up the glittering ring, “I’m supposed to tell you how you screwed up, so you won’t do it the next time we meet?” I looked at Jogun. “So, what do you do with cheats in this house?”

“Same thing EVERY house does with cheats,” Jogun grated out, pocketing GL’s money clip. Then he twisted GL’s arm behind his arm and set him for the bum’s rush. If GL was lucky, Jogun would take him down to the street to chuck him out, and not just do it out of one of the balconies.

I reached for GL’s watch, blade and bag, but he yelped, “HEY! Those are MINE!”

“Oh? Then why’d you put them up as bets?” I asked.

“What? I didn’t put them up!”

“Oh, ah, as I recall, you DID,” the Pudge said with a smirk. “I thought it was a very gallant gesture,” he finished with a snicker. The others around the table agreed; I may not have had many friends at that table, but a busted cheat only has enemies.

Jogun bustled GL out with one arm high behind his back, and GL’s backup discreetly exited under their own power. When they were well out of the room, the Professor asked me, “Just to soothe my curiosity, young lady… exactly how DID you deduce his cheat?”

“He kept dealing me great hands. Full houses, four kings and straight flushes just don’t happen that often in Showdown. Usually, it’s who has the better pair or high card. Besides,” I held up the ring and lied slightly, “I noticed that every time he dealt, this ring of his flashed.”

I was a sport and let the others reclaim their bets from the kitty. But still, let’s be real, I kept GL’s stuff and the money he’d put up, a good 60 K in cash and chips. A sleek, elegant black Ophidian woman immediately filled GL’s seat.

“Very well, gentlemen, lady,” I acknowledged her with a nod. “Fun and games is over. The ante is ten thousand- IN CASH.” Pudge, the snake lady, the Man in White, and the guy who came in with the gold lamé blonde all sent chips out for cash, as did I, refreshing my reserves by sixty thou in green. But the Professor gave a sour look, did some serious mental calculation and excused himself from the play.

Two hands later, I was up 60 grand in folding money, 75 grand in cashable chips and another hundred in those bogus ‘gold chips’ that only deducted from your debt. That was as good as it was gonna get for the kid. I was doing very well. I really wish that I could say that I was a kickass poker player, but to be honest, I think that it’s this glamour again, mucking with the other players’ ability to read my tells. Still, it’s been fun, but now is the time to cash out. I’d hoped that Flynn would have returned by this time, and seen me out the door with all this pelf. No such luck, and it’s getting late. Time to wrap it up.

Interestingly, the guy who’d come in with the gold lamé blonde, who I’d tagged ‘Bing’ for some reason in mind, was doing well with this latest hand. And get this: he’d specifically asked if the credit chips could be added to the pot. I got the impression that he’d dug himself in pretty deep with his key card, and was hoping that if he couldn’t get the emerald, that he could at least pick up enough of the gold chips to dig himself out again.

Y’know, ‘Bing’ and his girlfriend, who I’d picked up was named Hope, really didn’t belong at this table. Pudge, the Man in White, the Snake Lady, ‘Frick’ of the firm of ‘Frick & Frack’ (the Horse’s probable employers), and even the Professor all struck me as being, well, players. People who knew what they were doing, and who could be trusted to do intelligent things when the crunch came. But Bing and Hope? They were in even deeper than I was, and that was saying something. There was an element of desperation to them. They had NO IDEA what they were doing. God alone knows what they’d do if they won the power gem.

Which, of course, made them the perfect decoys.

Between the two of us, Bing and I managed to wrestle the others out of the pot. When it was just the two of us, I shoved most of the 100 grand (give or take) of my credit-only chips into the pot and gave Bing a confident smirk. Bing was showing a pair tens that might turn into a three of a kind. I was showing a slightly inferior pair as well. Well, at least the cards, anyway.

Bing gawped at the pile and looked like the horse that he’d bet the farm on had just gone lame in the home stretch. Okay, I think that maybe I overdid it a little… But then ‘Frick’ of all people rode to Bing and Hope’s and MY rescue. He growled, “No buying the fucking POT!” The rest of the table joined in.

I argued futilely for a minute, but gave in. Bing relaxed and Hope allowed a ray of, well, hope, to show in her eyes. Bing turned over his hole card, which turned out to be nothing. It was all on my turn of the cards. I let every eye fix on my hole card, which I turned revealing… nothing. I was bluffing with only a pair of sixes.

I gave a ‘oh what the fuck, at least I made money while there was money to be made’ sigh and shoved the emerald at Bing. He grinned like a loon as he picked up the stone, and Hope fought desperately to keep a squee of victory under control. She almost succeeded. There. I was off the spot, and those two were on it, even if that hadn’t penetrated yet.

As Bing and Hope bubbled, and the rest of the table was figuring their next move, I quietly scooped up my winnings and discreetly left the table. They were all focused on the big prize; I really didn’t need to remind them that I was walking around with over 100 thou in cash and chips.

A hundred THOU!

Jeez Louise, I don’t even know anybody who’s even SEEN that much money, outside’a television! Of course, the problem with that much money is that it’s more’n a handful, and tucking all that cash into my purse was a little clumsy. Even with the folding money crammed in there with everything else, which was getting a little bulky, I had a big heaping double-handful of chips. I carefully made my way toward the cashier’s window. But I must have been more keyed up than I realized. A hand came down on my shoulder and I almost jumped out of my skin. My chips went down and would have made a clattering racket that I really didn’t want, if the place wasn’t carpeted. I looked around and Tinjo said, “JEEZ, Jinx, what’s the matter?”

I kneeled and hurried to pick up the chips, “Is there a ladies’ room around here? We gotta talk.” And more quietly I added, “And I may actually have to use the bathroom.”

After I made sure that I hadn’t disgraced myself, I filled Tinjo and Denmar in the situation.

“You have HOW MUCH money?” Tinjo goggled at me.

“A little over a hundred grand,” I said. “My problem is that most of it is these stupid cash chips, about 75 grand worth.”

“So? Cash ‘em!”

“SEVENTY-FIVE GRAND worth?” I asked. “Don’t you think that it might just get around that an unarmed woman was walking around with 75 grand in her purse? Especially a purse that’s as bulky as the one I’m carrying right at the moment is?”

“So… why not ask one of the security guards to call you a cab and show you to the lobby?”

I gave Tinjo the ‘don’t be a chump’ glare and asked, “Y’mean, ask Stavrel’s guy? Who works for the ratsass who cobbled all of THIS together? To help a woman he never met before out of the club with 75 Grand of Stavrel’s money?”

Tinjo wilted but perked up again. “So, we get the guys to escort you out!”

“The guys…” I said with a ‘get real’ snarl.

“They, they’re our friends, they wouldn’t…” then Tinjo’s eyes went wide as the penny dropped. “Oh, what am I talking about?” she groaned, “It’s Seventy-Five GRAND! And they’re GUYS! They’d get their knickers all in a twist, ‘cause you made that much, and they made diddlysquat!”

“Yeah,” Denmar threw in, “and remember, Tinje- when people start making ‘share the wealth’ noises, they get very grabby.” She significantly shook the bracelets on her wrist, and gave Tinjo a look that said, ‘and how much worth are YOU wearing right at this moment?’

We looked at each other uncomfortably for a moment. Then I let out the pissy loser groan and said, “Crap. Well, 35 grand and home free with a whole skin is better’n bleeding to death in a back alley and leaving a humiliating corpse.” I handed Tinjo and Denmar $20,000 each in $500 and $100 chips.

“So, we cash these for you?” Tinjo asked. “How much of this do we get to keep?”

“All of it.”

“ALL of it?” Tinjo shot back, eyes wide with shock.

“Hey, if you want to give me any of it back, it’s not like I’m gonna punch you in the face,” I said. “But I’m not fool enough to ask you for it. PLUS, if you’re taking that much home, you won’t be as likely to let it slip that I’m taking this home.” I hefted the 35 grand’s worth of chips in my hand.

“That’s a little cold-blooded, Jinx,” Tinjo said. Then she added, hefting her own chips, “But I hear where you’re comin’ from.”

“Well,” Denmar summed it up, “Nuthin’ to it, but t’do it!” she handed me my bag, and we sailed out of the Ladies’ in close formation. We advanced without mercy on the cashier’s window, covering each others’ wings. Hey, when you’re an Avian, things like that come naturally.

Tinjo went first and cashed out without a hitch. The cashier gave Denmar a knowing smirk as she cashed out. When I shoved my 35 grand worth through the window, the cashier gave a respectful whistle. “Whoa! Another big payoff? What, you girls hit a big winning streak?”

“Better,” I smirked back. “We spotted a loser on a losing streak, and bet against him. Losing streaks run longer and are more reliable than winning streaks.” The cashier tucked the bills that the dispenser rolled out into an envelope and handed it to me. There was a nice, even distribution of $100, $50 and $20 bills, for a nice thick wad that still managed to fit into the envelope, and wouldn’t bulge too badly. I ran a finger over the nice, crisp but not uniformly new bills and nodded. As befits a high roller, I pulled one of the hundreds out and passed it to the cashier, who made it disappear quickly.

Tinjo and Denmar were waiting for me at the door and we went down to the regular club together. “So, did Lucky get in on the action in time?” I asked, tucking ‘Green Lantern’s’ ring and the wad of money into the cups of my bra, and trying very hard to keep from being possessive about the hefty purse of goodies I was lugging around. Hey, my purse was full, and it wasn’t like this outfit had a lot of pockets.

“Yeah, he came in just in time to really confuse the people who’d picked up that we was pulling somethin’,” Tinjo said as we came out into one of the little ‘nook’ bars. “He was makin’ whiny noises about pullin’ down 12 long.”

“Only twelve long?” I hooted, “MAN, it doesn’t take long for people to get used to big numbers, does it? How much did the rest of you take in?”

“Oh, about 40 grand on average, give’r take.”

“Forty grand?”

“Hey, you shoved those chips at us, remember?”

“Oh well,” I sighed, “at least I won’t have to feel guilty about pulling down as much as I did.”

“Jinx? We’re Catholic. We HAVE to feel guilty. How’re we s’pozed to know that we got over, if we don’t feel guilty about it?”

We went down to the second floor of the club, to where Tinjo said that Jack had decided that the meet point would be. Tinjo looked around, clicked her tongue in annoyance and growled, “Isn’t that just like a guy? He said, ‘Go find her, and bring her right here, we gotta go NOW’… And now, where IS he?”

“And where are the rest of the guys?” I said, looking around. There was, like, NOBODY we knew there. “Are you sure this is the spot?”

Tinjo just jerked a thumb at the cheesy consumer electronics stall, which I assume was the landmark that Cap’n Jack had picked. “Wait a minute,” she stopped in mid-sulk, “We can’t call Jack on his iCom, in case they got our phones hacked. But you got one’a them Netplexes… why don’t you call Ace on HIS, and ask him what’s goin’ down?”

“Ace didn’t pass around his new number,” I pointed out. “Besides, knowing Ace, he’s probably already got it pried open and cluttered up with add-ons, so it won’t be working for a while.”

Tinjo let out a snarl of frustration. I don’t blame her; she was lugging around as much valuable junk as I was, and I felt like I had a big flashing neon arrow pointing at me. Tinjo then let out a sigh of resignation. “So, Denmar, what say-? Denmar?” she looked around frantically. “Denny?” I looked around as well, and Denmar was nowhere to be seen. “What’s going ON here?” Tinjo demanded.

I let out a snarl of frustration myself. “WELL, y’don’t need a script to see what we’re supposed to do next. This is the part of the cartoon where we’re supposed to say, ‘We’ll cover more ground if we split up’, and hilarity ensues. ROFF that dreck, let’s do the smart thing that we always told ourselves we’d do if something like this ever happened: You, go find Denmar; you’ve got a much better chance of finding her. I’ll stay right here and call for a cab, and arrange for him to meet us at the gate. Once you find Denmar, we are OUT of here!”

“What happened to ‘there are things you just don’t DO to your crew’?”

“That was before Suzy Midnight got involved. Denmar must have agreed to something, just before she dragged us up onto the stage, and we did that big Girl Group number. That’s why Suzy stuck me with that emerald, ‘cause Denmar gave her permission. Now, I don’t know how much of this is Suzy’s doing, how much is Staretski’s, or Stavrel’s, or whoever hired Jack in the first place, or some other player in whatever game they got going on here, or WHAT! It is too fracking complicated! The smart thing is to get Denmar, and then get the hell OUT!”

Tinjo gave me an amused look. “Welcome to MY world. I know how y’feel, Jinx, really I do. And, Yeah, it stinks! On Ice! But there’s three things yer not figgering on, Smart Guy. First, if we run out now, it’ll give the guys something to beat you over the head with for the rest of yer LIFE. Second, if we run out, and the guys don’t make it- if ANY of them don’t make it- you won’t need for anyone to beat you over the head; you’ll hate yourself for it, without ‘em. And third… if Denmar did make some sort of deal with Suzy Midnight, all that leavin’ here’s gonna do is take all this craziness out onto the street, where it can get REALLY nasty.”

She had three really good points, but that last one really shut up that cold voice of selfish logic, the one that always yells in your ear that you’re being a chump when you do the right thing. “Good call, Tinje,” I admitted. “Go, find Denmar. Maybe she’ll know what’s going on around here. If nothing else, at least she’ll know what she agreed to with Suzy Midnight. I’ll stay here, just in case.”

Tinjo gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder and wiggled off to find Denmar. And, of course, the second that Denmar went into the Ladies’ to check that out, the shit hit the fan. As though they’d been waiting for Tinjo to leave (and, hey, for all I knew, that’s just what they’d been doing) two guys walked up to me and gave me the look-up-and-down. ‘Oh shit,’ I said to myself. ‘Just what I don’t need: a couple of horndogs looking for another notch on their bedpost’. I gave the lead guy my wiseass smirk, which he wiped away by opening his jacket. Tucked into his belt was a handgun that looked like it had been assembled from between 3 to 4 different small objects that you could carry on you without raising any eyebrows. Just the thing to sneak a gun past the club’s security systems.

I admit it, I had that kneejerk ‘Oh, crap, he’s got a gun’ moment. Then I remembered that we were in the view of practically all the second-level chumps, and put on my superior hawtsome chick smirk. “Downloading ear-piercing scream. Completion in ten seconds. Nine seconds-”

“Hey, don’t wait on our account,” said the gunman’s backup. “Go right ahead. We don’t care.”

“Really?” I riposted, “This club’s got a very BIG goatboy who happens to know me by sight. I’m not saying that he’s sweet on me or anything, but I DO get the impression that Jogun takes his job very seriously. And he knows that I won big in the casino.”

“Like I care,” the gunman said in a way that put across that he really was not that worried. The backup guy grabbed me by the biceps and between them, they steered me out of that lobby, through one of the side bars, and into a back corridor, lined by doors to those private rooms and suites that Stavrel is rumored to rent out for ‘special occasions’.

The room was too big and well-lit for a ‘small cozy intimate dinner’ and too small and cluttered for a ‘private party’; if anything, I’d say that it was perfectly set up for a small private ‘nobody needs to know about this’ meeting. There were chairs set up in a rough loosely spaced ‘U’, there were two tables with drinks and glasses set out on them, and a wet bar. And I recognized a lot of the faces from the Poker game: there was the Pudge, ‘Mr. White’, the Professor, the Snake Lady along with a rather stone-faced Black guy with a shaved head, and a sleek, very glam looking feline-biased Were with long curling chocolate-brown hair, big tawny eyes and ‘Tuxedo Tabby’ fur. Except for the tabby-cat and the Man in White, they each had two bodyguards standing just behind them. Stavrel was standing behind the wet bar with two of his own, obviously well-armed, guards. They were standing around in their own little groups, but they all stopped and turned to me as we entered. “What?” I asked, looking around. “If you wanted another game, you could have just SAID so!”

“Very funny,” ‘Mr. White’ groused. “Bring it here.”

The gunman took my purse from my shoulder and brought it over to Mr. White, while his backup towed me over there. Mr White grabbed my purse and started rummaging through it. “Hey, Stavrel!” I snapped in his direction, “You let thugs grab your customers and shake them down like this? This is NOT how you get four knives and forks in the Michelin Guide!” Stavrel just gave me the ‘ha-hah, very funny, mouthy bitch’ not-laugh glower.

Mr. White gave up looking for whatever he was searching my purse for and poured the contents out onto one of the tables. There was a lot of sparkly stuff, a big bottle of Chanel No. 5, and a small flat box. Mr. White ripped open the box, revealing some lacy underwear. No money. No chalice. No letter opener. No watches. No personal electronics. Throwing the scanties to the floor, Mr. White turned to me and demanded, “Where IS IT?”

“Where’s WHAT?” I shot back in a flat voice.

“The Emerald,” he growled, like he wasn’t amused that I was playing dumb. “The Power Gem?”

I snorted a snide chuckle and lifted a lip in a sneer. “I never had it.”

“I SAW-”

“You saw what Suzy Midnight wanted you to see,” I spelled it out for the idiot. “We’re talking Suzy Midnight here! If she really wanted me to be her mule, WHY would someone as slick as Miss Suzy slip me the gem right after I’d been up on stage, when everyone was watching me?”

You could see the penny drop for him. “But you… the poker game…”

“If I was Suzy’s mule, WHY would I put up something that valuable as a bet in a game? I got stuck with a decoy, and I had to get rid of it somehow. And hey, that rock is a solid chunk of synthetic emerald; it’s got to be worth a few grand, just for the size alone!”

He looked through the junk. “Where’s Rankin’s ring? Where’s his gris-gris bag, his athame and his watch-chain?”

“Rankin?” I asked innocently.

“The guy with the RING?”

“Oh, Green Lantern? Oh, Batman dropped by, and picked it up for the Justice League.”

Mr. White was not amused. He backhanded me. I took it with my best tough chick panache and gave him the ‘is that the best you got?’ glare “And where’s the money?” he demanded. “You had at least a hundred grand in there!”

“Do you HONESTLY think that I’m stupid enough to walk around with that much cash on me?” I jeered. “I put the money in an envelope, went down to the mail chute and mailed it to myself!” Damn, I wish that I’d thought of that dodge for real.

There were chuckles of amused scorn from the others. Mr. White grabbed at the only straw he had left. “Yeah? And what about all that!” He pointed at the pile of glitter-crap on the table.

I put on Denmar’s wide-eyed naughty schoolgirl act and pouted, “I have NO sales resistance! None at ALL!”

That got me a few chuckles, which apparently were more than Mr. White’s battered male ego and fraying temper could take. “LOOK, you little bitch,” he snarled as he grabbed me by the dress, which was not very sturdy, if you know what I mean. If he tore that, he might open up a can of worms that I really need kept shut.

“HEY, HEY, HEY!” I yelled, “Watch the hands, buddy, watch the HANDS!”

The tenor of the room, which up to that point had been ‘business is business, and action is action’, shifted perceptibly to ‘this is something I don’t want to be involved with’. The snake lady reared up on her tail. Her companion stood and hefted his heavy wooden stick with the skull tip suggestively. The Pudge was making moves like he had options. Their backup started to make ‘taking tactical advantage’ moves. Mr. White’s backup noticed this and their body language pretty much said, ‘we are not getting paid enough for this’.

Stavrel took this in, cleared his throat, and when that wasn’t enough, snapped in his gravely voice, “HEY! Hatch! Enough!” Mr. White, or ‘Hatch’ I guess is his handle, stopped and opened his mouth to complain. He stopped before he said anything, taking in the situation. “Hey, Hatch,” Stavrel went on, “I let you make your big play. It didn’t work out. Deal with it, and let’s get on with our lives, okay?” Hatch let go of me and let me get back onto my feet. The rest of the room backed down a bit.

“Indeed,” the Professor said with an annoyed glower at Hatch, “now that the floor show is over, shall we get ON with the business at hand?”

“WELL,” I breezed, gathering all the stuff back into my purse, “in that case, I don’t need to know your business, so I’ll just be on my merry way…”

“Siddown,” Hatch growled, shoving me into one of the seats. “We’re not done yet.” Wow, I can see why women are always bitching about men’s spun-glass egos.

“Okay, take it, Pussycat,” Stavrel said at the Were-girl. With an off-hand nod, she got up and reached into her purse. She pulled out what looked like an old-fashioned powder horn, the sort of thing they used to use back with the old black powder guns, only it was worked with silver and inlaid with minor gems. She undid the plug at the tip and then she walked over to one door and then the other, sketching out a design on each with the tip. Then she ran a line around the walls, sketching a design in the middle. She finished by drawing another design on the middle of the floor.

“What I’ve done is create a concealing ward on this room,” the girl said with a familiar purring voice. As I racked my brain trying to connect the voice and face with a name, a person, she continued, “If anyone is trying to find anyone or anything in this room, they simply won’t notice. Any probes won’t find a blank wall, they simply… won’t notice… anything here.”

“Even Six-Fingered Staretski?” Hatch asked. Apparently, the news of Staretski’s arrival has made the rounds.

“Especially Six-Fingered Staretski,” she said with confidence. “He’s why we’re going through with all of this.” Then that glamour was the only thing keeping my eyes from popping out of my head, as I finally pegged her. She was Tuxedo Mary, a very active Cat-biased Were chick that Leo happens to have a massive crush on. He tries to be cool about it, but we had to keep from laughing at him every time she came around. Not quite pathetic. Pathetic? Ask me about my love life. Now THAT’S pathetic. Thing is, Tuxedo Mary fronts for a street mage. Nobody’s 100% sure which street mage, but that’s par for the course with street mages. Normally, she dresses a lot grittier and street, and let me just say: DANG, she cleans up good!

Thing is, the reason I didn’t peg her before, aside from the glam job, is this scene is WAY out of Tux’s league. Okay, these waters are even deeper for ME, but hey, what do you want?

Then I processed what Tux had been saying while I was wrapping what I laughingly refer to my brain around the fact that an alleycat like her was working this scene too. Tux had basically owned up to the fact that the power keeping the ward up was in the horn, not her. Oh, and the horn was up for sale. AND, get this: she also had a bunch of other power items hidden around the Apex, but they were hidden by the power of the horn. She’d reveal the location to the highest bidder. Oh, and get this: a list of exactly what she was selling would cost five grand a pop.

But there was something that Tux didn’t know: her ward wasn’t anywhere near as good as she thought it was. That cane that I spotted just HAD to be one of Tux’s little Easter eggs; I mean, what are the odds that there’s another power item just lying around like that? I don’t know what I was thinking anyway, when I took it! It just HAD to belong to somebody! Somebody powerful!

Ah, who am I kidding? I know exactly what I was thinking: ‘Ooohhh… Shiny! MINE!’

But the real problem is that I spotted the cane, right off the bat. Okay, so I hadda use my Good Eye to see it, but still! If _I_ could spot it, then there’s no way that Tux’s ward could keep Staretski from finding out. This could get very ugly.

Then again, this could work out for me. Hatch here has no intention of being reasonable. But when Staretski comes kicking down the door, all I have to do is scream like a little girl and run for the other door, like the rest of the herd. Even if he sees through the glamour, all Staretski will see is the wig and the dress, and he’ll assume that I’m just another bimbo doing the sane thing; he probably won’t even bother to register that I was there. For the first, and probably only, time in my life, I was looking forward to seeing Six-Fingered Staretski.

Tux was continuing her sales pitch, when Pudge cut her off, saying, “I didn’t come here for this.”

“Yeah,” Stavrel agreed, “but that’s the price for her puttin’ up that ward: I get security, she gets to peddle her stuff. Still, you got a point. Yo! Pussycat! You can thrash out your details- AFTER we finish up here. At least with the ones that have money afterwards. Okay, Pickford, time for you to do your stuff.” The Professor stood and stepped forward as Stavrel leaned down behind the bar, and pulled out a large black metal flat rectangular container. Stavrel fit a tool into a hole in the container, and there was a sound of depressurization. Stavrel lifted up one end of the container and gingerly pulled out a canvas. He showed the painting around. I suppose that it was that Rubens that Jack and Ace were talking about; how would I know what a Dutch Master looks like? All’s I know is that it was a painting of the backside of some naked broad with serious saddlebags, who really should have hit the gym and lost maybe 20 or 30 pounds.

But the Professor, or Pickford, or whoever, must like ‘em hefty, ‘cause he brightened up considerably when he saw the picture. He looked at it like he really liked what he saw. Then he put his game face on, and slipped an eyepiece on. He looked hard at the canvas as colored dots raced all over the oils, and he pulled out an envelope of strips of paper that he placed against the paint. Checking his iCom every so often, the Professor checked everything on the canvas that he could possibly think of. Finally, with real regret in his voice, he said, “Well, either it’s the ‘Duchess of Vosges’, or it’s a good enough reproduction that it’s a masterpiece in its own right. Given the circumstances, I’m reasonably confident that this is what we came here to bid on.”

“Gee, thanks,” Stavrel grumbled. As he slid the painting back in the canister, he went on and on about how this painting had been a source of pride and comfort for him for the past two years, and how the only reason that he was parting with it was due to the financial strains of getting this club up and running. It was like he thought that they gave an award for the Best Performance by a Lying Scumbag, and he was in the running. After he stowed the painting back in the case, he set the case on end into some sort of stand on the shelf behind the bar. Then he set a nozzle of a hose to a tank of nitrogen into a hole in the case and started pumping in gas. I recalled that museums and like that often use nitrogen gas for preserving old exhibits. After a few minutes, it was fully pressurized, and Stavrel had the Professor place a security tape over the hole.

Stavrel took the case off the stand and set it on the bar. “Okay, now, bear with me,” he started. “Personally, I prefer to keep things nice and simple. But these days? With magic and like that? Everybody’s a wizard all of a sudden. And I know that some of you are magicians,” he gave Mr. White and the Snake Lady’s boyfriend the evil eye, “and there’s a certain person who I won’t tempt fate by mentioning by name running around the club. SO, I gotta get more elaborate than I’m really comfortable with.” He wheeled out a glass tank with gold runes painted around the edge of the top and bottom and five slots in the lid.You could see that the tank was divided into five sections by dividers. Then he secured the tank with a very heavy chain to the leg of the bar.

“I’ve found that having piles of cash lying around brings out the worst in people,” Stavrel noted philosophically. ‘And having magic around only makes it worse. I’m hoping that this will keep the hoodoo to a minimum. The tank is warded,” he pointed at the gold runes. “And the shatterproof glass tank will keep anyone from getting any ideas about a snatch-and-run. I know, I know, it’s clunky, but I’m trying to keep it as simple and idiot-proof as I can. Here’s the deal. Each time that you up your bid, you put the money in one of these envelopes,” he picked up an empty from a stack of such envelopes, and stuck it in the slot, like he was mailing a letter. “And you shove it in the slot for your stack. Pickford, you’re on the left. Dimanche, you’re next over, Powell, you’re in the middle, and Hatch, you’re next to the right-most.”

“Why not just stick in stacks of bills?”

“I tried that. It won’t land right, and the only way to keep it from getting all bunched up and filling up the section is to put the stacks into an envelope. At the end of the bidding, if you don’t win, then you just take yer money back.” Then Stavrel looked out at the bidders and his face fell. “Fuck,” he grumbled, “It’s always something…” then he looked at me. “Hey. You. Mouthy chick. C’mere.”

“Why?” I asked with reasonable (under the circumstances) suspicion.

“Look, there ain’t what you’d call a lot of trust in this room,” he pointed out with more reasonability than seems to be the norm for him. “And it just hit me: I can’t trust them to put the amount that they’re bidding into the envelope. And now that I think about it, if I was them, I wouldn’t trust me to not be pulling a fast one with that thing. When they make a bid, I want you to take the money from them, check that it’s the amount they say it is- oh, I insisted that they bring the moolah in bundles of 10 grand; you can check by the bank wrappers- and put it in the right slot.” He mimed ‘mailing a letter’.

“Why me?” I asked, “I got nothing to do with any of this. I got dragged into this.” I gave Hatch a nasty look.

“Exactly,” Stavrel smirked. “You got nothing to do with ANY of this. HE dragged you into this. If it was anybody else, I might be foisting you off on them somehow. Her?” he kited a look at Tux. “She’s gotta pay attention to that horn thing, and I brought her into this, so she might be a ringer. But you? You got nothing riding on this at all.”

“Yeah?” I shot back. “So, why should I do anything for you delightful people? Like you just said, I got nothing to do with this, and nothing riding on it.”

Stavrel nodded, conceding the point. He thought it over for a moment and said, “Tell you what. You do this, and when it’s over, I’ll make sure that you get out the door and in a cab. You can even take your purse full of sparkly stuff with you. I don’t know what hustle you’re playing, Lady, and I don’t care. Not my problem. Do this, and you’re home free.”

“Hey!” Hatch snapped, “She owes me-”

“NOTHING,” Stavrel cut him off. “Hatch, you made a play and it didn’t work out. Pull up yer big boy pants and DEAL with it.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “It’s not the best offer I’ve had all night, but it’s a helluva lot better than the alternative.”

I got up, Stavrel handed me the stack of envelopes, went back behind the counter, where I assumed he had a shotgun stashed. Hey, in his place, in this situation, I would. “The ante is $250,000,” He announced. Each party produced a very sturdy looking satchel and started trotting out wads of $100 bills, put them in stacks in front of them, and I riffled through the bundles, checking that the denominations were correct, and stuffed them, five each, into envelopes. All of them except for the Professor, that is. He brought out- dig THIS, friends and neighbors- thick stacks of those gold-metallic tone chips from Stavrel’s own casino. “HEY! What’s this?” Stavrel demanded, “I said CASH!”

“So?” the Professor said with a smirk, “These are chips from your own casino, purchased only today! Go ahead, check them!”

Very warily, Stavrel came back out from behind the bar and waved his iCom over one of the chips. It beeped back as kosher. “I need cash,” Stavrel grumbled.

“So? Cash them in yourself!” the Professor grinned back evilly.

Stavrel looked at the others, and I could see the connections in his little rat brain clicking in. The chips were effectively his own money; he couldn’t refuse them without raising a lot of questions that he really didn’t need just at the moment. “Okay, I’ll take the ante in chips,” Stavrel conceded. “But the REST has to be in cash.” The Professor nodded primly, and the auction went on as planned.

It struck me that now I knew who Jack’s mysterious buyer was. The Professor had arranged for $250 thou worth of buy-in for $25 grand, which is a good way of making sure that you have enough cash for the rest of the bidding. But on the flip side, this meant that our worries about our mysterious principal setting us up for a dirty deal didn’t mean anything. The Professor had bigger things to worry about than Jack’s Crew, and he wouldn’t have hacked into our iComs, which meant that when I was alone, I could just CALL the guys and have them get me out of there, if Stavrel didn’t come through with that cab. On the other hand, there was still the none-too-minor matter of what happened to all the stuff in my PURSE! I had a lot of great stuff in that purse, and no matter how I’m decked out, I’m allergic to getting ripped off!

I was kept busy stuffing the envelopes, and the bins in the tank were getting pretty full. All four bidders were running neck-and-neck at about one-and-a-half million, and I got the distinct impression that certain parties were concerned about the state of their finances.

Then the door kicked open, and three guys with body armor and SEAL carbines threw a flash-bang grenade into the room. I ducked and rolled myself into a ball the second that the door busted in, but the flash-bang was still like a kick in the ribs. There were a few muffled shots, and when I looked up, Stavrel was slumped over the bar, and his two guards were down on the ground, one of them with the pistol that he’d barely managed to clear limp in his hand. One of the raiders pushed Stavrel’s body off the case on the bar, and made off with the painting. Another clipped a reeling Tuxedo Mary on the chin and took the horn from her hand. And the third tried to open the tank to get at the money, but couldn’t, and the glass seemed to be shatterproof, so he and the guy who’d grabbed Tuxedo Mary’s horn settled for a satchel each of what cash was left.

The guy who only took the one satchel covered the other two as they ran back out the door, and then they were gone completely. There was the briefest of tenterhooks moments, and then everybody but Tuxedo Mary and me went for the tank. Between them, they managed to tear the lid back from the tank, and they tore the envelopes of money out, and somehow they managed to keep from tearing into each other for the others’ money.

After the big scramble, on some strange silent cue, they all ran out the door after the three raiders. The three guys with big GUNS, who’d just killed three other guys. WHY? Don’t ask me. Anyway, as soon as that crew was out the door, Tuxedo Mary went over to Stavrel and looked at him like she was gonna say something to him. But there was a puddle of red flowing out from under him, and she forgot whatever it was she was going to say. She reached for him, but didn’t have the nards for it. Instead, she went over to one of the guards, and rummaged around in his pockets. She found a key card and lit out the door. The one opposite the door that the others had gone out. Knowing a good idea when I see it, I hurried over to the other guard and found his key card- oh, and I helped myself to his wallet and gun, too. Then I scooped all the jewelry and stuff back into my purse and got going out the door as well.

Of course, there was the troublesome little matter that I had NO idea where I was, and how this second set of rooms and corridors played into the layout of the main lobby and rooms. On the principle that there’s nothing more stupid than waving around a gun you can’t use, I chambered a round into the chamber of the gun, a 9mm (I’m guessing). And, of course, as it’s ME, the bullet jammed, and I had to fight to clear it out of the chamber. When I pried the bullet out with my fingers, I noticed something weird: there was no slug in the bullet. Instead of the metal slug, there was a waxy plug set into the cartridge. It took me a moment to suss out that it was a blank, like they use in movies and on TV.

WHY would Stavrel’s guard have a gun with blanks in it?

Belatedly realizing that in this situation, waving a gun around was a dumb thing to do, even if the bullets were real (hell, especially if the bullets were real) I tucked the gun into my purse and ran. I used the key card on every door that had a card lock, and ran around in circles for a few minutes. Then, I opened a door that I had to shove open. Looking down to see what I’d have to step over, I let out a gasp. There, at my feet, blocking the door was the body of one of the three bushwhackers. And yes, I said ‘Body’, and I DO mean body, as in ‘corpus delecti’, as in ‘MAN, somebody’s got some awkward questions to answer’.

Of course, right at that moment, the Professor and his whole posse, followed by the rest come storming around the corner. The Pudge yelled, “DON’T MOVE!”

“ah, That’s a little awkward at the moment,” I said, “seeing as how I’m standing over a Dead Body?”

“Why’d you kill them?” Hatch asked, gun drawn.

“Are you NUTS? I got here just before you did!”

“Don’t be any more of in idiot than you’ve already proven you are, Hatch” the Snake Lady snapped. “Where’s the painting?”

“How… would… I… know?” I grunted as I pushed the door open, moving the body aside with sheer force. Then there was a metallic clunk at my feet. Looking down, I saw that the ambusher’s body had turned over, and he’d been laying on the case. “Okay, does that answer your question?”

There was a Mexican Standoff moment, and I picked up the case. My mouth outrunning my brain by a full lap, I asked out loud, “I wonder why this is here? I mean, I don’t see the moneycases, or the horn. And this is more valuable than all three of the others put together and a lot less noticeable. So why leave the really valuable thing here?”

That stopped the entire crew. Well, except for Hatch, who insisted on digging himself in even deeper with his mouth. “What? You left it, because we caught you before you could get away with it!”

“HATCH,” the Pudge said with a tone of annoyance as he leaned over the body of one of the other two bushwhackers, “she was coming through the door, from the other side. If she was already on the other side, why come back? Also, these men were killed by a sharp blade across the throat. And she doesn’t have so much as a drop of blood on her.”

“These men died helpless, and in mortal fear,” the Snake-Lady’s companion said, looking out into the air as a skull mask appeared over his face.

“Also, whoever did this killed three men in body armor with military grade weapons,” the Professor pointed out as he picked up one of the carbines. “If she was capable of that, I doubt that she’d put up with your nonsense.”

“Military grade?” I wondered, confused, “How’d they get MilSpec guns into this club? You’ve seen the security here; you guys had to sneak those things in in pieces, but that’s serious army hardware- so how’d they get those cannons in here? And the body armor? How do you sneak level III body armor past those guys?” That really stopped them. But it triggered an insight for me. “Oh. Crap.” I looked at the Professor, and asked, “Which way is the room that we were just in? I’m all turned around here.”

Hatch complained, but the Professor, tacitly backed by the others, led me back to the auction room, where there was the tank, the two guards-

-and NO Stavrel. “What’s going ON here?” Hatch demanded.

“Stavrel set us up,” the Pudge growled. “It was a scam.”

“A Pigeon Drop,” I said, taking one of the envelopes of cash that was sticking out of the Professor’s pocket. I took one of the bundles out and said, “This isn’t a bank wrapper; it’s the casino’s $10 wrapper. Stavrel pulled a switch on us.”

“What do you mean ‘Us’?” Skullface gave me the evil eye (not literally, I hope!)

“The Pigeon Drop?” Hatch demanded, “THAT old groaner?”

“It worked. We were so intent on not being had through magic that we weren’t expecting a simple old school switch,” the Professor grumbled as he examined the bills, wondering where the sting was.

Pudge pulled his iCom out and started scanning the bills with it. “SHIT! They’re all counterfeit!”

“You have a counterfeit bill scanner app for your phone?”

“You don’t?”

Hatch checked out the tank, being pretty sharp- after the fact. “There’s some kind of mirror arrangement in there- I think that this thing is kind of like a trick bag- we thought that putting the cash into those slots, but we were really feeding it into a hidden hopper, and Stavrel dropped these dummy envelopes with some gimmick.”

“But… the blood; he was all bloody,” one of the backup said with a squick in his voice that suggested that he’d picked the wrong line of work.

“Stage blood,” the Snake Lady hissed (well, she DID!). “The whole thing was to get us all upset and running after…” she looked at the case. The Professor picked up on her train of thought and took the case behind the bar.

He set the case into the stand that Stavrel had, and there was a sharp *bang!* that made everyone jump, something that is NOT a good idea with so many people with guns and edgy nerves. The Professor leaned over and he said, “There’s a trick bottom. The case… it’s… empty… there’s some sort of niche built into the bar… he must have used the pressurized gas to make the case weigh more, as though it wasn’t empty.”

“Stavrel pulled TWO switches on us,” Pudge mused. “He got us riled up to chase after an empty case… we leave, he gets up and takes the money…” Then his eyes popped open in realization. “He’s got both the painting and over five MIL in cash!” That realization went around the room in a flash, and they were all out of there like Third Graders on the last day of school.

Except for Hatch.

His boys gave him questioning looks like, ‘Aren’t we gonna go after them, Boss?’ Not taking his eyes off of me, Hatch gave a grim simle and shook his head. “Why did you tell them about the switch?”

“Ah, all that I did was avoid a nasty gunfight over a piece of crap,” I pointed out. “One where I was the chump holding the aforementioned piece of crap. Hey, I am NOT a part of this, all I want is that cab that Stavrel mentioned.”

“You keep saying that, but if you wasn’t in all of this up to yer tits, then HOW did you figure the switch?”

“The bullets in Stavrel’s men’s guns were blanks. They had no body armor. The only reason for those guys to have no armor or guns is that Stavrel wanted those three yahoos to make off with the painting. Past that, I was picking up pretty much at the same rate that everyone else was.”

Hatch gave me another backhand. “Where’s Stavrel?”

“How would *I* know?” He backhanded me again. “LOOK, if I was in on this, all that I’d had to do was keep my mouth shut and throw the painting to one of you assholes. Then you’d either kill each other or chase each other all over the place, which was what Stavrel wants you guys to do anyway. So, why would I screw that up, if I was in on it?”

“Dunno,” Hatch admitted. “Whatever the scam is, it’s got to be a hummer. But I got an ace-in-the-hole, and it ain’t YOU, bitch.” He fished around in his inside pocket and pulled out at charm on a chain. He waved it like he was testing it, and it swung toward the wall behind the bar. “Well, of course…” He prodded around the wall, and finally he found something and kicked in a door on a spring hinge. “Well? Waddaya say NOW, Glamourpuss?”

“Is this the part of the cartoon where bouncy bubblegum pop starts playing, and we all chase each other around in circles?”

“Very funny,” he sneered. “Icepick, you come with me. We’re gonna see where this goes. Rigo, you stay with Chatty Cathy here. She does anything, anything at all, put a bullet in her.” He turned the LED light on his iCom up on high, and he and ‘Icepick’ went through the hidden door. Maybe they’ll run into Nancy Drew.