Wings Over Bedlam

As soon as Hatch and his goon were well out of earshot, I gave Rigo a look. Casting eyes at the component gun tucked into his belt, I asked, “So. How many pieces does that thing break down into?”

“Five.”

“That’s a lot, but then you don’t want to be lugging around big parts, now do you? And what does that thing fire?”

“.38 Special,” he growled like he was trying to be a hardass.

I know just enough about guns to know that that’s slightly larger than a 9mm round, and it packs a good punch. “That’s a lot of bang for a gun with that many parts. It must jam a lot.”

“Nah. I paid an arm and a leg for this, but it’s designed to clear with a single pull.”

“Good to know.” With that, I pointed two fingers into my eye and then gave him the two-fingered Horns of Malediction gesture.

“What was that?” Rigo said as he whipped out his gun. Not bothering to answer, I adjusted the skirt of my dress and advanced. He pulled the trigger, but his gun jammed, as I knew it would. Y’see, while I think that I’ve made it abundantly clear that I am NOT Dr. Strange, throwing around bolts of bishru willy-nilly, at the same time I ain’t a complete loss neither. I got a couple of tricks that I can toss out, right off the cuff. The point being is that I got the Evil Eye in spades, and I just hexed Rigo’s gun. So, while he was trying to pull a trigger that wouldn’t give, I gave him a kick that sent him crashing back into the wall with enough force that he bounced. Hey, these Avian legs are good for more than broadjumping 15 feet, y’know.

As Rigo tried to get up off the floor, I rushed up and gave him a kick the jaw. As he reeled, I patted him down, pretty much on general principles. I didn’t find anything other’n a wallet that supported the bit about crime not paying, a protective amulet that was a waste of a money, and a blackjack. There was nothing really useful (especially the amulet), except for five envelopes of counterfeit money. Hey, it’s bogus, but I have a feeling that that much cash will be useful before the night is out! As Rigo started to focus, I dangled the Forget charm on my charm bracelet in front of his eyes. As soon as the charm kicked in, I slapped the sap down. MAN, when he woke up, was he gonna be confused!

And with that, I tucked his gun into one of the trick pockets in my purse and made my daring escape.

Yeah, ‘daring escape’ back into that corridor that I got lost in five minutes ago! Needing to get the hell away before Hatch came back, I tried to calm down and figure out why I was getting it all wrong. Normally, I don’t get lost! But then, most Avians have a built-in sense of direction. So what’s different?

Then the penny dropped.

Of course. The Glamour. It must be mucking up my sense of direction. It affects how I perceive things as much as how others perceive me. So, now I’m running around without that sense of where I am. Come to think of it, this glamour must be mucking up my other big trump card. Normally, when I put my mind to being sneaky, I could tip-toe through the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter would never be the wiser. But this ‘Gee, lookee me, I’m a scorching hawt babe!’ would really put the kibosh on that. And if I drop the glamour, the masks for the rest of the crew would drop too. So, another tactic bites the dust, and if I don’t get moving, I could be next. How do pounders-

Then I kicked myself for being an idiot. I pulled out my iCom, surfed for the Apex’s website, and found their ‘You Are Here’ map. Okay, it didn’t show the rooms and corridors that were off-limits to the customers, but it gave me an idea as to where I was and where the main lobby was.

And, best of all, that gave me a clue as to how to find the others. I did a quick search, and it turned that my brilliant idea flopped, ‘cause nobody had his frickin’ PHONE on! Whose stupid idea was THAT?

Oh. Right. It was my idea. heh.

By this time, I was in the lobby on the second floor, so I headed for the Ladies’, which was rapidly becoming my second home. I settled on a couch and thought as best I could. Okay, my problems are that I can’t leave until I find the other guys, and the way things are going, if I just go and LOOK for them, I’ll run straight into Hatch or one of Stavrel’s other pigeons. That is, if I don’t run smack into Six-Fingered Staretski. And, there’s the none-too-minor point that besides a LOT of money, resaleable jewelry, some nifty stuff in general, and ‘Green Lantern’s’ stuff, I’ve got a bunch of my own magic things in that purse, and that could cause me some serious pain if it got into the hands of any of the mojo-toting bastards that are running around this place. Ironically, if I had my dowsing pendulum, I could find either my stuff, or maybe one of the Crew, but that’s in my purse! Or, it was in my purse. Where it is now, what happened to it, I have no idea.

Then I remembered ‘Green Lantern’s’ ring. If I could swing the ring by some sort of cord, I could use it as a dowsing pendulum. And as I recall, there were several necklaces with gold chains that would serve as a cord. Yeah, it was makeshift, but I was on the spot (again), and I needed to find someone, anyone. Being out here, twisting in the wind was driving me nuts. Hey, if the Crew up and left without me, at least I’d be free to split, myself. But not knowing was driving me nuts.

Tucking my purse under my arm, I went into one of the stalls (people, even the stalls are nicer than any Men’s room I’ve ever been in!) and dug out the necessary materials. Stringing the chain through the band of the ring, I made a crude pendulum. Holding the ‘emerald’ stone, I muttered such words and names of power until I got a reaction from the ring. Dangling the ring from the chain, I softly spoke Cap’n Jack’s full name (or, at least what I know of it; he could be one of those guys with two first names, three middle names, four family names and an online degree for all I know) for a full five minutes. Nuthin’. Then I tried Tinjo, figuring that she’d either know where Jack was, or be tearing the joint apart, trying to find him. Nada. Giving up on that, I focused on finding my banishing charm. Zilch.

With absolute disgust, I slumped over and scowled at the ring. “At least find SOMETHING, fer the luvvakrist,” I growled at it. Really, I should have known better. In Magic, computer programming and the Law alike, one of the prime rules is: Keep It Specific. Generalizations only confuse the system. Of course, having said that, the first thing the stupid ring does is damn near break the chain, jerking off to one direction.

Okay, that’s something. Let’s just hope the stupid ring hasn’t latched onto Six-Fingered Staretski, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing. Well, walking through the lobby following a swinging pendulum would be asking for it, so I slipped the ring off the chain and put it on one finger, the stone turned into the palm of my hand so it wouldn’t show. The ring was several sizes too large for my hand, so it hung loosely enough that I could fudge a pendulum action.

Gingerly walking through the lobby, hoping that I didn’t run into any the people that I didn’t want to meet (which was a lot more’n normal for a friendly guy like me), I looked for any familiar faces, while trying to not look like I was looking for familiar faces. And finally, I spotted a somewhat familiar face: Flynn. Well, he wasn’t one of the gang, but looking for them with him at my side would be a lot better than flying solo. Okay, it would be a little awkward, but at least it wouldn’t be potentially deadly. Besides, Hatch won’t be quite so quick with the backhands, if Flynn’s around.

Dear God, I just latched onto a big strong man for protection. When did my life go so seriously wrong?

But as I walked up, it went even worse. As I got closer, Flynn’s appearance wavered and it was like looking through a one-man fog for a moment. And then I could make out that he was really ‘Green Lantern’- or Rankin, or whatever his name really was. He’d been wearing a mask of Flynn in order to get back into the club and get close to me!

But dig this: Rankin sidles up to me, all smiles, asks me where I been, and generally makes out like he’s Flynn. This confused the hell out of me until the penny dropped: he didn’t know that his mask had slipped. But how could someone who was good enough to mask that many hands at once, on the fly, let his mask slip like that?

He asked coyly, “So what happened, after I left the table?”

Okay, looking back, this might not have been the smartest thing to do, but after what I’d just been through, I needed a good laugh. “Oh!” I chuckled, “It’s a pity that you missed it. Right after you left, one of the other players, y’know, the sleazebag with that tacky RING?” I self-consciously slipped the large stone around so that it was on the palm side of my hand, “Well, he pulled the cheesiest swindle by trying to hex up the cards. Oh, I caught on right away, and played him for everything he had before I had the house troll chuck him out on his ear. Not that it was a lot; the big mook took his money clip, which might pay for breakfast, and that was the best of it. Everything else he had was pure junk! Still, we had a good laught over it.” I finished with a nasty snicker and enjoyed that pained smile that he forced himself to wear, trusting to his mask to keep me from seeing that he wanted to strangle me.

He made himself chuckle, “So, you’ve got all his stuff?”

“Oh, God no!” I said with a dismissive huff. “Like I said, most of it was junk. It got tossed. The only thing that was any good was that stupid ring, and I lost that at the table, before I lost the gem.”

“You lost… the… gem?” he asked with the barest perceptible catch in his voice.

Seeing an opening for something better than a good few vicious giggles, I improvised, “Sure! How else I was supposed to pass it along, without being fricking obvious about it? Those two are gonna have enough problems without people knowing that Miss Suzy passed it to them on purpose. By the way, have you seen the boss? He’s turned off his phone, and he needs to know that the switch went down on schedule.”

“The Boss?”

“Y’know, the guy I came IN with?” I shot back snidely.

He rose to the bait beautifully, and just gave me a ‘very funny, very not-funny’ smirk and said, “No, I haven’t seen him recently.”

“Crap. Well, we’d better find him,” I sighed. “Even if he’s not in a tight spot, he’ll want to know it went down like he wanted.”

Rankin fell in step with me, and that’s how I suckered a wolf into playing guard dog for me. On the theory that if they weren’t using any back stairs I don’t have any way of knowing about, they’d use the main stairs to get around, Rankin and I went up those stairs to the Third Floor and started looking around. That’s where most of the action was, and if we didn’t find Lucky or any of the others (or maybe even Flynn or Jogun), we could just work our way down again. Looking for someone without looking like you’re looking for someone can be hard work, and I was really grateful when Rankin jogged my elbow and pointed out Lucky standing around, doing the looking-without-looking-like-he’s-looking bit himself.

With a cautious look around first, I sidled up to Lucky with Rankin close at my heels. Before Lucky could put his foot in his mouth, I headed him off with, “The switch went down with a few hitches, but nothin’ I couldn’t handle. So, what’s next? Where’s the rest of the team?” I kited a look aside at Rankin, and prayed that Lucky had enough upstairs to pick up the cue.

For a wonder, Lucky actually picked up the cue, straightened the fit of his suit and said, “It’s about time. Come on, we’re behind schedule, and we still have a lot to do.” With that, he went over to one of the side doors and walked through like he owned the place, only slowing down long enough for Rankin and me to follow him. He went into yet another of those side corridors, though this one looked a lot more utilitarian than the sterile blank anonymous corridor that Hatch’s guys had taken me down. I got the impression that this was a service corridor that was used by the Apex’s employees, rather than a space for rent. There were colored lines on the floor and that sort of thing; if you knew the meaning of the color code, you could find your way, no problem, but if you’d just walked in without an invite, good luck finding anything.

Lucky surprised me. He was actually pretty impressive, rattling away, saying stuff that sounded important, but implied that you had know who and what he was talking about to follow. Rankin was hanging on his every word, no doubt trying to suss out what we were up to. Lucky stopped at one door, and took a clipboard from the wall. Not letting up his nattering for a minute, he signed one of the pages, and then, lifting the sheet, he handed the board to Rankin. Rankin was trying to credibly answer a question that Lucky asked him (that probably didn’t have a real answer), and signed. Then Lucky handed me the clipboard. Severely wondering what Lucky (or maybe Jack, or even Tinjo) was up to, I actually looked at the sheets. “SHIT! RANKIN, you Idiot, you signed your real name!”

“What?” Rankin bleated like a sheep, “How’d you know? And-” then the implications of what he’d just done sank in. “omigawd…” Rankin turned and gawped in horror as the seeming of Lucky Zedrajka melted away. A man dressed as a ‘gentleman devil’ complete with a grinning red mask with horns, a hooked nose and a goatee (only the ‘mask’ moved just like a normal face), smirked and took the clipboard from my unfeeling hand.

“Spoilsport,” Nick Scratch purred- or at least he purred as well as you can with a voice that sounds like nails scratching on a smartboard. “You ruined the surprise! And that look on their face when they realize that they’ve signed away their souls is always the best part!”

Lacking anything better to say, I gasped, “I… I… I got nothin’ you want…”

“That’s what you think,” he smirked as he looked me up and down. And it sunk in that that had been absolutely the worst thing that I could’a said. Telling guys like Nick Scratch that you’re afraid of them is like giving them yer personal pass code to everything; you more or less give them permission to do anything. Now, I have dropped mention of Nick Scratch here and there in my rambling narrative, and I think that I’ve pretty well established that he is NOT what you’d call ‘one of the good guys’. Nick Scratch is a Named Wizard, and Wizards like Old Nick are the reason why people are so scared of wizards. The word is that Nick isn’t as powerful as Staretski or Suzy Midnight, but what he lacks in power, he more’n makes up for in sheer nasty. If half the stories about him are true, he has a mean streak that you could put a good-sized suburban housing tract up on, complete with shopping mall, hospital and good schools.

Old Nick must be looking to move up in the world; Swank joints like the Apex aren’t his usual stomping grounds. Normally, Old Nick hangs out at Harrison & Carlyle, the stretch that the Red Light crowd moved over to when the Bijou started getting respectable again (and the Harrison is welcome to them!) Nick’s normal shtick is he’s the loan shark from hell; if he gets your John Hancock on a marker, whether it’s for a straight-up loan of money or a gambling debt, or whatever, he’s got his hooks in you BAD, and that ain’t good. He can get you to do damn near anything. And he never lets go.

And Rankin just signed one of Jack’s marker slips, of his own free will.

Man, Rankin tried to sleaze that emerald out from under me with bogus full houses and straight flushes, and I still felt bad for him. Hey, there are things that you just don’t DO to people, not even card cheats! And Nick Scratch does ‘em just for shits and giggles.

With a big ol’ lopsided smirk, Old Nick took the sheet that Rankin had signed from the clipboard. He ran a forked tongue over one thumb and pressed it against the sheet, where Rankin had put his right name. There was a sound like water on a hot griddle, and some smoke rose from the print. “Signed, sealed,” Nick pointedly put the paper in his wallet and tucked it away, “and delivered.” He smirked into Rankin’s pale face. “Now, your ass is MINE, Slick. You’ll do what I want, how I want, when I want. Period.”

Then he turned that smirk at me, and pulled from his swallowtail coat a long cutthroat straight razor that looked like it could lop the head off a full-grown bull. And the look in his eye said that he’d gleefully cut the throat of the Lamb of God. “Now… as for you…”

The first thing that came to my lips was, “You can’t make me sign away my soul! You can tempt me, and you can trick me, but you can’t MAKE me sign! I’ve got to agree, and I WON’T agree! It won’t work, if I won’t agree!”

Old Nick sagged and pouted a bit. “You just HAVE to go and spoil my fun, now don’t you?” he shrugged it off. “So what? You, Ellison Rankin- what were you two up to, what with you wearing another man’s face?”

Rankin tried not to tell him, you could see him fighting, give him that. But Nick just gestured, and it was like the story fought its way past Rankin’s lips. “We were looking for her boss, the guy you were disguised as. She wanted to report that she’d passed the power emerald along to another mule, on Suzy Midnight’s orders. I was hoping that she’d take me to him, and I could get the jump on him, wearing this disguise.”

“Well, of COURSE!” Nick gushed with patently insincere geniality. “Our dear Miss Suzy would come up with a big dog-and-pony show to move that rock. And, well, I’m not too proud to steal a good idea- and anything else that isn’t nailed down…” he casually plucked at Rankin’s face, and the masking spell came off like a rubber mask, which Nick pulled over his own mask. And suddenly, instead of a refugee from a 19^th Century comic melodrama, he looked like Flynn. He took me forcefully by the arm and said, “Well, time’s a-wasting! Let’s GO! You,” he added negligently to Rankin, “Just…. Hang around and make yourself useful somehow.”

As Nick Scratch dragged me by the arm, he leaned over and leered, “Y’know, you’re making this a lot harder than it has to be, Babe.” He finished this by giving me a long lick down the side of my neck and face with that serpent’s tongue of his. I shuddered, just like he wanted, but it kicked in an idea: he wasn’t twigging to my mask. I mean, howcome he didn’t feel my stubble? Okay, I shaved extra close, and shaving’s still kinda new, but hey! I DO shave, y’know! He should have noticed something!

Then it really clicked; the ring. Rankin’s ring. It’s some sort of spell booster, aligned to improving masks and illusions. That’s why Rankin was able to pull off that slick card-crocking mask, right off the cuff! And it’s why I was able to see through his ‘Flynn’ mask; either the ring helps me see through masks, or Rankin was just so used to having the edge that he’s lost whatever touch he has without it. From the way that Old Nick was able to see right through Rankin’s mask, but not mine, maybe a good jot of both.

Then again, maybe Scratch’s one of those guys who relies so much on a good offensive that he doesn’t really bother with defense that much. The buzz around town is that Old Nick isn’t as tough as, say, Suzy Midnight or Six-Fingered Staretski, and he knows it. Heck, he stays the hell out of the Bijou, ‘cause the last time he tried anything, Dr. Gabriel punted his forked tail for a 90-yard field goal. If Staretski’s sour puritan act means anything, he probably regards slapping Nick Scratch around as something between a religious observation and just good clean fun. And NS’s on Suzy Midnight’s turf just now. Between Miss Suzy and Staretski, if Nick kicks up any kind of row, one or the other of ‘em will send him back to the Harrison, yipping like a whipped dog. And I can make sure that Nickie-boy kicks up a row, be sure of it. Heck if I can get him to try something with Jazz…

Oh. My. Gawd. Jazz… or, rather, Leo…

Advantage: Jinx.

er, rather, WINGS…

“LOOK,” I snarled, trying to pull my arm away from Old Nick, “I don’t know where he is! This yutz and I were looking for him, remember? His girlfriend probably knows where he is; she has a way of keeping tabs on him.”

“Yeah,” he smirked back at me with Flynn’s face. “But so do I. I just needed a way of getting close to him.” With that, he produced a locket, and my Good Eye saw a whisper thin thread of something that dangled from it, and headed off down the corridor. “Well, let’s go! The night isn’t getting any younger, and there are things to do!” He leered at me. “And I’m really looking forward to how we wind up the night, Toots…”

Have you ever almost vomited from disgust, only to have it kept down by sheer terror? I don’t recommend it.

We walked out of the back corridor and were met with by two guys who showed all the signs of being Goons. Or worse. I don’t know what would be worse than the spooks that some wizards stick in guys to turn them into Goons, but if anyone would find something worse, it would be Nick Scratch. “Hang close, but not too close,” he told them like they was a couple of dogs who’d tag right along and queer his pitch if they wasn’t told not to. “I’m going trawling for a shark.” We jinked around a bit, and I saw Jogun, but I wasn’t able to catch his eye, and I spotted Bats and Jazz, but only for a moment. They looked like they had some action of their own going on.

Hey, they could’a been running from guys with machine guns, and I’d trade with ‘em in a second!

Okay, just going along meekly with someone like Nick Scratch is not what I’d call a good long-term plan, even if he’s taking me where I want to go. So as we walked along, I swallowed hard and used my Good Eye on Nick Scratch. Yet another thing that I never thought that I’d do, yesterday.

Okay, I admit it: I’m not experienced enough to really tell a lot with my ‘Good Eye’. I mean, I could tell that the walking stick that I gave Lucky had a magical presence to it, but that was about it. Looking at Scratch, I could tell that the mask that he was wearing was magical, and that was just about IT. But then I noticed some flickering things like were hard to get a fix on, but I eventually made out as small man-shaped… things… that were riding on Scratch’s shoulders, neck and back. What were they? Imps? Some kind of familiar spirits? Goblins that Scratch had somehow tamed? Was this whole ‘devil’ act of his more than just an act?

No, then I remembered something that I’d heard on the magic chat rooms: on TV and movies, wizards just twiddle their fingers, say a few cryptic words and the magic happens; that doesn’t happen in real life. In real life, even the big guys have to perform rituals, like I had; but in they couldn’t do that in their day-to-day work, so they performed the rituals and ‘stored’ them in various ways, including just leaving them ‘hanging’, ready to work but sort of on pause. Maybe those ‘imps’ are spells that Old Nick has ‘hanging’. Or maybe they’re his version of those creepy ‘shadow-things’ of Staretski’s. Then again, maybe both the imps and the shadow-things are just ‘hanging’ spells of some sort. MAN, I am in so over my head, it’s depressing!

But on the upside, it struck me that having a spell ‘hanging’ like that, sort of exposed had to be dangerous. Another mage could do some really nasty stuff to a spell that’s just hanging around like that. It follows that Nick must hide them from other mages. But he’s not bothering with me. That means that he doesn’t know that I can see them. Or that I have those alchemical powders, either.

Advantage: Jinx.

Following that locket of his, Nick dragged me down to the bottom floor of the club, and into yet another of those stupid corridors (there is something going on here with these things, but for the life of me, I’m not getting it). This corridor was another of those blank, sterile, featureless things like Stavrel’s bogus auction had been set in. Again, if you knew how these things were set up, you could find your way around; but if you didn’t, you were SOL. I think that’s kinda the point with these things. Which says things about what Stavrel was thinking; what the things that says really mean, again, I got no idea. We went in a bit, and around a corner you could make out the sounds of a guy and a girl talking. Or arguing, rather.

Old Scratch smirked and tucked away his locket. I psyched myself up to yell to Lucky to make tracks, that Hell on Legs was headed his way. Hey, I may not like Lucky, but he’s still one of the crew, y’know?

But Scratch caught me just as I was about to let rip, and he put a finger to my lips, and locked my words right in my mouth. Then with a smirk, he said, “Ziiipp!!”, ran that finger across my lips, and strike me Protestant if I didn’t feel a zipper form on my mouth, keeping my lips shut. I tried to talk, but couldn’t even mumble. “Ah, every man’s dream,” Nick sighed. “A beautiful woman- who can’t TALK.” He turned to his goons and snarled, “Stay back, I want to see what this guy is up to, before I drop the hammer on him.” He gave me a sideways glance. “If she runs back this way without me… tear her apart.”

With that, he hauled me around the corner. Lucky was, embarrassingly, grappling with Tuxedo Mary. Not that he was grappling with her was embarrassing, in of itself; it was the stilted, kid-gloves way that he was doing it, like he was afraid of hurting her. They were fighting over a bottle, one of those artsy things that’s flattened out like a flask, with a leather jacket heavily inlaid with brass filigree, and a large lead stopper. Old Nick gave out a loud ‘ahem!’ in Flynn’s voice. Tux reacted to our sudden appearance by relaxing her grip on the bottle, and Lucky pulled it away from her. Then he turned to see what she was reacting to, and sort of froze at the sight of us. Tuxedo Mary recovered enough to try and take the bottle away from Lucky, but he just absently shoved her into the wall with one hand, keeping the bottle far from her with the other. He looked at the two of us, took a second to recognize me, and was visibly confused by the situation. Keeping Mary against the wall with that one hand, he tucked the bottle under his arm, exchanging it for the cane I’d given him earlier in the evening. “aaahhh… Do I want to know what you’re going here?” he asked.

Nick gave Lucky this big warm smile and said smoothly, “Well, Miss Thing here wanted to let you know that she passed the power emerald along to your mules, as per your deal with Suzy Midnight.” And, miracle of miracles, Lucky actually had the brains and brass to play along with that. Mind you, Tuxedo Mary was pretty croggled, but then, she would any way the dice landed, so it was all jake. “I helped track you down; y’know, you’re a very hard guy to pin down? Anyway, I figured that a player like you would be in the market for something like THIS.” And he held up that horn that Tuxedo Mary had used to create the wards for the auction.

But that had been taken, along with the bogus painting and the money, by those three guys.

The three guys who’d almost immediately turned up with their throats cut.

Oh Crap, Old Nick’s in a killing mood tonight!

“I’m acting as an agent for a party who’s interested in gaining that bottle. I was empowered to offer a substantial cash incentive for it, but I think that since I’ve managed to lay hands on this, we what say we call it a trade?”

“And what about that ‘substantial cash incentive’ you were talking about?” Lucky asked cagily, giving me the eye and trying to figure out what I was playing at.

“I’ll just... tell my principal that you were a very demanding negotiator. As long as he gets that bottle, he won’t ask too many questions. The horn wasn’t part of my hire agreement, so… I’ll just make a lot more money on the deal than my principal intended. So what? If you refuse, I can make your night very difficult, Mr. …?”

“Call me… Reasonable,” Lucky weaseled nicely. But then, he really is one of those people who do best under pressure. Extreme pressure. “And she’s supposed to act as the middleman?” He nodded at me.

“Nothing so convoluted,” Nick assured him. “Just hand over the bottle, and take this horn from my hand.”

Lucky was hesitant, but he noticed the way that Tux was reacting to the sight of the horn. Twisting Mary’s arm around her back, he leveraged the bottle into his other hand, like he was seriously considering it. But there was something about the way that Nick said, ‘take this horn from my hand’ that just set off alarms and klaxons. Thinking a mile a minute, I pumped everything that I had into Rankin’s ring; forming a cohesive illusion or mask on the fly was way beyond me, but any yutz can screw things up. So, I scrambled Old Nick’s mask, and pulled at it. And for once, the Kid lucks out; the seeming of Flynn pulled off of Nick Scratch like a cheap kerchief mask.

Tuxedo Mary reacted like she’d just seen the Devil himself. Which was way too close for comfort. Lucky also saw Old Scratch for what he was, but he was able to hide it by concentrating on getting Mary back into an arm lock against the wall. Once he had her sort of under control, Lucky said, “Sounds like a reasonable proposal. Catch!” With that, he threw the bottle up into the air for a lob, and let Tuxedo Mary loose.

Nick Scratch and, surprisingly, Tuxedo Mary both dove to catch the bottle. They collided, and as Nick tried to figure out what had just happened, Lucky took advantage of Nick being prone to use that walking stick like a nine-iron on the side of Nick’s head. Lucky grabbed the bottle from Nick’s hand as the silver-tongued devil reeled, but Tux took advantage of her being right at hand to grab the horn from Nick’s hand.

Given how Old Scratch had been trying to push it just now, that wasn’t something that I personally would have recommended, but, hey, Tuxedo Mary isn’t what you’d call a big personal friend of mine. Better her than one of my crew.

As she scrambled to her feet, I dangled my Forget-Me-Now charm in front of her, and she reflexively looked right at it. As her eyes zoned out, I grabbed the horn from her hands; hey, however Nick Scratch hexed it, he hadn’t had it long enough to put anything more’n a simple curse on it. Whatever it was, it was Tux’s headache, not mine. As I looked around for a way out, Lucky reached over and hit a switch that cut off the lights. Then he grabbed my hand in the darkness and yanked me off to one side. There was a weird flash of light, and suddenly we were in another lit hallway.

I tried to ask him how he did that, but my lips were still zipped. Lucky ran, pulling me along after him by the hand. In order to handle it, I had to pull my hand from his as he yapped at me as to what my problem was. I reached into my ‘cleavage’ and pulled out a couple of powders. It took a couple of tries, but I managed to unzip my lips with some banishing powder <yuck!> “How’d you pull that off?” I demanded, “Where are we?”

“This is another hallway,” he said unnecessarily. “There was a hidden doorway between the two hallways, so whoever can make a quick exit. The latch was built into the light switch, so you could pull it off in the dark.”

“And how’d you find it?”

“There’s a monitor on this side, watching what’s on that side,” he explained. “I was on this side and found the monitor. Hey, that’s the only way that I was able to catch up with that were-bitch. MAN, that is one sneaky cat!”

“What has Tux been up to?”

“Tux?”

“Yeah, y’know? Tuxedo Mary? That chick that Leo’s always panting over?”

“That was Tuxedo Mary?” he gawped, goggle-eyed. “DANG, she cleans up good!”

I waved that aside. “Where’s Jack? We gotta get OUT of here, and NOW!”

“Right,” Lucky agreed, which sort of surprised me, “things are getting way too involved around here. The Smart Money says we get while the getting’s good. But I dunno where Jack or Ace are, and since we all got our phones off-”

“That reminds me,” I cut him off, “you can turn your phone back on.” I gave lucky the ‘Highlights for Children’ explanation about the Professor and his scam with the chips.

He turned on his phone, but there was no joy. “I guess they didn’t get the memo,” he grumped. Then something occurred to him. “By the way- what the FUCK were you doing with Nick Scratch?”

“I tried to find Flynn, the guy whose face Old Scratch was wearing, but instead I ran into this other jerk. Maybe the illusion fooled the charm- oh of course!” I smacked myself on the forehead. “Everybody’s wearing these damn disguises! No wonder my charm went wonky! I was visualizing Jack and Tinjo like they usually look! Buuuttt… now that I think about it…” I strung up Rankin’s ring as a pendulum again and started swinging it.

“What’s that supposed to do?” I explained about how I’d dowsed for Jack, and caught two sharks instead.

“And what’s changed?” Lucky sneered.

“I just remembered that Tinjo and Jack are wearing the sidhe stones that I used to create these masks. So, there’s a link between the mask that I’m wearing and the stone that’s maintaining it, and there’s the similarity, stone to stone.”

“HAH?”

“SO, I look for the stones, not Jack or Tinjo. And the illusions help me, instead of screw me over.” And, sure enough, after a few anemic swings, the ring-pendulum started to swing in a very definite direction.”Let’s go.”

“Let’s just hope that it doesn’t just lead us right back into Nick Scratch’s arms,” Lucky grumbled.

“It’s better’n just stumbling around the place, playing hide-and-seek looking for the guys, and all that grade school crap,” I pointed out as I followed the pendulum’s swing. To get off the point, I asked, “By the way- what was all that, with Tuxedo Mary?”

“T’be honest, I’m not a hunnert percent sure,” Lucky admitted. “It was all pretty fast and loose, and nobody was explainin’ nothin’.”

“I think we’re gonna be hearing a lot of that,” I agreed. “The Apex is THE place to be t’night, and there’s a LOT of shady action going down. I think you’re right- no matter what Jack’s got cooking at the moment, once we all get together, we GET while the getting’s good.”

“What makes you think he’s got something cooking?”

“This is JACK we’re talking about! If he was at Noah’s Flood, he’d be on a street corner, trying to sell umbrellas!”

“Right. We Get. Especially since we- or at least _I_ already have the big prize of the night!” he dug into a pocket and pulled out-

-that stupid phony emerald.

I snatched it from Lucky’s hand. “THIS? Let me guess- you managed to get it from a couple, fair-haired guy, kinda sleepy-eyed, gives off a real Cloisters vibe, and a cheap blonde in a gold lamé dress?”

Lucky sagged. “How’d you know?”

I explained the move that Suzy Midnight pulled on me, and how I got shuck of the thing in a poker game. “I spent the better part of a half hour getting RID of that thing!”

“It’s worthless?” Lucky asked like his dog just died.

“It’s worth a couple of grand,” I admitted. “The problem is that there are some VERY nasty people who think that it’s worth MILLIONS! And some of them think that *I* know what’s really going on. Oh, that reminds me.” I handed him that 9mm that I’d taken off Stavrel’s guard. “The guy I took that from was dead. Things are getting very hard core, Lucky.”

Well, having a gun all his own made Lucky feel better about the emerald, so he didn’t bitch (too much) as we traveled to the point where the pendulum pretty much said ‘well, it SHOULD be here’. We guessed that Jack or Tinjo were on one of the upper floors. We found a stairwell up, and then the pendulum went ‘THIS WAY, dummy!’ That led to a locked door which Lucky opened with a hideously illegal add-on to his iCom. But when we opened it, we was staring into the business end of a small artillery battery.

Okay, there were only 14 guns, but hey we’re talking Fourteen GUNS! And six of ‘em were big MilSpec-looking assault rifles. Maybe carbines, I dunno, I’m not big into guns, y’know? They tend to go off and kill people. Ace would know; he’s into damn near anything high-tech and-

-omigawd that’s ACE! And Jack!

Once I got over the freeze from seeing that much firepower aimed at me personally, I got an idea of the situation. It was a decent sized storage room with crates and boxes and like all that. In the center of the room were three groups, pretty obviously there for some kind of buy. On one side was this hefty guy in evening clothes who was pretty clearly in charge of his side. At his side was a slinky looking Asian chick in a long clinging red silk dress. He also had a big Were with him, a wolf-type, and three pretty ‘Thugs-R-Us’ enforcers. The Fat Man, the chick and one of the enforcers were holding pistols on us. The big Were and two of the enforcers were holding those carbines (SMGs?). Next to them was a crate that was open, and had bubble-wrapped packets.

On the other side of the equation were Frick and Frack, the Horse, Lorelei, and their two mooks. Frick, Frack, Lorelei and one of the mooks had pistols on us, while Ed the Horse and one of the mooks were holding the SMGs (?) Beside them they had a few cases, one of which was open, and was lined with

And in the middle of all this, holding exactly ONE of the carbines (?) was Jack and Ace. Ace was holding the assault rifle (or whatever). My immediate impression was that there was a pretty damn intense buy going down, and Jack and Ace were in the middle of it somehow. I let out an ‘eep!’ (hey, it’s the glamour working; that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it), threw up my hands and yelped, “Whoa! Chill out! Wrong Door!”

Ed the Horse and the Big Bad Wolf advanced on us and dragged us away from the door. Big Bad took the 9mm away from Lucky. The Fat Man glowered at us and rasped, “Okay, what the fuck IS this?”

“Hey, like I said, we were looking for somebody, and went in the wrong door!” I insisted. “Look, if we were here to crib your buy, would we do it with just TWO of us and ONE gun?”

“She has nothing to do with us,” Frack said. “She works for Suzy Midnight.”

“Just doing her a favor,” I said with a sick smile.

“If Suzy Midnight was looking to crash this gig, she’d do it with real hitters,” Lorelei pointed out, lowering her gun. “Or at least ones with actual class,” she sneered in my direction. Okay, Ophidian tolerance or no Ophidian tolerance, I officially do not LIKE this bitch.

“Look, if they’re working for Suzy Midnight,” Jack cut in making like he doesn’t know us, “it would not be a good idea to lean on them. Even if she’s just doing the lady a favor, Miss Suzy is NOT the type to sit still for guys putting the hurt on her people, y’know?”

“Why would YOU care?” the Fat Man asked suspiciously,

“I’ve, ah, noticed being trigger-happy is kinda contagious. Once it gets started, you never know what yer gonna catch.” ‘Like a bullet’, Jack left unsaid and clearly understood.

Frick added, “And Stavrel won’t like getting the nice little meet that he set up for us all bloody, and pissing off the resident Muse Queen.”

“Stavrel?” I peeped, the amount of sheer hardware on display clicking in. Besides the infantry cannons, the guns that Frick, Frack, the Fat Man, the two chicks and one of the enforcers were carrying weren’t the kind of component gun that you could slip past Club Security. The only way that they could have gotten those guns in, was if Stavrel told Security to let them pass. “Stavrel set up this meet?” I asked, smelling a big fat, greasy rat.

“Yeah. So what?”

“Did he stow that money you brought in for you?” I asked Frack.

“No.”

I relaxed, but then the Horse said, “Yeah, he even personally verified all the packets of money by hand, so we knew the funds were good.”

“CRAP!” I snapped and made for the open trunk. Lorelei stopped me with that gun up my nose. Suddenly I was aware of a flock of small aerial support drones that were maintaining air superiority. “It’s COUNTERFEIT!” I yelled.

“WHAT?”

“Does anyone have a counterfeit detector app for their ‘phone?”

“Yeah,” the Fat Man said with a grunt as he pulled out his phone and opened up one of the envelopes tucked into a pocket of his jacket.

“Let me guess,” I said dryly, “you were gonna use that, but Stavrel suggested that he do it, ‘to keep things friendly’ or some kind of bilge like that, am I right?”

The Fat Man flipped me that ‘Very not funny’ sneer that I’ve seen a lot of this night, and flipped through the bills. “SHIT!” he hissed. Yep, the bills were bogus. He looked up at Frick and Frack and started to say something less than genteel, and the tension when up exponentially.

I stepped between them and yelled, “THEY DIDN’T DO IT!” that stopped everyone. Jeez, I didn’t know I had this much guts. “Stavrel did it, and they weren’t in it with him.”

“WHY would Stavrel shit on his own dinner plate like this?” Fats demanded.

“Because he’s in full ‘getting ready to skip’ mode,” I explained. “He doesn’t care who he shafts, ‘cause he’s leaving town, probably TONIGHT, and he won’t have to deal with the fallout, ‘cause he won’t be here.” I turned to Frick and said, “Not ten minutes after I left you at the card table, Hatch- that guy in the white suit?- sent two of his boys to drag me into a big meet that Stavrel arranged with him, Professor, the Snake Lady, and that chubby guy. Short form: it was a Pigeon Drop, and Stavrel suckered them each into trading at least three Mil, probably more, for an empty box and a bunch of funny money.” I started to reach into my purse, and suddenly I was looking at a lot of guns again. “CHILL,” I said very carefully. Slowly, I pulled out one of those envelopes of bogus bills. I handed it to Fats and said, “This is one of the packets of bills that Stavrel foisted off on us. Check ‘em out. They’re bound up with the bill wrappers that the casino uses.”

Fats took the envelope and checked it with his iCom. Then he checked out the wrapper. He nodded that it was like I said, and he nodded. The tension in the room went down noticeably. “And what’s this to you?”

“Like pretty-boy over there said,” I jerked a thumb at Jack, “once people start shooting, they tend to get real sloppy. And that kind of firepower in this small a room? Have you even heard of something like that that turned out well? And even if you all don’t shoot ME, there’s no way that I want to be a witness to a mass murder, y’know? Especially when the shooting only helps a greasy ratbag who’s already given me a ton of shit tonight.” I looked around the room and got a general response that this was reasonable. They lowered the guns; there was no profit in shooting each other up for a bunch of funny money.

Then Fats had his boys raise their guns again. “The guns. Give ‘em back. You can have yer party favors.” He threw the packet of counterfeit at Frick and Frack. And the level of tension in the room- and guns- went up again.

“Whoa!” Jack cut in stepping between them, “Who says that ALL of it is queer, hah?” They cut Jack some pretty uniform ‘what are you yammering about?’ looks. “Look, I don’t know how Stavrel switched the bills, probably some stage magic crap that you’d peg in a minute IF you was expectin’ it. But no matter how he pulled it, you’d have noticed if he switched the entire crate, now wouldn’t you?” Frack nodded slowly. Jack smiled widely.

Oh God, Jack’s selling umbrellas again…

“SO, it’s more likely that Stavrel just bit off big chunks whenever he could, using whatever sleight of hand bullshit that he was using, right?” He looked around and saw that they were thinking about it, “SO, it follows that MOST of this money is the goods! And it follows from there, that this buy can still go down as planned. Okay, so you don’t sell as many of the guns, but still, it’s better’n going through all this crap fer nuthin’, am I right?”

“And what’s it to YOU?”

“So, Big Guy, yer gonna need someone to check the money, and figger out what’s safe to spend, right? And you can’t trust them, and they can’t trust you, same as before. So, send over the code for that Counterfeit detector, and me’n my boy here will do it for you. We’ll do it for... five grand each.”

Fats bargained him down to two grand each, one from Fats, the other from Frick and Frack, and Jack got to keep the funny money. Some of the Police Service Providers offer a penny-on-the-dollar reward for counterfeit money; just enough to give those people who got stuck with it a reason to turn it in, but not enough that wiseasses get the idea of running up big amounts, just to turn it in for the reward. When they had that nailed down, Jack ‘generously’ offered to handle ‘taking care’ of Lucky and me.

And, to give Cap’n Jack his due, both sides had come there to do business; they had commitments to keep, and even part of a square deal was better than ‘well, I got reamed’.

The sorting went a lot faster when we realized that however Stavrel had pulled his switch, he’d pulled it in batches with the house wrapper. I’d still love to know how he did it; he was ripping Frick and Frack off in bunches of $50k. We had about a Mil, 200K and change cleared, and maybe 500K of queer cash for Jack, and another good 2 Mil and change in the good and probably a 750K or so more fake cash separated but unverified when the Fat Man said, “Enough! Veles, I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault; you got rooked. But you simply don’t have enough for even a partial shipment! I can’t afford to break this up into small lots and try to move them at a decent price!”

Frick, or Veles, or whatever, called Fats a liar and a cheat (well, DUH! I don’t think that Fats got those guns from an Army Surplus store!), and said that Fats was trying to jack him up for some kind of concession to make the deal happen. And, again, DUH! This is the part of the deal where someone pulls something, just ‘cause they wouldn’t be sure that they’d won, unless they screwed the other guy over. I gave Jack a quick look, and sure enough, either he was thinking about all the times that he’d had the vice tightened on him like that, or he was trying to figure how to get out off whatever spot he’d been put on. Either way, it looked like Cap’n Jack was coming up empty handed again.

BUT, for once, I knew something that nobody (except Lucky, and if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep quiet) does, and I may not only be able to get rid of an albatross around my neck, AND make a real haul, but show Jack that I’m not the loser he thinks I am.

“Excuse me?” I cut in. “I think that I have something to offer, that might save this very profitable bit of business.”

That silenced them. “Oh?” Lorelei sneered. “What are you gonna DO? Sing us a song and make everything all better?”

“I ignore you. Fr- er, Veles, can you scare up the missing money in, oh, say… five days?”

“NO.”

“What if you had the guns? The entire shipment?”

“Sure, but-”

“Am I seriously supposed to hand over the entire shipment on speculation?” Fats snarled.

“No.” I reached into my purse, fished out that phony emerald, and held it up high, smiling brightly. There was a pretty uniform bugging out of eyes at the sight. Oh, and the jewel was pretty, too. “I’m willing put this up as a surety, in exchange for consideration.”

“WHAT?” Lucky yelped like he’d been scalded.

“HEY!” Frack (or whatever his name was) yelped, “That’s the power gem you put up as a BET in the card game! How’d you get it back from those two?”

“It’s a long, very involved story,” I drawled as I admired the way that the light played off on the big chunk of synthetic mineral. “But even if I felt like telling you- and I don’t- we don’t have the time.”

“Hey, wait a minute, you can’t give that away!” Lucky growled.

“So, who’s giving it away?”

“Power Gem?” Fats asked, a greedy glint in his eye.

“Don’t start shopping for that villa in Majorca just yet, Big Guy,” I told him with a warning glare. “I’m not just throwing this into the pot. Here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to give you the stone, and you’re going to hand over the keys or whatever to Veles here. Veles will take the guns and sell them to whoever. Within five days, he’ll contact us, and he’ll pay the balance that you’re owed. You’ll hand the emerald back to me, he’ll pay me 100 thousand, and we’ll ALL be richer and happier.” I finished with a happy ‘aren’t I clever?’ smile at them.

“A HUNDRED GRAND?” Frick gasped, like I’d just taken his first-born child or something.

“That’s the consideration that I was just talking about.”

“I aint that polite!”

“Take Charm lessons.”

“Yer gonna sell THAT for a measly hundred grand?” Lucky demanded aghast.

“A hundred thousand DOLLARS?” Veles seemed to take the exact opposite opinion of the amount.

“I’m not selling it,” I told Lucky, “I’m just putting it up as a surety. And if you try to repay me a hundred thousand YEN,” I told Veles, “I’ll hire Silver over there to bend your knees backwards.”

Fats grunted out an evil chuckle. “And what’s to keep me from just taking that little beauty, and FUCK you all?” His boys raised their guns again.

I gave China Girl a ‘will you talk sense to that pig?’ look. She gave a resigned shrug and said, “She works for Suzy Midnight, that mage who made such a scene in the Everest Room an hour or so ago. If she’s pulling this, then she has Midnight’s blessing, or at least her support. And Suzy Midnight is tougher than you are. She’s tougher than everyone here put together.” Then a thought crossed her mind. “She has to get the gem out of the building, somehow. This way, we’re holding the stone for her, she gets the jewel back when Veles pays us the remainder, and she gets a hundred thousand for getting us to do her job for her.”

“And?” I asked snidely, “This is a bad deal for you HOW?”

Lucky made an unhappy noise, that I was playing so fast and loose with what he regarded as his property, bogus or not.

Fats grinned at me ferally. “I wonder what your Miz Midnight would say if she knew that you were cutting deals on the side?”

“What makes you think that she doesn’t?” I shot back with a confident smirk. “What makes you think that she cares? As long as she gets her rock back, everything else is details, details, details…” Fats looked like he was looking through his deck of mindfuck tricks and was picking one, when I cut him off. “This deal is on the table for ten seconds. And then you can take your guns, and go back and tell whoever’s bankrolling this that you didn’t get NO money a’tall, not a dime, for all your troubles. Ten…”

“Still there IS-”

“NINE…” I cut him off in annoyed tone.

“You can’t-”

“EIGHT…” in a stern voice that I learned from Missus Dubrenski.

“LOOK, BITCH, I COULD…”

“Seven…” I said in a lower confident tone with crossed arms and a knowing smirk.

“Fine, fine,” he sighed, sagging his shoulders. “Gimme the rock and the straight cash, and Veles can have the guns…”

“Like it’s gonna be THAT easy,” I smirked. I sashayed over to an inventory clipboard, turned a couple of hardcopy sheets over, and used the pen to write out very simple yet comprehensive and binding agreements, basically that Fats accepted the emerald on the condition of the repayment of the balance owed in this deal, and he’d return the emerald when he got the rest of his money; Veles agreed to show up with the balance of the payment, plus $100,000 for me, by Friday at the very latest. “Okay, Veles, Horse, and… whatever your name is, c’mere and sign these things.”

“WHY would I sign one of those?” Ed asked with all-too due suspicion.

“Because you’re going to co-sign with Veles,” I answered equitably.

“WHAT?”

“Look, I have no way of making sure that Veles shows up with the rest of the money,” I pointed out. “I mean, the fact that he hired you to be here shows that this is a low-trust kind of business. And he’s not local; all Suzy Midnight to him is some local hoodoo, so he doesn’t really take her that seriously. I wouldn’t put it past him to just get on a plane and take the balance owed with him, not realizing that he’d be bringing down a ton of shit on his head. Not that that shit would do ME a lot of good. The Big Guy over there wouldn’t mind him keeping the stone that much, but I sure as hell would. But YOU on the other hand are local, and you know exactly what Miss Suzy is capable of. And I hear that you’re a dab hand with a slight concussion. You, sign this, and make sure that Veles doesn’t get a terminal case of Happy Feet.”

“Yeah? I can see why you’d want me to do that,” Ed snorted. “But what’s in it for ME?”

“Ten Grand, paid when I get the hundred.”

‘Ten Grand?” Ed stopped, blinked, and gave Frick and Frack a good long look. Then he gave Lorelei a long look. “I like your style,” he said. “But SHE’S gotta sign it first.”

“WHAT?” Lorelei yelped like she’d been burned. “How do I come into this?”

Ed raised his gun and pointedly chambered in a round. “It’s just become very important to me that no unfortunate accidents or merry mix-ups happen to Veles in the next five days. SIGN THE PAPER.”

Lorelei looked around the room frantically, saw no sympathy for her position on her own side, and the other side was downright amused by it. She let out a sigh of frustration and snarled, “FINE. Gimme the damn pen.”

“PEN?” I peeped. “Try PIN.” I drew one of the pieces of glitter crack, a brooch encrusted with what may actually have been diamonds (or not) and unfolded the clasp’s pin.

“We gotta sign in BLOOD?” Fatso said with a note of dread in his voice.

“Can you think of a better way to make sure that nobody runs off, leaving everyone- and by ‘everyone’, I mean ME- holding the bag?” I asked archly. “If I can’t hand Suzy Midnight THIS come Friday,” I hefted the gem, “I’m sure as hell handing her THESE,” I waved the pieces of paper. “And I’m not letting this out of my hot little hands until I see three- sorry, FOUR- John Hancocks on these.” I held up the pin and gave them a ‘no wussing out guys’ smirk.

I knew that I was pushing it, asking them to write their names in blood. Anyone who knows beans about magic knows that while signing your name on something in your blood doesn’t make it binding- well, Nick Scratch doesn’t even need the blood, but he does need a written agreement that hasn’t been kept- but a Mage can take your name, your blood and the fact that you broke your word, and use it against you. Right at the moment, the Fat Man is thinking that maybe he just kills us all, and takes everything, the stone, the cash, and keeps the guns. But if he does that, he’s gotta kill Veles’ entire crew, and Jack and the guys, and Lucky and me too. And despite what you see in the movies, shooting up the people you do deal with is bad for business. And I don’t think that all those drones up there are his. And I’m not sure who on their side is driving those things. It could get very nasty. Not to mention the fact that then he’d have to worry about his own boys. Hey, people get all upset about massacres; just ask Al Capone.

The guys weren’t eager, but they were working up their nerve to sign. But Lorelei had a definite ‘back to the wall’ vibe going down. Dunno why. Maybe she’s just squeamish about blood. The Horse jabbed his finger with the brooch and signed his piece of paper. Then he glowered at Veles, who jabbed his finger like he was slitting his own throat, and signed. Then they both glared daggers at Lorelei. She reared up, and snapped, “HEY! How d’we even know that that thing’s a real power gem, hah? How do we even know that it’s a real EMERALD?”

“Wait a minute,” the Fat Man croaked, and I saw Greed pushed out of the driver’s seat by Doubt, and it was replaced by Paranoia. “How DO I know that it’s a power gem? How DO I know that it’s real?”

_oh crap_

“BECAUSE, we saw-” Veles started.

“Because YOU say so?” Fats ranted on, “I mean, you come along with suitcases full of Monopoly money, and you blame it all on Stavrel, who ain’t here to give HIS side of things, when he’d be pulling a shit move in his own kitchen. YOU say that he’s getting ready to split town. But all I see is a sweet operation that’s pulling in money hand over fist. WHY would he run out on gold mine like this?”

So. This is what it’s like for Jack, when one of his scams blows up in his face.

The worst part is that even if we all get out of this in one piece, this will give Lucky and the others something they can bust my chops about, anytime they want, for the rest of our LIVES… that is, of course, IF we get out of this. Which ain’t exactly a sure thing, right at the moment.

Fats was working himself up into a killing rage, when Ace stepped up and yelled, ‘Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Chill out! There’s a way of being sure!”

“Why are YOU being so helpful?”

“I just got this suit fitted, and I don’t want to get bloodstains on it!” he fixed the (illusory) fit of his coat.

“Okay, Fancy-Pants, what do YOU got?”

Ace swaggered up to Fats with a big smile and very carefully pulled a phone out of his jacket pocket. “Dig It: ARCAM’s latest Netplex iteration. I just got it, and already I got as many of the tack-ons as I could find.”

“Groovy nifty keen-o,” Fats growled. “So WHAT?”

“I know that there is an app that will allow this to scan a precious gem and determine, among other things, whether it’s the real thing, and whether it’s a natural gem or a synthetic mockup.”

“And you just happen to have to have just what we need on your phone?” Fats asked suspiciously. “Just like SHE just happened to come along with a fucking POWER GEM in her purse?”

Ace pulled his ‘glasses’ down and glared into Fats’ eyes. “LOOK- you dragged us into this, remember? We didn’t wanna BE here in the first place, remember? And NO, I don’t have it on my phone! Why would I have something like that on my phone? BUT, I noticed it this afternoon while I was surfing for a circuit checking app, and I remembered it, ‘cause it was, y’know, a cool bit, but I didn’t have any use for it. SO, I know where the app is, it’ll take all of maybe three minutes to download, and it costs a whopping Five Bucks. I’ll eat the five bucks, just to get out of here in one piece, okay?”

Fats chewed on that for a moment, nodded that it made sense, and told Ace to go ahead. There was a delay, ‘cause the control signals for those drones were blocking him. Both sides had their riggers shut down their drones, and Ace was able to get the download, as Fats had one of his guys watch his Netplex to see that he wasn’t trying anything funny with the drones. Finally, he got the app, and hoping that Fats’ goon couldn’t read Ace’s app right, I held up the stone so the netplex could get a read. “aaannnddd… it’s good!” Ace read off, “It’s corundum, color squarely within the ‘emerald’ band, there are 176 imperfections that only show up under a laser so it’s not synthetic, and there are three barely noticeable flaws. It’s definitely real. And… just a sec… this says that the precise trace impurities in the silicate, and their amounts are consistent with gems found in the Long Valley tephra. And if it’s the product of one of the Mega-Blasts, then the odds that it’s a power gem are very good.”

Thank you Ace! I may have to eat shit for the rest of my life, but at least I’ll live to eat it. “Of course it’s a power gem!” I groaned like I was tired of this shit already. “Look at the size of it! If it wasn’t a power gem, they’d have cut that thing up into a hundred smaller gems that they could actually SELL. The only reason that I’d be punting this thing around here is that I was doing it for Suzy Midnight. And the only reason that Miss Suzy would go to all this trouble, is if it was a power gem.”

“Maybe,” Fats growled, his eyes all narrow and piggy. Now, I’m sure that you’ll agree that what I was saying was logical. Bullshit, but logical. But like I said, Paranoia was in the driver’s seat, and Paranoia hates to be wrong.

“DUDE!” Ace snapped, his patience wearing as thin as mine, “That thing weighs over 300 carats! Even if it’s NOT a power stone, a natural emerald that size is worth millions! It’s worth more than the balance, all by itself!”

“Maybe,” Fats growled again. “It’s too slick, too pat… too many people coming out of nowhere, and they all got something to offer… but I’M the only one who’s really putting up anything…” Like I said, Paranoia hates to be wrong.

It struck me that the reason that he was so suspicious was that I was pushing this too hard. So I groaned, “FINE! BE like that! The hundred grand isn’t worth this bullshit!” I snatched the emerald back, “You! Big Bad! Give my guy his gun back, ‘cause we’re OUT OF HERE! You chumps can settle up this mess by yourselves!” Hey, if I can get Lucky and me out of there, at least we’ll be safe, and Jack should be able to talk his way out and take Ace with him.

Fats was still wrapping his head around that, but Big Bad had other ideas. He stepped up to me and grabbed me by the wrist that I had the emerald in. “I smell magic,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean much, especially if a Wizard’s involved.” He took the emerald from my hand and sniffed at it.

Oh Shit! Weres can smell magic? Why didn’t anyone TELL me about that? He was probably smelling the mask that I had up. If I held the stone, I might be able to force something through the big rock using the smaller rock on my ring, but I could do that from a distance!

I grabbed for the stone, but Big Bad just held me at a distance and took a good whiff of the emerald. He took another sniff, and sneezed, his eyes going wide. “Woof! It’s for real! There’s some other magic confusing the scent, but what I’m getting is a good strong whiff of power that ain’t coming from anywhere else! It’s a real power stone! And potent, too!”

Say WHAT?

That thing is for REAL?

And now I gotta hand the most powerful magical item that I’ll probably ever SEE over to this creep?

I grabbed the power gem back from Big Bad. “Of COURSE it’s for real!”

I was about to tell Fats that he’d used up his chances, when one of the doors crashed in and someone yelled, “I KNEW that you were hustling us, you BITCH!”

Turning to see wtf was going down, “HATCH? What the HELL do you think you’re doing? No, don’t point the gun at ME, shoot HIM, he’s got a GUN!”

“What IS this?” Fats demanded. Though, give the big guy his due, he was pointing his gun at Hatch. He may have been paranoid, but he wasn’t stupid.

“What do you think?” I shot right back. “He’s some idiot who wants to get this gem, but isn’t willing to pay anything for it. Why do you think we were sneaking around the back halls? You don’t- rrrggg! You think he’s with ME? Try THIS on for size, Fat Boy: SHOOT HIS IDIOT ASS!”

“I wouldn’t, Babe!” Hatch sneered, taking advantage of their (recommendable) reluctance to simply open fire. “Y’see, I got a friend of yours, who’s been asking around about you. Real anxious to see you, too.”

Friend? All the guys are here, except for Bats and Leo. Bats was not a worry. And disguise or no disguise, Leo could tie Hatch and his entire crew into decorative knotwork. That means that he’s got either Tinjo or Denmar. All that Denmar would have to do to get around these guys is bat her eyes at them, and they’d fall all over themselves trying to help. That means he’s got Tinjo. Yeah, he could take Tinjo; she’d bitch the hell out of ‘em while they did it, but they could pull it off. I didn’t think that it could, but somehow, it just managed to get even nastier, right after I’d calmed Fatboy down.

Hatch gestured into the hall behind him, and Rigo and Icepick dragged Flynn into the room. Hatch put the barrel of his gun against Flynn’s temple and said, “So, hand over the gem, or I punch yer boyfriend’s ticket. The rest of you, stay out of this.”

“Boyfriend?” Lucky hooted, “You have a BOYFRIEND?”

“SHUT IT, Lucky, he-” then the fact that Flynn wasn’t that worried registered. And the second that clicked, he gave me this skeavy smirk that just made everything clear as crystal. “SHIT! Hatch, you IDIOT, that’s not Flynn! That’s NICK SCRATCH!”

Showing that Hatch really IS an idiot, he didn’t shoot as the mask of Flynn melted away and he was holding a gun in Nick Scratch’s red devil face. No, he just goggled as Old Nick grabbed his wrist and burned it so’s he dropped the pistol.

“So?” Nick asked me as he pulled that razor from his jacket, “No hug?”

“Open FIRE!” I shouted.

“Why?” Lorelei asked, “He just wants you. I say we give the power gem and the mouthy bitch both to him, and get on with our lives.”

I swear, the only reason that I didn’t kick her scaly ass, is I wasn’t sure which section of her lower two-thirds was her ass. “Please! Just SHOOT him! He’s already killed three people tonight, and those are only the ones I know about! He’ll just take the gem AND the money, and kill us all anyway!”

“Money?” Nick peeped, his eyes glinting curiously, “You have money?” THAT prompted them to open fire. But Nick jerked Hatch in front of him, and used him as a meat shield. As the both sides on this side of the doorway ceased fire as to figure out how to handle that, Nick sliced Hatch’s throat and flicked blood from the razor onto the floor.

Well, so much for Hatch. He wasn’t that bad a guy. Okay, okay, he was a screaming asshole, but I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

Well, maybe Lorelei…

Gouts of flame rose up from where the blood splattered on the floor. Okay, it was an illusion, but it was a damned effective one. Those two big hulking goons that had been following Nick around seemed to appear out of the flames. Actually, I picked up that they’d just walked out of the concealment that Nick had them hiding in, and they walked through the bogus fire. Either Nick had concealed the fact that they were Caprines, with really intimidating horns and big hooves, or the spooks that Nick uses to create his goons is even nastier than what other Mages use. More’n likely a bit of both.

Finally, the guys open fire into Nick’s two goons. The goons reacted like they’d been hit by a baseball or something, but not like they’d been shot. Oh yeah, no way that Nick’s playing the ‘criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot’ card with that devil act of his; he’s been dealing with the darkness.

The goons started in my direction. “Ah, people?” I reminded them, “If he gets this stone, there is NOTHING stopping him from killing us ALL!”

“Such raw, mindless, unreasoning fear!” Nick tutted. Then he added with relish, “I *love* it!”

Fats had been rummaging around inside his jacket for something- a gun, I presumed. Instead, he pulled out something that looked like an old-school ‘smart phone’ and held it up in Nick’s direction. He clicked and an eye-ripping field of light patterns formed and started to swirl. “Wow!” Ace said with that grin he gets with cool tech. “A vertigo inducer! It might even have a seizure inducing strobe! I guess the kid gloves are off!”

And the kid gloves were off. As Ed and Big Bad closed in on the two goons, Nick slathered a little more blood from Hatch’s neck onto his razor and sprinkled that on the ground with another flick of the razor. And up popped six little devils of fire. I guess that those ‘imps’ that I’d spotted on Nick’s back were his version of Staretski’s creepy shadow-things, after all. They hunched together and and went for Fats. The China Girl, who’d been hiding behind Fats through most of this (and can you blame her?) stepped forward, holding up what I took to be a pretty serious Banishing charm. Which slowed the fire imps down some, but it didn’t no-how stop ‘em.

“Why isn’t anyone shooting the big guns?” I asked the guys, indicating the carbine (or whatever) in Ace’s hands. “I mean, these goons can’t be THAT bulletproof!”

“No bullets,” Ace explained.

“Who brings ammo to a gun buy?” Jack added. “Someone might get ideas!”

Then, as the imps was biting into Fats something fierce, Lorelei (of all people!) reached into her purse and pulled out a packet, which she opened with one thumb. She held it up and blew at it, sending a powder into the air. The powder, which I recognized as Essence of Water (I’ve got a couple of packets of that stashed away myself) billowed out a lot further than it had any right to, and things got very misty, as a very dense fog formed. Then there was a *BAM!* and everyone was thrown to the ground. “Nice going, Scales-for-Brains!” I hissed at Lorelei. “You tried to douse that hot a fire with Essence of Water? You just turned it to steam! We’ll be lucky if those guys weren’t scalded to death!”

“Hey, I didn’t see YOU doing anything except screaming for someone else to start shooting!”

There was a light film of water over everything, and most of the guys in the room seemed to be dazed, if not knocked out. Well, except for Nick Scratch, who was standing there with a ‘aw, man, the shit I have to put up with’ look on his mug. “GET UP!” he yelled at his boys, who were in a heap, even the imps (who, though I hate to give the snake-bitch her due, really did look like they’d been through the wringer). He flicked some more blood onto the imps, who jumped up, no worse for the wet. He did likewise with his two goons. Ed and Big Bad were just starting to get to their feet, and one of the goons started towards Ed with more than saddling the Horse on his nasty little mind.

But Ace stepped up between them with the battle carbine (or whatever), and with a big grin, opened up. There was a sound like a buzz saw, and the goon took a punishing spray of bullets to the labonza. The first volley didn’t kill the goon, but it clearly hurt him bad, so Ace kept up the spray of metal until the goon went down hard. Not bleeding, for some reason, but looking beat all to (forgive me) hell. Once that goon was down, Ace aimed the gun at the other one and gave him a big ‘wanna play?’ grin.

“Okay, you wanna play rough?” Nick sneered at Ace as he held up that razor and sheen of fire ran along the edge. I didn’t know what Old Nick had up his sulfurous sleeve, but I DID know something that Miss Snakehips apparently didn’t: namely, that while in modern alchemy Fire and Water may mutually (and disastrously) annihilate, Fire feeds Air.

I sneaked one of the Essence of Air packets out of my décolletage and prepped it. “HEY NICK!” I yelled, ‘Eat THIS!” And then I chucked the powder at him.

As I figured, Nick sliced at the incoming powder with his razor, trying to burn away whatever agent I was sending his way. But, like I said, Fire feeds Air, not destroys it. So the powder, which was usually pretty mild, not doing much more than cooling water or lightening the weight of things, went turbo, and a small tornado wrapped itself around him for a minute or so, and wound up smacking him up against the ceiling.

Nick landed hard, and as he reeled, Lucky showed again that every so often, he’s actually worth keeping around. He charged in with that walking stick and laid into Hell’s Favorite Son like he was an Old Testament patriarch, and tried to beat some virtue into that sinner!

Of course, Nick’s backup singers weren’t having any of that. They collected themselves and were about to jump Lucky when I joined the fight. Now, I’d love to say that I grabbed that bottle because I saw the elemental nature of that bottle, and realized the conflict which already been so aptly demonstrated. But to be honest, I grabbed it because it was the closest thing I had at hand to a club. Anyway, I grabbed that artsy wrapped bottle that we’d taken from Tuxedo Mary, hefted it by the neck, and waded into the fight.

One hit, and I scattered the imps like bowling pins. I also sent up a cloud of steam that would have played absolute hob with my hair- IF my fancy hairdo wasn’t illusory. Even so, that cheap polyester dress felt like wet toilet paper against my skin. I smashed in the first of the imps that came anywhere near me. It was like trying to clobber water- I’d smack it, it’d go all over the place and then it would pull back together again. And, every time I did that, it sent up another big cloud of steam. On the upside, the imps I smacked were kinda all ‘where did he go, George, where did he go?’ after I splattered them. I did that a few more times, and turned that storage room into sauna. A few more whacks, and you couldn’t see shit for all the steam.

A form loomed at me out of the steam, and I reared back with the bottle, ready to bat for the bleachers. “Whoa!” I heard Ace say suddenly. “CHILL, Wings!”

Okay, I knew that Nick Scratch might be able to borrow Ace’s face and maybe even voice. WHY he’d try to copy Ace, is a whole other question. But if Old Nick knew that I was really Wings, I was in such deep shit that I might as well just slit my own throat and cheat the evil fuck out of the pleasure.

I lowered the bottle and stepped forward. Ace was standing there, holding that fancy gun barrel to the ceiling with one hand and holding his netplex out in my direction with the other. Oh; he was using the netplex as a kind of forward guard, with that net visor of his as the monitor, so he wouldn’t have to get too close to someone swinging a big bottle around wildly. He pocketed the netplex and grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me in one direction.

I let him, and together we joined Jack, who had Lucky by the collar, at the back of the room. Keeping it sweet and simple (for once) he just jerked his thumb upwards and said, “Up ‘n Over.” ‘Up n’ Over’ being our set’s tag for a gag that Avians have been using to good effect for a while. Being ground-bound, Pounders tend to think 2-dimensionally. So, having these powerful jumping legs, we Avians will occasionally jump up, kick against something high up, and just sort of ‘hop’ over the Pounders when they ain’t looking. Confuses the HELL out of ‘em. So, not trusting to the steam to cover this, Ace pointed his gun (or whatever) and shot out the two overhead lights. Then Ace did more or less what I just said, landing at the sole point of light (other’n the ten or so iCom lights flickering around in the mist), the door at the other end of the room. Lucky, I and then Ace followed suit, and suddenly we was in the clear.

We pelted down the hallway, and managed to get back to the public area of the club. As we got our wind back, Ace fiddled with his Netplex. “There. Not only don’t they know we’re gone, but they’re still fighting tooth ‘n nail.”

“Hah?”

“While I was *ahem!* ‘downloading’ that gem check program, I got those losers they had wrangling their drones to shut ‘em down while I got the download, remember? I used my computer visor to highjack the signal and assign myself as the drone’s only handler. Right now, those drones are keeping all three sides fighting each other just as hard as they can.”

“What about Ed the Horse?” Jack asked. Hey, Ed’s a right guy.

“I zotzed him with a taser, right off. He should be safely down and out on the floor for the next five to ten minutes.”

“Very smart, you get a gold star,” I said, “now will you hide that stupid gun? We’re in plain sight here. The Club’s security’s gotta be hella edgy, what with everything going on, and I don’t want to have a firefight with Jogun and his boys!”

Jack was giving me some guff about knowing the Security troll by name, when Lucky felt around his chest and said in a voice of deepest dread, “Blood… I’m bleeding!” He held out his hand, and sure enough, it was bloody.

“huh?” Jack bleated, “I don’t see nothin’.”

“It’s the mask,” I explained. “That’s also why, even after that Turkish Bath we just got out of, we look like we just came out of Makeup and Wardrobe.” I pushed Lucky’s hand aside and felt his chest. “Yeah, I definitely feel a gash.” When I pulled my hand out, it was red as well.

“Nick Scratch must have cut me with his razor!” Lucky gulped. “He almost carved my GUTS out!”

“He IS cut,” I agreed, “and we gotta cover that, fast. Nasty scrapes like that can bleed like a mother.” Now, if I seem a tad cavalier about Lucky’s condition, well, you gotta understand that he’s one of those guys who scream about paper cuts, but says ‘It’s nothing’ and tries to macho it out if it’s actually serious. “Ace, find the nearest Ladies’ room with no personal signals coming from it. That Netplex thing that Ace has been drooling over is the latest ‘big step’ in personal communications. It’s supposed to take advantage of the fact that damn near everything from personal computers to books of matches have some sort of tracking gizmo worked into it somehow, and takes all of that to create, and I quote: ‘an information gestalt’ that’s supposed to somehow be more complete and usable than that ‘Augmented Reality’ cluster fuck of a few years ago.

Whatever.

Hiding that stupid gun as best we could (I had to use that Forget charm on a couple of people), we made it to one of the side Ladies Rooms and duck in. I still had to use the Forget charm on a couple of women, one of whom looked like she really needed to forget something. Once the place was clear, I took a ‘Closed for Cleaning’ sign and put it on the outside door handle. As I gave Ace a dirty look, Jack looked around and said, “Woo, this really IS nice.”

“You should see the main Ladies’, up on the Third.” The reason that I dragged the guys into the Ladies was something that I saw on TV; yeah, yeah, I know, but it made sense. I went to the vending machine and bought a *ahem!* ‘feminine hygiene pad’. Yeah. One of those. And, looking at the selection that the vending machine had, I also bought some adhesive tape, a tube of ScarZip™, alcohol towelettes, and 4 packets of BuzzKill™. Don’t even ask about some of the other stuff it was offering. I don’t want to know.

“What’s that for?” Lucky snarled as I wiped down his scrape with one of the acohol towelettes. “You on your period already?”

“Very funny,” I said as I applied the ScarZip™. “Now stand still.” I took the ‘sanitary napkin’ from its wrapper.

“Hey! What’re you gonna do with that?”

“It’s Sanitary,” I snarled. “It says so on the wrapper. So grow a pair!”

“That’s what I said to YOU and you grew the wrong pair!” Despite Lucky stepping back to Third Grade, I managed to get the ‘feminine hygiene pad’ onto Lucky’s wound, where it would act as a bandage. Then we both wiped our hands with the towelettes and I passed out the BuzzKill tablets.

As I’d been taking care of Lucky, Ace had pulled out this really cool looking multi-tool and had broken that gun into four distinct parts, none of which looked particularly weapon-ish. I stashed the flywheel-looking part in my purse, and I asked, “By the way- where did you find those bullets? You couldn’t have gotten bullets through Security, so where’d they come from?”

Ace grinned. “This thing is a flywheel-initiated linear accelerator gun. It uses a 25,000 rps flywheel to kick a bullet into the linear acceleration track. BUT it’s designed to do that to regular steel-jacketed ammunition.” He pulled a box of screws out of one pocket. “I found these in that store room, and loaded them into ammo hopper. They don’t pick up the spin that regular bullets do, and they tumble in the Linac track, so they lose a lot of momentum, so it only hits with, like, the force of a line drive. BUT-”

“You throw enough baseballs hard into somebody’s gut, and they go down,” Jack finished. “Crude, but effective.” Jack and Ace did a high-five.

Only then did I notice the briefcase that Jack’s other hand. “Jack…” I asked in the voice of dread. “What’s that?”

“Hey, you’re not the only one who made a big score!” Jack grinned. He hefted up the case and opened it, revealing very familiar stacks of paper bound together with bank wrappers.

“JACK!” I said with exasperation. “You ripped off Veles? What were you thinking?”

“What? Why’re you getting up in my grill?”

“’Cause Tinjo isn’t here to do it!”

“I think this act comes with the equipment,” Lucky said sourly. “She’s been giving me this kind of shit all night.”

I only gave Lucky a dirty glance for the ‘She’ crack, but went full bore on Jack. “You IDIOT! Why did you steal all this money?”

“Hel-LO? It’s the score of a LIFETIME!” Jack beamed.

“A lifetime that will be measured in weeks, if not days, unless we can get this moolah back to Veles!”

“What?”

“Or, at the very least, foist it off on someone who has some actual chops!” Jack started to complain, but I cut him off, saying, “JACK, do you honestly think that Veles is gonna just say, ‘golly gosh, I got ripped off, ding-dang it all’? NO! That’s two and a half MILLION, and I’d say that not all of that is his money! He’s gonna come looking for it, and when he does, the word is gonna get around. What do you think that Tommy the Tank will do, when he learns that we got TWO AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS? That fuck would kill us and everyone we know for just the half! And what about Sgt. Planchett?”

“How would Planchett find out?”

“It’s what he does…” I growled.

“Oh, like you’re such a big wheeler-dealer!” Jack sneered.

“Na-na-na-NO!” I snapped, “After this brain-fart, you have completely pissed away any right to give me shit about that!”

“ah… Sorry, Fearless Leader, but I gotta go along with Jinx on this one,” Ace cut in sheepishly. “You know me, I’m always up for a good score. But this? This falls under the heading of ‘never eat anything bigger’n your head’. We simply can’t handle this much cash without it going screwy on us. And that’s even if Veles or any of the other players can’t follow us home. Hell, with this kind of money, how far can we even trust each other?”

“Thank you, Ace, I appreciate that.” Jeezus! Now I know how Tinjo feels!

“Yeah, well…” Jack hedged, sulking ‘cause Ace and I was harshing on his big score, “Well, what about you and that honkin’ big jewel, huh?”

“Jack, I’ve been trying to get RID of this thing since Suzy Midnight rammed it down my throat!”

“You mean… that bit about you workin’ for Miss Suzy wasn’t just a hustle?”

I ran through the whole scene, starting from when Suzy Midnight stuck me with the rock to Lucky and my little set-to with Nick Scratch. “So, I figure that Miss Suzy’s playing all of this somehow. What she’s after? I have NO clue. Who she’s gaming? Us? Why bother? What have we done to her? As… scretchy as Suzy gets, she’s never been… well… petty. Stavrel? Maybe, but I don’t see how it plays out.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Jack pointed out. “I mean, Suzy didn’t get her rep by being obvious, y’know.”

“True,” I gave him his due. “But that just doesn’t have the Suzy Midnight vibe. Staretski? Yeah, I could see him being her target.”

“God knows, he’s got it coming,” Ace said.

“And what about Nick Scratch?” Lucky asked.

“Well, he’s the obvious target,” I agreed. “But like Jack just said, Miss Suzy didn’t get her rep by being obvious.”

“Jinx,” Jack asked me with a… respect, I think is the right word, that doesn’t come my way very often, “how dangerous IS Old Scratch, I mean, really?”

I shrugged widely. “You’re asking ME? HELLA dangerous! That asshole is NUTS! But now that I think about it, it’s not that Nick is that powerful as it is that he’s willing to use that power on guys that most Mages with his power wouldn’t bother with. As a matter of fact, if you put ‘em in a ring, I’d put money on Staretski or Miss Suzy to wipe up the floor with Nick.”

“He is WAY off his turf,” Ace agreed.

“Yeah, but if these magic thingies are so powerful that Nick would risk his forked tail going this far off his turf to get them, then having them could put him in a whole new league,” Lucky pointed out.

“Any idea what they do, Jinx?” Jack asked.

“Well, the bottle is aligned with the element of Water, which is why it did so well against Nick’s little demons,” I spelled it out for them. “And Tuxedo Mary used the horn to create a ward. Past that? No clue,” I admitted.

“Tuxedo Mary?” Ace hooted. “What’s she got to do with this?”

“She was the one peddling this stuff to those guys at the auction. And I got the impression that Hatch and the black guy were interested.”

“That was Tuxedo Mary? DANG, she cleans up good!”

“If Tuxedo Mary is suddenly peddling magic items,” Jack was working it out, “then either the guy she’s fronting for is pullin’ some very strange moves, or-”

“Or he’s pushing up daisies,” Ace finished for him. “There’s a power vacuum on the street, and Nick Scratch is looking to up his game. God, I hope that Suzy Midnight’s pulling something. ‘Cause if she ain’t, then things just got very nasty.”

“Yeah, but there’s something very important that you’re not talking about.” Lucky cut in. He glared at me. “What’s this about you having a boyfriend?”

“What’sa matta, Lucky?” I jeered. “Jealous?”

Lucky was about to say something really unfortunate- for him- when my iCom buzzed. Loudly. The conversation stopped dead as I checked the caller ID. “It’s Tinjo!” Jack gave a nod and I answered it. “Yo?”

[Hey, Jinx? It’s me. Is the Boss there?]

“Just a sec.” I gave Ace a questioning look.

He checked his Netplex, synched the signals and checked something. Very hush, he said, “It’s Tinjo, and not a synthesized voice analog.”

“He’s a little busy right at the moment, Tinje. What’s up? Where are you?”

[ah, Look, would you tell the Boss that I have some people here who want to talk to him?]

“What’s this about, Tinjo?”

[Look, they just wanna have a sit-down, talk, and maybe do a little business.]

“What sort of business?” Giving Ace a quick look, he gave me a ‘stall for time’ gesture, but didn’t stop staring off into thin air, which meant that he was working his visor for everything he could. “I mean, Tinjo, in case you haven’t noticed, things are getting very dodgy around here. The Boss and I were thinking of getting while the getting’s good.”

[NO! No, Jinx, you have something this guy wants, and he’s willing to trade value for value]

I got a text reading ‘WHERE?’ “Okay, and where do they want this meet?”

[The Kunlun Room. As soon as possible] Then she logged off.

Ace said, “The Kunlun Room is on the first floor, and open and doing good business. They serve Chinese food, but I wouldn’t recommend it- not only do they bring in catered stuff from outside, but they serve Cantonese right alongside Szechuan! There are three open tables, there’s a lot of personal chit-chat going in and out of the room, no emergency bleats or calls to 911. Club security has it tagged as Green, no problems. But there are three Code Reds hanging in other places, and they’ve restricted access to the ‘Private Sections’ of the club. I’d say that the Kunlun Room would be a good place to hold a meet: lots of people, if anyone tried anything there’d be an uproar that would wake up Abe Lincoln, there’s a reasonable excuse for you all to be there and talking, there’s usually so much chit-chat going on that it’s almost impossible for people at other tables to hear you, and the tables are pretty good sized and very sturdy.”

“And I hear that the egg rolls are fabulous,” Lucky cracked.

“AND, I tracked Tinjo’s call from the Kunlun Room, so she’s safe for now.”

“So, Jinx,” Jack asked with more caution that I usually hear from him, “who d’you think it is, y’think they got anything more than Tinjo to offer, and what do they want from me?”

“Ah, Jack?” I answered, “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but by ‘the Boss’, I think that Tinjo meant Lucky.”

“LUCKY?” Jack gawped, aghast.

“I don’t see why you’re so surprised,” Lucky grumbled.

I spelled out for them how first Rankin and then Nick Scratch had rather taken for granted that I worked for Lucky. “WHY, I dunno.”

“Yeah and remember, Jack, we’re talking about Tinjo,” Ace pointed out. “She’d rather open a vein than call you ‘Boss’ out loud.”

“Y’think it’s Nick Scratch, trying to get at Lucky for something he thinks he’s got?”

I turned it over in my mind. “Nah. Not his style. Too many people around, no real opportunity to get nasty. And from what I’ve seen and heard, Old Nick loves to get nasty. But whoever it is, they got some serious teeth; Tinjo sounded scared. Not as scared as she’d be if it was Nick Scratch or Staretski, but she was definitely spooked.”

“Hey, and what about Denmar?” Lucky asked, “Anyone got any idea where Denmar is?”

“Last I saw of Tinjo, she was going to look for her,” I said. “If they connected Tinjo with me, then they’d connect Denmar.”

“Nah,” Jack ruled that right out. “If they had Denmar as well as Tinjo, they’d have her make the call. I mean, I love Tinjo, but Dennie kicks in the old ‘Knight in shining armor’ reflex a lot better’n Tinjo does.” Jack gave me a look like he was trying to make up his mind about something. “So. Jinx. What’re the chances that they’ve, y’know, put the whammy on Tinjo?” he twiddled his fingers at me. “So, when we go there, they have Tinje pull out a gun and do something, so’s no matter who sees it, they’re not t’blame?”

I thought about a bit. Now that I think about it, the problem with people taking you serious is that you gotta be right, or you could screw them up as bad you do yourself, and that’s worse. “I doubt it. Nick Scratch could do something like that, but he’d need their marker t’do it, or something like that. And, even if they did, and we just don’t know about it, I kinda doubt that they’d pull this move with it. More likely, they’d just have Tinjo come up to Lucky out of the clear blue, pop him with a gun and then they’d *ahem!* ‘rescue him’, and take him somewhere. To the hospital, honest, guys!”

“Okay, yer on a roll, Wings,” Jack said. Well, at least he didn’t call me ‘Jinx’ this time. “So what d’you think we got they want? And WHY do they think that LUCKY is the big boss, hah?”

“WHY is that so hard for you to take?” Lucky demanded, all outraged.

He was waving that walking stick around, which kicked the answer in. “Of course! The walking stick! It’s magical!”

“It’s magical?” Lucky asked, looking at it stupidly.

“Of course it’s magical! Why d’you think I bought it in the first place? I spotted it in the Magic stall, among all the other schlock, and then I gave it to Lucky to hold for me. And remember, Lucky: that’s MINE!”

“Now that you mention it,” Lucky said, spinning it like a baton, “Old Scratch didn’t even blink when there were guys firing guns at him. But when I lit into him with this, he was screaming for his mah-mee!”

“Something about the enchantment on it must get right through whatever Scratch uses to keep people from kickin’ his teeth in, like he deserves,” Ace guessed.

“I was wondering why nobody else spotted that when I did,” I went on. “The answer: they did, and they were watching when I gave it to Lucky. They assumed that since I gave it to him, that he’s my boss.” Okay, and I may have ratted out Lucky as ‘my boss’ to Rankin; details, details, details!

Jack nodded, like he got what I was saying, and addressed the troops: “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have to take the shot that they don’t know about Ace and me, and they think that you’d go in all mobbed up if you had backup. So, Ace and I say out of the room, but close at hand, and if anything goes wrong, we’ll come in and back you up.”

“HOW?” Lucky sneered. ‘There’s no way that you could put that flywheel gun back together and still keep it hid while you wait. What’re you gonna do? Wait for the shit to hit the fan, and then put the gun back together, and then come to the rescue- when we’re DEAD?”

Jack locked up on that one, but I came to his rescue. “Here,” I dug that component gun out of my purse and handed it to Jack. “It’s not a machine gun, but it’s something.”

“How?”

“Long story, I’ll tell you later.”

Cool!” Jack bucked right up again. “So, first, hand over the cane and that bottle and the horn thing. If they’re what these guys are after, then there’s no sense in bringing it right to ‘em, am I right? If they do try to cut a deal for one of these, you bring one of them to US. Lucky, you go in like you’re the big mysterious boss-guy. BUT you let Jinx do all the talking.” Finally! Jack’s actually making sense!

“What?” Lucky yelped.

He started to bitch and moan, but Jack ran right over that, “LOOK, as Jinx just so aptly demonstrated, it’s a lot harder to sound like a big shot than it seems.” HEY! “And she had a better build-up than you do-”

Ace snickered, “Yeah, and she still almost sold a multi-million dollar jewel for a measly hundred grand!”

“I did that because I thought it was a cheap synthetic jewel, ‘cause I paid attention to that stupid knockoff appraisal app that YOU gave me!” I gave him some of his own right back at him.

“-but you’re going in with just this weird mistake going for you,” Jack continued like we hadn’t said anything. “So, you don’t say nothing, you just sit there.”

“What?” Lucky said again, but confused this time, not insulted.

“- but, I’m sorry to say, Luckster, you just don’t know how to sound like the big shot that we need you to be. If you try, you’ll just sound like a street kid trying to sound like a big shot, and you and Tinjo might not walk out of there alive. So, the Japanese have this weird thing where the senior guy going into a deal doesn’t say anything. It’s like he’s too important to say anything. He just lets the junior guy do all the talking. But he makes it clear that he’s in charge, and he’ll only step in if the deal ain’t going the way he wants. That’s what you do. You just sit there, making out like you’re listening to everything they say, and let Jinx talk. ‘Cause I’ll be telling her what to say.”

“What?” That was me this time.

Jack held up an earbud. “I’ll be listening in with this, and feeding Jinx answers. I’d give it to you, Lucky, but I can’t be sure that that mask thing will cover it up, and if they see a guy your age with one of these things, they’ll know something’s hinky for sure. But Jinx has long hair, which should cover this thing nicely.”

“So, I just sit there, like a dummy,” Lucky said sourly.

“You have it easy,” I droned. “I get to be Jack’s ventriloquist’s dummy.” I glared into Jack’s face as I shoved the bud into my ear, “This does NOT constitute a precedent, Jack! I am NOT going to be your mouthpiece again!”

Jack gave me a look like he was hurt, but I could tell that behind that hurt look, he trying to figure out whether being safe by operating by remote control was worth losing out on the fun of running the hustle himself. I let out an aggravated breath and grabbed Lucky by the arm and snarled, “Let’s get going, before he tries to work a dancing bear into the act!”

Lucky and I started out the gate (or restroom door) a little stiff, but by the time that we got to the stairs we’d gotten our mojo going again. We made our way to the stalls, where I picked up a replacement for the walking stick, and then we descended the stairs as the epitome of grace and style that we’d come in. We hit the bottom level and ignoring the looks of resentment, envy, ‘oh wow’ and ‘YES, this IS the place!’, we casually made our way to the Kunlun Room. Jack was yammering into my ear, but I figured out fast that he was just talking to ease his nerves, so I tuned him out.

I checked out the lobby carefully, just in case any ‘old friends’ that I didn’t want to see (or more to the point, be seen by) happened to be there. Instead, I saw something a lot more welcome. I spotted a close group of six muscular people in simple dark evening suits that were suspiciously stiff around the chest. I recognized Jogun, there was another, shorter but still very buff Caprine, two Weres, two Pounders, a guy and a very athletic woman who gave me the impression that she could give Leo a run for his money in the ring. They were standing together, obviously talking about all the weirdness going on tonight.

At the last minute, I towed Lucky away from the door to the Kunlun Room, and towards the knot of Security goo-er, thugs. Jack kept rambling on into my ear, until I was almost there, when he yelped, [HEY! What’re you DOING?]

Standing at the edge of the group, I dramatically cleared my throat and asked sweetly, “Excuse me? Jogun? Could I have a word with you?”

The other Security types gave Jogun the silent message, ‘take care of this, and then let’s get back to serious business’. Jogun walked us over to the side and gave me that patient, slightly insulting look of professional patience and courtesy that you see aimed at high-profile customers. Well, I wasn’t about to be patted on the head while I tried to get him to take me seriously. “So, are you discussing the deaths in the Storeroom on the Second level, the two guys in the meeting room on the third, or the three guys in the corridor?”

[WHAT ARE YOU DOING?] Jack shrieked in my ear.

Jogun’s look of bemused tolerance melted off his face like snow on a furnace. “What?”

“The guys in the meeting room may or may not been two of your crew, but they worked for Stavrel. They were shot with MilSpec rifle rounds. They should have been wearing body armor, but they weren’t, and one of them had a gun that was loaded with blanks. Stavrel set them up to be killed.”

[What? When did this happen?] Jack asked frantically.

“Keep going,” Jogun graveled through a face set like granite.

“They were killed by the three guys in the corridor. Those guys had their throats cut by a straight razor, despite the fact that they were wearing MilSpec body armor and carrying MilSpec assault rifles; if you check, the bullets in the guys in the meeting room should match those rifles. The guy in the storeroom was wearing a startling white evening suit, with a black shirt and a silver lame tie. He was wearing a blue brocade vest with a pocket watch with a shark’s tooth, a fake jade 4-leaf clover charm, and a large gold dingbob that might have been some sort of anti-bullet charm on the chain. Though, now that I think about it, he may not have had a pocket watch- he was also wearing a probably bogus Rolex watch. Though I wouldn’t put it past him to wear both. Either the brocade vest was armored, or he had body armor under his shirt, because despite the fact that he was shot somewhere between 12 and 20 times, none of those killed him; he died by having his throat cut, same as the guys in the corridor, from left to right, and the left side of the cut was cauterized, like the blade was red hot. Oh, and his suit was wet. Not drenched, more like a heavy dew, and there was more of the same over most of the store room.”

[TMI! TMI! Why are you TELLING him all this?]

Jogun stared at me coldly. “How do you know all this?”

“I saw it. I was there. There was a buy that Stavrel had arranged going down, it was proceeding nicely… well, not that nicely, but we’d managed to get most of the wrinkles ironed out. Then Hatch tried to muscle his way in, and would up getting his throat cut. It was very traumatic to see; I’ll probably be dining out on the story for at least a month.”

[Yeah, when you get out of the hospital, after I pound the HELL out of you!]

“Hatch?”

“Yes, that was his name. Or at least that was the name that he used. You didn’t find his wallet? Well, then his two boys, Rigo and Icepick, must have taken it. And probably that Rolex as well. Given the kind of guy that Hatch was, that’s the kind of men he probably had working for him. Right now, they’re probably running up a huge debit on his key card and credit cards, while they can, the ghouls.” Btw, that last bit was sarcasm. After the night I’ve had, I need all the laughs I can get.

“Who killed him?”

“Nick Scratch.”

“Nick Scratch?” Jogun’s face took on an all-too familiar look of anger, confusion and caution. “You were doing business with Nick Scratch?”

“Mother of GOD, No! As a matter of fact, Old Scratch used Hatch to find me and crash the meeting.”

“Then why did Scratch kill him?”

“As near as I can tell, just to be evil. God knows, there was no real reason for it, other than to terrify everyone.”

Jogun’s face went hard, like he’d figured out that a bad situation was way worse than he’d thought. “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to come to the Security office with me.”

[If Tinjo gets hurt ‘cause of this, I’m gonna rip your wings off and ram them down yer throat!]

I figured that a change of tactic was called for. “So, what exactly what Stavrel’s excuse for not paying the staff this week?”

“What?” Jogun grunted, stopped for a moment.

“And what excuse has he given all those creditors that you’ve had to keep off his ass?”

“How’d you…”

[What are you up to, Wings?]

“Jogun, there is some very nasty business going down tonight, and those poor assholes in that meeting room were only the beginning of it. And your boss Stavrel is in it right up to his bushy eyebrows. Now I don’t think that you’d believe me if I told you what I know about Stavrel; you have no real reason to. BUT, there are things that are going on tonight that would turn your hair white, Jogun. And that’s just the things that I know about. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I only knew a fraction of the nastiness that’s going on behind closed doors in this club tonight.” Jogun’s eyes flickered, like what I was saying matched up way too well with what he was hearing from his buds. “Now, my friend here and I are heading into a small private meeting over in the Kunlun Room. It may turn out to be another piece of that nastiness, it might not. I’d vastly prefer that it not. If you come with us, and, ah, lend the meeting the weight of your presence, not only might that meeting come out more pleasantly, but you might hear things that you need to know.” I fixed him with a meaningful stare. “I’ll make sure of it.” He kited a glance over at the other Security guys. “Too much weight; it might, ah, inhibit the flow of conversation.”

Jogun looked like he’d rather be chewing broken glass, but he nodded. Still, he returned to his circle of buddies and talked with them for a bit.

[What do you think you are DOING?] Jack demanded.

“Getting backup,” I replied, making it look like I was talking to Lucky.

[What do you call Ace and me?]

“Comedy Relief.”

[Are you NUTS? He’ll-]

“JACK, there’s a lot more serious shit going down tonight than our rinky-dink little scam! People are dead, Jack! And since the Cops aren’t here, that means that Security’s sitting on it. Which means that once we get Tinjo, we can have Security find Denmar, Bats and Leo, and they’ll show us out, so there won’t be any more trouble.”

[But they-]

“JACK, this way Security is working for us, instead of against us!”

[But we’ve been ripping Stavrel off!]

“Jack, they’ve got bigger things to worry about than us dipping into Stavrel’s reserves of swag- namely, their paychecks!”

[What?]

“Jack, Stavrel killed two of his own guys, just to cover that Pigeon Drop play of his; what makes you think he’d so much as bat an eye at running off with the payroll? He’s in full Rip-Off mode, and I’d say that from the way things are going down, he’s skipping out tonight. And Jogun’s sharp enough to know it. Trying to put us on ice would just be work that they don’t need.”

Jack was bitching about how I was complicating this all to hell and threatening to do horrible things to me when the Security guys broke their huddle. The others spread out like they had a plan, and Jogun walked up to us. “Okay, let’s get to this big meet of yours.” But the look that he gave me said that if I was presuming on our very brief acquaintance to mooch a free bodyguard, he’d do things to me that would make the worst our upcoming opposition could do to me look absolutely pleasant by comparison.

As we walked together to the Kunlun Room, I ignored what Jack was yapping into my ear, furiously trying to come up with ingenious ways of making sure that I could steer the conversation into the direction of where that ratass Stavrel had got to.