MATT FORBECK

 

 

Vegas Knights

 

 

 

 

Dedicated to my wife, Ann, who is always willing to take a gamble with me, and to our kids – Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen – who are always our biggest payoff.

 

CHAPTER ONE

 
"Luck is for losers."

  I hated it when Bill said that. I hated the tone, the words, the way it made me feel.

  "Quiet," I said. "I can't think with you jabbering at me like that."

  I ran a hand over my dark, shaggy curls and stared down at the cards before me. I ignored the five laid out face-up in the middle of the table. I couldn't do anything about them. The two hole cards face-down in front of me worried me though, and I hadn't even looked at them.

  Bill slapped a hand on the polished wood. The cards jumped off the table a fraction of an inch and settled right back down where they'd been. Nothing about them changed a bit.

  "You think it's hard to concentrate here, in a hotel room?" Bill sneered at me. "Just imagine how much worse it's going to be on the floor in a real game with real money on the table."

  "We won't be playing for chips?"

  "Chips are money, Jackson," he said. "That's one of

the tricks the casinos play on you to keep you coming back. Losing a stack of black chips doesn't seem like that big a deal. But that stack's worth all your textbooks for the year."

  I glared at Bill now. He stared back at me with his blue eyes under his dark, close-cut hair. Everything about him was razor-sharp, from the edges of his sideburns to the creases in his khakis. He was only nineteen, a few months older than me, but he always seemed far more sophisticated.

  "You're not helping, brother," I said. I turned and reached for my laptop.

  Bill leaned over the table. "What are you doing? That can't help you."

  I launched my video chat program. "I'm going to call Ultman."

  Bill slammed the laptop shut, almost pinching my fingers. "No. What's the professor going to say?" He put on his best Indian accent. "'I told you not to do anything foolish, Mr Wisdom'? 'Bring him back to Ann Arbor, Mr Chancey'?" He gagged. "Are you going to listen to that?"

  I rubbed my eyes and sighed. "This is crazy," I said. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

  Bill pulled the laptop away and tossed it on one of the beds. I glanced out past it to the view out of the room's wide, tinted window, which was curved to fit inside the casino's outer wall. The sun had fallen behind the mountains to the west, turning the sky into bands of bright orange at the horizon, fading to star-speckled blue-black high above.

  I'd never seen mountains before this morning's flight from Detroit Metro to McCarran. The guidebook on my smartphone called the range hunkered off to the west of Las Vegas the Spring Mountains. They looked close enough to walk to, although I knew it would take me at least a good day's hike just to reach their feet.

  "It's a good plan," said Bill. "It's going to work. How can it not work?"

  I smirked at him. "You want a list? I've seen enough movies. We're going to screw this up, and a couple gorillas in dark suits and glasses will take us into a back room and beat us half to death then offer us a free ride to the airport."

  Bill groaned. "You're always so negative. You have to think positive. We're not going to screw this up."

  "I'm positive we will."

  Bill made a fist. "Thinking like that will get us killed."

  I put up my hands and walked to the window. When we'd checked in three hours ago, the hotel tower had faced the Strip. I wondered how long it would take for it to make a complete spin.

  "Forget it then," I said. "It's not worth it. It's just money."

  "Just money," he said. "So you're rich? Your grandma doesn't have to work to send you to school? That out-of-state tuition isn't taking a bit out of her retirement fund?"

  I winced. Bill knew how poor I was, especially compared to him. I felt guilty every day about taking my grandma's money, but she wouldn't let me not. "A man's nothing without an education," she'd told me. "Just see how your daddy and granddaddy turned out. We ain't gonna have that from you."

  Bill just wouldn't let up though. "How's that scholarship working out for you?"

  I turned and scowled at him. He knew. "I'd be doing fine."

  "If what?" he said. He stuck out his chest, daring me to say it.

  "Forget it. I ain't going for it."

  He pumped his fist at me in frustration. "Magic isn't the problem, Jackson. It's the solution."

  "It's stealing. It ain't right."

  "So now you got morals." He rubbed his forehead. "You didn't seem to mind taking money from those frat boys last week."

  I knew he was going to bring that up. "They had it coming. Besides, it was just beer money. They could afford it."

  Bill tossed up his arms. "And these casinos can't? Have you looked at this place? It's a garden in a desert!"

  He walked over to the wardrobe, opened it up, and started rummaging through it. "Look at this hotel," he said. "Revolutions is fifty stories tall, and the whole building spins on an axis.

  "Check out the Luxor. That light that spears out of the top of the pyramid? You can see that from space. The Stratosphere is over a thousand feet tall, and it has rides on top of it. The Mirage has a working volcano sitting out in front of it.

  "Do you have any idea about the kind of engineering that goes into building something like that? Do you know what it costs to keep it all going?"

  "Do you?"

  "A hell of a lot more than we could ever take out of here in a single night. The profits on a place like this are astronomical. And half of them go to the mob."

  "You believe that, you've been watching too much TV."

  "Think what you like, Jackson," he said. "You could take enough money from these people to pay for your entire education, and they wouldn't notice it."

  I knew he was right, but I shook my head anyway. "That ain't the point. I can't do it anyhow. It – it just doesn't want to work."

  "You can do it," Bill said. "You've done it before. You're just psyching yourself out."

  He pulled a pistol from his duffel bag.

  "What the hell are you doing with that?" I took a step back and bumped into the tempered glass behind me. We were thirty-three stories up in a rotating building, and the windows here were all sealed up solid.

  "It's insurance." Bill flipped out the pistol's empty cylinder with practiced ease, like a gunslinger from the early days of this lawless town. He slipped a single bullet into it, slapped it back home and gave it a spin.

  "Against what? The bellboy?"

  "All sorts of things." He pointed the gun at me. "Right now, it's against friends cutting their own throats."

  "Put the gun down, Bill," I said. "It ain't funny."

  "I'm not joking." He cocked the pistol. "Change the cards."

  "How the hell did you get that through the airport?" I glanced around for some way to escape. Only one door led out of the room, and Bill stood between me and it.

  "I'm a magician, Jackson." Bill snorted. "How do you think I did it?"

  He pulled the trigger, and my heart nearly stopped. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

  "Put it away, brother." I held my hands over my chest. "Someone's going to get hurt."

  He cocked the pistol again. "Just change the cards. Then I put it away."

  I walked back to the table. "How did you get your hands on a gun?" I asked. "Tell me you haven't had that stashed in our dorm room all year."

  "I'm from Detroit," he said, like that explained everything.

  "I ate in your family's mansion for Thanksgiving, Bill. Grosse Pointe Woods ain't hardly the hood."

  "Just change the cards."

  I looked down at the table. The cards were still there, mocking me: the Three, Six, and Jack of Clubs, the Queen of Diamonds, and the Ace of Spades.

  I put a hand on the top of my two pocket cards, and I stared at their backs so hard I thought I might burn a hole straight through them.

  "Feel anything?" asked Bill.

  "I don't always. Sometimes it just happens."

  He grinned as he shook his head. "Too funny. For me, it's like a synapse bursts in my brain, like a little orgasm."

  "That what I hear you doing in the bathroom at night? Playing with your wand, trying to make the mojo happen?"

  He pulled the trigger.

  The click made me jump about a foot. "Knock that the hell off!" I said.

  "Just shut up and change the damned cards!"

  I reached down and turned them over, exposing the Two of Hearts and the Two of Diamonds.

  Bill clucked his tongue at me. "A pair of deuces? That's the best hand you can come up with?"

  "That's not what I was trying for."

  "I know," he said. He pulled the trigger again.

  I tried not to flinch – I didn't want to give him the satisfaction – but I just couldn't help it.

  "That's half the chambers," Bill said. "And you say you're not lucky." He pulled back the hammer. "Three more tries."

  I wondered if I could catch the bullet. The great stage magicians had done it for decades, ever since there had been bullets to catch, and they'd just been using tricks. I knew real magic.

  If I couldn't change a couple of cards, though, I couldn't see how I might manage to catch a speeding bullet in my bare hands.

  "Clock's ticking," Bill said.

  "You told me there weren't any clocks in the casinos."

  "We're not on the – just change the cards!"

  I turned the hole cards face-down again. I pictured the faces of the cards in my mind, and I imagined them turning into something else. I turned them back over.

  They were the Two of Diamonds and the Two of Hearts.

  "Dammit," I said. "I could have sworn something happened there."

  I was so frustrated, I didn't even move when Bill's pistol clicked on an empty chamber again.

  "They did change, you idiot," he said. "You flipped them."

  "What?"

  I did a double-take at the cards. He was right. The Heart and the Diamond had switched positions.

  "What'd you pull the trigger for then?" I asked.

  "Rearranging the cards may be good for Three Card Monte," he said, "but this is poker. The big leagues. Nolimit Texas Hold 'Em."

  I nodded. I hated him at that moment, but not just for the gun. I hated him for being right.

  "Two more chambers," he said. "One of them has to be full."

  That gave me a fifty percent chance of taking a bullet if I missed the next try and no damned chance of lucking out at all if I missed the one after that. I'd been fortunate so far, but eventually my luck would run out. I had to make this work.

  I flipped the cards over and stared at their backs again. We'd picked up a few used table decks in the hotel store after we'd checked in. They bore the red, white, and blue roulette-wheel logo of the Revolution Casino and Hotel laid over a background of the original US flag with the circle of thirteen stars. Two of the corners had been rounded off to make sure no one could try to use them to cheat in a game.

  I pictured the card faces in my mind, and I saw the Two of Diamonds change to the Five of Diamonds. I left the other deuce alone.

  I flipped the cards over, and they'd done just what I'd seen. I turned to smile at Bill and instead found he'd pointed the gun right in my face.

  "What?" I said, more disturbed by his angry grimace than the pistol. "It worked! I got me a straight."

  I pointed at the cards in order: ace, deuce, trey, four, five. It was the lowest possible straight, sure, but still a straight.

  "You dumb ass," Bill said. "Is that really the best you can do?"

  "Come on," I said, my voice cracking just a little. "That'll beat anything that anyone else could come up with. Even a tiny straight like that beats a pair, two pair, or trips. Even a full house."

  "What about a flush?"

  I froze, then looked at the cards again. There were three Clubs there. "A straight doesn't beat a flush?" I asked. "I always get that mixed up."

  Bill stabbed the gun at me and pulled the trigger. I had just enough time to say, "Don't!" before the hammer fell on the last empty chamber.

  "That's it," Bill said, cocking the pistol again. "Your luck's run out. You get one last chance. Do it right, or die."

  "You suck," I said. "You know that."

  He leveled the gun at my chest. "You don't think I'd do it."

  "No." I shook my head. "I know you would. That's why you suck."

  I flipped the cards back over and tried to ignore him, to concentrate on changing the cards. I could have chosen any two Clubs, of course, but I wanted to get the best possible hand. In my mind, I changed the cards into the Ace and King of Clubs.

  I found it hard to focus on those two cards, though, knowing that Bill was pointing a pistol at me. I figured he was just bluffing. He wouldn't really shoot me. He knew what he was doing, and I trusted him. He was just trying to motivate me, to get me paying my full attention to the cards, but I couldn't stop thinking about that bullet sitting in that final chamber.

  I thought I'd done it right, but I wasn't sure. I just had to trust, to hope, that I'd managed to make the cards switch. I reached down and flipped them over.

  Bill poked the gun at me as he leaned over to look at the cards on the table: the Ace and King of Clubs.

  I'd never been so happy to see two cards in my life.

  "Woo-hoo!" Bill threw his hands in the air. "You did it! I knew you could!" He offered me a high-five, and I slapped his hand hard enough to make it sting.

  "Shit!" He shook his hand out. "What was that for?"

  "That damned gun. Were you really going to shoot me?"

  Bill gave me a sheepish grin. "Of course not," he said. He reached into his pocket and produced a bullet. "I palmed the bullet. It was never even in the gun."

  We both laughed at that, me mostly out of relief. Then he tossed the gun onto the table, and it went off.

  The bullet smashed into the wall next to Bill's bed, and the recoil sent the gun spinning back off of the table to land with a dead thud on the carpeted floor.

  "Shit!" Bill said, his hands trembling. "I'm – I'm sorry, Jackson. I don't know how – that's impossible."

  I looked down at the Ace and King of Clubs, which the gun's misfire had knocked to the floor as it skidded off the table.

  "That's the thing about magic," I said. "Nothing's impossible."

 
 

CHAPTER TWO

 

"Card, sir?"

  I looked up at the dealer, a dark-haired man in a pinstriped suit and fedora, the men's uniform here at Bootleggers, one of the hottest new casinos on the strip – or so Bill had said. The dealer's name tag read: "Justin: Atlanta." He peered at me over his wire-rim glasses and his dark soul patch.

  Justin had been peeling cards out of a six-deck shoe with the detached resignation of an assembly line worker at the end of his shift. Everyone else at the Blackjack table hung on the turn of every card, but Justin didn't seem like he could care less.

  It wasn't his money.

  Bill and I had each brought five hundred dollars to the table. For Bill, that was just pocket money, but for me it represented all my textbook money for the term. I'd borrowed some of the books I needed for the seven weeks from the start of the Winter semester to the beginning of Michigan's spring break, but I hadn't bothered showing up to most of the classes anyhow. Bill and I had been cramming on our magic studies instead, getting prepped up for the biggest test of them all: nine days in Las Vegas.

  On the walk over from Revolutions, Bill had insisted we go over the plan again. I didn't want to – I was sick of thinking about it – but he told me he could see how nervous I was. I wondered if he was trying to calm his nerves or mine.

  "Just repeat the Blackjack plan back to me," he said as we walked out the front door and down the steps carved to resemble those of the Capitol Building in DC. "I want to hear you say it."

  I groaned but went along with it. I liked playing Blackjack, but studying it so hard had stripped all the joy out of it for me.

  It's a simple game. The dealer gives everyone two cards face-up, then gives himself one face-down and one face-up. You're not playing against the other players, though, just the dealer.

  Whichever one of you gets closest to twenty-one without going over wins whatever you bet. Face cards count as tens. Aces can be used as either one or eleven. If you get twenty-one on the deal, that's Blackjack, and it pays three to two odds, or a hundred and fifty percent of your bet.

  When it's your turn, you can either ask the dealer for another card ("Hit me") or stay pat ("Stand"). If you take a hit and go over twenty-one, you bust out and lose your bet.

  After you go, the dealer flips over his hole card. If his total is seventeen or more, he stands. Otherwise, he has to take hits until his hand is seventeen or over, or he goes bust.

  There are a few other wrinkles. You can split pairs to make two hands and bet on each of them. You can double down on lower hands, which means you double your bet and take one card, but after that you have to stand.

  Blackjack offers some of the best odds of any casino game, especially if you pay attention to the cards that have already been played. If you're clever, you can then figure out what's left in the dealer's six-deck shoe and use that to push the odds even farther in your favor.

  This is called card counting. It's what Dustin Hoffman's autistic character did in Rain Man. Regular folks use things like plus-minus systems to help them keep track of whether or not a deck's running high on face cards – which favors the player – or low.

  There's nothing technically illegal about any of this, but the casinos hate it. If they catch you counting cards, they ask you to leave, then send your photo to every other casino in town to make sure you can't play there either.

  We didn't want that.

  "We play the same table," I said as we strolled north on Las Vegas Boulevard. "We keep our bets the same. We never vary, and if one of us leaves the table, the other one does too."

  "Right," said Bill. "We don't want them picking us out as the latest version of one of the MIT card-counting teams."

  The clown sirens of Circus Circus beckoned us on our left, while the flashing lights of the Riviera and the new Thunderbird called to us from across the street. The artdeco tower of Bootleggers shone like a beacon at the end of the block.

  "We don't try to change the first cards dealt to us," I said, "just the ones we take as hits. We stand pat on seventeen or higher."

  During our practice sessions back in Ann Arbor, we'd tried messing with the cards during the initial deal, but it was too hard to keep track of each set long enough to concentrate on them. At least it was for me.

  Bill raised an index finger to correct me. "Unless the dealer is showing a face card or an Ace."

  "Right. Then we take a single hit."

  Bill checked his expensive watch. I never wore one, preferring to rely on my phone. One less thing to carry.

  "It's 9pm," he said. "Just before the shift change in the Blackjack pit at Bootleggers. We play for an hour, and the next time they change dealers after that, we leave."

  "How do you know all that?" I asked. "You talk like you grew up in a casino instead of the burbs."

  Bill grinned. "That's what the Internet is for. It explains the rules to you."

  "And you gotta know the rules to play the game."

  Bill shook his head. "To win the game."

  Bootleggers had been theme-decorated like something Donald Trump would have come up with if he'd finally realized he was the reincarnation of Al Capone. The main entrance had been built to resemble the red-carpeted front of the glitziest theatre in 1920s Hollywood. The hotel tower behind it stabbed into the night, hundreds of spotlights illuminating its limestone-clad sides and neon-traced corners that curved toward setback after setback in layers like the crags of a mountain spire. It all culminated in a monster of a circular sign that read "BOOTLEGGERS" in a tall, thin, curved font with neon letters that had to stand thirty feet high.

  At the entrance, a doorman dressed in a pinstriped zoot suit over black tuxedo shoes with white spats held open the speakeasy-style door for us. We walked inside and skirted around the antique paddy wagon that sat in the center of the lobby. Bill had the place mapped out in his head, and he took us straight to the Blackjack pit – a collection of green-felted tables under brassy lights with green-glass shades – and we got to work.

  At least Bill did.

  We sat down at a half-crowded table and put our money on the felt. Bill tossed down his cash with authority: five crisp, new hundred-dollar bills. I pushed my stack of crumpled twenties to the dealer who took pains to smooth and count them carefully and in full sight of the hidden security cameras that watched every table. Then he counted out two stacks of twenty green twenty-five dollar chips and pushed one of them to each of us.

  A small red sign near the dealer noted that this table had a twenty-five dollar minimum bet. With a confident smile, Bill pushed four of his chips forward as his bet. Trying not to gulp loud enough to be heard, I did the same.

  I'd wanted to start out easier, with minimum bets, and work our way up. Bill had argued against it. "We can't ramp up too fast, or we'll draw attention," he said. "If we start big, it's not so steep a climb."

  The fact that this only gave me five chances to blow it before I was tapped out didn't budge Bill a bit.

  "That's only a worry if you're going to lose," he said. "That's not in the cards. Not for us."

  I'd expressed my doubts about this, which ended up with Bill pulling a gun on me in our hotel room. I knew he was just trying to motivate me, but that bullet sneaking its way into the pistol still scared me. I believed he'd palmed the bullet, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have accidentally killed me.

  How did the bullet get in there then? Had one of us subconsciously used our mojo to load it into the chamber? If so, one of us wanted me to die. I wasn't sure which one of us would make the worse answer for that question.

  Then I came up with one: It might have been us both.

  With thoughts like that troubling me, it's maybe not surprising I lost the first four hands. Try as I might I couldn't get the right cards to fall for me. Not once.

  On the fourth hand, the dealer pulled a blackjack, which took everyone's bet. That wasn't my fault. Even Bill lost his money on that one, although he was still up three hundred dollars already. But it put me down to my last four-chip stack.

  I thought about parsing out my stack and just betting a single chip at a time. Although it would break with our plan, it would keep me in the game for at least another few hands. That had to be worth something, right?

  I pulled the top chip off my tiny stack and glanced at Bill for confirmation. He gave me a noncommittal shrug. I didn't see any hatred, anger, or even frustration in his eyes. It was something worse: resignation. It said, "Of course you blew it. I knew you would."

  I may not have been able to pull out the cards I wanted when I wanted, but I knew one thing. I wasn't going out like that.

  I shoved all my chips forward.

  Justin dealt the cards. Mine both came up Aces. I groaned. That gave me either two (playing both cards as ones) or twelve (playing one card as one and the other as eleven), since the third option – using both Aces as elevens – would bust me out.

  The dealer's up-card showed the Ace of Diamonds. "Insurance, anyone?" he asked, offering us a side-bet that would keep our original bet safe if he happened to have Blackjack.

  None of us took him up on it. It was a sucker's bet. "Only card counters and idiots take insurance," Bill had said during one of our practice sessions. "You're neither."

  I couldn't have paid for the insurance anyhow, even if I'd wanted to. I had nothing else to bet.

  Despite that, I held my breath as Justin peeled back the corner of his hole card to take a peek at it. For an instant, I thought he'd flip it over to show a ten or a face card, then sweep up the last of my money along with everyone else's bet. Instead, he put the card back down and kept playing.

  "Card, sir?" That's what he said when he got to me.

  Players in the zone – ones who are good at the game and are there to win – rarely speak, and the dealers don't talk to them. They don't need to. They used distinct and simple hand signs to show what they want. This makes it easy for the dealer to know exactly what they mean and for the eyes in the sky to keep track of it all.

  When my turn came around, I'd kept my hands on the rail in front of me. I'd been trying to concentrate on the next card out of the shoe, and I'd forgotten to scratch the table to signal the dealer to hit me.

  "You should split those," Bill said. "You always split Aces."

  "I can't," I said. I nodded at the blank space on the green felt where my starting stake had once been.

  "Would you care to purchase more chips, sir?" Justin asked.

  I grimaced and shook my head.

  Bill grabbed a short stack of chips from his pile and shoved them next to mine. I gaped at him. After all the crap he'd given me up until now, I figured he'd just let me go broke and then be stuck watching him win for the rest of the week.

  "You can't bet on my hand," I said.

  "It's a loan," Bill said. "Not a bet. Split them."

  "Sure you're not just wasting your money? I can't pay that back if I lose."

  Bill smiled. "So don't lose."

  I pointed at the cards and asked the dealer to split them. Justin moved them apart, and I pushed Bill's chips over to one of the Aces, and my stack over to the other.

  I stared at the plastic shoe and the first card sitting in it, the one the dealer would slip out of there and place next to my first Ace. I willed for it to come up a face card. I visualized the Jack of Hearts – and that's just what landed next to my Ace.

  "Blackjack," Justin said. He reached into his tray of chips and put a stack of six green chips right next to mine.

  The dealer's complete lack of enthusiasm did nothing to dampen mine. I wanted to jump up and let out a war whoop, but I refused to let a single success distract me. I still had another hand to win, and it was Bill's money riding on it, not mine. Somehow, that meant even more to me that I not lose it.

  "Can I double down on that Ace?" I asked.

  Justin nodded. I moved my the chips I'd just won from him over to double my bet on my remaining Ace. With the double down, I'd only be allowed a single extra card, but I only needed the one.

  I stared at the deck and reached out with my mind again. I pictured the King of Diamonds, the One-Eyed King, the Man with the Axe.

  The dealer reached for the shoe, drew a card, and flipped it over in front of me.

  Hello, Your Majesty.

 
 

CHAPTER THREE

 
The night only got better from there. Bill and I were unstoppable. We made sure to lose enough hands so that no one would get suspicious of our incredible lucky streak, but we steadily raked in the cash. Over the course of an hour, we each turned our five-hundreddollar stakes into a little over two thousand dollars.

  At the end of the hour, another dealer stepped up behind Justin, ready to take over for him right after the hand in which he reached the colored plastic card that represented the end of the shoe. We'd been tipping Justin steadily, and he'd even started smiling along with us.

  "I think Justin's going to leave us," said Bill. "I'm not sure I can handle that."

  "That's right!" I said. "He's our lucky dealer. If our luck's running out, maybe we should too."

  "One last hand, gentlemen," Justin says, still all business.

  Bill looks at me. "I'm feeling lucky, Jackson. How about you?"

  "Hell yeah, brother." And I mean it. Even if I've been creating the luck myself, winning feels great. I look down at my tidy stacks of chips, which Justin has kindly colored up to black, worth one hundred dollars each.

  "Just how lucky are you feeling?"

  "Ain't nothing that can stop us."

  Bill nodded. "I agree, Jackson." He pushed his entire stack forward.

  I gawked at it for a full five seconds. Then I reached down and did the same.

  "If you're going to go," I said, "go big."

  In any other situation, putting a couple thousand dollars down on a bet of any kind would have had me breaking out in a chilled sweat. At that moment, I was riding high. In my mind, we could do no wrong.

  There was a lot of truth to that.

  The pit boss came over to watch us. We'd started to draw a crowd, and he'd been sneaking sly glances at us, pretending not to care. Now, though, we'd gotten his attention.

  The twenty-five dollar tables had a ten-thousanddollar limit on single bets. We were still well under that, so Justin didn't need to get special permission to take our bets. Still, he glanced at the pit boss, a rough-cut man with a lantern jaw and a Fred Flintstone five o'clock shadow. The boss nodded his assent.

  Justin dealt the cards. My first card came up a Jack, and Bill found himself facing an Ace.

  I took that as a signal that Bill was going for a blackjack, which paid half again as much as a regular bet. If we wanted to push our luck, now seemed like the right time, and I decided to join in. I focused on the cards and had Justin give me the Ace of Hearts.

  "Blackjack," Justin said.

  I jumped up and pumped my fist in the air. The people gathered around me, watching the table, cheered.

  Justin kept dealing, not ready to pay anything out until he'd finished getting all the players their starting hands. Bill's card came up the Jack of Clubs.

  "Blackjack again," Justin said.

  Bill leaped up and joined me in my whooping. In a single hand, we'd won more than five thousand dollars each.

  We were rich. Ten thousand dollars was more money than I'd ever seen in a single place in my entire life. I may have screamed like a little girl.

  Justin pulled our winnings out of his rack and pushed them across the table to us with a wide grin. We each tossed him a black chip for his troubles, then had him color us up. That left us each with five orange chips worth a thousand dollars each, plus change.

  The pit boss gave us a strange look, like a shark sizing up a meal, trying to figure out if it might be worth the bother. He smiled at us, but all I could think about was a great white in a zoot suit, baring his teeth.

  I was too excited to let it bring me down. After a high five or three, Bill and I grabbed our chips and made our way through the crowd of well wishers.

  "Where to now?" I asked. "The moon?"

  "Slow down, cowboy," Bill said. "First we need to find a cage and cash out."

  At the cage, Bill and I took most of our winnings on debit cards but each put a thousand dollars cash in our pockets. I couldn't stop grinning the entire time. I felt happy and free and ready to party.

  Then a hand tapped me on the shoulder, and I came crashing back to earth.

  A beautiful, blue-eyed woman with sun-bleached hair and a trim, tanned body that her sparkly white flapper's dress did little to hide flashed me a smile so dazzling I wondered where I'd left my shades. "Hi," she said, shaking hands with me and then Bill. "My name's Melody, and I'm a casino host here at Bootleggers. I'd like to welcome you to the Inner Circle, our exclusive high-rollers club."

  I blushed at the attention. "We're hardly high rollers," I said.

  "Pay no attention to him," Bill said. "We're just getting started."

  "Excellent. I've taken the liberty of making up membership cards for you already. If you can show me your IDs, I can get your accounts all set up for you, and I can offer you your first set of comps."

  I glanced at Bill. At eighteen and nineteen, we were technically too young to be gambling. By Nevada state law, we had to be at least twenty-one.

  I froze. With an easy smile, Bill reached for his wallet and pulled out his Michigan driver's license. He showed it to Melody, and she took it from him and snapped a photo of it with her smartphone.

  "That will send it automagically to our database so we can get you in right away, Mr Teach," she said. She handed Bill back his ID and a black plastic card with the Bootleggers logo stamped on it in silver foil.

  She turned to me, and I just stared at her. She was as beautiful as a bouquet of magnolias.

  "Your ID, sir?" she asked. Her smile never faltered for an instant.

  "Oh," I said. "Right." I fished my wallet out of my pocket and handed her my Louisiana driver's license.

  Once Bill and I had gotten to Vegas, the first thing he'd insisted on doing was altering our IDs. "As far as anyone other than the airlines is concerned, we're not here," he said. "While we're in Vegas, we're other people: cooler, smarter, richer, better."

  I don't know if I'd have thought that far ahead. Growing up in the French Quarter, I'd never had much trouble getting into clubs or buying drinks if I wanted them. As long as you were tall enough to reach over the bar, most places were willing to serve you. I'd never needed a fake ID.

  That changed when I went off to the University of Michigan last fall. The bouncers there checked IDs with jeweler's loupes and UV lights. That never stopped me from finding a beer if I wanted it, but it had become a hassle. The first thing Bill and I did after Professor Ultman taught us a little of what he called "ink rearrangement" magic – the same thing we used to alter playing cards – was make ourselves a few years older.

  Figuring that casino security might be a bit tighter than what we found at the bars in Ann Arbor, we'd decided to change a bit more than our birthdays this time. We altered the last names and addresses too. We even changed our license numbers, just in case someone decided to run those through a national database. We'd come up blank on a credit check, but we weren't planning to need any. We kept our first names the same to make sure we wouldn't get too confused under pressure.

  Bill had become William E. Teach, and I took the name Jackson J. Lafitte, both in honor of famous pirates. It just seemed to fit.

  "From the Big Easy," she said. "Were you there during Katrina?"

  I failed to keep the smile on my face. "Born and raised," I said. "I saw it all."

  A flash of real concern crinkled her forehead. I'd seen it a thousand times before. She followed it up with "You poor thing."

  I was proud to be from New Orleans, but this was the reason I didn't talk about it too much. I just couldn't take the pity.

  "I survived," I said.

  "So did the Quarter," Bill said with a grin. "I think they're still celebrating the Super Bowl down there."

  I let Bill's smile infect me. I'd had enough sadness about my hometown. "They ran it straight through to Mardi Gras before they took a break," I said. I wished I could have been there for all that, but Bill and I had been saving every cent for our run at Vegas instead. If it all worked out, I'd be able to afford season tickets for the Saints next year.

  Melody smiled at that, her momentary concern washed away like bird tracks on a beach. "Because you're new to Bootleggers, we'd like to credit your play here today. That qualifies you for a free pass through our Little Italy Buffet. Just jump to the front of the line and flash the cashier your card."

  "I'm too pumped up to eat," Bill said, glancing at me. "You ready to celebrate?"

  Melody giggled. "Well, I can't quite help you with that yet, but if you continue playing like you have, I can get you access to the VIP lounge at the Speakeasy nightclub."

  "I think we're done for the night," I said. The thrill of winning hadn't left me, but I wasn't ready to leap right back into it quite yet.

  "What are you doing tonight?" Bill winked at Melody, and I had to struggle not to roll my eyes.

  Her perfect smile never wavered. "I'm on duty tonight, so I can't help you personally, but I have some friends who can."

  She handed Bill a business card printed in gold foil with black lettering knocked out of it. It read "Ace of Clubs" and had a phone number listed below that, nothing else.

  "Call them," she said. "They'll take care of you. They specialize in getting people whatever they want, and they're very discreet."

  We thanked her, promised her we'd be back soon, then headed for the exit.

  Once outside, Bill got on his smartphone and called the number. While he chatted with someone on the other end, I looked out at the flashing lights of the Sahara across the street. Off to the north, I heard a bunch of people screaming. I peeked around the corner and spotted the Stratosphere. I ran my gaze up the side of the tower until it reached the rails spiking out of the top, where I saw a glowing circle of lights bouncing up and down. Someone up there was having too much fun.

  Bill came up and clapped me on the back. "We're all set," he said. "Our ride will be here in a few minutes."

  I patted my pocket just to make sure the grand I'd kept out in cash was still there. "I can't believe it worked," I said. "I can't believe we're rich."

  Bill smirked. "Rich? That's just the beginning. Now that we've got a bigger stake, we can hit the high-roller tables. The minimums start at a hundred dollars and go into the tens of thousands. I hear some games – the ones they don't tell anyone about – have no limit at all."

  My head spun with the possibilities. "This can't last though," I said. "I mean, even if nothing crazy happens, we only have a week until break's over and we have to get back to school."

  Bill arched his eyebrows at that. "I don't know about you, Jackson, but if we keep making this kind of cash I'm in no hurry to head back. Michigan's always going to be there."

  I can't lie. The notion of staying in Vegas for ever, of being rich and living the high roller's life, appealed to me. This desert city was so strange and colorful and blazing full of life, it seemed like a different planet from Ann Arbor or my home in the French Quarter.

  I could hear my Grandma Laveau's voice in my head, though, saying what she always did just before she got off the phone with me. "You keep dat nose of yours clean, cher. You all I got in dis world."

  Most days I tried to listen to Grandma. She'd raised me on my own ever since Katrina, and I knew the sacrifices she'd had to make to send me off to college. I'd worked hard to get the kind of grades I needed to go, and no one was happier for me than her when my acceptance letters started rolling in.

  Right now, though, the call of the Vegas nightlife was drowning her out.

  A long black car pulled up next to us, gleaming in the ghostly lights of the casino entrance. It looked like something out of a bootlegger's dream, long and sleek with silvery trim and a hood that seemed longer than the whole rest of the car, with running boards to match. It looked like it ate streets for dinner and then came back for the alleys as its midnight snack. All it needed was a man with a fedora and a Tommygun, and it would be ready to take the town, Dillinger style.

  The driver got out of the car and waved at us. "Teach and Lafitte?" he asked.

  We nodded, and he opened the car's rear door for us to get in.

  "Where are we off to?" I asked.

  The driver started to answer, but Bill shut him down. "Don't tell him a thing," Bill said. He turned to me. "We're in for one hell of a ride."

 
 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

The pounding on the door of the hotel the next morning almost didn't wake me up because the pounding in my head was much louder. It matched the beat of the house music we'd been dancing to last night. I tried to remember which nightclub that had been in, but they'd all blurred together in my head.

  We'd started out at the other end of the strip, at the Mix Lounge atop THEhotel. Our driver and host – a tall, slick brick of a guy named Mickey Tanaka – brought us up to the place and set us up in the VIP section with our own table service. That included a bottle of Grey Goose vodka brought out in a silver wire tote that included six cans of Red Bull arranged on a set of tiers that rose around the bottle in a spiral.

  The dazzling view from the sixty-fourth floor balcony stunned me. You could see every major casino in the entire city from that vantage point, this blazing island of light swimming on the flat floor of that dark desert basin. I just stood there with the desert winds whipping around me, cackling and drinking and taking it all in.

  After we'd finished up there, Mickey hauled us off to the VooDoo Lounge, another ritzy bar, this one located at the top of the Rio. The bouncer standing in front of the entrance to the elevators, though, took exception to the way we were dressed – all right, to the way I was dressed – and wouldn't let us in.

  I thought I looked all right in a button-down shirt and jeans, but the kicker, it seemed, was my Chucks. No sneakers allowed, and my tattered canvas footwear had no chance of passing muster. The people at the Mix hadn't cared, but the guy at the Rio wanted to be a prick. Bill tried to slip him fifty bucks to let it slide, but he just sneered at the effort.

  "No problem," Mickey said. "We'll just go shopping."

  He led us off to the shopping part of the casino, which was larger and nicer than just about any mall I'd ever seen. On the way in, we passed by a place called Nawlins Authentic, which was filled with all sorts of Mardi Gras and French Quarter crap, the kind they sell in the tourist shops all throughout the Quarter. I guess that made it authentic, but that didn't keep it from being crap.

  The sight of coffee and beignet mix from Cafe du Monde made me miss home though. When I was a kid, my parents walked me through Jackson Square just about every day on our way to or from the French Market. My parents had named me for the place, which was where they'd first met.

  You'd think the Rio would be all about the big city in Brazil, but they seemed to have taken the Carnival from Rio de Janeiro and conflated it with Mardi Gras. The place was filled with all sorts of things that reminded me of New Orleans, but in the same way that Disney World brought to mind the real world.

  Mickey brought us straight to a store called Fashion 101, where a couple of gorgeous ladies set us up with what they said was the latest in club wear. Bill flirted with them relentlessly, but I was too stunned by the price tags to say much. I knew we'd won thousands of dollars, but I'd never dropped several hundred dollars on a single suit of clothes before.

  I wound up going with a sharp black suit, white silk shirt, and the most incredible dress shoes I'd ever worn. All the ones my parents and grandma had ever bought me always pinched my toes and cut into my heel. I'd hated them. Putting on these shoes was like having every spot on your feet kissed at once.

  When we got back to the elevators for the VooDoo Lounge, the bouncer waved us right in. At the top, fiftyone stories up, Bill ordered us a round of Hurricanes. I know they're the drink of the Quarter, but I never did care for them much. They taste too much like Kool-Aid to me. Back home, I generally stuck to Abita beers – especially Turbodog – when I could get them. Here, though, I figured I'd do what the rest of the tourists were doing and enjoy it.

  We walked out on to the wide balcony and took in the view of the Strip from this angle. The Rio sat apart from the Strip, on the other side of I-15. The interstate slashed a canyon of utter normalcy through the neon city, separating us from the glittering gulch of neon that sprawled beyond it.

  I spotted the spire of Bootleggers way off to the left, between Revolutions and the Stratosphere. It stood there like a beacon beckoning to us in the night. We'd had our way with the place tonight, and it wanted us back for another shot. It just didn't know what it was asking for.

  The backs of the Mirage, Caesar's Palace, and the Bellagio spread out straight in front of us. To the south, past the newly opened City Center, I spied the Excalibur, the Luxor, and THEhotel, where we'd just been.

  The spires of the Excalibur intrigued me. When I was a kid, back when my father was still around, he'd loved to tell me stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The hotel looked more like a LEGO castle than any rendering of medieval architecture, though, and I suspected it would be just as faithful to the classic tales of Arthur as the Rio was to New Orleans.

  My favorite part of those stories, of course, had been the bits about Merlin. My family had long connections with magic – even if I hadn't known it at the time – and most days the idea of a man in a pointy hat making incredible things happen with a wave of his wand enthralled me. The other days I imagined myself as some sort of modern-day knight rushing in to help those who needed it most.

  That's part of what had drawn me to Vegas – the idea that I could be both a magician and a knight, someone who could use his mojo to make things happen. All that was missing now was a Holy Grail for my quest, or at least a windmill to tilt at. I'd totally expected to flame out hard and spend the rest of the week watching my pennies while Bill lived large on the money his parents had given him for the trip. So far, so good.

  While I'd been taking in the flashing vista, Bill had struck up a conversation with a pair of the hottest women I'd ever seen. Mickey ran off to grab a round of drinks for us all. I tried to wave him off because I was already feeling the spin of the world beneath me, but I didn't get his attention in time. When he came back and put a drink in my hand, I didn't want it to go to waste, so I gratefully accepted it.

  The women – whose names I just couldn't seem to get straight – suggested we hit a dance club. Bill thought that was a great idea. Even though I can't dance my way out of a closet, I figured whatever these beauties wanted to do was fine with me.

  Minutes later, Mickey walked us straight to the front of the line at Pure, this kicking nightclub inside of Caesar's Palace, and slipped us right past the velvet rope. Inside, he escorted us and the ladies to the Red Room, where we sprang for a bottle of Dom Perignon 2000. After downing a flute each, the ladies hauled us out onto the dance floor where someone named DJ M4RC3L0 was spinning electronica like Crystal Method, Delirium, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, and even some Prince and Lady Gaga mixed in with the kind of Rat Pack tunes my Grandpa Laveau used to listen too before he passed away.

  We were a long way from Preservation Hall.

  After a while, I needed some air, so I staggered on out to the terrace, an open-air balcony that looked out over the strip. Unlike at the other place, I was only a story or so off the ground. Instead of watching the action from a distance, I was right there in the heart of it, drinking from the fire hose as I tried to take its pulse.

  The next thing I remember, I started to feel sick. Fortunately, the woman who'd followed me out – she had stunning red hair and brilliant green eyes, but that's all I can recall – steered me away from the edge of the terrace and straight to a conveniently placed planter instead.

  It all gets a little blurry after that. The woman went and grabbed Mickey, and he came and gathered me up to take me to the car. The last I saw of Bill, who now had a lady on each arm, was back on the dance floor as Mickey and I passed through. He came over and grabbed me by the collar with both hands. I wasn't sure if he was trying to steady himself or me.

  "Get back to the room and sleep it off!" he shouted over the thumping music.

  I tried to apologize for being such a mess, but he wasn't having any of that. "You deserve a wild night!" he said. "You did great today! No one could have done better!"

  "It's been a hell of a day!" I said, barely able to get the words out around my thick tongue. "You were fantastic too! I'm glad to have you by my side, brother!"

  He grinned at me. "I love you, man!"

  I rolled my eyes and nearly kept going right over with them, but Mickey held me steady. "Are we at that point of the night already?" I asked. "Then it's time for me to head home!"

  Mickey bundled me in the back of the car, leaving me face-down on the back bench seat. He even brought me an ice bucket to hold on to, just in case I still felt the need to throw up. I'm sure that if I'd gotten sick all over the floor, he would have cleaned it up without complaint, but that doesn't mean he wanted to have to.

  Once Mickey got me to my room at Reservations, I tipped him my last hundred bucks. Given what he'd done for Bill and me that night, it seemed like the right thing to do.

  Then I fell over and slept like I was dead – at least until someone started knocking on my door.

  "Open up!" Bill shouted from the other side of the door. "Come on, Jackson! I know you're in there!"

  "Use your key!" I shouted back. My ears still rang from the music at the nightclubs, and the effort involved in raising my head, opening my mouth, and making words come out made me feel like my brain had shrunk down small enough to rattle around loose in my skull.

  "He doesn't seem to have one," said a woman. I didn't recognize the voice, but there was a lot about last night that seemed fuzzy.

  I staggered over to the door, still dressed in my expensive clothes from last night, except for my shoes, which I tripped over on the way. I stank of booze and vomit, and I felt like Mickey had laid me down in the middle of the Strip and let traffic run over me until someone shouted "Jackpot!"

  I glanced back at the clock on the table near my bed. Its glowing blue numbers read 2:05. I suspected that meant pm rather than am, but I wasn't sure of anything at that moment.

  I pressed my eye against the peephole. In the fisheye lens, I spotted Bill swaying there, his head lolling on the shoulder of a young lady in a turquoise blouse. As I tried to get a better look at her, she pounded on the door again, hard enough to smack the peephole into my eye.

  I yelped in pain, but the woman under Bill's arm didn't seem to care. "Just open the damned door!" she said.

  Still holding one hand over my hurt eye, I reached out with the other and pulled the door open. As soon as I'd cracked it an inch, it came flying in at me, and I had to leap out of the way.

  Bill staggered into the room with the woman still under his arm. As he reached the nearest bed – which I'd been sleeping in – he slumped face-down onto the rumpled sheets and started to snore.

  The woman sighed in relief. "Your friend's an idiot," she said. When she'd had a moment to look me up and down. "You look like an idiot too."

  "Pleased to meet you," I said as I stumbled over to the other bed and sat down. The room spun around my head – and not in the same speed or direction as the hotel – and I focused on the woman to try to make it stop.

  She was young, not much older than me, but her wide dark eyes above her small sharp nose burned with a fierce intelligence that her anger couldn't obscure. She had perfect, longbow-shaped lips and flawless skin that the sun had burnished a deep brown. Her long black hair hung in a loose ponytail held back with a silver clip set with turquoise and lapis lazuli stones.

  Had she not been so irritated, I would have told her she was beautiful. As it was, the best I could do was struggle to keep my balance on the bed.

  "Thanks for bringing him home," I said. "Where did you find him?"

  She rolled her eyes at me. "Good job sticking with your friend," she said.

  "He's a big boy," I said, "and I ain't his momma."

  The woman strode over to the window and threw open the curtains. The afternoon sun came streaming in, nearly blinding me. She glared at me, and I realized how horrible I must have looked. It was a long fall from how I'd felt last night when we walked into the VooDoo Lounge. Yesterday had been one hell of a roller coaster ride.

  "He came into the Ghost Dance and started making an ass of himself."

  I shrugged. "Ghost Dance? Last I saw of him was at Pure."

  She sighed. "It's the nightclub at the Thunderbird, where I work. He stumbled into the club about 5am and started stirring up trouble."

  "He didn't have anyone with him?" I glanced over at Bill. He'd started snoring like a bear, which meant he was still breathing. Good.

  "He came in with a couple of party girls, but they lost him after he passed out. Security thought they'd let him sleep it off in the VIP lounge for a while. They forgot about him until the next shift found him. When the new guards woke him up, he started going off about how he was going to use his magic to bring the girls back."

  I winced at that. "She's right," I said to Bill. "You are an idiot."

  He snored right back at me.

  "Thanks for bringing him here." I leveraged myself up to hustle her out the door before she started asking too many questions about Bill's drunken indiscretion. "I owe you for that."

  She stood her ground. "It's not quite that simple," she said. "If you two have been using magic in Las Vegas, you're in a lot of trouble."

 
 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

I sat back down on the bed. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Don't play dumb with me. Your friend here started making drinks disappear and reappear, and then he started levitating over the couch he'd been sleeping on."

  "Oh, that," I blushed. "He's an amateur stage magician. Sometimes he gets carried away."

  The woman cocked her head at me. She gave me a look like my mother used to, the one that could see right through me.

  "Don't kid a kidder," she said. "You're wasting my time, and it makes you look like a jackass."

  I gritted my teeth and put my head in my hands. When Bill woke up, I was going to kill him. We'd gone through this over and over while we planned our trip out here, and Professor Ultman had drilled it into our heads over and over again. Magic was the greatest secret left in the world, and before he'd agreed to take us on as students, we'd had to swear that we would keep it that way.

  Now, in one drunken night, Bill had blown it.

  "Hey," the woman said, her voice soft and almost kind, "it's not the end of the world."

  I looked up at her and shook my head. Then I looked over at Bill and said, "You dumb bastard."

  When I turned back to the woman, she had her hand out. "Let's start over," she said. "I'm Powaqa Strega. Call me Powi."

  I shook her hand. It was warm and soft. "That's an unusual name."

  "My father's Italian, and my mother's Hopi Indian." She waved the explanation off with the resignation of someone who'd run through it a million times. "How about you?"

  "Jackson Wisdom."

  "There's an ironic last name."

  I faked a smile. "Nice. I've never heard that one before."

  "Any relation to Luke Wisdom?"

  My fake smile melted away. "Why?"

  "Ah," Powi said. "That explains a lot."

  "I'm not here to see him," I said. "Bill and I are here on spring break."

  Powi gave me an understanding nod. "Not a very close relation then."

  I shrugged. "I haven't seen him in years."

  "He's playing at Bootleggers four nights a week," she said. "He wouldn't be hard to find."

  "I don't know if I'll have the time. Weren't you about to run me out of town?"

  Powi smirked. "It doesn't work like that. I'm not part of the magic machine around here. I'm just trying to do you and your friend over there a favor."

  "By ruining our good thing?"

  She glanced over at the still-snoring Bill. "I think you can manage that all by yourselves."

  "What do you want then?"

  Powi crossed her arms. "I've seen this happen before. It's never pretty. I just thought I'd try to save you two some grief. Gambling and magic don't mix."

  "They seemed to go together just fine last night."

  I got up to grab myself a glass of water and a couple ibuprofen.

  "It won't last," she said, calling after me. "It never does. You think you've got it all figured out, but you have no idea what you're doing or who you're dealing with."

  "So enlighten me," I called back as I swallowed the painkillers.

  "Do you think you're the only people in the world who know how to use magic? I mean, real magic. Not that stagecraft stuff."

  Honestly, I hadn't really thought about it. Most of the time, it did seem like Bill and I were alone in the world with Professor Ultman, like a couple of the last Jedi knights training under an old East Indian version of Yoda.

  "Of course not," I said, "but it's not like there's a Facebook fan page or a national convention, right?"

  She said nothing.

  I walked back into the room and sat down in the chair across the table from her. My head had started to clear a bit, although I desperately needed a hot shower, and I could see in the light streaming in through the window that I'd been right. She was gorgeous.

  "Right?" I said.

  "It's never billed as that," she said. "But anytime you get a group of magicians together, it's close enough. And Vegas is the convention capital of the world."

  I rubbed my head, confused. "You mean stage magicians? Like Siegfried and Roy? Or Penn and Teller?"

  Powi nodded.

  "But those guys just do tricks. My dad taught me all sorts of stage magic when I was a kid. It's nothing like the real thing."

  Powi gaped at me. "Luke Wisdom is your dad?"

  I froze, then nodded. Much as I might have wanted to, I found I couldn't deny I was my father's son. I glanced over at Bill, grateful he was out cold.

  "Wow," she said. "I'd figured he was a distant cousin or an uncle. But your dad? Really?"

  "Ever since I was born. What's so strange about that?"

  She squirmed in her chair. "It's just that, well, you're at least part black, right? And Luke Wisdom is as white as they come."

  "My mother was Louisiana Creole. I take after her."

  "Clearly."

  "Hey."

  She narrowed her eyes at me. "No offense. Now that you mention it, I do see some resemblance. Mostly around the nose and the lips. Maybe the cheekbones and the eyes."

  "Tell me about the magicians."

  She smiled and leaned forward in her chair, warming to the subject. "It's a natural cover, isn't it? If you can do real magic, pretend to be someone who fakes it. That way, if anyone ever spots you, you can just claim it was a trick that they haven't yet managed to figure out."

  A thought struck me. I couldn't be sure whether it was my hangover or the ramifications of that thought that was making me queasy. "Aren't there an awful lot of stage magicians already in Las Vegas?" I asked.

  "Now you're catching on," Powi said. "Why do you think that is?"

  I took a shot in the dark. "Gathering together for the betterment of humanity?"

  Powi reached out and caressed my cheek. Despite the way she mocked me, I enjoyed the contact far more than I wanted to let on. "So adorable," she said. "You think Las Vegas was built for the betterment of humanity."

  "What's your theory?" I asked, trying to strip any hostility from my voice.

  "It's so they can keep an eye on each other. It's comforting to know where your enemies are when you need to find them."

  "That's insane."

  She shrugged. "What part of magic isn't insane?"

  "All of it," I said. "That's the stigma that surrounds magic – that it's the product of demonic pacts or other crazy things – but it's nothing close to the truth. Using your mojo is simply the conscious manipulation of the quantum state of things. By taking control of an altering probability, we can make things happen that seem magical, but every bit of the process can be explained with science."

  "They teach you that sort of thing in college these days?"

  I shrugged. "We're part of a secret degree program in magic studies through the University of Michigan's Residential College. They call it 'trans-quantum postulating,' but it's really all about figuring out how to do magic."

  Powi made a face. "I learned magic on my mother's knee, and she had it taught to her by her mother, my Grandma Mamaci. They never mentioned anything about quantum mechanics."

  "For most folks, it's like a computer. You don't have to understand how it works to be able to use it. You just need to know which buttons to push and when."

  "Whatever you say, but I didn't come here for a lecture from Professor Not A Clue."

  "No, you came here to drop off Bill and chase us out of town."

  "Your friend there's just lucky I'm the one who found him showing off like that. Some other magicians might have taken him for a ride into the desert, handed him a shovel, and told him to start digging."

  "We didn't do anything wrong," I said. The lie tasted horrible on my tongue.

  Powi sat back in her chair and spread out her arms. "You used magic to cheat a casino."

  "Ask anyone." I smirked. "There's no such thing as magic."

  "Trans-quantum postulation then. What you did was wrong."

  "We just played a little blackjack."

  "Call it whatever you like. A polite robbery is still robbery."

  I scoffed at that. "Isn't that what the casinos do here every day? Look at this place. It's built on the wallets of people who can't do math. Come to Vegas and win big, right? But these places only run games that give the house a huge edge. There's nothing fair about it."

  Powi put up her hands. "Fine," she said. "I tried. I did more than I had to. More than I should have. You don't want to listen to me, it's your problem, right? Not mine."

  I stood up and gestured toward the door. "Sounds right to me. We're big boys. We'll get along fine."

  She patted me on the cheek. "Vegas isn't a town for boys, no matter how big they are. The grown-ups run this place."

  She headed for the door and let herself out. As she left, she turned back to say one last thing. "Have a good life. Here's hoping I never see you and your friend over there again."

  As soon as the door shut, I went over to shake Bill awake. He kept snoring away. I gave up and decided to get cleaned up.

  By the time I was done, Bill had woken up. He lay there on the bed, moaning in pain.

  "Have a good time?" I asked.

  He rolled over on his back and grinned through his groan. "It was awesome," he said. "I think."

  I shook my head at him. "You blew it, brother."

  "Hey," said Bill, "you were the one who blew chunks all over the patio. I was the one who ran off with the two hotties."

  "And passed out on them. And slept it off at the Thunderbird for eight hours. And started doing magic in front of strangers when you woke up."

  "Oh, yeah." A lopsided smile toppled across Bill's face. "That."

  I frowned at him. "You can't do that. We promised Professor Ultman we'd keep it on the down low."

  "I think we also promised him we wouldn't do anything stupid with it, like going to Las Vegas."

  That one burned, but I refused to acknowledge it. "What do you think's going to happen if someone spots us doing magic?"

  "Oh, come on. It's not like the Feds are going to break down our door and haul us off to Area 51 for medical experiments. This isn't E.T."

  "The woman who hauled you back to the room said it would be worse."

Bill smiled. "A woman, eh? Was she hot?"

  "That's not the point."

  "So she was, huh?"

  "Focus, would you? She said that Vegas is full of magicians."

  Bill snorted. "Sure, the kind that do card tricks and saw ladies in half."

  "The real kind. Like us. Only they probably know what they're doing."

  "Aw, don't be like that."

  Bill sat up and grinned. He wasn't hungover at all. I hated him for that.

  "We did fantastic last night," he said. "You were amazing. This town is ours. Nothing can stop us!"

  I unclenched my fists. "She was probably just trying to scare us off."

  "Right! That's it. Afraid we'd come after her casino next."

  I stared out the window. We'd come around to look down at the Strip again. In the bare, blazing sunlight, the place had lost a lot of its dazzle. If you looked closely, you could see the cracks in the facades. The casinos seemed like the girls Bill sometimes brought back to our dorm room in East Quad – not as pretty as they might have appeared the night before.

  "She's not the problem, brother. It's you."

  "Hey, now–"

  "She wasn't the one who got drunk and risked exposing everything."

  "You got pretty loaded yourself last night."

  I grimaced to admit that. "But I got back to the room and didn't do any harm to our plan."

  I turned back toward Bill. "Seriously, brother. If the casinos think we're cheating them, they won't care how we're doing it. It won't matter if we used science or magic or bribes. They'll come down on us hard. We could wind up in jail – if we're lucky."

  "All right." Bill put up his hands in surrender. "You got me. You're right. I screwed up. I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

  I nodded in grim acceptance. "I think maybe we ought to just head back to Ann Arbor. It ain't safe here."

  "Aw, no," Bill said. "It's spring break! It's too damned cold back in Michigan."

  "Hey, with what we raked in last night, we can grab a flight to someplace else warm: Padre Island, Lake Havasu, Miami Beach, Cancun. And we'd still have plenty left over."

  Bill waved that off. "For what? Beer money? Textbooks? You'd seriously be satisfied with that?"

  I stared back out the window. I didn't want to let on, but Powi had scared me. If half of what she said was true, doing magic in the casinos was far more dangerous than we'd guessed. And Bill had shaken my faith in him.

  "Come on, Jackson," he said. "Michigan is the most expensive public university in the world. I know you've got some grants, but you're covering the rest of your expenses with student loans. You – or your grandmother – have to pay all those back someday. Wouldn't you like to never have to worry about that again?"

  He was hitting me as low as he could, and he knew it. I hated the fact that I'd be so far in debt when I got out of school, and it made me ill that my grandma would be on the hook for it too. The fact that Bill didn't have those worries made them burn that much hotter.

  I needed the money. He didn't. He was doing this for the thrills.

  "OK." I nodded. "We stick it out. But no more partying then."

  Bill threw himself back on the bed and groaned. "You take all the fun out of winning."

  "Seriously," I said. "If we're here for a job, to work the casinos, then that's what we do. We take it seriously. When we're done, we can go someplace else and party until our families figure out we never went back to school. Then we can start back fresh in the fall."

  "Hell, if we're doing that, I'm taking summer classes. There's no way you'd get me to go back home."

  I smiled. "All right then. Let's do it."

 
 

CHAPTER SIX

 

"Welcome back to Bootleggers, gentlemen," Melody said, her smile just as wide and pretty as I remembered it from last night. "I hope you enjoyed the buffet."

  "It was excellent," Bill said, rubbing his belly. "We are stuffed!"

  I grinned in agreement, mostly to cover my nerves. I couldn't shake the feeling that despite how confident Bill seemed, Powi had known exactly what she was talking about. We'd made the decision to keep at it, though, and I was determined to do just that – at least for tonight. If we won big enough, I hoped I might be able to convince Bill to take our winnings and head for safer ground.

  "Well, I hope you didn't fill up too much on all that Chicago deep-dish pizza and Midwestern prime rib. If you're interested, I have an invitation for the two of you to the Bolthole, our high-limit VIP lounge."

  "How high are the limits?" Bill asked.

  "It depends on your game. If you stick with Blackjack, our tables in the Bolthole have a one hundred dollar minimum bet and a limit of up to ten thousand dollars."

  I blinked at the thought of risking five figures on a single hand.

  "Yeah." Bill motioned for her to lead us to the lounge. "That I like."

  "Of course, if you want to bet more, you can always arrange to play several hands at once. Our tables can manage up to seven hands at a time."

  "That's seventy thousand dollars a round," said Bill. "Not bad. With each round taking roughly a minute, you could bet four-point-two million dollars in an hour."

  I had to clear my throat. "I think we'll probably start off a bit easier than that."

  "You're free to set your own speed," Melody said with a wink as she led us across the crowded floor and into an elevator that zipped us up to the fortieth floor.

  "I hope you had a great time last night," she said.

  Bill snorted at that. I put a hand on my head. "Maybe a little too much," I said.

  Melody flashed us a wicked grin. "That's what the Strip is here for. Just remember, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

  Bill laughed. "Thank God for that."

  The doors to the elevator opened, and Melody led us down a short hallway to a thick door set in a wide, curved wall of dark oak paneling. It bore no sign or window, nothing but a little sliding door set at eye level. As we approached, that little door slid open, and a pair of dark eyes looked out at us.

  "Password?" the man said. He sounded like he'd smoked cigarettes from birth.

  "They're with me, Misha," Melody said.

  "They still gotta use their passwords, Miss Melody," Misha said. "Them's the rules."

  "Just wave your Inner Circle cards over that panel on the door, gentlemen." Melody pointed at a small, innocuous inset panel right where a knob should have been but wasn't.

  Bill and I fished out our cards. He was faster on the draw than I was, and he waved his card over the panel first. The door clicked open, and the man behind it pulled it wide for us.

  "Misha and the rest of the gang inside will take excellent care of you," Melody said. She pressed a business card into each of our hands. "If you need anything else while you're here, don't hesitate to give me a call."

  Misha was a moose of a man, towering over Bill and me and maybe weighing as much as the two of us put together. In his zoot suit and fedora, he seemed like the original archetype of the leg breaker. There was no way I ever wanted to owe money to this man or anyone he worked for.

  "What's your poison, fellas?" Misha said in a thick Chicago accent. "Poker, Craps, Roulette, Baccarat, Pai Gow, Blackjack?"

  We gazed around the room. The walls of the large, circular room were lined with old bricks, and the room had a high tin ceiling pressed in patterns that resembled the backs of cards. Old lampposts stabbed out of the floor, providing most of the chamber's soft, welcoming lighting. A long brass-railed bar of gleaming oak stood against the far wall, and a brace of bartenders with rolled-up sleeves and black suspenders worked diligently behind it.

  Despite how much money the players had to have just to get into the room, it was packed. Every card-game table had at least two or three players at it, and the crowd around the craps tables stood two or three deep. Unlike in the other parts of the casino, though, they were anything but raucous. With few exceptions, these were serious people who'd come to play serious games, probably staked with more money to risk in a single night than I'd ever seen in a year.

  Nervous as I was, that made me smile.

  "Blackjack, I think." Bill tried to act nonchalant, but I could tell that the amount of money floating around the room had unnerved even him. "That seems to be our game."

  "Right this way, fellas." Misha led us off to a cluster of six Blackjack tables off to the left and directed us to sit at the least crowded one. "Here ya go," he said, clapping his hands once to turn us over to the dealer's tender mercies. "Good luck, guys."

  The dealer was a petite woman with long tight curls. Her name tag read "Gabriella, Cicero." She was so small that I wondered if they should have given her a box to stand on, but she handled the cards just fine. She gave us a winning smile as we sat down at the table and handed her the debit cards Melody had given us last night.

  "How much would you like to play?" she said.

  "All of it." Bill spoke without an instant's hesitation. I just nodded that I was fine with that plan too.

  Gabriella checked our balances and counted us out twenty black one hundred dollar chips and four purple five hundred dollar chips each, plus a bit of change. I fondled the chips while she shuffled the cards for a fresh shoe. It made my fingers tingle to handle this much cash at once.

  Two other players sat at the table with us. Neither of them seemed much in the mood for jabber. The woman directly to Bill's right, to the far side of me, was young, probably not too much older than me. She wore a sharp suit over a half-open white dress shirt, and sunglasses so dark I wondered how she could see the cards. Her short black hair had been gelled up in some kind of anime-inspired spikefest. Her upper lip curled in a perpetual sneer.

  The other player sat just beyond her, ignoring us and sipping his drink. His thick head of hair had gone a steely gray, but his browned skin glowed with vibrancy. He had the easy way about him of someone who was entirely comfortable with himself. He looked like he'd been born in this spot and the casino had been built around him.

  Gabriella started dealing the cards. Bill and I each tossed a hundred-dollar chip on to the table. The other two players threw out a yellow chip worth a straight thousand dollars.

  As we'd walked into the room, I'd started to feel like maybe Bill and I had hit the big time. Watching the bets fly, I realized just how small we really were.

  Bill and I had worked it out ahead of time that we'd play without using any mojo for the first half hour or so. We'd both studied Blackjack enough to know how to squeeze the most out of the game. Even playing perfectly would still give the house an edge, but barring a terribly bad run of luck, we'd manage to only lose slowly, which wouldn't add up to too much over thirty minutes. Then we'd strike.

  At least, that was the plan. For the first twenty minutes or so, everything worked fine. Bill sipped at a complimentary glass of Laphroaig as we played. I wanted one to lathe the edge off the remnants of the hangover still lurking around the edges of my brain, but I needed a clear head, so I stuck to water.

  The other players at our table didn't say a word as they played. By the familiar way the dealer and the cocktail waitresses dealt with them, it seemed they were regulars here, but they could have just earned that kind of respect with their wagers. The rest of the room murmured along with their games, punctuated only occasionally with a whoop of triumph or a groan of defeat. Compared to the constant dull roar of the thousands of people in the main casino, the Bolthole felt peaceful and quiet.

  That meant I could really concentrate on the cards once it was time.

  Before Bill and I were ready, though, our luck hit the skids. We each lost ten rounds in a row. While that's not impossible, it's statistically significant, and it cost us a cool grand each. By the time we'd been playing a half hour, I'd already lost half my chips.

  When the time came to get to work, I cracked my fingers and said, "Brother, it's about time our luck started to change."

  Bill gave me a glum look. "I've been thinking that for a while now."

  I didn't know why he seemed so down, but I couldn't stop to ask him about it here in the middle of the room. I decided to just focus on the cards and make the magic happen.

  I upped my bet to two hundred dollars and reached out with my mind. I won the next three hands in a row, but Bill kept up his losing streak. We'd talked about how it might not look good for both of us to be winning at the same time, so I assumed he was just letting his unlucky streak slide to help allay any suspicions.

  I lost the next hand, then upped my bet to five hundred dollars. "I think things are finally turning my way," I said with a grin.

  Bill gave me a helpless shrug.

  Within minutes, I'd recovered all of my losses and had stormed into the black. I knew I'd orchestrated the hot streak, but it felt good. A few players started drifting over from the other tables to watch. I just ignored them and kept my mind and my mojo on the cards.

  I lost every third or fourth hand, just to keep my lucky streak from becoming too unbelievable. I gave myself a blackjack every now and then to make up for it.

  Bill took a break for a few minutes to cheer me on. We hadn't talked about it before, but it seemed like a smart idea. This way the spotlight only shone on one of us at the time.

  Bill clapped me on the back. "I can't believe this," he said. "I guess I was more hungover than I thought, but you, you're on fire!"

  The man at the other end of the table stopped playing too and just sat watching me, his lips pursed. The woman cursed at me a few times for stealing all the luck from the table, but I just laughed her off. Gabriella kept dealing. With only the two of us playing, she ran through the rounds fast.

  When Gabriella ran through to the end of the shoe again, the pit boss tapped her on the shoulder. She spread her hands in front of her and thanked us all for playing. I picked up a black chip from the huge stack in front of me and tossed it to her as a tip.

  "I think it's time for a break," Bill said.

  "Why?" I said, half serious. The pit boss handed me a rack, and I started filling it with chips. "I'm on a streak!"

  "It's time. I need a smoke."

  That stopped me cold. My smile froze on my face.

  Bill didn't smoke, not even when he'd been drinking. He'd had asthma ever since he'd been a little kid, and he'd never even tried it. He often insisted on leaving a bar if people were smoking there. Several places in Ann Arbor were already smoke free, but he'd cheered when the Michigan legislature had passed a statewide smoking ban in bars and restaurants just before our winter break.

  If Bill wanted a smoke, something was seriously wrong.

  Fixing my winner's grin wide and strong, I nodded at him and finished stacking my chips in my tray. "That sounds great," I said. "After all that action, I could use one too."

  The people around us laughed at that, and the rubberneckers around the table began to disperse. I scooped up my heavy rack of chips, put my arm around Bill, and headed for the exit, where Misha still stood guard.

  Instead of opening the door for us, though, Misha blocked it. "Good run, fellas," he said, his friendly demeanor gone. "The management would like to congratulate you. Personally."

  Bill blanched. I glanced around the room and realized that we were trapped. The Bolthole only had one door for patrons, and Misha was blocking it.

  I'd worked in enough restaurants in the French Quarter to know that there had to be another way out. The staff would need a way to get in and out of the place without running everything through the front door, and fire codes would demand it.

  I spotted a small alcove next to the bar, which I guessed led to the restrooms and the storage room, and the service entrance beyond. It wouldn't be easy to get to it, but I rated our chances there better than trying to force our way past the man-mountain standing before us.

  "Sure thing," I said to Misha, pretending not to notice how much trouble Bill and I were in. "Just let us hit the head here first. I don't think I can wait another minute."

  As I swung Bill around and headed for the restroom, the silver-haired man who'd been sitting at the table with us stepped into our path.

  "Hello, my young friends," he said. From his looks, I had thought he would have a Mexican accent, but he sounded like maybe he'd come from New York a long time ago instead. "My name is Benito Gaviota. I'm the head of security for Bootleggers. I'd like a moment of your time."

 
 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

"Is there a problem, sir?" I gave the man my most innocent look of concern. Grandma had never bought it, but no one else knew me as well.

  Gaviota smiled, showing rows of perfect white teeth. "Not at all," he said. "There's a question about your IDs we need to clear up. As I said, this should only take a moment."

  Bill gaped at the man, not saying a word. He'd always been the smooth talker, but he just stood there shaking his head.

  "Sure thing," I said. "If you could just give us a minute, though, I think my friend isn't feeling too well. I'd like to get him to the restroom before he throws up all over your carpet."

  "Of course." Gaviota stepped aside with an even smile, and I pressed straight past him.

  I planned to walk straight past the restrooms and bolt into the lounge's back room. From there, I hoped to find a way out into the main casino. How we would manage to leave from there, I couldn't say, but I figured I'd tackle one challenge at a time.

  As we moved, I dumped the chips from my tray into my pockets. I didn't want to have to worry about them during what I knew would come next.

  I leaned over and whispered into Bill's ear. "When I start running, follow me."

  "I tried," Bill said, not bothering to keep his voice low. "I tried as hard as I could. I just couldn't do it."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" I whispered.

  "I couldn't beat that damn game for anything. The harder I tried, the worse it got."

  I shushed him. "Let's just get out of here. We can do the post-game analysis later."

  We entered the alcove next to the bar, and it turned out to be a short hallway, just as I'd guessed. Doors leading to the men's and women's rest rooms lined the right wall, and a third door sat at the end of the hall.

  I glanced back and didn't see Misha or Benito behind me. Grateful for small favors, I moved straight to the unmarked door and tried it. It was unlocked.

  "Time to go," I said to Bill.

  He gave me a determined nod and then pushed his way through in front of me. I followed right after and almost ran into him. As I looked past him to see what had caused him to haul up short, I heard the door click behind me.

  "Your friend seems to have recovered," Gaviota said. He stood next to Misha in the middle of the well-lit storage room.

  "We must have gotten turned around," I said.

  Gaviota frowned. "Could you drop the charade, please? It's insulting to all of us – even Misha here."

  The big man didn't even look askance at Gaviota. He either didn't understand the insult or was so used to such cracks that he no longer cared.

  "What do you want?" I said.

  Gaviota's lips curled upward in an approximation of a smile. "Better," he said. "But I can't tell you what I want yet. First, I need some more information."

  I shrugged. "Like what?"

  "Who sent you?"

  That surprised me: that there might have been someone who sent us here to cheat the casino out of its money. Who could he have meant?

  "To the Bolthole? I believe her name was Melody."

  The man took a step toward me. While he was barely an inch or three taller than me, he loomed over me like the casino's tower, exuding menace.

  My throat ran dry.

  "Let's try that again," he said. His tone told me that this was my last chance. "Who sent you?"

  I cleared my throat. "No one," I said. "We came here on our own."

  Gaviota stared into my eyes as if he could read the answer to his question in my soul and had only asked it to see if I would lie. He laughed. It was a sound with no warmth in it.

  "That's priceless," he said. "You two are so goddamn naive."

  "We don't want any trouble," said Bill.

  Gaviota spoke to him but kept his eyes on me. "Then you came to the wrong place. Here we got nothing but trouble. This trouble, though, you brought with you."

  I glanced at Misha. The massive man hadn't said a word. He just stood there, impassive, with his hands folded in front of himself. I had no doubt that he was ready to break any one of my bones Gaviota might point him toward though.

  "We didn't do anything wrong." I tried to believe it as I said it.

  Gaviota reached out and gave me a pat on the cheek. "I think I asked you to drop the lies. Politely."

  He slapped me across the face. It stung like hell.

  Without thinking – it seemed like my hand moved on its own – I slapped him too. I'd been in enough fights growing up in the Ninth Ward to not let something like a slap shock me. My blow left a red mark on the man's cheek, and the man staggered back a step, his eyes wide with surprise. I don't doubt he'd been in a lot of fights himself, but it had probably been a while since someone had hit him back.

  "You little bastard." Misha strode forward. I put up my fists. I knew he was going to beat me into a pulp, but I wasn't going to stand there and take it.

  Gaviota put out a hand to stop Misha, and the big man ground to a halt with me just out of his reach. His face flushed red, and his nostrils flared like those of a bull about to charge.

  I heard something behind me, and I chanced a glance back to see Bill hauling on the handle of the door we'd come through. It didn't give an inch. I scowled at him. Here, I was about to get my head handed to me, and instead of having my back he'd bolted for the door.

  Gaviota spit on the floor. "Forget it, kid," he said to Bill, who jumped away from the door in shock. "The only way out of here is through me."

  Ignoring Bill, Gaviota focused on me again. "You need to think hard about what the next few minutes here are going to mean to you and your not-so-great friend there. They're going to determine a great deal about how you spend the rest of your life – and just how long that might be."

  I kept my mouth shut and nodded.

  "Now, tell me how you worked your lucky streak in there."

  "I was counting cards," I said. "It's not illegal."

  "No," Gaviota said, "it's not. It is unsporting, though, and we and every other casino in the city frown on it. Do you know what we do to card counters we catch here?"

  I shook my head. I had my guesses, but they were all based upon film and TV.

  "We show them the door. Then we ban them from our casino for life. After that, we send photos of them to every other casino in town to make sure that they can never try to ruin another game again. If we catch them a second time, we prosecute them for trespassing – and we know several excellent judges who are only too happy to throw the book at them."

  I swallowed hard. "All right," I said. "You do what you gotta do."

  Gaviota frowned at me. "Unfortunately, that's not what you've been doing here. It's too bad. Handling card counters is so much simpler."

  I was getting tired of this too. "If you're so sure of what I've been doing, why don't you just come out and say it? If you'd rather play games, let's go back out and hit the tables."

  Gaviota smirked. "You've got spirit, kid. I like that."

  "Enough to let us go?" asked Bill.

  Gaviota scowled at him. "No one likes a comedian."

  "I wasn't trying to be… oh. Shutting up now."

  "Just beat us up and get it over with," I said.

  "Spoken like a kid who's never taken a good beating," Misha said as he cracked his knuckles.

  "We didn't do anything wrong," Bill said, not bothering to keep his desperation from his voice. "You can't prove that we did."

  Misha snorted. "This ain't a court of law."

  Gaviota sneered at us. "You two think you're the first people to come to Vegas to try rigging the games in your favor? People have been trying to cheat the casinos here ever since the first one opened its doors. You think just because you're using magic you're something special?"

  The word magic made me freeze. Bill actually whimpered. A key part of our plan had been to dare anyone who accused us of cheating to prove that we had. We were sure that no one would have a shot in hell at doing it. They wouldn't even know where to start looking.

  But when Gaviota said "magic," I knew we were screwed – maybe dead.

  "Magic?" Bill said. "That's preposterous. Next thing you're going to say that Tinkerbell came in and sprinkled the cards with fairy dust for us."

  I shook my head. "Nuh-uh. I'm pretty sure I would have seen that."

  "Shut up," said Gaviota. "Don't bother with the denials. We know what you did. We want to know who taught you how to do it."

  My mind flashed straight to Professor Rishi Ultman, probably one of the gentlest people I'd ever known. I couldn't bear to think that this might somehow come back to haunt him. It was one thing for Bill and me to pay for our stupidity, but Professor Ultman didn't deserve that.

  Bill opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. "We taught ourselves," I said. "We found a site on the Internet and learned most of it from there."

  "Ah, Christ," Misha said. "I told the boss that Internet thing would be trouble for us sooner or later." Looking at the man, I found it hard to believe he'd ever done anything with the web other than surf for porn.

  "Bullshit," Gaviota said. "You can't learn that kind of stuff by just reading about it. I don't care how good a site it is."

  "It had video too," said Bill. "And lots of pictures. With step-by-step diagrams."

  Gaviota gave Bill a murderous look. "What's the name of the site?"

  Bill blanked.

  "The site," Gaviota said. "It has to have a name. An address. What is it?"

  "MagicForMorons.com," I said.

  Gaviota fixed me in his glare. I wondered if the only thing that kept him from killing me there was having to find someone to clean up all the blood. "Throw them in the cooler," he said to Misha.

  The big man reached out and grabbed Bill, who was closer to him. I leaped at the man, but he was faster than I thought anyone his size could be. He backhanded me with a fist that felt like a brick, and I dropped to the floor. Stars spiraled before my eyes.

  Bill started to shout for help, but he stopped in midsentence. As my eyes cleared, I gazed up at him, expecting to see Misha's meaty hand clamped around Bill's throat. The man had him by the front of his shirt instead. Bill seemed to be shouting at the top of his lungs, but no sound came out of his mouth.

  I hauled myself to my feet and steadied myself for another run at the bruiser, but before I could I heard something zip right by me, and my left arm felt like it was on fire. I looked down at my arm and saw blood seeping through the torn fabric of my jacket's sleeve, which looked like someone had punched a screwdriver through it.

  I glanced over to see Gaviota pointing an automatic pistol at me. "Try not to be any stupider than you already are, kid," he said. "I don't want to have to shoot you again."

  I put up my hands. I hadn't heard the gun go off, but given the pain in my arm I couldn't dispute it.

  "I'll give it my best," I said. I almost added "shot" to that but stopped myself cold.

  Misha had scooped Bill up by his collar, and the big man hauled him over to the door of a walk-in cooler. He opened it and tossed Bill inside, where he landed without a shout of protest.

  "You next." Gaviota gestured me toward the cooler with his gun.

  Playing dumb hadn't worked out well for me, so I decided to comply. I walked into the cooler, turning to keep my eyes on the gun the entire time.

  "Pity you couldn't do this the easy way," Gaviota said, "but I'm sure the boss will be able to get it all out of you."

  "You – you don't have to do that," I said clutching my wounded arm with my opposite hand. I wondered how long they'd leave us in here and whether I'd freeze to death or bleed out first. "Can't we work something out?"

  "I think it's a little late for that now, kid."

  The time we'd spent at the table flashed through my mind. I couldn't understand it. Bill and I had played perfectly. He'd even taken the extra step of making sure to lose while I won big.

  "How did you figure it out?" I asked. I'd started to feel lightheaded. If I was going to die here, I wanted to know how they'd spotted us. And if I somehow survived this, I wanted to figure out how to keep it from happening again.

  Gaviota smirked. "Because you kept winning."

  "That could have just been a lucky streak," I said. "Doesn't anyone ever win in this casino besides the house?"

  "Not when I'm playing, kid," Gaviota said. "I was using magic too."

  I stared at the man in disbelief. "But you weren't playing against us. That would have only helped you win the game."

  Misha laughed, but Gaviota just shook his head, his face filled with concern. "Maybe you two really are morons," he said. "I wasn't using my magic against the dealer. I was using it against you."

  The big man pointed at Bill and laughed even louder. "Didn't you ever wonder why you started losing?"

  I glanced at Bill. He sat there on the floor still, gaping at Gaviota.

  "I figured he was just trying to throw you off," I said. Bill shook his head a silent but emphatic no, even mouthing the word.

  "He didn't throw me off," Gaviota said. "You did."

  "How's that?" I said.

  "I used my best magic against you," he said, "and you still kept winning. How you managed to do that, I don't know, but that little mystery is the one reason you and your friend aren't dead – yet."

 
 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

After Misha slammed shut the door, I went over and tried it. It was locked, just like I'd expected. I turned back and offered Bill a hand up. When he saw how it was covered with blood, he waved me off and got up on his own.

  Bill stabbed a finger at his throat, snarling silently in frustration.

  "They did something to you, didn't they?" I said. "Gaviota must have used his magic to kill the noise around you."

  Bill nodded, then made a gun with his finger.

  "That makes sense," I said. "He silenced the gun with his magic too. That's why I didn't hear it go off."

  I stared at the door. "How long do you figure we have?" I said. "Before they come back with their boss, I mean?"

  Bill shrugged and pointed at my arm.

  "Right," I said. "The question probably should be how long do I have." I groaned. "It hurts like a bitch. Feels like a gator took a nip at me."

  Bill took out his smartphone and looked at it. He held it up for me to see. No bars. I pulled mine out of my pocket and found the same.

  "I'm guessing they knew that," I said, looking all around the cooler for some way to get out. I spied some bloodstains on the back wall. "I don't think we're the first people they've ever tossed in here before."

  Bill grabbed me, and I yowled in pain. His eyes were wide and wild. I'd never seen him so scared. I'd never seen anyone that scared since Katrina, and I could have happily gone a lot longer without it.

  I pulled away from Bill's grasp. "Just give me a chance, brother. We'll figure this out."

  "How?" Bill mouthed, still not able to make a sound. "How?"

  "Magic got us into this mess," I said. "Maybe magic can get us out."

  I walked up to the door and studied it. There was a handle on this side to use in case you shut yourself in, but it didn't do any good if someone had locked the door on the other side. I wiggled it anyhow, and listened to the workings of the lock rattle.

  I reached out with my mind and tried to feel the lock. I'd done this before under Professor Ultman's guidance, picking the mechanism with my thoughts. I actually found moving tiny parts around a lot easier than rearranging ink. Those times, though, I'd been able to see the lock. At the moment, I had to work blind.

  I fumbled about with it for a full minute before I had to sit back for a rest, my face covered with sweat.

  Bill shouldered me aside and signaled that I should let him try.

  "We can't both do it at once," I said. "We'll trip each other up. How about I try fixing your voice instead?"

  Bill shrugged. I reached over and grabbed his neck. This, I thought, would be simple enough that I could handle it. I felt warmth surging through my wounded arm and into his throat.

  Bill stared at me, shocked. If I'd been expecting gratitude, this wasn't it. As he stabbed his finger at his throat, I realized he wasn't mad at me. He was choking.

  I smacked him hard on the back, but nothing happened. I did it again, three more times. On the last blow, he coughed up something that looked like a giant hairball, and he spit it on the floor.

  "Goddamn," he said in a hoarse voice. "I hate those guys."

  "Just add it to the list," I said. "If we don't get out of here before they come back, though, it's not going to matter."

  "I know. That's what I was trying to tell you. Let me try the lock." He pointed at my arm. "That's screwing with your concentration. Take a break."

  "But–"

  Bill put a hand on my shoulder and spoke in a low voice. "I can handle this."

  I shrugged. I wasn't sure he could do the job, but I hadn't managed it myself so far either. "Give it your best shot."

  Bill knelt down in front of the door and put his hand over where the lock would be on the other side. I watched him work. He'd never been as good at this sort of thing as me. He had a silver tongue and a way with women that I envied more than I would ever say, but I'd always been the better magician.

  Well, most of the time. I had problems, as Professor Ultman often said, with confidence. When you're reordering the universe around to meet your vision of it, it helps if you're firm about that vision, and I couldn't always pull that off. I often liked things just fine the way they were. When I was on my game, no one could beat me, but with the crease on my arm, I was far from being in the zone.

  I wondered, if it hurt this much just to have a bullet graze my arm, how much worse would it be to take a shot in the guts? I didn't want to learn, but if we didn't get out of there soon I thought that both Bill and I stood an excellent chance of discovering much more about pain in the hardest ways possible.

  Bill cursed beneath his breath several times, and I was just about to start swearing alongside him when I heard the lock click and the door nudge open. Instead, I let out a whoop.

  "You did it!"

  He gave me a fist bump. I winced at the movement, and he glanced down at my arm.

  "We gotta get you out of here, Jackson. Fast."

  As we stepped out of the cooler and into the relatively warmer air of the storeroom, I staggered to the left and realized just how dizzy I was.

  "Which way?" Bill asked.

  "If we go back into the Bolthole like this –" I pointed at my arm "– we're bound to draw trouble. Let's try the other direction."

  I headed for the storeroom's rear door. As I reached it, I heard voices approaching the other side of it. I dove to one side of the door and hid myself behind some racks filled with cases of liquor. Bill followed right behind me.

  Gaviota entered first, with Misha dogging his heels. The big man prattled away, nervous about something.

  "It's just wrong," he said. "I don't care what the boss wants. I say we just feed 'em to the scorpions."

  "That's why you're just the hired muscle around here," Gaviota said.

  I hoped the men might just walk past us. Then we might be able to slip out the door before they realized they were missing. When they stopped dead in their tracks, though, I saw what they had seen, and I knew what we'd done wrong.

  "The door's open," Misha said. "They got out."

  "I can see that, you idiot," Gaviota said. "They ain't going to make it out of the casino though."

  I grabbed Bill by the arm and whispered to him. "Gotta go – now!"

  He waved me off. He was concentrating on something, but I didn't know what. He wasn't a powerful enough magician to make both those men disappear.

  Then he pulled his pistol from his pocket.

  "Where the hell did you get that?" I asked. I hadn't seen it since our first day here in Vegas, when it had gone off accidentally, but I was sure he hadn't been carrying it around with him the entire time since.

  Instead of taking the time to give me an answer, he pushed past me and stepped out from behind the rack of liquor boxes, his gun thrust before him. I rushed up behind him, trying to stop him, but I never had a chance.

  "Freeze, assholes!" Bill shouted in his best buddy-cop film voice.

  The two men stopped, held up their hands, and turned in our direction. When Gaviota spotted us, he broke into a grin and started to chuckle.

  "Isn't that cute?" he said to Misha, who didn't seem nearly as sanguine about Bill's weapon. "The kid's got a gun."

  Misha forced out a nervous laugh. His hands twitched toward the holster I could see exposed under his jacket.

  "This isn't some kind of joke." Bill cocked the pistol's hammer. "Get down on the floor – on your knees – now!"

  Gaviota smirked at us both. "Come on, boys. Play nice. It doesn't have to be like this. We came back down here to make you a deal. Don't ruin it with all this stupidity."

  "The only thing we want is the hell out of here," Bill said.

  Gaviota shrugged. "That's one option, but you might find the other one a lot more attractive."

  Standing behind Bill still, I edged toward the door that Gaviota and Misha had entered through. As I reached for the knob with one hand, I kept the other near Bill's collar, ready to grab him and run as soon as the bullets started flying.

  "You fellas oughta listen to him," Misha said. "Ain't many people get this kinda chance."

  "Whatever you're selling, we ain't buying," I said. Normally I might have tried to play cocky enough to stand there and parlay with those two, but the blood running down my arm had dampened my enthusiasm for that.

  "When the devil comes calling, a wise man at least listens to the offer," Gaviota said.

  My eyes opened wide. I stopped reaching for the doorknob and put a hand on Bill's shoulder. My father had often said that exact thing to me, right down to the letter.

  Bill glanced back at me, but I ignored him and focused on Gaviota, never forgetting the man had just shot me and thrown me into a cooler. "Toss your guns over here."

  Gaviota shrugged, then drew his weapon, placed it on the floor, and kicked it over toward us. He moved like he'd done this before.

  "You too," I said to Misha.

  The big man growled in disappointment, but he went ahead and followed Gaviota's lead. I scooped up both of the weapons. Gaviota carried a slick automatic pistol with a pearl grip. Misha's gun was a cannon of a revolver. I hefted one in each hand.

  "So," I said. "What do you want to talk about?"

  Gaviota flashed what I'm sure his mother had told him was a winning smile. "You two got a lot of raw talent, but you got no damn sense at all. I don't know who's been teaching you about magic, but if you don't wise up fast you're going to both wind up dead."

  "Don't threaten us," Bill said.

  "It's not a threat. It's a fact. You are lambs, and you've wandered into a very dark forest. Without a shepherd, the wolves here are going to eat you alive."

  I hefted Gaviota's gun in my hand and tapped it against the wall. It made no sound at all. "You strike me as more of a wolf," I said.

  He broke into a wide grin. "Look, kid. I'm sorry about that bullet. You'd be surprised how many cranks we get in here trying to do exactly what you managed to pull off. They get on my nerves."

  "We just want to walk out of here," said Bill. "We'll never bother you again."

  Gaviota frowned and shook his head. "That's not good enough, I'm afraid. While I might go for that, the boss has other ideas. He thinks you two have a lot of potential, and that means you gotta work with us. You'll be my apprentices."

  "Or else what?" I asked.

  "There's no 'or' here. We can't have you wander off and get wise under someone else. The boss feels it would be bad for business, and I happen to agree with him. This is the deal. Take it."

  "Let's go," I said to Bill.

  Misha cracked his knuckles. Gaviota sighed. "You seem like smart kids who just did a dumb thing," he said. "Don't compound that."

  I pointed the silenced gun at Gaviota, and I flicked off the safety. "You shot me," I said. "I'm having a hard time getting past that."

  He ignored the gun and stared straight into my eyes. "Come on, kid. I'm rooting for you here. For once in your life, play it smart."

  My father had often said that to me too. He'd used the phrase after my mother's funeral, when he'd told me he had to leave. I begged to go with him, wherever he was going, but he insisted on leaving me with my grandma, who was still mourning the loss of both her husband and daughter to Hurricane Katrina.

  "For once in your life, Jackson, play it smart," he'd said. That was the last time I'd seen him, five years ago.

  I'd taken that from him then, but I was just a kid. I was a man now – off to college, living on my own – and I wasn't going to take that from anyone ever again.

  Gaviota started toward me. I pointed his gun at his legs and fired.

  Even though it didn't make a sound, the pistol kicked so hard in my hand that I almost dropped it. Gaviota stepped backward in mid-stride and planted his feet. I stared at him, waiting for a dark spot of crimson to appear somewhere on his pants and then bloom.

  Instead, Gaviota laughed.

  "Oh, my god," Bill said. "He disappeared the bullet."

  "No way," I said, my voice a bare whisper.

  Gaviota nodded. "This is what I'm talking about, boys. You have the power, but you have no idea how to use it." He made a gun from his finger and shot it at me. "I never should have been able to even crease your clothes with that slug, but there you stand bleeding."

  I pointed the gun at Misha instead. "Are you good enough to protect him too?"

  The big man slid behind Gaviota, crouching down behind him like a child hiding behind his mother's skirts. Gaviota turned to yell at him for being a coward. That's when I grabbed Bill by the arm and ran.

 
 

CHAPTER NINE

 

I pushed open the door, pulled Bill through it, and slammed it behind us. Since it opened outward, I spun around and threw my weight against it. Then I stood up and jammed the side of my shoe under the bottom of the door, wedging it in good.

  The men on the other side of the door threw their weight against it. Misha had plenty of that to go around all by himself, and I knew that even with my shoe serving as an impromptu doorstop I couldn't hold out against him for long. I glanced around for something I could use to help jam the door shut.

  Bill and I stood in a service hallway that ran around the back of the Bolthole. I didn't see any other doors off in either direction, just more hallway that eventually disappeared around a turn. The doors of a service elevator stood straight across from us, though, and Bill stabbed his finger at the call button, which lit up.

  Now all we had to do was hold out until the elevator arrived.

  "Open the damned door!" Gaviota shouted. I couldn't tell if he was talking to Misha or me, but I pushed harder against it just in case.

  Bill stabbed at the elevator button again and again. Normally I'd say that wouldn't make it show up any faster, but I'd seen enough strange magics today to stifle my doubts.

  Something huge and heavy hit the other side of the door, and door jamb around the latch splintered out at me. The door moved a few inches and nearly crushed my foot, but I had a good angle on the wedge. Despite that, I yowled in pain.

  Bill dashed over from the elevator to give me a hand. He shoved his shoulder up against the door too. The two of us together couldn't have outweighed Misha, but I sure appreciated the help. The man shoved against the door from the other side again, but my shoe-wedge still held.

  "Where the hell is that elevator?" I shouted.

  The indicator light over the top of the elevator's doors came on, and its bell rang once. The doors slid open.

  "Go for it!" I said.

  "We'll go together," said Bill.

  I shook my head. "My shoe is the only thing holding these two back. Get in there, and I'll make a dive for it when the doors start to close."

  I just hoped the service elevator didn't have an electric eye for safety. If it did, the doors would open up again as soon as I crossed the threshold, just to make sure I didn't get crushed. On any other day, I wouldn't have minded that, but right now it would give Gaviota and Misha another chance to grab us instead.

  Bill patted me on the back, then shoved himself off the door and into the elevator.

  "Come on!" he said. "I've got the Close Door button ready to roll."

  Before I could respond, Gaviota's face appeared through the door. He'd stuck his head through it, right up to his neck, leaving the rest of him on the other side. I almost leaped out of my new clothes, and if my shoe hadn't been wedged under the door, I might have managed it.

  "Do you boys really think you can get out of here like that?" Gaviota said. "This is our casino. We own every inch of it."

  I tore my foot out of my shoe, spun around, and fired three shots from Gaviota's pistol into his face. I'd figured out how he'd protected himself from the bullets. Magic can do a lot of amazing things, but it's all about rearranging reality. It still obeys the laws of physics on a macro if not a quantum level.

  Gaviota couldn't just make the bullets vanish. He had to exchange the bullets for air someplace else nearby. However, just because he'd swapped out materials didn't mean he'd done anything with their momentum. The air hit him just as hard as a bullet, which is why it had stopped him in mid-stride when I'd shot him in the leg.

  A concentrated burst of air like that wasn't going to put any holes in Gaviota's skin, but it could still leave a hell of a bruise. It was one thing to get hit with that sort of blow to the leg, and something else entirely to take it three times between the eyes.

  Gaviota tumbled forward through the door, stunned. When he hit the ground, I reached down and shoved him up against the door. Then I dashed into the elevator and shouted at Bill to "Go! Go! Go!"

  As the doors to the elevator closed, Gaviota struggled to his knees and moved toward us. For a moment, I thought he was going to be able to stop us, and I readied the silenced pistol again. He reached for the door as it was shutting, but it moved just a hair too fast for him and closed before he could stop it.

  An instant later, the elevator began its descent. Gaviota's hand shoved through the doors, but it then zipped up and away through the elevator car's roof as we left the fortieth floor – and Gaviota and Misha – behind.

  "We're screwed," Bill said. "They'll have security on us the moment we step out of the elevator. We'll never get out of here."

  I looked at the elevator's control panel. The light marked "L" glowed, but the others were all dead. Glancing around, I found a list of locations on each floor, including Big Al's Chicago Steakhouse and Pub on three. I stabbed the buttons marked "3" and "2."

  "Are we going to stop to eat?" An edge of hysteria tinged Bill's voice.

  "If we get off in the lobby, security will be waiting for us," I said. "We need to throw them off a bit to give us some breathing room. We'll get off on the third floor. The stop at the second floor might confuse them."

  "You're a hell of an optimist."

  "I just ain't quite ready to give up yet, brother."

  I held up my hands, each with a gun in them. I stuffed the silenced one in my pocket, where it chinked against the pile of chips in there. I looked at Misha's revolver and wondered what to do with it. Even if I could fit it in a pocket, it felt heavy enough to pull down my pants.

  "Give me that," Bill said. "I'll put it with mine."

  I handed the revolver over, happy to be rid of it. "How are you doing that? Hiding the guns, I mean?"

  Bill grinned, glad to have a chance to explain how clever he was. "I built my own pocket dimension and attached the portal to the inside rim of this rubber bracelet I keep in my pocket."

  "I wondered why you weren't wearing that."

  "It's great. I can carry whatever I want in it, and it doesn't weigh a thing. Best of all, it's entirely undetectable. I can carry anything–"

  The elevator's bell rang as we came to a stop a floor earlier than we had planned. "Did you press four?" Bill asked.

  I shook my head. He stuffed the guns into the pocket of his jacket. They shouldn't have both fit, but instead they didn't take up any space in there at all. I held the silenced pistol in my pocket, ready to draw it and start firing right away if I had to. As the doors slid open, I braced myself for a standoff with a squad of armed security agents.

  Instead, a housekeeper pushing a large cart of bedding eased her way onto the elevator. I sighed with relief. Once the woman and her cart were in, I reached out with my hand to stop the door from closing.

  "I think this is our floor," I said to Bill. "Excuse us, miss."

  The woman shrugged as we filed out of the elevator. She probably should have been concerned about a pair of customers using the service elevator and disembarking on a floor in the middle of the hotel, but it was a matter too high above her pay grade for her to care.

  Once in the service hallway, I followed my nose to the right, down a hallway that led toward the scents and sounds of an active kitchen. Bill stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. He pointed at a security camera aimed at the kitchen's back door. If we went in, we'd be spotted for sure.

  "There has to be a better way out of here," he said.

  I nodded. "Did you see what Gaviota did upstairs?"

  Bill raised his eyebrows. "You mean before you shot him in the face? How could I have missed it?"

  "Think you could pull that off?"

  Bill shivered. "Walking through walls? I don't know. I've never done it before, and that's one trick that looks like it has a lot of painful ways to blow."

  "It's ought to be easier than moving around ink on a card," I said. "You don't have to move anything. Just phase one set of molecules through another at the subatomic level."

  "Just?" Bill gawked at me. "You are too damned funny."

  "You got a better idea?"

  "Yeah, I prefer not getting killed when the wall I'm phasing through decides to become solid while I'm partway through it."

  "Professor Ultman told us how it works."

  "He also said that we were, under no uncertain terms, not ready for it yet."

  I shrugged. "He also would have told us to avoid Vegas."

  Bill hung his head. "And yet here we are." He looked up at me again. "We're not quite that desperate. Let's give reality a try before we go messing with it too much."

  "Lead on," I said. "But as soon as we pass that camera, we're done."

  "I could just take out the camera."

  "Then they'd know something's wrong and send someone up here to check it out either way." I glanced around and saw another cart like the one the woman had pushed into the elevator.

  I reached into the cart and pulled out a chef's uniform, including a white jacket and hat, each liberally stained with colored streaks of food. I tossed it at Bill.

  "Hey!" He started to protest, then figured out what I had planned.

  While he threw the coat and hat on, I dug out one for myself and struggled into it. It was a little small. We looked at each other and couldn't help but laugh.

  "I went to college to avoid having to work in a kitchen," I said.

  "Let's move it," Bill said, "or we'll wind up working in the prison kitchen instead – if we're lucky."

  We pushed our way into the kitchen, keeping our heads down. The place was packed with cooks and their helpers working hard and rushing about. They didn't pay any attention to us.

  We walked straight through the kitchen from one end to the other, and we found ourselves at the back end of a darkened steakhouse decorated like an Italian restaurant in 1920s Chicago. Dozens of people ate at tables and booths scattered throughout the place, many of them along the wide line of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out toward the south side of the Strip and the glittering array of lights that blotted out the stars in the clear night sky beyond.

  "How are we going to get out of here?" Bill said. "We can't just wander around in these uniforms and walk out the front door?"

  "Don't the employees do that?"

  "How do you think we found a bin full of dirty uniforms in the back hall?"

  "Good point."

  I froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. I knew the clock was ticking. The elevator would have reached the first floor by now, which meant security would know that we weren't in it. They had to be searching for us everywhere, and with the number of cameras installed in a casino, it wouldn't take them long to find us.

  I knew the best way to disappear was in a crowd, but the casino security teams in Vegas worked with crowds all the time. If anyone could find a needle in a haystack, it would be them – especially if they had some magical help. We needed to find a way to tip the odds in our favor, and fast.

  "There they are!" a voice shouted just as I'd spotted a solution – or at least part of it.

  Bill grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward the restaurant's front door, where the maitre d' stood stabbing a bony finger at us as he spoke to a team of five burly men in cheap suits. I swore, then reached back to the wall next to swinging doors that led into the kitchen. A fire alarm hung there. I took off my chef's hat, put it on my hand, and pulled the T-shaped lever.

  The alarm blared loud enough to make me want to cover my ears. A few people screamed in surprise, but most of the diners got up in a so-called orderly fashion and began hustling toward the marked exits. This sent a lot of them straight into the path of the security detail heading our way.

  "Come on," I said to Bill. I dashed toward the window, weaving my way through the diners heading the other way.

  "Where the hell are you going?" he asked. "The fire exit's off to the right."

  "That's just going to lead us right into another team of security guards," I said. "We need to try something else."

  I looked out the window and saw that my mental map of the place had been right. The restaurant's windows overlooked a broad stretch of rooftop punctured by large swathes of skylights. It was a short drop down to the rooftop, only about ten feet.

  "All right," I said. "We can do this."

  Bill gaped at the windows. "You're out of your mind."

  "Maybe," I said, "but that doesn't mean this isn't our only chance."

  I grabbed him by his shoulder. "You were worried about getting stuck inside of something, but look, it's just a window. We can see straight through it. It's not even solid. It's a supercooled liquid, right?"

  "It's solid enough to cut us to ribbons if we smash it."

  "Nah." I shook my head. "We'll probably just bounce right back off it."

  "Hey!" one of the security guards shouted. "Hold it right there! Don't move!"

  "Now or never," I said to Bill.

  "All right." He blew out a breath and nodded, his eyes huge with fear. "Let's do it."

 
 

CHAPTER TEN

 

We both started hollering at the top of our lungs and sprinted right for the glass. Despite the fire alarm, the guards shouting at us, and the oncoming sheet of plate glass, I tried to focus on making myself as insubstantial as possible. I thought of myself as the wind blowing though a screen and coming out the other side unharmed.

  I only hoped it wouldn't instead leave me in lots of little pieces.

  When we reached the glass, both Bill and I passed right through it as if it wasn't there. I glanced back to see a guard who'd been racing up behind us slam right into the window and bounce back.

  Then I realized that even though Bill and I had moved through the glass, we were still falling. I put out my hands to brace myself for the impact, but instead I fell right through the rooftop in front of me. I zipped right through the coal tar roof – not one of the skylights – and found myself high in the air over Bootleggers' massive indoor pool.

  For an instant, I panicked. I bellowed in fear and windmilled my arms and legs as I hurtled through the air. The thought that I might not be able to stop falling terrified me. Would I pass through the bottom of the pool and into the foundation and bedrock beneath it? Would gravity pull me straight down to the center of the earth? Would I face the choice of either suffocating down there or dying of thirst?

  When I hit the water, though, I discovered I'd once again become as substantial as ever. I smacked into it hard and unprepared, and it stung like hell. I'd forgotten to hold my breath as I went in too, and by the time I reached the bottom of the pool I was already struggling for air. I kicked off hard from the blue-painted bottom and emerged into the warm, humid room, gasping for oxygen.

  I swam to the nearest edge of the pool and hauled myself out. The few people hanging out in the pool at that time of night, stared at me in astonishment. A young couple came over to see if I was okay. Despite the fall, the difficult landing, and the blood still leaking from the gunshot wound in my arm, I waved them off.

  Then I realized that I'd lost Bill somewhere.

  "Did anyone land next to me?" I asked no one in particular.

  I pulled myself to my knees and stared into the water, fearing that I might find Bill staring up at me from the bottom of the pool with unseeing eyes. He wasn't there, but if he hadn't come through the rooftop with me, where was he?

  I leaned back and craned my neck to see Bill staring down at me from one of the skylights above. I waved for him to come on down.

  "Hey," I said, "the water's fine!"

  Bill waved me off like I was crazy. Then he spun around and stared at something coming from behind him. Terrified, he twisted back around and charged across the skylights until he came to a stop right over the center of the pool.

  I heard something crack above him, and I feared it might be the skylight cracking. Then I recognized the sound as that of a muffled gunshot – more than one, actually.

  Bill dropped through the skylight like he'd stepped off of a high-dive platform. He drew himself up into a sphere and slammed into the water in a picture-perfect cannonball.

  I raced around to the edge of the pool closest to where Bill had landed, and I called out to him as he emerged from the water. He swam over to me with clean, steady strokes and pulled himself out of the pool.

  "They came right after me," he said. "They'll be here any second too."

  I looked back up at the skylight and saw three armed men glaring down at us through the glass. If there hadn't been any other people around, I have no doubt that they would have started shooting at us through the skylights, collateral property damage be damned.

  I spotted an emergency exit not too far off – a glass door set in the glass walls that surrounded the pool room – and charged right for it. A red panel on it read, "Emergency Exit Only. Alarm Will Sound."

  I didn't think another alarm would make our situation any worse. I slammed into the panel and flung the door wide.

  Bill and I raced out into the cool, desert night. The noise of the traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard sounded like a roar after the relative quiet inside the hotel. I'd heard it for a second or two while I fell from the restaurant into the pool, but I'd been too busy wailing in fear to listen to it.

  "Head for the street!" Bill said. "Don't go near the entrance!"

  I saw what he meant. The curve of the driveway outside the pool would lead us toward the entrance of the casino, where we'd be sure to find plenty of security cameras and guards keeping an eye out for us.

  I hesitated as I came up against a tall hedge that cut us off from the street, not knowing if I should try to go around or through it. Stopping for that instant reminded me that I'd lost one of my shoes to the Bolthole's service entrance, and I cursed the waste of the money I'd spent on the damned things.

  Then I heard a burst of gunfire and the sound of bullets zipping past me.

  I dove straight through the bushes, not bothering to concentrate on passing through them first. The branches scratched and tore at me, and I let them tear the chef's uniform from me as I went. I didn't even feel the scrapes right then. I had too much adrenaline pumping through me to worry about such things.

  Bill and I burst through the bushes and emerged onto the sidewalk outside the casino, well south of the entrance. We turned to the right and sprinted down the pavement as fast as we could. Not wanting the Bootleggers security team to follow us right back to our hotel room, we ducked into Circus Circus and tried to act as uninteresting as a couple of soaking wet and bloodied young men with guns in their pockets could manage.

  Mostly we kept moving. We speed-walked through the throngs in the carnival area. The place thrummed with conversations and cries of triumph and grief at the carnival games and of astonishment at the acrobats swinging and spinning high overhead.

  I had no interest in any of it. I kept my eyes focused forward, ignoring the decades' worth of attractions designed to grab my attention and draw me in. I hunted for a way out, trusting my instincts and my desperation to show me the right path out of the place.

  Bill and I wove through the casino – never stopping for an instant – until we found our way into the parking structure that stood between Circus Circus and Revolutions. From there, we took the stairs up to the fourth floor and crossed through the structure. On the other side, we took the elevator to the mezzanine level of Revolutions, which gave us a clear shot to the hotel tower's bank of elevators without having to set foot on the casino's main floor.

  A couple of young ladies – both very blonde and Californian – were already in the elevator when Bill and I staggered into it. They giggled as we entered, then gasped when they got a closer look at us.

  Under any other circumstances, Bill would have been hitting on them right away. As it was, he didn't spare them more than a passing glance. We had other things on our mind.

  "What happened to you two?" the taller of the two girls asked.

  I turned to Bill. "What's the first rule of Fight Club?"

  Bill's lips curled into a vicious smile. "You don't talk about Fight Club."

  The women giggled the entire way until we reached our floor and stumbled out of their lives.

  When we got into the room, I stripped off my torn and bloodied jacket and shirt, then grabbed a hand towel and wrapped it around the groove the bullet had sliced through my arm. The wound had stopped bleeding freely, but it still oozed a bit. The hurt had turned from a white-hot burn to a dull ache.

  Bill collapsed on his bed. "What are we going to do?"

  "Pack," I said. "We're getting the hell out of here."

  "We can't just leave," he said. "What about all those chips in your pockets?"

  I kicked off my one remaining shoe, then took off my pants and emptied the pockets onto my bed. The silenced gun and my smartphone sat there on a bed of black and purple chips worth thousands of dollars, maybe enough for a year's tuition. I wanted to take the whole mess and throw it out the window. If the windows actually opened this high up, I might have done it.

  "The money doesn't do us any good if we're too dead to spend it," I said.

  I grabbed a fresh change of clothes from my Army surplus duffel bag and got dressed while Bill did the same. As I was tying my old shoes back on my feet, Bill's phone chirped. He had an incoming text.

  "Surprised it still works," Bill said as he scooped his phone from the dresser on which he'd laid it.

  His eyes grew wide as he read the message. "Oh, shit," he said. "This is really bad." He held up the phone to show me.

  It read: "Heard you blew it. Meet me at the Thunderbird if you need help. Powi."

  "Who the hell's Powi?" he said.

  "That's the woman who carried you back here this morning."

  "Right." A smile started to creep over his lips, but he frowned it back down. "How the hell'd she get my number?" he asked.

  "You were passed out in her casino for hours," I said. "She had plenty of time to figure it out. That's not the worst part though."

  Bill nodded. "If she knows about what just happened in Bootleggers, then how many other people know too?"

  I shook my head. "The real question is how many people know where we are?"

  I jumped up and started shoving everything I owned into my duffel bag, including my laptop. Bill did the same with his things.

  When I was done, I stuffed my phone in my pocket, hoping it still worked, and I shoved the silenced pistol in the other. Then I scooped up the chips. "Hold out your bracelet," I said to Bill.

  He'd already transferred it to the pocket of his dry pants. He pulled it out and held it up in front of me. I peered inside of it and saw nothing but blackness.

  "Hold on," Bill said.

  His hand went in through the bracelet but disappeared rather than coming out the other side. He fiddled around with something for a moment, then pulled his hand back out. It was whole.

  I looked into the hole again. Bill had turned on an LED lightstick inside the pocket, so now I could see the guns and bullets he'd stored there, along with a thick wad of cash. I took the chips in my hands and poured them into the hole. Just like his hand, they failed to appear on the other side.

  "Don't lose that," I said.

  "Believe me, I won't," Bill said. "Even if we can't cash those chips in now, I haven't given up on them yet. Maybe we can find someone else to do it for us."

  I opened my mouth to point out that Bill needed to keep breathing a lot more than he needed to add to his bankroll. Before I could speak, the phone rang. It wasn't either of ours. It was the hotel phone.

  Bill and I stared at the phone as it continued to ring, neither of us moving toward it.

  "Who knows we're here?" I asked.

  "No one. Why would I give out our hotel room's number. We have cell phones."

  "Don't answer it."

  "Maybe it's a wrong number." Bill moved toward the handset.

  "Seriously. Don't."

  Bill rolled his eyes at me. "What? Are they going to zap me right through the phone line?"

  I shrugged. "Maybe. If we learned anything about magic today, it's how little Professor Ultman really taught us."

  The phone kept ringing and would not stop. I zipped up my duffel bag and threw it over my shoulders, wearing the strap bandolier style. Bill kept staring at the phone like it might leap off the table between our beds and bite him.

  Finally, he broke. He snatched the receiver up and barked into it. "What?"

  Bill held the receiver out so we could both hear the voice of the woman on the other end. "Mr Teach? Or Mr Lafitte? There's someone who would like to talk with you."

  "We're just on our way out the door," Bill said. "Who is it?"

  "They say they're friends of yours."

  I clutched my chest. We had no friends in Vegas that we knew of. Had someone from the dorm back in Ann Arbor come down for spring break too and spotted us here? I knew better than that, but my brain kept clutching at any straws within reach.

  "Tell them we'll be right down," Bill said. "We'll meet them in the front lobby."

  "Thank you, sir. I'll let them know."

  Bill hung up the phone.

  "We're going to meet them?" I couldn't believe he'd set up an appointment with whoever was looking for us.

  "Don't be silly," he said. "We're heading for the fire stairs and slipping out the back." Now that he was dressed in fresh clothes and didn't have someone pointing a gun at him or ready to break his legs, Bill seemed much more in control, more like the guy who'd talked me into coming out to give this mad scheme of his a shot in the first place.

  "All right," I said. "Let's go."

  I walked to the door and held it open while Bill grabbed his black leather duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. I glanced down the curved corridor, toward the bank of elevators that ran down the revolving building's central shaft. A trio of grim men in dark suits stepped from the stable platform onto the slowly spinning hallway and turned toward me.

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

I swung back into the room and slammed the door shut. "They're here," I said. "Three guys coming up the hallway right now."

  "Maybe they're heading for their room," said Bill. Even as the words left his lips, I could see that hope die on his face.

  I threw the deadbolt and the security chain on the door. Meanwhile Bill grabbed one of the chairs from the room's table and jammed it up underneath the doorknob. I had no idea if it would do any good at all, but it made me feel better to try.

  "What are we going to do?" I said in a whisper.

  Bill raced to the window. "We can't just jump out of here," he said. "We're on the thirty-third floor."

  The room had turned around so that we could see the north side of the Strip now. Bootleggers' art deco tower stabbed into the sky before us, not even a block away.

  "Maybe we could fly," Bill said. "Aren't magicians supposed to be able to fly?"

  "Professor Ultman only got as far as levitation with us," I said. "It's not the same thing."

  "It's the same principle, though, right?"

  "I am not leaping out of that window on the off chance that we might figure out a way to adapt that principle before we smack into the pavement."

  "I suppose you've got a better idea?"

  Someone knocked at the door. Bill and I both jumped in surprise.

  "Security!" a deep voice behind the door announced. "We need to speak with you immediately."

  "Guess they didn't feel like waiting in the lobby," Bill said.

  "We need to go," I said, glancing around. "If it's not the window, then some way else."

  "Mr Lafitte! Mr Teach!" the voice said, growing firmer. "We know you're in there. Please open up!"

  "Can't we just hide until they go away?" asked Bill.

  "Do you really think that's going to work?"

  I heard a key card slip into the lock, which clicked open. A regular key went into the deadbolt and threw it back too.

  "We have to go," I said. "Now." I glanced around the room, hoping we'd grabbed everything we needed. There would be no coming back.

  "Mr Lafitte! Mr Teach!" the voice said. "We are armed, and we are coming in!"

  "Damn it," Bill said. "I can't believe this. It wasn't supposed to work out like this."

  I grabbed him by the shoulder. Something heavy hit the door. The chair under the door held, but I heard it start to splinter. It wouldn't last much longer.

  I leaned down so I could peer up into Bill's eyes as he stared at the floor below us. "Ready, brother?" I asked. "You gotta be ready now."

  Sweat dripped from his brow. He didn't look at me. He just nodded.

  Something heavy hit the door again. The chair broke into kindling, and the security chain popped off its mooring.

  The man who'd shouldered down the door came stumbling through and landed on his knees. The two other men stormed through behind them, their guns leveled straight at us.

  "Freeze!" they said together.

  "Now!" I said. With a thought, the floor beneath us felt as substantial as the wind, and we fell straight through it, bullets blasting through the air where we had just been.

  The room we landed in was dark, but the lights of the Strip poured in through the open curtains. Bill had fallen to his knees. I pulled him back up.

  "We made it," I said. "You all right?"

  He gulped and nodded. "That was too close."

  "Get ready," I said. "We got to do it again."

  He clutched my arm. "No! Why can't we just run to the end of the hallway and take the stairs?"

  "They're going to be down here in just a few seconds. They have keys to every room in the entire complex, and there are cameras in every part of the place except inside the rooms." I glanced around. "And I'm not even so sure about that."

  I pulled Bill off my arm. "We need to take the most direct way down. That's straight through the floors until we reach the lobby. Then we run like hell."

  "All right," Bill said, wiping the sweat from his face. "It worked just fine. I'm starting to get used to this. We'll make it. We can do this."

  Someone pounded on the door.

  I grabbed Bill, and we slipped through the floor into the room below. It was dark and empty too.

  "How the hell did they get down there so fast?" Bill said, staring up at the ceiling. "Are they cheating?"

  "We're not just running from three guys." I ignored Bill's unspoken question: were the people chasing us using magic too? "It's the hotel's entire security staff. Their whole system."

  Bill shuddered. "I'm sorry, Jackson. I'm sorry I ever got us into this."

  "Don't even start." I grabbed his shoulder again. "I'm a big boy. I make my own decisions, and I went along with it. Now, let's get out of it."

  Bill took a moment to steady himself, then nodded. We fell through the floor again.

  At that time of night, most of the rooms were empty. Either the hotel hadn't been able to fill them or the people who were staying there were out on the town, hitting the tables, restaurants, shows, or clubs.

  Fearing I'd lose track of where we were, I started counting the floor numbers out loud every time we reached a new one. As I remembered from the elevator buttons, there wasn't a second floor in this part of the complex. The ceilings on the first floor had to be twenty feet high, and I didn't want to fall that far and wind up breaking my legs in the lobby.

  Everything went perfectly most of the way.

  "Thirteen!" I shouted as we slipped down from the fourteenth floor.

  The room wasn't empty. As my head slipped through the floor, I saw that the lights were on, and I knew we had trouble. Bill and I landed on top of the room's table, which someone had moved over from where it had been in every other room on the way down.

  Bill slipped off the side of the table and fell to the floor with a shout. I managed to keep my balance and landed in a crouch. I glanced around the room and saw a woman sitting straight up in the room's king-sized bed and gaping at me as she drew up her sheets to cover her nakedness. When she saw me gaping back at her, she screamed.

  The ear-piercing noise threw off my concentration. I put up my hands and said, "Hey, it's all right! We're just passing through. Sorry for the – ah, whatever – sliding through your ceiling. I'm sorry!"

  I looked for Bill, but he'd already disappeared through the floor. I was just about to do the same when someone tackled me from behind and dragged me off the table. I got a glimpse of an angry man wrapped in a towel before I fell over.

  I instinctively tried to slip through the table and the floor to get away, and it almost worked. No matter how much my trick might have shocked the man, he held on to my ankle with an iron grip that would not let go. While the rest of me passed through into the darkened room below, he kept a hold of my leg, keeping me from getting away clean.

  I wound up dangling into the room below, upside down, my foot still in the room above.

  Bill looked up and me and hollered in horror. "Oh my god!" he said. "You got stuck in the floor!"

  "No!" I shouted. "Some jackass has me by the foot and won't let go. I can't slip free!"

  "You can't phase through living things!" Bill said. "Not unless they let you."

  "Somehow, I don't think he's willing!" I said. I could feel the blood rushing to my head. I wondered how long I might have before I passed out – and what the man holding on to my leg must be thinking.

  I struggled with the man's grip, but I couldn't get any leverage to break free. If I turned solid, my leg would fuse with the concrete passing through it, and that would likely be the end of my non-existent track and field career.

  "Don't push on the ceiling!" Bill said, stepping away. "Kick him!"

  "How?"

  "Your body is still phased. Kick back up as hard as you can! Aim for your ankle!"

  I gave it a shot. I lined up my free foot and booted myself in the ankle as hard as I could.

  My shoe didn't connect with my trapped leg though. Instead it cracked into the fingers of the man holding onto me up above. That must have been enough to hurt him because an instant later my leg came free, and I fell to the floor below.

  I caught myself on my hands and rolled flat onto my front. The landing knocked the wind out of me for a second, and Bill was at my side before I could breathe again.

  "Are you all right?" he said. "Jackson!"

  I nodded as I gasped for air.

  "God, I thought you might be trapped in that ceiling until someone could come out and amputate your leg."

  The thought made me want to vomit, but my need to breathe superseded that. "I'm fine," I finally said. "Let's get going."

  "Sure," he said, helping me to my feet. "Just one question."

  "What's that?"

  "Just before we landed in that room, you yelled 'Thirteen,' right?"

  I didn't see where he wanted to go with that, but I nodded anyhow.

  He cleared his throat. "Does this hotel have a thirteenth floor?"

  I stared at him, then started laughing. He joined in, and we knelt there cackling on the floor, tears rolling from our eyes, until we were too weak to laugh any more.

  Once I caught my breath and wiped my eyes, I said, "I have no damn clue."

  Before Bill could respond, I heard someone shove a key card into the door. Without a word, we slipped through the floor again. I thought I heard someone curse at us as we left, but it was cut off too fast for me to be sure.

  "Eleven," I said as we hit the next floor.

  "Or maybe ten."

  I nodded to concede the point.

  "What are we going to do?" Bill said. "I don't want to fall 20 feet onto a marble floor."

  "Right now, we keep going. When we get to the fourth-maybe-third floor, I have an idea."

  We made it down the rest of the floors without any real problems. On the sixth-maybe-fifth floor, someone was in the room, sitting at the table and counting stacks of cash. He yelped in surprise as we appeared, but we didn't stick around long enough to see him do much more than that.

  "He's in for a big surprise when security storms his room," Bill said as we appeared in the room below.

  "If we're lucky, maybe it'll slow them down."

  Another jump down, and we were on the fourthmaybe-third floor. The room sat dark and empty.

  "So what's the plan?" Bill asked.

  "Lie down," I said. "Brace your legs against the floor."

  "I don't think we have that kind of relationship, Jackson."

  "Just do it," I said, and he did.

  I laid down with my waist over Bill's legs, then let myself go through the floor. My head and chest pitched forward into the room below, but Bill's frame kept me from falling straight through.

  The blazing lights blinded me for a moment and told me instantly that I'd been smart to look before I leaped. As my eyes cleared, I saw that I was hanging with my head and shoulders sticking down through the ceiling of the lobby, right over the antique paddy wagon that sat in the middle of it.

  I hauled myself back up. "We're good," I said. "Remember that old police van sitting in the middle of the lobby? We're right on top of it. We drop down here, and we can slip on down the front and charge for the exit."

  "Are you sure about that?" he asked. "I'd be surprised if they didn't have someone waiting for us near the doors. Look again."

  I thought he was being paranoid, but if there was ever a time for that, it was now. I leaned back down through the ceiling and craned my neck for a good look around.

  Sure enough, Bill had been right. Five men and women in dark suits stood near the exits, listening to someone squawking at them through their earpieces.

  I swung back up. "Good call. That way's screwed."

  I walked over to the window.

  "Any other ideas?" Bill asked. "If we take the stairs or the elevator, they've probably got those covered too."

  I looked out at the strip. We were facing the Thunderbird now, the ghostly blue mythic creature stabbing out from the front of the place's facade. Powi was there. She might be able to help if we could reach her.

  "Hey," Bill said, "look – a rooftop."

  I glanced down and saw that he was right. The window outside the room looked out over a broad expanse of roof that covered the vast casino floor out of which the revolving hotel tower rose.

  I gave Bill a fist bump. "Ready?"

  He nodded. Together, we took a running start at the window and leaped straight through it.

 
 

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

Getting down off the roof wasn't easy, but we managed it. Given everything else we'd been through that night, climbing down the part of the facade farthest from the front door wasn't hard. We wound up behind some of the bushes lining the casino's front. We hunkered down there and tried to figure out our next move.

  Then Bill's phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, looked at it, and swore. He turned it to show me the caller ID: Powi. I took it from him and thumbed it on.

  "You two are prime idiots."

  "Hi, Powi," I said. "Always great to hear from you. Now's not such a good time for a chat though."

  "So I gather. From what I hear, Gaviota has every spare security guard from Revolutions and Bootleggers combing the Strip for you. He's put out the word to every other house in the city. You're as good as dead."

  "Fine," I said. "In lieu of sending flowers to our funeral, please make a donation to the Prime Idiots Memorial Fund. Your dollars will help ensure no one ever makes the same mistakes we made again."

  Bill elbowed me to be quiet.

  "Do you want my help or not?" she asked.

  "What do you have in mind?"

  "Where are you?"

  "In the bushes off to the south side of the casino at Revolutions."

  "Can you see the post office from where you are?"

  I stuck my head up like a prairie dog poking out of the ground. "It's just to the southwest of us."

  "Sit pretty," she said. "I'll be there in a minute."

  I thumbed the phone off. Before I handed it back to Bill, I brought up Powi's number and memorized it.

  "Help is on the way," I said.

  Bill cocked his head at me. "Are you sure we can trust her?"

  I shrugged. "She had you knocked out cold in her place for hours, and she brought you back to the room and dumped you into a bed. That's about the best I think we can expect in Vegas."

  "Truth."

  A minute later, a red ragtop Mini Cooper with the roof and windows down zipped into the parking lot and cruised up right alongside our hiding spot. Bill and I glanced at each other, then burst out of the bushes, vaulted over the car's passenger side, and landed in the seats.

  "Drive!" I said.

  "Keep your heads down," Powi said, scowling at us both. She hit the gas, and seconds later we were rolling south on the Strip.

  "Is anyone following us?" I asked.

  Powi glanced in her rearview mirror. "Not that I can see at the moment, but if they're any good I wouldn't. Stay down."

  "Where the hell are we going?" Bill asked from the back seat.

  "Someplace safe. Relatively."

  We rolled past the Mirage, Caesar's Palace, and the Bellagio on our way to the south part of the Strip. When we reached New York, New York, we turned left on Tropicana and threaded our way between the MGM Grand and the Trop on our way east. For Powi, every light turned yellow as we approached it and shifted to red directly behind us. I couldn't tell if she was controlling the lights or was just so in tune with them that it amounted to the same thing.

  "This is the way we came in from the airport," I said.

  "I'm not taking you to the airport," she said. "At least not yet."

  We made it past the north side of the airport and beyond the edge of the Thomas and Mack Center on the edge of the UNLV campus. Powi turned off the main streets then and started to wind her way through the crazy quilt of small streets and tiny houses that made up the bulk of Las Vegas that sprawled in the dim edges of the brilliance thrown off from the Strip. Not too long later, I'd been totally turned around and had given up on figuring out exactly where we were. I figured as long as I could still see the blinding beacon stabbing out of the tip of the Luxor's pyramid of glossy black glass, I could still find my way back to the center of town if it came to that. Until that moment, safe or not, I was in Powi's hands.

  Powi slipped off the lit streets and into a dark, empty stretch of land that had been platted out for a residential subdivision. Empty streets snaked through the naked land, a barren stretch of undeveloped desert filled only with broken promises and shattered dreams.

  "Got some property you want to show us?" Bill asked. "Looks like a real ground-floor opportunity."

  "Shut up," said Powi. "Every time you open your mouth, you show how ignorant you are."

  "Funny," Bill said, unperturbed, "Jackson never mentioned how hot you were."

  Powi sneered back at him. "I liked you better when you were unconscious."

  Bill opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Powi pulled the car over to the curb next to a dusty yard that led up to nothing, and she shut off its motor. She turned around in her seat so she could look at both of us.

  "I warned you," she said. "I went out of my way to make sure that this jackass here didn't get killed, and I did you an even bigger favor by telling you to get the hell out of town. And you do the exact opposite. You might as well both have painted bright red targets on the seats of your pants."

  "We did just fine without you," said Bill.

  "Well," I said, "right up until Misha and Gaviota hauled us out of there."

  She hung her head and shook it. "When two men like that throw you out of a place, you're lucky to land without breaking your legs."

  "You got that right," said Bill. "I'm still sore from landing in that pool."

  She raised her head and narrowed her eyes at him. "They threw you into the pool? I've never heard of them trying to drown someone before. You two really are a piece of work."

  "No," I said, "we did that to ourselves. Well, not really on purpose, but it all adds up to the same thing."

  The look she gave me made me want to shut up for ever.

  "Hey, we were doing damned well up until that point," Bill said.

  "Up until you threw yourselves into the pool?" said Powi. "Were you trying to drown your sorrows after they cleaned you out?"

  "They didn't clean us out," I said. "First they wanted to kill us. Then they wanted to hire us."

  Powi's jaw dropped. I'd never seen her speechless before. I liked it.

  "That's – that's impossible," she said. "They always clean everyone out. That way they can't ever get charged with stealing the money back from you."

  Bill reached over and clapped me on the back. "Oh, they tried. They tried! But Jackson here was unstoppable. On fire!"

  Powi stared at me. The moonlight glowed in her hair. It could have been light from the Luxor, but I preferred to think of it as moonlight either way.

  "Who did you say threw you out?"

  "No one," I said. "We let ourselves out."

  "Actually, we ran like hell. After we broke out of the cooler."

  Remembering all that made me wince, I rubbed the sore spot on my arm. "After I got shot trying to stick up for you."

  "You were shot?" said Powi. For the first time, her face showed real concern.

  "Just a little," I said. "I'll live."

  "Let me see," she said.

  I shrugged, then stripped off my shirt as gently as I could. Crimson showed through the hand towel I'd wrapped around my bicep. In all the insanity of dropping through the floors in Revolutions, I must have broken open the barely formed scab again.

  I held out the arm, and Powi helped me peel off the towel. This worked fine until we got to the last bit. My blood had coagulated into the fibers of the towel, and removing it broke open the wound again. It felt like someone had stabbed me in the already raw flesh.

  Powi took the towel from me and used the dry parts to stanch the fresh flowing blood. After wiping it clean, she turned on the map light near the car's mirror to get a good look at it. She grimaced at it, then let her lips twist into a wry smirk.

  "It's not too bad," she said. "I think I can help you with that."

  "Got a needle and thread?" Bill asked. "Going to stitch him up Rambo-style?"

  She ignored him. Instead, she placed the palm of her hand over the wound and clamped it there tight as part of a circle she made with her other hand around my arm. She closed her eyes and began chanting something in a language I didn't recognize.

  Bill got up on his knees in the back seat to get a better view. Without a word, he reached over me and shut off the map light.

  "Shit," he said, his voice soft and low. "I was right. She's glowing."

  In the illumination from the map light, I hadn't been able to detect it. In the dark again, though, I could see a soft nimbus of golden light surrounding Powi's hands.

  "Don't move," she said softly.

  I had no urge to panic at all. Her hands were warm and soft, and rather than hurting me they seemed to funnel a tingling warmth into my skin. The glow slowly moved from her hands to my arm, along with the tingling sensation that built until it came just shy of an uncontrollable itch.

  I held still through all of it. Bill started to say something a couple of times, but a dirty look from me shut him up. After a long, sweet moment, the glow faded from both Powi and me, and she removed her hands.

  Powi used the towel to wipe my blood from her hands. Then she flipped it over until she found a clear spot on it and used that to clean off my arm. When she was done, my arm hung bare in the moonlight, a thin white scar tracing the line where the bullet had grazed my skin.

  "Wow," said Bill. "Just wow." He sounded like a little boy who'd just seen his first dinosaur in a museum. "How the hell did you do that?"

  "My people specialize in healing magic." A knowing smile curled Powi's lips. "You've never heard of a medicine man?"

  She looked at me and noticed me watching her. "Thank you," I said.

  "You're welcome." She blushed. "You can put your shirt back on."

  Although my shirt sleeve still showed a bit of blood on it, I shouldered my way back into it. I enjoyed the total lack of pain in the muscle as I moved. If anything it felt better than my other arm now.

  "People specialize in different kinds of magic?" I said. "I didn't know that."

  "If ignorance were water, we could flood Las Vegas with what you and your friend here don't know about what you've gotten yourself into."

  The moment of tenderness that I'd felt with Powi when she healed me disappeared. She'd brushed it aside like a spiderweb. Perhaps it hadn't been there at all.

  Bill raised his hand. "I know I slept through this lecture the last time, but Jackson here gave me his notes, so feel free to not repeat yourself for my sake."

  Powi swiveled around in her seat again to glare at Bill. "Since neither of you bothered to listen to me last time, maybe I should just save my breath."

  I leaned between the two of them. "No, no," I said. "Please. You're right. We ignored you before, and we paid the price for it." I pointed at my arm. "We're ready to listen to you now."

  Powi arched an eyebrow at Bill, and he shrugged in noncommittal agreement. She pursed her lips at us for a moment before she started in.

  "Get the hell out of town," she said. "I'll take you to the airport. You can fly standby back to wherever it is you came from. Mark Las Vegas off the list of places where you're welcome, and never come back."

  "We can't just walk away from this," Bill said. "There's too much money involved. I've got at least twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of chips in my pocket."

  "That handful of clay and plastic is not worth your lives. And I didn't say walk away from this. You jet."

  Bill looked to me, and Powi did too. Both of them seemed to think I'd listen to their version of reason, each of which had excellent points. I did neither.

  "I'm not ready to leave yet either," I said.

  Bill gave a silent victory pump with his fist. Powi's frown was so harsh I thought it might find a way to suck her healing glow right back out of me and leave me hurt and bleeding again.

  "I don't care about the money," I said. Bill gasped. "All right, I care a bit. That kind of money would solve a lot of problems for me, but it comes with enough new problems that it's probably not worth it."

  "You're insane," Bill said. "Ever since we started out on this trip, it's been the money that brought you here. You kept going on about how this would mean you'd finally be able to stop soaking your grandma for tuition and rent. Was that all a lie?"

  "Not at all."

  "Do you even have a grandma?"

  "You spoke to her on the phone."

  "I spoke with someone who sounds like a grandma that might be related to you."

  "Now you're the one talking crazy."

  Powi cut us off with a wave of her hand. Once she had our attention, she turned to me. "If the money isn't keeping you here, then what is?"

  I flushed as I struggled with the words. Finally, I gave up and just started talking. "It's time I came clean with you," I said, mostly to Bill. "The money was never the big draw for me to come to Vegas. If that's all it had been about, Atlantic City is closer to Ann Arbor. Hell, there are casinos in Detroit."

  "You'd go into Detroit?" Bill stared at me with wide eyes.

  "It can't be any worse than New Orleans."

  "You've clearly not been to Detroit."

  "Can I finish?"

  Bill gestured for me to go on.

  "I had another reason to come here, to Vegas, something more important to me than the money."

  Bill couldn't help but interrupt me again. "What could be more important than money?"

  I opened my mouth to tell him, but another voice called to us out of the darkness to cut me off again.

  "I think I can answer that," the man said.

  Bill, Powi, and I all jumped out of our seats in surprise. Bill stuck his hand in his pocket to draw one of the guns out of his bracelet. I recognized the voice, though, and I grabbed his wrist to stop him.

  "You don't need that," I said. "It won't do us any good."

  The man strode forward in a crisp, stylish suit, the moonlight on his face. He glowered at me, as mad as I'd ever seen him, but somewhere beneath his anger I could see a layer of relief wrapped around a core of something else. Maybe delight.

  I could hope.

  "Hello, Jackson," he said.

  "Hi, Dad."

 
 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

"Who?" Bill said. "You told me your dad went missing in Katrina."

  "My mom went missing," I said. "He left."

  I stared at my father, unblinking. I hadn't seen him since I was just a terrified thirteen-year-old boy. He didn't look much different than I remembered him. He had a bit more gray in his hair, but he looked fit and much better dressed.

  "I left you with your grandmother," he said. "I told you I'd be back."

  "That was five years ago, Dad. You never wrote or called. I didn't know what had happened to you."

  He moved toward the car and put his hands on the top of the driver's side door. He leaned over Powi and ignored both her and Bill.

  "I tried, Jackson. Your grandmother, she doesn't care for me much. But that's not the point. I told you to stay put and listen to her, and here you are instead."

  "I'm an adult now, Dad. I'm going to college at Michigan."

  This took him aback. He stood up, concerned. "Ann Arbor?"

  I nodded. "Professor Ultman looked me up and told me all about you. You and the things you did."

  "Dammit." Dad put a hand over his eyes and groaned. "I didn't think about Rishi."

  "He's sure thought a lot about you, Mr Wisdom," Bill said. "He could go on for hours about all the things the two of you did."

  Dad lowered his hand, revealing a grim face. "I'm sure. He probably filled your heads with all sorts of tales of adventure, made it all seem like a series of silly pranks."

  Bill nodded and grinned, clearly hoping he'd distracted Dad from his anger at me by leading us down Memory Lane.

  "Did he tell you about the times we almost got killed in Detroit?" Dad said. "Or the week we spent in the Upper Peninsula on the run from the thing behind the Paulding Light? Or what happened when we first went to Las Vegas?"

  Bill's excitement dropped farther and farther with every question Dad asked. "He must have not gotten to those yet."

  "That's because he's a fool. He's always been a fool, and I was a fool for letting him talk me into going along with his idiocies. That's why we haven't spoken in fifteen years."

  "Oh," said Bill.

  "He told us about your trip to New Orleans," I said. "He told us about how you met Mom."

  Dad's face fell as if I'd punched him in the gut. Looking gaunter and older than I'd ever seen him, he frowned at me. "He didn't tell you everything about that either, I'm sure."

  "Grandma filled in some bits for me."

  "She didn't know everything." His voice had grown thick and hoarse. "We never told her. All she knew was she didn't care for me, no matter how happy I made her daughter."

  "She never said a bad word about you to me."

  He snorted. "Did she ever say a good word?" He couldn't keep a note of hope from his voice.

  I shook my head and crushed that. "Actually, she didn't say much at all."

  Dad shrugged. "It's not like you were a baby when I left you with her, Jackson. You remember your mother. You remember us all together as a family."

  I felt my throat start to constrict. No one else in the world could get to me like my dad. I don't think he ever knew that. He probably thought I just got choked up and emotional around everyone, but that was the farthest thing from the truth. It only happened around him.

  I shoved all that back down and locked it away. I'd been without him for years, and I didn't need him or his approval for anything now.

  "What are you doing here, Dad?" I said. "How did you find us?" I shot Powi an accusing glare.

  "I didn't have anything to do with it," she said. "I barely know him. We talk about magic sometimes, but that's it."

  "Your grandmother Mamaci mentioned this drunken jackass to me." Dad pointed at Bill. "I didn't make the connection between the two incidents until now."

  Powi winced and slammed the side of a fist into her own head for saying too much.

  "The second incident was the one that got my attention. Two cocky young magicians storm into Bootleggers like drunks into a church bent on robbing the poorbox. Gaviota tries to have a word with them, and they nearly kill him as they escape."

  Bill smacked me on the shoulder with the back of his hand. "Hear that? 'Nearly killed him.' We sound like a couple of bad-asses."

  Dad grabbed Bill by the shoulder of his jacket and threw him into the farthest corner of the backseat. "You think this is some kind of game?" he said. "Gaviota is a stone-cold killer, one of the top enforcers in the city. He does not play well with others. Both of you are lucky you're not dead."

  "I think they know that, Mr Wisdom," Powi said. "Before you got here, I healed a gunshot wound in Jackson's arm."

  That put Dad back on his heels. He stopped snarling at us and put a hand on his chest. He gaped at me. "He shot you?"

  I held up the healed arm. "It was only a flesh wound," I said in a British accent. He didn't laugh. In my own voice, I added, "I'm OK now."

  Dad glanced over our heads at the distant glittering lights of the Strip. "We have to get you out of here," he said. "Immediately."

  Powi started up the car. As the engine leaped to life, I jumped out of the car and stood there on the curb at the edge of the empty lot. My dad stared back at me over the heads of the others.

  "Jackson," he said, "get in the car." He used that stern, threatening voice that every kid knows means your parent is about to lose it entirely.

  "I'm not a little boy. You can't order me around."

  "This is for your own good." He stabbed a finger toward the ground as he spoke. "You have no idea what you've wandered into here."

  I folded my arms across my chest. "Enlighten me."

  "Ah," Bill said. "Now I get it. This is what he came here for."

  "Shut up," Dad and I said in unison. Neither one of us cracked a smile.

  Dad stood there and steamed at me, neither of us saying a word. I wasn't about to crack before he was, and he wasn't going to get me to move until he opened up and told me what was going on.

  It was Powi who finally broke the silence. "Would you two drop the macho bullshit posturing and just talk to each other already?"

  Dad and I stared at her.

  "Mr Wisdom," she said, "your son clearly came all the way out here – and nearly got killed for his troubles – not so he could make some easy money but so he could hunt you down and talk to you. Even if you're a rotten parent, try to act like a decent one and speak with him."

  I laughed at that, but Powi snapped around and cut me off.

  "Jackson, you stubborn jackass, you said you wouldn't leave town until you got what – or who – you really came for. Here he is. Now take care of business so we can get you out of here – before Gaviota and his friends catch up with us and put a quick end to this whole conversation."

  Dad nodded. "I'm game if you are," he said to me.

  I motioned for him to get us started.

  "We have a few minutes," he said. "Gaviota's not coming after you. Not directly. Not yet."

  "How can you be so sure?" asked Bill.

  "Because I'm the one he sent to look for you."

  "You work for him?" I said. I couldn't contain my shock. I knew my dad wasn't any sort of angel, but I didn't figure on him joining the guys with the pitchforks.

  Dad shook his head. "Not even with him, really. We both work for the Cabal, though independently."

  Even in the moonlight, I could see Powi shiver at the mention of that word: Cabal.

  "What is that?" I asked. "Some kind of magicians' club?"

  "In a way," said Dad. "It's a collective formed by the most powerful magicians in the nation. It's headquartered here in Las Vegas."

  "It's like the Mafia for magicians," Powi said. "It's a shadowy group of crooks who have their greasy fingerprints on every business in the city, legal or otherwise."

  "The Native Americans don't much care for the Cabal," Dad said by way of explaining the venom tainting Powi's voice. "They've been struggling with each other over the fate of magic in this nation ever since the time of Columbus."

  "No way the Cabal dates back that far," Bill said. "That's over five hundred years of magic."

  Dad glared at Bill as if he were a child who'd declared there was no such thing as air. "I said the Cabal's been battling the Native American magicians for that long. It actually dates much farther back than that, possibly all the way to early Pharaonic cultures in Egypt."

  Bill rolled his eyes at that. I spoke up before my dad could smack him.

  "But why did this Cabal send you out after us?" I asked.

  Dad knew I was trying to distract him, I'm sure, but he went with it. "After you escaped from Bootleggers, Gaviota put out a Code Brat on you. That happens whenever we get some rookie magicians in town. It happens more often than you might think."

  "I don't hear too many Code Brats," said Powi.

  "For one," said Dad, "the Cabal doesn't like to broadcast its business to the Native American contingent in town. For two, the Cabal isn't one big happy family. We have lots of factions, and not all of them are friendly with each other. When a Cabal magician stumbles on a rookie, one of two things usually happens. He either murders the new kid or recruits him."

  "Gaviota tried both with us," I said.

  "A Code Brat only goes out when something's gone perpendicular," Dad said. "Any magician who sends one out is admitting that the rookie is beyond his ability to keep or kill. The Code Brat is an all-hands call for everyone to run down the trouble as fast as possible. Rogue rookies pose a threat to all of us, and we usually take care of them fast."

  "What kind of threat?" I asked.

  "Magic works best in secret, or so the theory goes. The people in charge believe that power shared is power fractured, so they do their best to keep rookies out. They tolerate those with enough talent or savvy to work their way in but they take care of those who break the rules with public displays of actual magic."

  "And what do you mean 'take care of them'?" said Bill.

  Dad gave Bill a deadpan look. "Kill, usually."

  The rest of us absorbed that.

  "You mean that every magician in Las Vegas wants to hunt us down and kill us?" I hoped my voice didn't sound as shaky as I felt.

  "Except the ones at the Thunderbird," said Powi.

  Dad gave me a helpless shrug. "That's the gist. They sent out photos, videos, and copies of your IDs from Bootleggers' records. As soon as I saw Jackson's face, I knew I had to find you first."

  I stared at my dad. His face had softened and aged since the original anger at me had left him. "How'd you manage that?"

  "I'm a diviner," he said. "An information specialist. And you're my son. I can always find you, no matter where you are." He looked at Bill. "You're just lucky you happened to be with him."

  "You're not going to kill us?" said Bill.

  I smacked him on the shoulder. I hadn't even considered that possibility. As a kid, I remember thinking lots of times that my dad was going to kill me over one thing or another, but it had just been a figure of speech. I knew he'd never really do it.

  "I'm getting you out of here right now," he said, "before anyone else can do it."

  "You don't have to do that," Powi said. She turned to Bill and me. "We can take you in at the Thunderbird. We can protect you."

  "No, you can't," said Dad. "Not really. Not if the Cabal decides they're bringing the boys in dead or alive."

  "We've stood up to them for over five hundred years," Powi said.

  Dad snorted. "Did you know there used to be another Thunderbird? Somebody bought it and turned it into El Rancho. It all used to fall under the protection of a magician who ran under the name Prospero. That's gone now too, torn down years ago."

  Powi stuck out her jaw. "We're back now. And stronger."

  "That's because your grandmother struck a truce with the Cabal before you came back to town." He looked at Bill and me. "Some people in the Cabal have been hoping for any sort of excuse to destroy you. This could be it."

  I looked at Bill. "We got to go."

  "Aw, come on," he said, pained beyond decent words. "What about the money?"

  "Give me the chips," said Dad. "Or give them to young Strega here if you trust her more. Either one of us can cash you out in a couple weeks when the heat's off and send you a check."

  "Bill," I said, "we can't let these people go to war over us."

  "If that's all it takes, they'll do it one way or the other anyhow, right?" he said. "It's just a matter of time."

  "If the Cabal is coming for us, then we could use all the help we can get," said Powi. "We can teach you two what you need to know to become real forces in this city."

  "Like you?" Dad shook his head. "You kids are in so far over your heads you're walking on the bottom of the sea."

  He looked at me. The rage he'd started with had drained from him, and his concern for me was all I could see left. "Go back to Ann Arbor," he said. "Or back to New Orleans. Now."

  "But I – we–"

  He gave me a weary smile. "I know. I screwed up. I thought I was protecting you from all this, but all I did was leave the door open for you to wander through alone."

  "I'm right here," Bill said in mock annoyance.

  Dad ignored him. "Go. I'll come find you by the end of the week, and then I'll explain everything."

  I glanced down at Bill and Powi, but I'd already made up my mind. If staying here might spark off a magicians' war, then we had to go.

 
 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

"Dammit," Bill said as we pulled into the passenger drop-off lane at McCarran. "We just got here."

  "Time to get while the getting's good," I said.

  "It's the middle of the night," he said. "There won't be any planes leaving now."

  "The last flight to DTW leaves at 1:45am," said Powi. "It's only 1am now. You should still be able to make it."

  "Let me guess," Bill said. "You specialize in travel agent magic."

  Powi smiled. I don't know about Bill, but I couldn't be angry at her. "You don't work at a hotel in Vegas and not get a sharp handle on the flight schedules after a while," she said.

  "Thanks," I said as I climbed out of the car and slung my duffel bag over my back once again. "I'm sorry we didn't have more time to chat."

  "Don't think you're getting away that easily," she said. "I wasn't joking when I said we could use your help at the Thunderbird."

  I put up my hands. "The decision's already been made."

  "I understand, and I respect your father – and you – too much to try to change your mind now. But it's a long life. I see our paths crossing again."

  "Are you a diviner too?" I asked. "Some kind of prophet?"

  She shook her head. "Just call it a hunch."

  "Fine," Bill said as he climbed out of the Mini's back seat and hauled his duffel bag after him. "Banter away, you two. I'm just trying to figure out how we can make something decent out of this mess."

  "My dad gave us a thousand dollars in cash, and he said he'd send us the rest of the money in a week or two, as soon as he could manage cashing out all those chips without drawing too much attention." I narrowed my eyes at him. "You really think it came up to twentyfive thousand dollars?"

  "Probably more. You really don't bother to count your money at the table?"

  "All I need to know is if I'm winning or losing. The rest works itself out, I think."

  Bill shook his head at me. "You keep winning the money, and I'll keep counting it."

  Powi pulled out her smartphone. "What's your number?" she said to me.

  I told her, and she punched it in. My pocket began to buzz and rattle off the best bars from the crescendo of Orff's "O Fortuna."

  "Now I've got you," she said with a grin, "and you've got me."

  I couldn't help but smile.

  "Do your best to stay out of trouble, boys." Powi said as she put her car into gear. "A few weeks from now, everyone will have forgotten about this, right?"

  "Not me," I said. I watched her as she pulled away from the curb and raced off into the night.

  "At least not until we get that money from your dad, right?" Bill clapped me on the back, and we trotted into the airport.

  We walked up to the Delta counter and stood in line until we could talk to one of the agents. We explained to her that we had to cut short our trip and wanted to head back home early.

  "Had a hard run at the tables, eh?" she said with a knowing smile.

  "Something like that," I said.

  Before we packed our duffel bags, I pulled a small backpack out of mine. It had my laptop and a few other things in it that I wanted for the flight or didn't trust to the baggage handlers. Bill hadn't bothered with one. I figured he had everything he needed inside that crazy bracelet of his.

  We had to pay a fee to change the flights. I paid for it out of the money Dad had given me. I handed half of what was left to Bill.

  "That's your money," he said. "You won it."

  "We won it. That was always the plan. We go in as a team. We share wins and losses, right?"

  Bill wavered for a bit but stuffed the money in his pocket just the same. "Sure you don't want to go somewhere else for the rest of spring break? Ann Arbor's awful cold this time of year."

  "Last-minute flights are pricey," I said as we walked toward the security lines. The airport seemed like a dark cave after all the flash and thrum of the Strip, but I could still hear the echoing sound of slot machines working somewhere in the distance. "What we have left wouldn't get us all that far."

  "Then we'll live it up in town," he said. "Every night out: Dominick's, Ricks, Ashley's, the Full Moon, the Grizzly Peak. Dinner at Blimpy's and Cottage Inn. Dessert at Stucchi's. Late-night munchies at the Fleetwood or the Brown Jug. Nurse our hangovers in the Half Ass in the mornings."

  "Paradise." I gave him a fist bump.

  "This is only the beginning," he said. "Just because Vegas kicked us out doesn't mean we're done. The world is filled with casinos all ripe for the skimming."

  I shook my head and laughed. "Let's just get home and enjoy the week. We can plan our conquest of the universe from East Quad."

  There was a line at security, but it moved fast. Our fellow travelers shuffled along next to us. At this time of night, no one had tried to drag any kids along on a trip, no mothers struggling with strollers or fathers hauling carts full of toy-stuffed luggage. Some of them were kids our age heading out of town, giggling and chatting, texting friends or playing games on their phones. The rest were grim-faced adults determined to get out of town and back to the realities that awaited them in the world outside of Vegas.

  We handed the TSA woman at the front of the line our boarding passes and IDs. It made me nervous to have anyone examine the fakes, but we'd bought our tickets with them so we couldn't safely change them back until we left the airport in Detroit. She handed them back to us without even looking up at our faces.

  When we were about halfway to the metal detectors, a TSA officer stepped forward and grabbed our attention. "Can you two come this way?" she said. She disengaged one of the black retractable ropes that formed the maze that led to the security checkpoint and motioned for us to join her on the other side.

  "Is there a problem?" I asked, half laughing.

  "Not at all, sir. We're just testing out some new security equipment, so we're routing a few passengers at a time through it."

  "Will it take long?" asked Bill. "Our flight leaves in a half hour."

  "Not at all." She looked at the line of people still in front of us. "You might get through faster than the rest of them."

  Bill nodded at me, and we followed the woman around the maze of security ropes and through a short hallway that circumvented the metal detectors. She brought us to a doorway and opened it with her security card. "Right through here," she said, gesturing for us to enter first.

  I stepped into a small bright room with white walls and a set of hard chairs around a small table. Another door in the wall to the right stood closed. Bill entered after me, and the woman followed us both.

  "This doesn't look very high-tech," said Bill. He flashed her the grin he always used when he thought he might be in trouble and needed to charm his way out of it. I recognized it too well.

  The woman smiled. "This isn't it." She tapped her headset with a finger. "Are we ready?" she asked. A moment later, she nodded and smiled. "Right through there." She pointed at the door.

  As soon as I opened the door, I knew something was wrong. The room looked just like the other one – bare white walls and industrial gray carpeting – but there was nothing in it at all.

  I turned back to say something to Bill. As I did, I spotted Gaviota coming through the wall behind him.

  I grabbed Bill and pulled him after me as I backpedaled through the door.

  "What's the big–?"

  His back arched as every one of his muscles contracted at once. I heard the distinct crackle of an electrical discharge, and I could smell ozone in the air, as if lightning had struck inside the building. I caught him as he stumbled into me, and I saw the Taser dart sticking out of the back of his jacket.

  I have to admit I froze. I should have slipped through the floor then and gotten away. I should have gotten rid of the dart, tried to swap it out for air on the other side of the room, like Gaviota had done with the bullets I'd fired at him.

  Instead, my first instinct was to help my friend. Having grabbed Bill, I tried to hold him up and failed. He was too heavy, and I'd not been braced for his fall as I moved backward through the door.

  As Bill slipped to the floor, Gaviota shot me with a second Taser dart. It stabbed right through my shirt and into the flesh of my chest. I didn't have any time to think about how much that hurt, though, because the shock that coursed through me right after that blotted out every other sensation in my entire body.

  As every muscle in my body clenched at once, I gurgled in pain and toppled over backward to the floor. Bill landed on my legs, and we both writhed there for an instant, hurting horribly but unable to give voice to it.

  When the current stopped flowing, Bill howled in agony, and I echoed him a moment later. Before I could clear my head, I felt hands on me, grabbing me by my chest and shoulders and hauling me to my feet. They shoved me into one of the hard chairs at the small table in the first room and held me there, a hand clamped under each of my upper arms.

  The TSA woman had disappeared, but four unforgiving large men in dark suits had taken her place. Two of them held Bill, and the other two held me. Gaviota sat across the table from us and glared at each of us in turn.

  Bill started hollering for help, and I joined in too. While Gaviota and his men might have gotten one TSA woman to help them capture us, I figured that there had to be someone within the sound of our voices that might be able to help. At the moment, I was willing to confess everything to anyone – the fake IDs, the gambling, even the magic – if it meant we could leave Vegas alive.

  Gaviota reached across the table and slapped Bill's face. When he turned to me, I joined Bill in shutting up before I had to be smacked into it.

  "No one here is going to help you boys." Gaviota said. "This is our town. We run things here."

  "Not everything," I said. "You don't own everyone."

  He smiled at me as if I were a slow but promising child. "Let's just say we have a controlling interest then."

  "What are you going to do with us?" Bill asked.

  The question had been on my mind too, but I hadn't been about to ask it. I was too afraid that I wouldn't like the answer.

  Gaviota folded his hands on the table before him and gave us a professionally pleasant smile, like a banker about to set out the terms of a loan. "Let's start over, boys. I'm Benito Gaviota. You can call me Ben."

  "Hi, Ben," I said. "You don't seem mad at us."

  "Why should I be?"

  Bill and I gaped at him.

  "Oh, that incident at the Bolthole?" He grunted. "Don't let that bother you."

  "It doesn't bother you?" said Bill.

  "Of course not." He gestured at his placid face. "Do I look bothered?"

  "I shot you in the face," I said.

  Gaviota stuck up a finger. "You tried to shoot me in the face. You failed. But that's not important. Not at all."

  Bill and I glanced at each other, confused. The men holding us didn't look at us or even move a muscle. I realized, though, why Gaviota had them pinning us to our chairs by our arms. If we tried to pass through the chair and the floor to get away, we'd get hung up on their hands. He'd effectively trapped us in the room with him. We had little choice but to hear him out.

  "Then why did you keep chasing us?"

  Gaviota sat back in his chair. "Because you got away." He said it as if it explained everything.

  "I don't get it."

  "If you boys had just let us, we would have taken our chips back and then thrown you out of the casino, just like we do with every average cheater we catch."

  "We weren't cheating," Bill said.

  Gaviota gave him a cold wink. "Call it what you like. The fact is that just using a bit of magic to manipulate the cards isn't such a big thing. We deal with people who manage that all the time. Some of them don't even know they're doing it."

  He shook his head. "No, what's important is that you two had enough mojo going to get away from us. To get away from me. And that hasn't happened in a very long time."

  I might have felt a burst of pride at that if I hadn't been so damned scared.

  "That's very kind of you, but our flight leaves in twenty minutes," Bill said. "It's probably boarding right now."

  "Don't worry about that," said Gaviota. "You're going to miss it. We have an appointment to keep."

  "What are you talking about?" I asked.

  "The big boss wants to see you," he said, "now more than ever."

  He stood up. With a jerk of his head, he signaled for the men holding Bill and me to haul us to our feet.

  "It's time someone finally told you the rules of the game you're playing, boys. That way, you can be sure that you wind up on the right team."

  "And whose team is that?" Bill asked.

  "The winning team," said Gaviota. "Ours."

 
 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

A black stretch limousine brought us back to Bootleggers from the airport. The men who'd helped Gaviota capture us kept their hands on us the entire time. I had no desire to slip through the floor of a moving car and wind up in the center of the interstate, but they were determined to make sure that neither Bill nor I gave it a try.

  By the time we reached Bootleggers, it was two in the morning. Despite that, the adrenaline coursing through me kept me from even letting loose a single yawn. My life as I knew it was on the line here, and that kept me more alert than any energy drink.

  The limo slipped around the back of the casino and into a private parking structure directly under the place. Gaviota led us out of the car and into an oversized elevator. With a flick of his security card, it took us on a nonstop trip to the penthouse suite atop the hotel tower.

  "Who is this big boss?" I asked.

  "Are either of you a student of history?" Gaviota asked.

  I shook my head. "Engineering."

  "Political science," Bill said. "Mostly European conflicts."

  Gaviota gave a resigned nod. "Then this will likely be lost on you."

  The elevator doors opened, and Gaviota and his men led us into the penthouse. The room we stood in occupied half of the tower's entire top floor. It was as large as a ballroom, but it served as an office and a place to entertain guests.

  A fireplace crackled off to the left, flames leaping from a woodless stove to take some of the night chill out of the room. A set of couches and chairs – enough to seat twenty or thirty people – clustered around it, but they all stood empty. Tall windows broken up only by overstuffed bookshelves lined the walls. Beyond them, the Strip sparkled in all its neon, incandescent, and LED glory.

  To the right sat an office area dominated by a broad desk made of a thick slab of polished gray granite standing atop four marble pillars carved to resemble bones so large they would have had to come from an elephant's leg. The whole thing was skirted with more of the gray granite, and it reminded me of the aboveground graves scattered about New Orleans cemeteries. Stacks of shuffled papers and ancient scrolls covered one side of the desk, and a large flat-screen computer monitor stood on the other. No one sat in the highbacked chair that stood behind it.

  Black marble tiles covered the floor except for a wide, sandy-colored path that led from the elevator to an open set of double doors straight across the room from it. These let out onto a wide balcony that ran all the way around the penthouse.

  "He's not here," Gaviota said, "but he should be any minute."

  The men holding us didn't say a word. They hadn't muttered even a single syllable the entire time.

  Gaviota turned to us. "A word to the wise. When he tells you who he is, even if you've never heard of him before, pretend you have."

  "What?" I said. "Why?"

  Gaviota sucked at his teeth. "He was famous once, and while he may live like a hermit these days, he still likes to think people remember him. He calls it his legacy."

  "Can't you just tell us all about him right now?" Bill asked.

  "What?" Gaviota smiled. "And spoil all his fun? I wouldn't dream of it."

  We stood there in silence for a full minute, the tension mounting with every second. Gaviota eventually turned to his men and signaled for them to let Bill and me go. While they relinquished their iron grips on our arms, they did not back off far.

  "The floors here are lined with something no one can phase through," Gaviota said. "I don't care how powerful you are."

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "You don't want to know."

  I decided to take him at his word. Even if I could have slipped away through the floor, I had no doubts that I wouldn't get far, and the man had piqued my curiosity. I wasn't leaving until I knew exactly who his boss might be.

  A chilly gust of desert night wind blew through the open doors at the edge of the room, bringing a man with it. He swooped down out of the midnight sky, and alighted in the center of the balcony. His momentum carried him forward into the room as he touched down, and the doors swung shut behind him.

  "Hello, Ben," the man said, his voice dry and raspy. "I'm relieved to see you've brought our guests."

  "As requested, Mr Weiss." Gaviota stood up straighter and motioned for Bill and me to come forward. When we hesitated, his men gave us each a little shove. "We found them at the airport."

  The man allowed himself a tight smile as he strode forward, dressed in a classically styled black suit with a white shirt but no tie. He did not offer us his hand but instead gave us a little bow.

  "Thank you for accepting my offer of hospitality," he said. "I hope my friends here weren't too emphatic in delivering it."

  I rubbed my chest where the Taser dart had gone in. "Nothing we couldn't handle, sir," I said.

  The man flashed a wide, easy smile then. "Excellent." He gestured toward the cluster of seating around the fireplace. "Please come in and relax. We should talk."

  The man stood shorter than anyone else in the room, yet he somehow seemed larger than them all, as if he took up more space than he actually filled. He had dark curly hair, lively inquisitive eyes, and a wide and knowing smile. I was sure I'd seen the man someplace before – maybe on the Internet or TV – but I couldn't place him.

  The man sat in a chair by himself. Bill and I took spots on a nearby couch, and Gaviota perched on the edge of a chair next to me. The four thugs who'd hauled us out of the airport stood behind the couch. I had no doubt that they'd grab Bill and me in a heartbeat if we tried to escape or threatened either man. Weiss ignored them, though, as if such protection would always be beneath him.

  "I hope you've enjoyed your stay in Las Vegas," Weiss said. He spoke with the clear diction of an actor. "I assume this is the first time either of you has visited here."

  Bill and I both nodded. I noticed then that Bill had gone pale and clammy. I, on the other hand, felt more at ease now than I had since we'd been captured in the airport. I don't know exactly what I'd expected from a meeting with the big boss of Bootleggers, but this wasn't it.

  "It's been far from boring," I said.

  Weiss laughed. "A master of understatement. I like that."

  "I could have done without the Tasing," I said.

  Weiss creased his brow and gave Gaviota a concerned look. "What happened, Ben? I specifically asked you to retrieve them unharmed."

  Gaviota rubbed the back of his neck as he spoke. "I wanted to make sure they didn't rabbit on us again, Mr Weiss. I figured this was the best way I could get them to sit down and talk without having to chase them through the entire airport."

  Weiss gave Gaviota a disapproving grunt. "I'd like to think you have more imagination than that, Ben. I suppose I should know better by now."

  "There's not a mark on them, Mr Weiss."

  "We're fine," Ben said in a tremulous voice. He looked like he would have given up every dollar we'd won at the casino today if he could be somewhere else right now. "Just fine."

  Weiss arched an eyebrow at me for confirmation, and I nodded. "I'd rather not go through it again, but we're all right."

  "That is a relief," he said. "I'd hate to have our relationship start off on such a bad foot."

  I leaned forward on the couch. "What sort of relationship is that?"

  "Oh," said Weiss. "I do hope that we can become friends. Young men with talents like yours have a lot to offer us, and I believe that you'll see that we have a great deal we can do for you in return."

  "What do you have in mind?" I glanced at Bill. His head swayed slowly back and forth as he stared at the floor and out the window. He refused to make eye contact with Weiss at all.

  Weiss sat up in his chair. "As you might guess from your encounter with old Ben here, we place a great deal of importance on the study and practice of magic here at Bootleggers, and we're always on the lookout for new talent to recruit to our ranks. You two boys have shown a great deal of aptitude already, and with the proper training I think you could develop into some of the most powerful magicians this city – or any other – has ever seen. I'm prepared to give you that training personally."

  "Really?" I said, flattered. The idea that Bill and I could be that good at something as amazing as magic thrilled me straight through. I tamped that enthusiasm back down though, as I knew there had to be a catch. "And what would this training cost? We go to college. We know tuition isn't free."

  Weiss waved this off. "Not a thing," he said. "Your money is no good here. In fact, we'd hire you. A full salary, benefits, the whole kit and caboodle."

  That snared my attention. I loved studying at Michigan, but the thought of me or my grandmother having to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans for the rest of my life bothered me every day I spent there. The idea that someone would pay me a good wage to study exactly what I wanted to learn – and probably help me learn it better than I could at any college – sounded too good to be true.

  "What's the catch?" I had to say.

  A wry smile wrinkled his face in a way that told me that Weiss had to be far older than he'd seemed at first. He must have been dying his hair at the least. I'd seen far faker things in Vegas already though.

  "No catch," he said. "I simply want to hire you and train you to be the best employee you can be. This is common in all sorts of business, and in this at least magic is no different than any other kind of occupation."

  "And what if we want to leave at some point? Go work for someone else?"

  Weiss looked over at Gaviota, who began to laugh. "No one has ever left my employ voluntarily," Weiss said with a wide smile. "We tend to keep our employees very happy."

  I shrugged and peered at Bill. He sat as far back in the couch as he could go without pushing himself straight through it, and he was now watching Weiss like a hawk. "What do you think?" I said to him.

  "About what?" he said, still staring at Weiss, who pretended not to notice.

  "About this offer. It sounds great. What am I missing?"

  Bill licked his lips, then swallowed. "The fact that Mr Weiss here is dead."

  I narrowed my eyes at Bill. "What?"

  Bill pointed at the old man in his immaculate suit. "I've been watching him this whole time. Other than to talk, he doesn't breathe. And he only blinks on purpose."

  Weiss blinked three times as if to respond to Bill's accusation. I expected him to throw back his head and laugh it all off. Instead, he broke into a wide smile that showed his gums had turned black.

  "Very astute, Mr Teach," Weiss said. "From what Mr Gaviota here had told me, I expected only Mr Lafitte to be the prize catch of the day, but you have surprised me. I'm delighted. That doesn't happen to me often enough."

  "Wait," I said to Weiss. "He's right? You're dead?" I knew I was just getting started in my education about magic – Professor Ultman had tried to drive this into my head – but this revelation shocked me to my core.

  Weiss allowed himself a faint smile. "As are the men that helped Mr Gaviota bring you here tonight."

  I craned my neck around to stare at the men. I hadn't noticed any of this, but the fact that the men hadn't breathed a word to me the entire time I'd been with them lent some credence to that.

  "They're not quite as chatty as you," I said.

  "Despite my best efforts, no," Weiss said. "They're closer to death than I."

  Bill spoke to Weiss. "If I wasn't staring at you right now, I'd say this was all impossible. Even with magic, coming back from the grave just can't happen."

  "Which is yet another reason I suggest you take me up on my offer," said Weiss. "You clearly have a great deal to learn about our ancient profession. I can provide you with the knowledge you seek."

  Bill looked back at me. He no longer seemed like he wanted to sprint out of the room, but I still thought he might want to leave at a steady jog.

  "It sounds like a good deal to me," I said, "but I'd like to know a little bit more about who we'd be working for."

  Weiss tapped himself on the side of his head. "A smart boy," he said. "I like that."

  He sat up in his chair then and composed himself. "If you wish answers, then you shall have them. I have been dead for a very long time, over eighty-five years now, but before I died I was the greatest magician of my time."

  "Of any time," said Gaviota.

  "You're too kind," Weiss said. "The point is that I knew that I would someday die, so I set about taking precautions. I was determined to be the first man to ever come back from the grave – barring Jesus and Lazarus, if you believe in that sort of thing – and I went about making sure that I would be able to survive my own death, at least in a manner of speaking."

  "But you didn't survive it," said Bill. "You're dead."

  "That I am, but I did manage to keep myself out of the grave despite that. While I was not able to extend my life, I substituted a magical spark for the spark of life, and that is the energy that motivates my form until this day."

  "It seems to be working well." I said.

  "Being dead has its advantages," Weiss said. "I no longer age. I am never hungry or thirsty. I have no need for sleep. But I suffer from a cold that penetrates my bones in a way that I can never drive from them, except in the harshest of the desert heat."

  "Is that why you live in Las Vegas?"

  "In part. The dry air here helps to preserve my form and to keep it from rotting. My magic does the rest."

  I nodded. Bill seemed only partly ready to take the plunge, and as enthused as I found myself becoming about it, I understood why. It was one thing to study magic and another entirely to work for a dead man at it.

  I moved forward on the couch and turned myself square with Weiss so I could gauge his reaction to my next question. "If you don't mind me asking, sir," I said, "you look awfully familiar. I'm sure I've seen you someplace before. Who are you?"

  Weiss smiled, again showing me his blackened gums, reminding me that no matter what he might say he was still dead.

  "If you've studied magic for any length of time," he said, "I have no doubt that you'll have encountered my name and my handiwork. After all, before I died I was the most famous performer in all the world."

  Weiss edged forward on his seat too, his unblinking gaze flickering back and forth between Bill and me. "My name is Ehrich Weiss," he said. "I was born in Hungary and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin. I lived most of my years in New York City. I was a good son, brother, and husband. I traveled all around the world to stun audiences with my stage act and my stunts. And I was once – and, I humbly submit, still am – the greatest magician who ever lived.

  "I was Harry Houdini."

 
 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

Bill shuddered so hard I could feel the vibrations through the couch. My head spun so much I had to reach up and grab it.

  "Houdini?" I said. I couldn't believe the word coming out of my mouth. I had to repeat it. "The Houdini?"

  "The one and only," Weiss – I mean, Houdini – said. I don't care what he called himself. I'd never think of him as anything other than Harry Houdini again.

  "This – this has to be the biggest secret in town," Bill said. The color drained right out of him along with the volume of his words. "Oh, god, you're going to kill us too."

  Houdini shook his head and gave us a smile that lacked none of the warmth he could no longer feel. "If we had wanted to kill you, Mr Gaviota would have destroyed you in the airport. You two are far more valuable to us alive."

  "Then why tell us who you are?" said Bill. "You can't just let people walk around with that kind of knowledge in their heads."

  "It's an open secret among Las Vegas magicians," Gaviota said.

  "Then why doesn't the outside world know about this?" I asked.

  "For the same reason they don't know about magic. "It's so ludicrous that few people can manage to believe it," Houdini said. "It's very much 'The Purloined Letter.' Hiding in plain sight."

  "Like how magicians use stage magic to cover up what they're really doing?" It dawned on me then. "Oh, wow. You invented that, didn't you? You're the one who started it."

  Houdini laughed at that. "Not at all. Whoever began this long and trusty tradition of ours started it long before even I was born. The proof of its excellence is the fact that it still works."

  "How – how old are you?" Bill asked.

  Houdini rolled his eyes backward a moment while he thought about it. "One hundred and thirty-five years old," he said once he had figured it out. "In fact, I'll be one hundred and thirty-six later this month."

  "That's just wrong," Bill said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  "I have to agree with you, Mr Teach," said Houdini. "I'd always planned to defeat death in a more glorious manner, but as I said after I survived my first plane crash, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. The same is true of any death."

  I leaned back in the couch and gazed at the room around us and the Strip blazing beyond the tall windows and the open doors. "You have everything you want," I said. "Power. Money. Eternal life. You flew into the room. Why could you possibly need us?"

  Houdini frowned. "One of the perils of having power is that other people would like to have it. They are often willing to kill for it. I see a great deal of talent in you two boys, and I would much rather have you working for me than against me.

  "I have been here since long before the Strip existed. I played no small part in coaxing it from the valley's desiccated floor. I built this icon of America from its dust. I founded this garden in the desert as a shining temple to the best and worst that our nation has to offer, the crucible in which we discover who the winners and the losers are in their lives."

  He stared into Bill's eyes and mine. "Despite the forces arrayed against me, I refuse to let Las Vegas fail. My enemies may be as weak and distant as coyotes howling in the foothills of the mountains, but they are growing in number. Someday we may have to cull their numbers for the safety of all we have built, and when that day comes I will need help – not the least of all yours."

  Bill nodded all the way through this, and the color returned to his cheeks. "All right," he said, "then what's the deal?"

  "Your salary starts at one hundred thousand dollars each, with a full raft of benefits. Your training will begin immediately." An idea struck him, and he held up his hand. "Wait? Are you boys here on spring break?"

  Bill and I nodded.

  "Then I would not deprive you of your vacation. Your training would begin next Monday."

  Bill looked at me. His reluctance had evaporated in the dry desert air, but I could tell he still wasn't sure what to do. "What do you say?" he asked.

  I rubbed my chin. "This sounds like exactly what we came out here for: to hit it big and live the high life in Vegas. Doesn't it?"

  "But without any of the risks that come with trying to rip off a casino," Gaviota said without a hint of menace in his voice.

  I screwed up my face as I tried to think about it, but I didn't feel sharp enough to handle it. "It's a generous offer," I said. "Especially considering what I thought was going to happen when Ben here hauled us out of the airport. But it's been a long day, and I – it's late. Can we sleep on it?"

  Houdini tapped the side of his head again and smiled. "You are smart boys," he said. "I think we'll work well together. Of course you can have the time. Take until the end of the week if you like."

  He became serious again. "A deal is only a good deal if everyone involved is happy with it. I've had enough bad deals in my life. Take your time to make this decision. I was here for decades before you arrived, and with any luck at all I will be here for decades to come."

  He stood, and the rest of us did too. "For now, Mr Gaviota will show you to your quarters. It is very late, and while I know that young men do not often require much sleep in a town like this, I suggest that you get yourself some rest. Tomorrow, we will take you behind the curtain and show you what Las Vegas is really all about."

  Houdini bowed to us, and we returned the gesture. Then we followed Gaviota and the bodyguards to the elevator. As the doors closed, I looked back to see Houdini standing on the balcony, his back to us, staring out at the Strip.

  Gaviota clapped a hand on Bill's back and mine, grabbing us by our shoulders. "You boys did good," he said. "Not everyone makes it through that meeting as well as you."

  Neither Bill or I decided to ask him what happened to those unfortunate others.

  Houdini's office had been on the sixty-sixth floor. We rode down to sixty and emerged into a vast, deserted lounge, complete with its own fully stocked bar.

  "The rest of our people are either sleeping, at work, or still out on the town, it looks like," Gaviota said. "I'll escort you boys to the guest suite."

  The undead bodyguards remained in the lounge. Gaviota, Bill, and I walked around the elevators and to the end of a long hall that terminated in a set of double doors. Gaviota waved his hand at the doors' lock, and it blinked from red to green. "If you boys want me to have keycards sent up, just say the word. Given the way you got out of the cooler downstairs, though, I'd guess you don't need them."

  I let out a nervous laugh at that. I had failed at opening the lock on the cooler, although I had been bleeding from a gunshot wound at the time – one that Gaviota had given me. If Bill hadn't managed to free us, neither of us might have survived to have this conversation today. I promised myself I'd study opening locks so much that I'd be able to manage it half-dead.

  We followed Gaviota into the suite, and any kinds of thoughts about studying flew out of my head.

  We stood there in the entrance of the most amazing gym-sized hotel room I'd ever seen and just gaped. It looked like something out of a movie, all high ceilings, pale walls, hardwood floors, dramatic lighting, and artdeco brushed-steel accents. The living room featured a pit of couches and chairs in a semi-circle around a stretch of wall on which hung a seven-foot flatscreen TV. On either side of the TV, a set of French doors let out onto balcony wide enough for a table, several chairs and a stainless-steel barbecue grill and beer cooler.

  "There are rooms on either side of this part of the suite," Gaviota said. "Each of you can have one. Someone will grab your bags from the airport and bring them up here while you sleep. Meanwhile, how's about a nightcap?"

  We strolled out onto the balcony, and Gaviota reached into the well-stocked, glass-doored cooler and grabbed us each a beer. As he cracked them open and passed them out, Bill and I took in the view, which looked out south over the Strip. The Thunderbird stood there on the other side of the street, and I could see Revolutions' spire towering over Circus Circus.

  Just hours ago, Bill and I had escaped from that building – and from this one not long before that. People had been shooting at us. The man handing me the beer had been one of them.

  "Is this for real?" I asked.

  Gaviota grunted. "I didn't conjure it out of thin air."

  "I think he meant the deal," Bill said, "not the beer."

  Gaviota took a swig from his bottle before he answered. "It's as real as it gets, boys. Mr Weiss sees something in you, and he'd like to capitalize upon that. One thing I've learned over the many years I've known him is to trust the man's instincts. He's almost never wrong."

  "And when he is?"

  "That's when it all goes spectacularly bad. He doesn't do anything by halves."

  "You shot me," I said. I resisted the temptation to rub my arm where the bullet had grazed me.

  "My apologies for that," Gaviota said. "It wasn't anything personal. Just part of the job. You look like you got it taken care of just fine."

  "He's just like new," said Bill. He shot me a "cool it" look.

  I wasn't about to let this go though. Not yet.

  "Is that part of the job then? Shooting people."

  Gaviota shrugged. "Just the ones that need it." Then he realized what I meant. "Oh, but that's just me. That's my role here. I'm the enforcer. I make sure people follow the rules. You guys won't have to do anything like that."

  "Unless we don't follow the rules ourselves."

  He spread his lips to show me a shark's smile. "You boys strike me as a lot smarter than that." Then he let his expression reach his eyes. "We give the guys on our side a lot of leeway. Stick with us, and you'll be fine. That's really the only rule."

  "Sounds good to me," Bill said as cheerfully as he could force it.

  "And if we don't join you in the first place?"

  "Not that this would happen," Bill said. "It's just a hypothetical, right?"

  I nodded to comfort his nerves. "Hypothetically. Of course."

  "Hypothetically?" Gaviota said. "You'd be fine. We'd bring you out to the airport, wish you luck, and send you on your merry way. But Las Vegas is a town in which you have to choose sides. If you're here and you're not with us, we gotta play it like you're against us."

  Gaviota polished off the rest of his beer.

  "Nothing personal," I said. "Right?"

  He reached out and gave me a pat on the cheek. "Now you got it." He put down the empty bottle and headed for the exit.

  Bill called after him. "Anything on the schedule tomorrow?"

  "Not until after dark," Gaviota said as he reached the door. "I'll take you out and show you the town. The real Vegas."

  He snapped off a quick salute as he left. "Sleep in tomorrow, boys. I know I will."

  Bill gave me his best "oh my god!" face and stuck out his hand for a high five. I gave it a lazy slap.

  "Do you believe this?" He brimmed with excitement. "What a turnaround! How lucky are we? Huh? Answer me that. How lucky are we?"

  "Let's hope," I said.

  "Jackson! Don't do this."

  "What?"

  "That thing you do where you analyze all the fun out of something. It's a buzzkill."

  "This isn't a party we're talking about, or some kind of game. It's our lives. If we screw this up, we could be dead or worse."

  "You think I don't know that? But we can't just walk away from this. Could you stand going back to Ann Arbor and leaving all this behind? Really?"

  "I've grown to like breathing." I knew what Bill meant. A part of me was just as amazed and enthusiastic as he was, but when I looked out at the Thunderbird, I couldn't stop thinking about Powi and my dad and what they would think about this.

  "Joining the winning team increases the chances that we get to keep doing that," said Bill. "I'd much rather be on the side of people with the guns than against them."

  "I'd rather be far out of the line of fire." I gazed into the suite and then down the Strip. "I don't see any good place to pull that off here."

  "Hey." Bill dropped his voice back to normal and put a hand on my arm – right where I'd been shot. It didn't hurt a bit. "I get it. We had a hell of a night, didn't we? There's so much swirling through my head right now it's a miracle I can still think at all."

  I nodded. "My guts don't lie to me though," I said. "And they're telling me to get the hell out of here as fast as we can."

  "Sure, but we tried that once already tonight. We didn't get far." He moved over to the balcony and stared out at the Strip. I joined him and looked down at the long drop to the Las Vegas Boulevard below.

  "One thing," he said. "We make the decision together. It has to be unanimous. Right?"

  He put out his fist, and I gave it a tired bump.

  "You got it," I said. "Right or wrong."

 
 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

I didn't emerge from my room until after noon. Bill was already up, and he sat at a dining table in a niche near my door, eating a big brunch. He looked up at me with a grin as I stumbled into the blinding rays of the desert sun streaming in through the French doors' glass.

  "I ordered a big mess of room service," he said. "I figure if this is all on Houdini's bill, we might as well live large."

  "The smell woke me up," I said as I sat down and dug into a ham and cheese omelet. "I'm starving."

  We said nothing as we stuffed our faces with food. When I came up for air, I said, "So, we're doing this?"

  "So far. You going to call your dad?"

  I put down my fork. "I've been thinking about it. I don't know. I don't think so."

  "Why not?"

  I sat back in the chair. "The man abandoned me after Katrina. Left me with my grandma and never looked back. I know what he'd tell me to do about all this, but I don't much value his opinion these days. I'm an adult. Now that I'm not being chased out of town by gun-toting wizards, I'll take my time and make up my own mind."

  "I like that attitude." Bill grinned. "What about Powi?"

  I went back at my food. "What about her?"

  "You going to call her?"

  "You're not?"

  Bill grinned. "I thought you two had a moment there at the airport. I don't think she likes me much."

  "Just because she keeps calling you an idiot?"

  "I don't think I made the best first impression."

  "I don't think she'd like me calling her from the magicians' lounge at Bootleggers."

  "True."

  "Did our clothes ever show up?"

  Bill shook his head. "Better."

  He walked me over to the closet near the suite's entrance, and he slid the folding doors wide. Inside hung a dozen high-priced big-label outfits, six to each side. The ones on the right fit me. As I looked them over, I saw the note.

  It read: "We found your luggage. Your clothes weren't worth burning. If you're going to work with us, you need to look the part. Enjoy!"

  Gaviota had signed it.

  Bill held up an Armani jacket in front of himself. "I think I could learn to like this."

  Once we got cleaned up and dressed in our finest new rags, we had nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon. Bill checked his e-mail and social feeds on his smartphone, and I broke out my laptop to do the same.

  When I was done, I realized who I needed to talk to.

  I launched my video chat program and checked the list of people available to ping. I spotted my intended target at once and shot him a request to chat.

  A moment later, Professor Ultman's face appeared on my laptop's screen.

  "Mr Wisdom!" he said, smiling through his wispy gray beard, his dark skin wrinkling around his brown eyes. "How are you? I did not expect to hear from you during break." He still spoke with the slight lilt of an Indian accent, even though he'd been in America for longer than I'd been alive.

  "We're all right, Professor. I just wanted to check in with you."

  Bill got up from where he'd been lying on a couch across the room and made silent gestures of disbelief at me, well out of the field of vision of my computer's webcam. I ignored him.

  "We?" Professor Ultman said. "Is Mr Chancey there with you then? Give him my best."

  I glanced up at Bill, who mimed strangling himself.

  "I will, Professor."

  "So," he said, "what is it that you wanted to talk about? As much as I enjoy our classes together, I do not wish to fool myself that your call is purely a social one."

  I grimaced, sad to realize I was so transparent. "You got me, Professor. Bill and I are out here on vacation, and we've run into a pretty amazing situation. We could use your advice."

  Professor Ultman squinted into the screen, trying to see behind me. "Where are you two?" he asked. "You never said where you were going. I had thought you might wind up at Bill's house in Grosse Pointe Woods."

  I hesitated. Beyond the laptop's screen, Bill stood shaking his head, waving his arms back and forth, and mouthing, "No!"

  "We're in Las Vegas," I said.

  Bill grabbed his hair as if he was going to tear it all out. He fell to his knees in mock agony. I did my best to ignore him.

  "V-Vegas?" Professor Ultman's face took on a shade of gray. "What in God's name are you doing there?"

  "It's warm," Bill said as he got to his feet. He still avoided stepping in front of the camera so Professor Ultman could see him though.

  "We came out here to see the sights and do a little gambling," I said.

  Professor Ultman covered his mouth and nose with his hands as if he were praying with his whole face. "Tell me you didn't use magic," he said, his muffled voice little more than a whispered plea.

  I winced. I didn't have to say anything more. He bowed his head for a moment.

  "You're still alive," he said. "You seem unharmed. You didn't get caught?"

  "Not the first night."

  "There was a second night?"

  I nodded. "That didn't go so well."

  He sighed. "What did I tell you about using magic in public?"

  "Not to. Ever."

  "And especially not to do something illegal."

  "There aren't any laws about using magic while gambling," Bill said. "I checked."

  "How?" Professor Ultman's gaze darted around the screen, hunting for Bill but still not seeing him.

  "Google is my friend."

  "The laws on cheating don't bother mentioning methods," the professor said. "They make it illegal to alter the pieces of the game in any way, magical or not."

  "Sure, if you want to read them that way, but who's going to be able to prove we did anything?"

  "You, Mr Chancey, are missing the point. The people who manage security operations at the casinos won't care about how you cheated, just that you did."

  "But–"

  I cut Bill off with a glance. "Given last night, I think it's clear the professor is right, don't you?"

  Bill gave a defeated shrug, then waved at the suite in which we sat. "I don't call this much of a punishment though. Do you?"

  "They caught you?" the professor said. "What happened?"

  "We were gambling at Bootleggers when it happened," I said, "but we escaped. My father found us and pushed us out of town."

  "Luke? He found you?" Professor Ultman wiped his clammy brow. "I think I specifically told you two to avoid Vegas, more than once."

  "What do you think drove us here?" said Bill.

  "Don't be like that," I said.

  "Like what? Like someone who nearly got killed last night because our teacher didn't tell us the whole truth about Las Vegas?"

  "Yeah. Don't."

  "We're just kids," Bill said. "We didn't know what we were doing, and we almost paid for it with our lives."

  "Now, that's not entirely fair," the professor said.

  Bill walked around behind me and leaned in over my shoulder so Professor Ultman could finally see him too.

  "You're not the one who got shot at," Bill said. "You don't get to tell me about fair."

  I put up a hand to shut him up. "You just said it didn't work out too bad for us."

  "That doesn't mean it didn't scare the hell out of me at the time."

  "We'll discuss this when you get back," the professor said. "How long until your flight leaves?"

  "We're not leaving," I said. "Not yet anyway."

  "But you said Luke pushed you out of town."

  I nodded. "We got picked out of the security line by the TSA."

  "The government grabbed you?" The professor swayed about a bit as if he might faint. "Oh, God. Is this line secure?"

  "It's fine," Bill said. He didn't bother to keep the disgust from his voice. He stood up and started to pace the room, carving circles around the laptop and me.

  "It wasn't the government," I said. "The wizards from Bootleggers picked us up." I cringed inside as I recalled the Tasing that Bill and I had taken. "They brought us back to the hotel."

  "Do they have you in custody? They can't hold you. You have rights."

  "We're all right," I said. "They offered us a job."

  "Employment?" Professor Ultman leaned toward the screen, terrified and suspicious. "Doing what?"

  "Working as part of their team of magicians."

  "At Bootleggers?" The professor's eyes bulged so hard they seemed like they might pop out of his face. "Do you have any idea who's in charge of Las Vegas?"

  I nodded. "Do you?"

  "Does your father know about this?"

  I shook my head.

  "Then you should probably – no. Don't bother him with it. Just run out to the airport and take the first plane out of there. Don't worry about where it's going. Once you get out of Las Vegas, give me a call, and we'll get you home from wherever you end up."

  Bill snorted. "That didn't go so well for us last time. They clearly have the TSA in their pocket."

  "I wouldn't be surprised if they have the whole city in their pocket," I said.

  The professor put his head in his hands and groaned. "I'm sorry, boys," he said softly. "I tried to warn you."

  Bill scoffed from across the room. "You did a shitty job of it."

  "Bill!" I said, indignant on the professor's behalf.

  "You heard what your dad said, Jackson. Ultman kept us in the dark. He made magic sound like rainbows and unicorns. He never mentioned the parts that might get us killed."

  "I – I didn't think you were ready. I told you to stay away from gambling." Professor Ultman's voice cracked as he spoke. "I tried to warn you, but I didn't want to cause needless panic."

  "You might have leaned a little bit more toward the panic side," said Bill. "You could have told us what happened to you and Jackson's dad here in Vegas. Maybe a little honesty would have kept us from making the same damned mistakes."

  "What did happen to you?" I said to the professor.

  He blinked several times. "We – I haven't thought about it much for almost twenty years. I pushed it out of my head. I thought I'd put it behind me."

  "What happened?"

  "Luke – your father – and I, we went to Las Vegas to have some fun and maybe make a little money. That's all. This was back in 1990, before either of you were born."

  "And?"

  "And it all went wrong. We tried our luck at Caesar's Palace, and they spotted us right away. They sent their top wizard after us, and we nearly died getting away from him."

  "This all sounds painfully familiar." Bill let the bitterness drip from his tongue.

  "How did you escape?" I asked the professor.

  "We had some help. There were a couple of locals – an Italian magician and his Native American wife – who gave us a hand, and an old wizard who lived under an overpass near Henderson."

  "Seriously?" said Bill. "An Italian wizard, an Indian shaman, and a homeless bum got you out of town?"

  I shushed him with a wave of my hand. I looked at the professor. "I don't suppose you have any way of reaching them now."

  He shook his head, sober as the grave. "I wouldn't even know where to start hunting down that grizzled old wizard. He called himself Prospero."

  "Like the wizard from The Tempest?"

  Professor Ultman nodded. "He was ancient even back then. I'd be surprised if he's still alive now."

  "What about the couple?"

  The professor grimaced. "They can't be any help to you or anyone else now. They – the Stregas died helping us get away."

  "Holy–" Bill whispered at me. "Isn't that Powi's last name?"

  I thought I might be sick right there on my laptop.

  "Nicólo brought us to New Orleans." The professor continued, not having heard Bill at all. "But the Vegas magicians followed us there too. We hid deep in the French Quarter, and with the help of some of the wizards there we eventually managed to send them running back to Vegas."

  "Who helped you?" said Bill. He came back around so he could see Professor Ultman again. "Could they do the same thing for us?"

  "They were part of a long family tradition of voodoo practitioners going back generations," the professor said.

  I knew who he meant even before he opened his mouth. This was the part of my family history that Mom and Dad had never talked about, that Grandma kept secret from me, that the professor had neglected to mention before.

  "I would think you'd be able to find them, Jackson," he said. "After all, two of the Laveaus who helped us were your mother and grandmother."

  Bill clapped me on the back while I sat there stunned. "Awesome!" he said. "All we got to do is get you home, and we're free. Even Gaviota can't stand against the Laveaus, right?"

  I opened my mouth to explain to Bill that I had no idea if my family still even knew how to use any mojo at all, but the look of horror on Professor Ultman's face stopped me cold.

  The professor blanched. He spoke in a clear but fragile voice. "Who was it that picked you up?"

  "Benito Gaviota," I said. I could feel the professor's dread creeping over me. "Do you know him?"

  "Of course I do." Professor Ultman swallowed hard. "He's the same man who chased us all the way to New Orleans."

  "What?" I said. "But he looks like he's only thirty or so. He'd have just been a kid back in 1990."

  "He never ages. Never." The professor leaned toward his camera, and his image grew wide and distorted on my screen. "I've already said too much. Boys, you must leave there as soon as you can."

  He glanced over his shoulder. "Just by speaking with you, I've put too many people in danger. If they come here, everyone in East Quad could pay the price. Get free, fast, but do not contact me again until you have left Las Vegas behind."

 
 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

"What the hell are we going to do now?" Bill asked.

  "You heard the man, brother," I said, already on my feet and tossing my laptop in my backpack. "Let's go."

  "What about the clothes?"

  "They won't do us any good if we wind up buried in them."

  Bill stood in front of the door. "If they're the same people that Ultman thinks they are, you really think they're just going to let us walk out of here?"

  I slung my backpack over my shoulders. "Won't know until we try."

  "How about the floors?" Bill pointed straight down. "It worked for us once. We might only need to get down to the floor below. If the elevators aren't guarded, we can just grab one and cruise on down."

  "This is Vegas," I said. "Every square inch of the place is covered with cameras – except the inside of the rooms. Maybe."

  I glanced around, searching for telltale signs of security cameras in the suite. I knew I'd probably not be able to spot them if I hadn't been meant to. The obvious shaded bubbles installed throughout the casino's main floor served as deterrents as much as eyes in the sky. If you saw one, you never knew if a camera inside might be pointed at you. I wondered if all of them even had working cameras in them or if the casinos might have decided to save money by just putting up the darkened enclosures all over the place instead.

  If Gaviota and his security team were spying on us, though, it would already be too late. They'd have heard everything we said, both to each other and to the professor. In that case, we had to move fast.

  I knelt down on the floor. "Grab my legs," I said. "I'm going to take a peek downstairs."

  Bill moved into position without a word. I laid across his shins and pitched my face forward. Instead of moving through the floor, though, I smacked my forehead on the floor.

  "Ow!" I said. I rolled off of Bill just as the front door to the suite opened and Gaviota strolled in with Misha right behind him.

  "You fellas having fun rolling around down there?" Misha smirked at us. "I knew you two were friends, but I didn't figure you were that close."

  Gaviota didn't bother to crack a smile. "You can't phase through the floors here either," he said.

  "What are they lined with?" I asked.

  "You really want to know?"

  I nodded.

  "You can't phase through living things, right?"

  "Right."

  Misha laughed. "Use your imagination, kid."

  I winced at the thoughts spinning through my head.

  "Ew," Bill said. "Human skin?"

  Gaviota snorted. "Do you know a way to keep skin alive on its own?"

  "Tell me you don't have people in there," I said.

  Misha chortled at this. Gaviota shot him a dirty look, and he shut up.

  "We imbued the subfloor with bacteria," Gaviota said.

  I felt my skin crawl.

  "I don't know if that's better," Bill said.

  "It's harmless. As long as you don't try to phase through it."

  "So it's impossible to get through the floors?" Bill asked.

  Gaviota shook his head. "To phase through, but not to get through. There's always a way for a clever wizard. What's impossible for magic, right?"

  "Or a rocket launcher," Misha said with a grin.

  "So you put us in a cage?" I got to my feet, still rubbing my head. It hurt, but I didn't think it would leave a bump. "I thought we were guests, not prisoners."

  "That's there to keep novices out of here," Gaviota said. "Not us in."

  "Then what's up?" Bill said as he stood. "I thought we weren't going anywhere until after dark."

  "Nothing's on the schedule until then. I just wanted to check in and make sure the two of you were all right. I see you found the clothes."

  "Yeah, thanks," said Bill.

  "They're very nice," I said.

  "Can't have Bootleggers boys running around in rags," said Misha. "Gotta look the part."

  "I think you two will fit in just fine," Gaviota said. He looked us up and down. "Would you like to meet some of the others? It's happy hour out in the lounge."

  "The drinks there are free," said Misha. "Every hour is happy hour."

  Bill and I glanced at each other. "All right," Bill said. "Why not?"

  "It's not like we're going anywhere anyway," I said. "We might as well have a beer."

  I left my backpack in the room. The only thing of any real value in it was my laptop, and anyone who grabbed it would need a password to get in. I backed up all my data regularly over a cellular connection, so even if it was destroyed, I'd still be all right. Leaving it behind, though, might give the impression that I was here to stay and had no reason to run. If anyone wanted to think that, I was happy to encourage them.

  We walked down the hall to the lounge, and I could hear it thrumming with conversation long before we got there. At least twenty people filled the place, every one of them seemingly under thirty years old.

  As we entered the room, the conversations ground to a halt as everyone turned to stare at us. I couldn't tell if they were more interested in Bill and me or Gaviota and Misha. Gaviota held up his hands for attention despite the fact he already had it. Everyone from the bartender to a couple of staggering beauties chatting near the farthest window sat, stood, or reclined there in silence.

  "My friends," Gaviota said in a clear, even voice, "I'd like to introduce you to the two newest members of our exclusive club: Jackson Lafitte and Bill Teach. They'll be here for the rest of the week and – if that works out well – for a good deal longer than that. I hope you'll do your best to make them feel welcome."

  He pointed toward the bar. "Now, to celebrate this new beginning, the next round's on me!"

  The people in the room all cheered. They parted as Gaviota led us straight to the bar, some shaking our hands with a smile, others making a point to ignore us.

  "I thought the drinks here were always free," I said to Misha.

  He grinned. "True. The boss here, he likes to play magnanimous whenever he can though."

  Gaviota turned and pulled Bill and me toward the bar with a smile. "The drinks are free here because I say they're free. I just like people to remember it."

  I ordered an Abita Turbodog, and Bill went for a Tanqueray and tonic.

  "We have better stuff than that available, boys," Gaviota said. "Experiment. Try new things. See what you like. It's all on the house." He clapped Misha on the shoulder. "I'm going to mingle."

  After Gaviota left, most of the eyes in the room remained on us rather than him. I didn't feel much like making small talk with people I soon hoped to be on the run from, so I nursed my drink and watched them back.

  Everyone in the room seemed healthy, wealthy, and well-dressed. If I'd been expecting grizzled ancients or witches and wizards in flowing robes and pointy hats, I'd have been disappointed. Instead, they seemed like vibrant young businesspeople in town for a convention, ready to loosen up a bit before painting the town that night. We could have been in any of the classier lounges in the city.

  "At least they don't have a cheesy musical act," I said.

  "Only on Thursday nights," Misha said. I couldn't tell if he was joking.

  "This doesn't seem quite so frightening as I'd been led to believe," Bill said between sips of his drink.

  "What, these folks?" Misha said. "They're nothing to worry about. They might be some of the best magicians in the city, but they're just people underneath all that. Every one of them was once in the exact same situation as you – even if some of them sometimes tend to forget that."

  While the majority of the magicians seemed to be men, it came down to maybe a sixty-forty split. They were predominantly white, but I saw Asians, AfricanAmericans, Hispanics, and Middle Easterners represented too. It wasn't exactly a snapshot of America, but it would do in a pinch.

  Everyone in the room could have stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. The male dress code seemed to consist of a stylish suit with an open-collared blue shirt, no tie. There were some variations, but they were mostly by degree rather than design. The women wore even more stylish clothes in all sorts of cuts and colors. Most outfits featured skirts above the knee, although a few wore slacks instead.

  "Not exactly Hogwarts, is it?" a brown-skinned man with slicked back hair said as he sidled up to us along the bar, a half-empty Corona in his hand.

  "Maybe if Harry Potter had grown up reading Esquire or GQ," I said.

  The man laughed. "I'm Alejandro Gomez," he said. "I was the last one to join before you."

  "So you're no longer the new kid," said Bill. "I guess the blush is off your rose."

  "I'm all right with that. Maybe that means I move up the totem pole."

  "That only applies if you're working at the Thunderbird across the street, fellas," Misha said. He laughed at his own joke, but I couldn't find it in me to fake amusement.

  "So what do you do here, Alejandro?" I asked. It might have sounded like small talk, but I wanted to know, if only so I could figure out who and what Bill and I were up against here.

  "They have me handling the night watch at Revolutions," he said. "I keep an eye out for any statistical aberrations, intentionally caused or otherwise, and I bring them to Ben's attention."

  "Kind of the same thing you do here?" I asked Misha.

  "Sort of. I'm more like a pit boss here," he said. "Normally I don't get involved until Mr Gaviota asks me to. Most nights I babysit the Bolthole instead. It's one of the few joints where magicians can play without worrying about causing trouble."

  That surprised me. It must have showed on my face.

  "You didn't realize that when you came in last night?" Misha grinned. "Oh, yeah, the place was lousy with magicians last night. That's what made what you did so impressive."

  "What? I didn't think using my mojo to cheat at cards would impress anyone in this room."

  "Normally not," said Alejandro, "but when you have someone else at the table using magic at the same time to try to stop you, it gets a little more interesting."

  I blushed a bit at that. "I was so focused on the game that I barely noticed."

  "That's the impressive part," said Misha. "I watched the whole thing. You remember when your pal there started losing?" He jerked his chin toward Bill, who was standing behind me, chatting with a pretty blonde woman who had her back to me.

  I shrugged. "Sure, but at the time I figured he'd just hit a rough patch. A bit of bad luck."

  "That he did, but it wasn't natural luck, you follow?"

  I nodded.

  "You two sure pissed off Ming Liu," Alejandro said. He gestured toward a woman sitting at a nearby table. She'd been sitting at the table with Bill, Gaviota, and me last night. I'd never forget that anime-spiked hair.

  "How's that?"

  Alejandro smirked and spoke in a low, confidential tone. "Ben had sent her in there to destroy you two, to take all your money at the table. It's always easier to confront people when they're already broke. It eliminates the need to take the money back from them more forcefully."

  "But she didn't."

  "She couldn't. She tried as hard as she could, but she couldn't stop either one of you. Man, was she embarrassed."

  "Nothing stopped either one of you fellas until Mr Gaviota took a personal hand in the matter," said Misha. "That's when your man Teach there took a beating."

  "But shouldn't he have been able to beat me too?" I asked.

  "That just it, man," Alejandro said. "He tried. Did his best too, but he couldn't do a damned thing to stop you. You schooled him in that little duel, and you didn't even know you were fighting."

  "Pissed him off good too," said Misha.

  I searched the room and spotted Gaviota talking with a pair of young ladies who laughed at everything he said. Either he was entertaining as hell or they were determined to give him every ounce of respect they could muster.

  "Is that why he shot me?"

  Alejandro's jaw dropped. "He shot you?"

  "That's exactly why," Misha said. "If it hadn't been for Mr Weiss, he'd have come back and killed you too, he was in such a rage. When Mr Weiss figured out what had happened, though, he insisted that Mr Gaviota bring you fellas up to see him – unharmed."

  "That didn't go too well," I said.

  "Not for lack of trying on our part," said Misha. "I don't blame you guys for rabbiting like that though. After how we started out, you had every reason to be scared."

  "Guess we just got lucky."

  "You don't know the half of it. If Mr Weiss hadn't figured out what you'd done at the table, you'd have been dead before you even knew it. Mr Gaviota may not be the sharpest card player around, but when it comes to making people disappear, there ain't nobody does it better than him."

  I suppressed a shiver. Talk like that made me more eager to leave Las Vegas than ever. I just didn't know how I was going to manage it.

  Bill turned back to me then to introduce me to the woman he'd been chatting up. "This is Melody, the lady who helped cash us out the first night," he said. "Remember her?"

  "Of course," I said as I shook her hand. "So you're a magician too? Not to insult you, but I never would have guessed."

  She gave me the chirpiest shrug I'd ever seen. "We can't all be the big players. I like playing hostess. It gives me a chance to watch and learn."

  "Do you run into lots of magicians on the floor?"

  "More than you might think." She winked. "Some of them don't even know they're doing it. They just instinctively muck around with the probabilities without understanding how. They think they're lucky. Most times we just let them down easy and send them on their way."

  "And the other times?"

  Melody made a face. "Ben and Misha here take care of the details then."

  I forced a laugh and wondered how long it would take before Bill and I became one more detail to be marked off Gaviota's to-do list.

 
 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

After drinks in the lounge, we hit the Strip. Gaviota took about twenty of us to Samba, a Brazilian steakhouse in the Mirage. Misha called it "meat on swords," and he wasn't kidding. The waiters brought out skewer after skewer of barbecued meat in a stomach-stunning variety, and we stuffed ourselves silly for nearly two hours.

  Alejandro and Melody sat across from Bill and me, and they showed us how to use the double-sided token to tell the waiters when to give us a break. It started out with the green side up, but if you flipped it over to show the red side, the servers would pass you by – at least until you flipped it back to green. We used it judiciously, just enough to keep us from falling straight into a meat-induced coma.

  Maybe the food overload made me fuzzy. Or it could have been the rum in the head-sized glasses of caipirinhas that made my head spin. Or maybe the lively conversation roaring around the table. As we staggered out of the restaurant, though, bellies full and heads buzzing, I found it hard to latch on to a good reason why I needed to leave Las Vegas right away.

  Professor Ultman's warnings had been about something that had happened a long time ago, before I'd even been conceived, much less born. And I only had his alarmist side of the story. Things had probably changed in Las Vegas in the past twenty years, right?

  The fact that the professor hadn't mentioned Weiss – or Houdini – at all made that notion seem all the more solid. Bill and I had stumbled into the chance of a lifetime, and if signing up with Houdini meant having nights like this, I was having a hard time seeing the downside to it.

  After the meal, Gaviota led us over to the theater at Revolutions. Due to the revolving theme of the place, it featured a different act every night of the week. As we approached the box office, I saw the name on the marquee – "Tonight Only: Luke Wisdom!" – and the warmth of the food and booze faded away.

  "Hey, Jackson." Bill grabbed me by the elbow and whispered at me. "That's got to be your dad!"

  I shushed him.

  "Seriously," Alejandro said, half-joking. "On my night off, we have to go see a magic act? I mean, sure, Wisdom's good, but don't I get enough of this during the week?"

  "Wisdom's a class act, fella," Misha said. "Pay attention, and you might learn something for a change."

  "What do you think, Mr Lafitte?" Gaviota said as he strolled up with a fistful of tickets and handed them out. "Might the show prove educational?"

  "I'm sure," I said carefully. "He has a great act. It's been a while since I've seen it though."

  "Really?" I felt myself in the crosshairs of Gaviota's interest. "How long?"

  "Almost five years."

  Gaviota gave me a wry smile. "That might explain a few things." He clapped me on the back and walked me into the theater. Bill and the others followed as Gaviota led us to our seats.

  "You have to know that Luke Wisdom is my father." I kept my voice soft enough that the others could not hear.

  "Of course," Gaviota said, matching my tone. "He's spoken about you before. Does he know you're here?"

  "He did." I stared at the empty stage. Black curtains stood drawn across its front still, and the lights remained low. "He thinks I'm gone again now."

  Gaviota directed me into a seat next to his, only three rows back from the stage. "I apologize if this is awkward for you. I didn't understand your situation."

  I couldn't tell if that was a lie or not. I decided it didn't matter.

  "It's a dark theater," Gaviota said, "with bright spotlights. You could make it through the entire show without him being able to see that you're here. Or you could leave now. Hang out at the Speakeasy or the Bolthole. We'll meet you when we're done."

  I contemplated that for a moment, then shook my head. "It's all right. Believe it or not, I'm actually curious to see him perform."

  "Haven't you ever?"

  "He showed me all sorts of tricks when I was a kid, but he never took the stage in New Orleans. Grandpa – my mom's dad – tried to push him up there a few times, but he always resisted. 'Those days are behind me now,' he said."

  "Looks like he changed his mind after he left New Orleans."

  "A lot of things changed for me when he left. I'm not surprised the same is true for him."

  "Do you know any magic tricks yourself?"

  "Seriously?" I stared at Gaviota. "I think you know the answer to that. Isn't that why you're hiring us?"

  He gave me a winning smile. "I meant stage magic, like the kind we're about to see."

  I shook my head. "I used to play around with card tricks as a kid, and I read every book I could find on escape artists for a while, but I never performed anything. Why?"

  "As part of our organization, every magician must study stage magic and perform it well. If you sign on with us, you should be ready for that."

  The idea of walking onto a stage and making myself disappear didn't scare me much. "That sounds a little too easy."

  "The trick – for people like us, that is – is that we're not allowed to use our other talents while on stage."

  "Why not?" Bill said. Until then, I hadn't realized he was listening.

  Gaviota turned to welcome Bill into the conversation too. "For centuries, the use of stage magic has given magicians the perfect cover story, and Mr Weiss insists on following in that tradition. One of the greatest advantages that magic gives us is that no one expects it to be real. And why is that?"

  It dawned on me first. "Because you tell them it's fake."

  "It's an orchestrated disinformation campaign," said Bill.

  Gaviota gave Bill a hesitant nod. "I wouldn't have used those words in a million years, but sure. We perform tricks, and some of us even show people how they're done. Then, when people see us do something they can't explain by normal means, they automatically assume there must be a reasonable explanation for it, even if they don't know what it is."

  "And having members of the Cabal perform magic helps reinforce that image?" I asked.

  "Every stage magician who has ever performed in Vegas has either been a member of the Cabal or has walked on stage only with our permission. We own – either in part or in whole – most of the casinos in town after all. A few of them have absolutely no talent with real magic. They're exactly what they say they are: skilled mechanics practiced in the art of illusion. They make for the best cover of all."

  "So why can't we just skip that part?" Bill said. "Why do we have to bother with card tricks and sawing women in half?"

  "Because you can't be as careful as you want to be. At some point, you'll do something that will expose your magical powers to the world. When that happens, it's easy to explain the error as a magic trick – but that only works if you happen to be a magician."

  My head spun back to the man who'd grabbed my leg as Bill and I were trying to escape Bootleggers. He and his lady were sure to have one hell of a story to tell people back home – as would that guy who'd been counting all that money – although no one would be likely to believe them. I decided to not share those details with Gaviota myself.

  "Why not just come clean and announce it to the world?" I asked.

  Gaviota laughed out loud at that. "Some people have tried. In the best cases, no one believed them. In the worst, they were hanged as witches or warlocks."

  "That had to be centuries ago though."

  "Try the 1950s here in the USA. In some parts of the world, this still goes on today. Sometimes we still get the occasional spoon bender who goes public, but we just send one of our own out there to discredit him. It goes away fast enough then. People don't really want to believe in magic."

  "I always did," I said.

  "Sure. To you, it's real. To most people, the idea that others can manipulate the world in ways that they can't flat out terrifies them. They like to think that the world works the way it's supposed to, that it's fair and impartial, and it's hard for them to swallow that they're wrong about that in so many ways."

  "So it's a matter of maintaining your edge? Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for just that. "

  "Just that?" Gaviota smirked. "Kid, I've seen a lot of things in my many years on this planet and in this town. If there's one thing that Vegas taught me it's that you never give up an edge. You keep it up for as long as you can, or you wind up being one of the losers that put this city in their rearview mirror every day. That edge put Mr Weiss in control of this city, and edge or not that's no mean feat."

  I fell silent as I pondered this. None of the three of us said anything more until the curtains rose on the stage. That's when Gaviota leaned over and said, "You two are in for a treat."

  I'd seen a few magic shows as a kid, mostly just buskers on Bourbon Street or in Jackson Square. Once in grade school, a classmate's parents hired a magician for her birthday party. My dad had come along and chuckled the whole way through it. It struck me now that he hadn't been laughing with the performer so much as at him.

  I'd also seen a few TV shows about magic, mostly those specials in which the performer claims to be a rogue magician exposing the secrets of his peers. I wondered now if Houdini had somehow secretly been behind all that. Anything that made magic seem to be more mundane like that would work in his favor.

  I'd never seen my father do so much as step onto a stage to accept an award. He'd worked a series of odd jobs when I was growing up: bartender, newspaper reporter, janitor, delivery man, cook, even private investigator. Sure, he spoke like he was in charge, like he always knew what he was doing, but I'd figured that's just how fathers were – right up until he'd left town. I'd never had any inkling that he wanted his name up in lights.

  When Luke Wisdom came out on the stage, it was something else. He didn't just occupy the space, or even fill it. He owned it.

  He rolled through a sequence of tricks, each one better than the last. He had every one of us in the audience on the edges of our seats. He made us laugh, think, and even scream.

  He was masterful, and I don't remember when I'd ever been so proud of him. It had been far too long.

  Throughout it all, I don't think he saw me. Not until he set up his last trick.

  "For my last feat, I need two volunteers. Strong souls who do not fear to get their hands more than a little bloody."

  He took off his black dinner jacket and handed it to an assistant as a spotlight from the side of the stage swept the audience. I tried to duck low, but all of the magicians around me – except, admittedly, for Bill and Gaviota – were stabbing their hands into the air, eager to be even a small part of such an excellent act.

  My dad's breath caught in his chest when he saw me. He actually staggered a step back. I don't know what surprised him more: the fact that I was there at all, or that I was sitting next to Gaviota.

  I have to give him credit though. He masked his surprise by rolling up his sleeves, and he recovered right away. Someone else might have stumbled through the rest of his act, or maybe just moved on and ignored us until the show was over. Dad wasn't willing to let me off that easy though.

  "You, sir!" he said with a humorous tone. "The handsome young man in the third row."

  I pointed at myself. "Who, me?"

  "Yes, of course, you. You and the young man sitting next to you. You both seem like just the sort of boys willing to toss caution to the wind and do something really stupid – even more so than most souls in Vegas."

  The crowd giggled at that, but I didn't crack a smile. I knew just what he meant. I tried to wave him off, but he wasn't going to permit that.

  One of his assistants rolled out a rack of long, shiny swords, Asian weapons with thin, curved blades. Their edges glittered in the spotlight. Dad picked up three of them and juggled them as he spoke.

  "Come now, boys!" he said. "Don't be shy. This will be a lot harder on me than you. I promise."

  He tossed the three blades into the air, one by one. "This is your chance to really stick it to me."

  The blades thunked down into the stage on each of his last three words. Each of them stabbed deep into the wood and stuck there, juddering from the floor. He snatched up the middle one and stabbed it out at me, still cowering in the audience.

  "It's the chance of a lifetime, son," he said. "Don't let it pass you by!"

  Another assistant stepped forward and started up a chant, clapping with every word. "Stick! It! To! Him! Stick! It! To! Him!"

  The crowd roared and joined in. "Stick! It! To! Him!" The noise grew with every second.

  "Stick! It! To! Him!" The people sitting right behind me and Bill pushed us forward, urging us to our feet.

  "Stick! It! To! Him!"

  I glanced at Bill, who shrugged. "It's your dad," he shouted.

  "Stick! It! To! Him!" I glared up at the man on stage. The man who'd left me behind in New Orleans to grieve for my mother on my own. The man who'd found me in that empty lot last night and sent me packing with barely a word of explanation.

  "Stick! It! To! Him!" I looked at those swords and thought of how it would feel to stab someone with them – anyone – particularly him, the man who was daring me to do it in front of hundreds of strangers.

  "Stick! It! To! Him!"

  I stood up tall and strong and thrust my fists into the air. Bill jumped up by my side. The crowed cheered. People nearby pounded me on the back and whooped in my face.

  As I strode onto the stage, I had one thought in my head. If these people wanted blood – if my father wanted it too – then I was going to give it to them.

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY

 

"Hello, gentlemen!" my dad said, shaking our hands as Bill and I joined him on stage. "I'm so glad you could join us."

  Here, in front of the crowd, he had to pretend he didn't know us, or the audience would think we were shills, paid to be part of the act. It also meant he couldn't chew me out quite yet, at least not until the show was over. I decided to play along, and Bill followed my lead.

  "For my next trick," Dad said to the crowd, "I will require the most devious and demented device ever created." He turned to shout at someone offstage. "Bring out the Chinese Torture Trap!"

  Two of dad's assistants wheeled a strange contraption onto the stage. The open lattice of silvered framework stood about as large as a closet. It had a black platform at the bottom, and a pair of handcuffs hung from closed steel loops high on the front side's bars. The middle part of the framework held a steel box with a man-sized hole cut out of the top and the bottom of it. It had a hinge in the middle, and the entire apparatus separated in half and could be spread out like the covers of a book standing straight up with its spine pointed at the audience.

  The assistants brought the device into the middle of the stage and then spun it around and opened it up to show it from every angle. When they were finished, they rotated it so that the hinge faced the audience again. Dad strode behind it and stepped into the device, one foot on each side of its floor and his arms held high.

  His assistants brought the sides together, trapping him inside the steel box from his chest to his groin. One of the assistants locked the box with a heavy padlock slipped through a hasp that wrapped around from the back to the front. The other set to fastening a handcuff to each of my dad's wrists, keeping his arms high and away from his sides. He rattled them hard to test them, and they held tight.

  Then each of the assistants stepped away and went to retrieve the blades from where they still stood sticking out of the floor. They handed two of these directly to Bill and me, giving one to each of us.

  "Gentlemen!" Dad said to us. "I want you each to inspect both the box around my middle and the manacles around my wrists. Please assure both yourself and the audience that they are solid and untampered with."

  Bill and I set about doing just that. I knew that if I found anything wrong with the setup I wouldn't say a word to blow my dad's trick, but everything seemed as normal as could be.

  "Now, please satisfy yourselves that it is impossible for me to break free."

  At the assistants' urging, Bill and I pulled and yanked on both the box and the handcuffs. The box had been tailored to fit my father like a glove, and both it and the manacles were sealed on him tight. After checking everything out, we gave the assistants and the audience an approving nod.

  "Now, please examine the swords and ensure that they are composed of nothing but the finest steel."

  Bill and I each took our blades and swung them around. They looked and felt real. The edges seemed sharp, although I wasn't about to cut myself to prove the point.

  I held my blade up before me, and Bill did the same. Without a word, we assumed double-handed grips and clashed them together like Jedi battling with lightsabers. They clanged against each other just like the real thing, and I felt the jarring from it all the way up to my shoulders.

  The audience hooted at that, and Bill and I turned to salute them with the blades. The spotlights blinded me, and I couldn't see anything much past the edge of the stage, but I could hear the people out there as they burst into applause.

  In that instant, I could already see how performing in front of a large group of people could become addictive. I wondered how my father – if he was actually the stage magician Gaviota had implied he had been – could ever have given it up. He must have done it for my mom and me, and realizing that I found it hard to be angry with him right then.

  "Now, gentlemen," Dad said. "I want you to carefully observe the slits on the sides of the box."

  With broad and flamboyant gestures, his assistants pointed out a pair of wide thin slots on either side of the box. They were just about wide enough to shove a sword through them. Of course, if we did that, they would stab right through Dad's guts.

  "Now, place the tips of your swords at the edges of the holes closest to the audience. On the count of three, I want you to shove your blades straight into those holes as fast and hard as you can."

  I must have goggled at my dad. He grinned at me and then Bill in turn. "It's all right, gentlemen. In the event that I might come to harm at your hands tonight, I hereby absolve you of all responsibility for your actions."

  "Can we get that in writing?" I asked.

  The audience burst into a nervous titter. This had been fun for everyone at first. Now it was turning deadly serious.

  Dad flashed a broad toothy smile and rattled his handcuffs. "I'm afraid I can't quite reach a pen at the moment. You'll just have to settle for the testimony of a thousand eyewitnesses."

  Bill and I nodded in agreement, each giving the audience our most confident smiles. I didn't feel good about it in the slightest, but I could fake it with the best of them.

  "Now," Dad said. "On the count of three, ram those blades home."

  I wiped away the sweat beading on my brow, which – until that moment – I hadn't realized was there. I don't know if it sprang from the heat of the spotlights or a sudden attack of nerves, but I didn't suppose it made a difference. I grasped the hilt of the sword in both hands and steadied the tip of the blade at the indicated hole on my side of the box.

  "One."

  I steadied my grip.

  "Two."

  I took a deep breath and steeled my arms.

  "Th– Now don't be shy with those blades, boys. There's nothing worse than having a steel rod shoved halfway through you so that it can swirl around inside you and destroy your guts."

  I'd just about thrust the sword straight into him before he switched tactics, and I'd barely caught myself. It frustrated me enough that I considered shoving the sword into him while he talked, but I couldn't bring myself to be quite that petty.

  "You may notice that the blades are much longer than I am thick. If you push them in properly, they should stab clean through me and emerge out of the other side of the box. Take care and strike clean and true." He grinned at us both. "Please."

  He nodded at us, and Bill and I steadied ourselves once again.

  "One!"

  I swore that if he tried to stop me this time I was going to shove the blade right through him anyhow. I assumed that he had some sort of trick up his sleeve. I wondered what it might be, but I couldn't see how it might work. Of course, you could have filled that entire theater with what I didn't know about magic.

  "Two!"

  Preparing myself for the sharp stab he'd requested, I visualized the blade passing right through him. I hoped he knew what he was doing, or he was setting himself up for a world of hurt.

  "Three!"

  I slammed the blade home with a single forceful move. I felt some resistance as it snaked forward, through my dad's body, but I kept his warning in mind and pushed right past it. I saw the tip of Bill's blade appear right next to me, on my side of the box. It came out clean and unbloodied.

  Dad tensed up hard, and he hauled on his handcuffs like he might rip them right out of their anchors. Then he howled with what I hoped was excitement and triumph.

  The crowd burst into an unrestrained roar of applause.

  The assistants grabbed the framework and spun it around on the stage, showing it from every angle. I gasped when I noticed that the tip of my blade ran red.

  I stared at Dad's face when they brought him back around to face the crowd. He seemed as easy and confident as if he'd just been given a long-expected award, but I could see lines of strain on his face. No one else would have noticed them, I was sure, especially not if they were sitting on the audience rather than the stage – or they didn't happen to be his son.

  The assistants reached up to the top of the contraption and released a set of black curtains I hadn't even seen rolled up along the top rails before. They unfurled down, obscuring the contents of the latticework from every angle.

  The device shook once, twice, three times. A moment later, there was a bright flash of light from inside the curtains, and a cloud of smoke burst from within.

  When the smoke cleared, the curtains had fallen away, and the Chinese Torture Trap stood empty.

  The assistants undid the lock on the box in the middle of the trap, then swung the entire thing open on its hinges and spun it around for everyone to see.

  The crowd roared louder than ever. Bill and I stared at the box in amazement. I had no idea where Dad had gone or how he'd pulled it off. I wondered if the blood on the sword had been real or just another part of the act. I had no way to tell.

  As the applause began to fade, the assistants pointed up to the far back end of theater. Someone appeared there a moment later, his back to us as he slid down toward us on a zip line so black I hadn't seen it the entire show.

  As he reached the stage, the man dropped down from the line and landed in a backward somersault that put him directly between Bill and me, right where the Chinese Torture Trap had been before the assistants had moved it. Coming out of the somersault, he struck the landing like an Olympic gymnast and raised his arms high and wide.

  It was, of course, Dad, dressed in his black dinner jacket once more.

  The audience went insane. The people out there all leaped to their feet, giving Dad a thunderous standing ovation.

  The curtain came down behind him, cutting Bill and me off from the audience and leaving him alone with his worshipful crowd. His assistants came over to us and led us to the side of the stage.

  "Thanks so much for your help," one of them – a leggy brunette with bright blue eyes – said. "If you're able to stick around, Mr Wisdom likes to give his helpers a souvenir and an autograph after the show for being such good sports."

  "I think we need to be going," I said. "We have a lot of friends out there waiting for us."

  Before I could even take a step away though, the curtains at the front of the stage parted, and Dad stormed back toward us. "Don't you dare try running off on me now, Jackson," he said. "You have a lot of explaining to do."

  The crowd outside kept up the applause. Dad scowled at me and Bill. "Wait here," he said. "This won't take a moment."

  He slipped out onto the stage again, and the cheers started up again, louder than ever.

  This happened twice more, with Dad becoming more agitated each time. When he came back after the third curtain call, he reached out and grabbed me by the arm as if to make sure I wouldn't disappear.

  "That's all they're going to get from me tonight," he said. "Now, we need to get somewhere quiet to talk."

  He leaned on me hard, and I realized he hadn't grabbed me to keep me from running off. He needed me to help hold him up.

  "Are you all right?" I asked.

  He grimaced. "You did a hell of a job on me there, Jackson," he said. "I managed to phase through your friend's blade just fine, but yours got me good."

  "What the hell are you talking about? You're fine." I pulled open his jacket. The white shirt underneath it was soaked with blood. "Dad!"

  "I'll be all right," he said. "I managed to heal it up part of the way before I had to slide down the zip line. Otherwise, I'd have bled all over the crowd on my way down. People tend not to forgive something like that."

  The assistants came over, gasped in horror, and insisted on leading Dad off to his dressing room. "All right," he said with a grim nod. "Before someone outside the act notices."

  He pointed at Bill and me first. "But you two are coming with me."

  Gaviota appeared behind Dad, emerging from around a corner. Dad noticed my jaw drop, and he turned around to see who the intruder might be. I thought for sure I'd see a knockdown drag-out fight between the two of them. Instead, Gaviota stuck out his hand.

  "Great show, Luke," he said. "You haven't lost a single step. You should let us book you here every night."

  "No can do, Ben," Dad said. "I have too many other duties. You know that."

  My head spun so hard I couldn't open my mouth, but Bill spoke up and said what I couldn't. "Wait. You two work with each other?"

  "Of course." Gaviota nodded. "It's been, what, four years now?"

  Dad winced instead of replying, and Gaviota noticed what kind of pain he was in. "Jesus, Luke," he said, staring at the bloodstain that had spread farther across Dad's white shirt. "You're hurt? We gotta get that taken care of."

  Dad started to object, but then just gritted his teeth and nodded. Gaviota pointed at the assistants. "Get him down to his dressing room," he said. "I'll have a healer or three down there in under a minute."

  The assistants each put one of Dad's arms over his shoulders and then hauled him away. As they went, Gaviota called after them. "Don't worry about the boys, Luke. They're in good hands. We'll be waiting for you up in the lounge when you're ready."

  "Shouldn't we go with him?" I said. I'd been dreading the chewing out my father was going to give me for still being in Vegas, but my concern for him trumped that.

  Gaviota shook his head. "There's nothing you can do for him, kid. The healers will have him like new in no time. Let's just head back to Bootleggers so we'll be there when he's ready."

  "Seriously?" I said. "I can't. I'll just worry about him the entire time."

  "Listen to him. He's right," Bill said, showing far more regret than Gaviota had mustered. "We'd just be in the way."

  "Smart kid," Gaviota said. "There's a time to get involved, and a time to back away and let the trained professionals handle things. Let's get you boys back to the lounge. If you need a distraction to help keep your mind off Luke until he's OK, I've got just the thing."

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 

"The name of the game, ladies and gents, is Mojo Poker." Misha dealt with deft flicks of his thick fingers and wrists, displaying far more control over the cards than I would have thought he could manage. "We have a couple new players here tonight, so I'll explain the rules as we go. Be as gentle with them as you like."

  "Fresh blood," a short balding man at the end of the table said. "I'm always glad to see that." He flashed a too-easy smile through his goatee.

  Nine of us had joined Misha at the oblong poker table that sat in the south part of the lounge, near the bay of windows that overlooked the Strip. The players included Bill, me, Alejandro, Melody, Gaviota, and the goateed shark. The three others I didn't know were a tall bearded man with prematurely gray hair, a blond-haired man with a desert tan, and a curvy brunette with a wide friendly smile. We each had two cards in front of us, face-down on the midnight blue felt.

  "You can play Mojo Poker just like real poker, with any sort of variants you like," Misha said. "In Chicago, we prefer the Five Card Draw version, and in Asia they play Pai Gow Poker. Here in Vegas, we mostly stick with No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em. Blinds – the big and little antes – start at twenty-five and fifty dollars. They go up every half hour."

  I nodded at him as he went along. Bill and I had played a lot of Hold 'Em online over the past few months and in local poker games, testing out our skills. I knew the game well.

  "It can't be any harder than Magic: The Gathering, right?" said Bill. "I played the hell out of that game in high school, and it comes with hundreds of possible cards instead of just fifty-two. And each of those has a different power that can affect the game."

  I clamped down on my poker face as I laughed inside. I'd seen Bill pull his naïve noob act many times before. "Anything to make them think I'm a sucker," he often said. He'd have all their money before they realized he wasn't nearly so ignorant about the game as he claimed.

  "Actually, some of the best players on the professional poker circuit these days sprang out of the Magic pro tournaments," the tall man said. "Jon Finkel, David Williams, Eric Froelich, and Noeh Boeken made the jump, and others are coming over all the time. The game makes for a very fertile training ground."

  "Thanks for the history lesson, Ryan," the brunette said. "Can we play cards now?"

  "Just making friendly conversation, Cindi. And helping provide our new friends with some perspective."

  Although she was barely half Ryan's size, she chucked him in the arm with her fist. "You're so cute when you're didactic."

  Misha cleared his throat, and all eyes returned to him. "The standard buy-in is a thousand dollars. One rebuy is permitted, although only if you have less than a thousand dollars in front of you at the time. During our annual tournament, we don't permit that, but today it's OK."

  "We're all friends here, right?" said the brunette. She fixed her wide brown eyes on Bill and me and smiled. "I'm Cindi, by the way. This boy next to me with the tan is Christian, that's Peter with the beard, and–"

  "I think they get the picture," Christian said. He grinned when he said it, but his posture said he'd sat down at the table to play.

  Bill stuck out his hand and started shaking. "Bill Teach," he said.

  I followed behind him. "Jackson Lafitte."

  "So far it sounds like standard poker," Bill said. "What's the catch?"

  Sporting a wide grin through his permanent five o'clock shadow, Misha drew the top three cards off the deck and laid them face-up in the center of the table. "Here's the flop," he said. He peeled off another card, then another. "There's the turn, or fourth street. And the river, or fifth."

  Misha swept a hand past the cards in front of them. "These are the common cards you use to make the best five-card poker hand available. Once a card appears face-up, it's fixed. No one is allowed to change it."

  "How about before it's flipped?" I asked.

  "Then it's fair game," said Melody, "but you have to wrestle with everyone else here at the table to change it. There are easier targets on the table."

  "Like our hole cards," Bill said, pointing at the facedown cards before him.

  "Right," said Alejandro, "but it's not just your cards that you can try to change. Anyone's hole cards can be targets at any time, right up until they get turned face-up."

  "That's insane," I said. "Won't we all just see the common cards and come up with the best hole cards to make the best possible hand?"

  "You might think that," Gaviota said, "but it's not that simple. Nothing ever is."

  Misha splayed his hands on the table. "Can I finish teaching the rules here, fellas?"

  Everyone nodded or waved their assent for him to go on.

  "There's three catches to the game," the stout man said. "First, everyone else in the game is trying to change the cards too. That makes it hard for you to decide which cards you should work on. Do you try to change someone else's cards, or do you protect your own?"

  "If Bill and I are both trying to change Melody's cards, and she's trying to stop us, how do we know if we succeed?"

  "You don't," said Melody, "but I would, since I can look at my own cards."

  "Some of the best players can change several cards on the table at once," said Ryan. "This, of course, requires dividing your attention, which means that your chance of changing any single card goes down, even while your chance of meaningfully affecting the round goes up."

  "Just play the game," Peter said. "You'll figure it out fast enough."

  "Do you still have rounds of betting just like in regular poker?" Bill asked.

  "Yes," said Cindi. "That's the best time to try to change some cards too – when people are distracted by the betting."

  "But why would you bother changing any cards early on in the round?" I rubbed my forehead, trying to massage an understanding of the game into it. "Wouldn't you be better off just waiting for the end?"

  "Sure," said Christian, "you could wait for the showdown, but it's easier to defend cards from changing than it is to change them. If you manage to change a card early on – maybe while someone's not paying much attention to it – then you stand a better chance of keeping that card the way it is later on."

  I nodded, hoping I understood it as well as I would need to.

  "What are the other catches to the game?" I asked Misha. "You said there were three."

  He smiled. "Ties get thrown out."

  I cocked my head at him. "What's that mean?"

  "What happens if you have two hands that are equal to each other in a regular game?" Alejandro asked.

  "You split the pot," said Bill.

  "Right. Not in Mojo Poker. Instead, you throw those out, and the hand goes to the next best hand."

  "So if we had two royal flushes, they'd both get tossed, and the next highest hand would win?"

  "Exactly."

  "What happens if everyone left in the round gets knocked out?" I asked.

  "That's the best part," said Christian. "The money rides, even if the players bust out. It stays on the table and becomes part of the next pot."

  I chewed on my lower lip. "All right. What's the third catch?"

  "Any obvious cheats in your hole cards gets your hand tossed," said Misha.

  "How's that work?" I said. "Aren't we all cheating like crazy throughout the whole game?"

  "And that's just fine," said Cindi, "right up until you reveal your hole cards. If those are copies of each other – or if any of them is a copy of the common cards you're using in your hand – that counts as an obvious cheat, and that disqualifies your hand."

  I sat back and blew out a long breath as I stared at the table with my eyes open wide.

  "You fellas ready?" Misha asked.

  "The real problem here is that Bill and I don't have a thousand dollars each for the buy-in," I said. "We can't play."

  "I'll spot you your first stake," said Gaviota. "That's the tradition around here." He surveyed the people sitting around the table. "That's one reason these sharks are always sniffing around for fresh blood."

  "As an advance or as a loan?" Bill had on his "I just want to be sure about this" face.

  "As a gift to our guests," Gaviota said with a magnanimous smile.

  "More like a gift to the rest of us," said Peter. "Chances are you won't last long. The game is fantastic, but it moves fast – maybe too fast the first time you play."

  Bill and I looked at each other and nodded. "Deal us in," I said.

  Misha gave Bill and me each a stack of chips that totaled up to a thousand dollars. Then he went around the table and sold chips to the rest of the players one at a time.

  Then Misha gathered up the cards and shuffled them with a deft and practiced touch. I half expected him to show off with a few card-manipulation tricks while he worked them, but he was all business. As the dealer, he theoretically didn't have a stake in the game, but that didn't mean he might not help someone else cheat – someone like Gaviota. With the cards as mutable as they could be during a game like this, though, I wondered how much dealing off the bottom of the deck would help anyone anyhow.

  Misha dealt everyone two face-down cards. I peeled back the corners of my cards to see what I had in the hole. The Ace of Hearts and the Jack of Diamonds peered back at me.

  In a regular Hold 'Em game, these would be fine cards. In Mojo Poker, I had no idea how well they might do.

  Before the first round of betting, I decided to change the Jack to the Ace of Diamonds. The picture on the card faded, and the Ace symbol replaced it. I put the cards back down, satisfied.

  We had a gentlemanly first round of bets. Gaviota started out with the dealer's marker in front of him, although Misha actually handled the cards. Since Bill was next to him, he had the little ante, so he tossed a green twenty-five dollar chip into the middle of the table. As the second from the dealer, I had the big blind, so I pushed two of the green chips in my stack over to join Bill's lonely chip.

  Everyone called the big blind without a raise until it reached Ryan. He called the bet and raised it another fifty dollars. We all covered the raise, even Bill and me.

  The betting over, I peeked at my cards and saw that my Aces had turned into deuces, both of Clubs. I wasn't sure who was messing with me. It could have been everyone at the table. I hadn't been paying any attention to my cards, and I'd already paid the price for that.

  That sort of hostility so early in the round surprised me. We hadn't even seen the flop yet, so it was impossible for anyone to tell how my cards might fit with the common cards. Tinkering with my hole cards so early reeked of hostility or desperation – maybe both.

  I decided to take the offensive. I ignored my cards again, but this time I put everything I had into altering the flop. In one sense, this worked just like messing with the cards in the Bolthole the other night. I just had to focus on each card as Misha dealt them.

  They came up the Ace of Spades, Two of Hearts, and Two of Spades. I'd been going for three deuces, and I'd only gotten two. That meant that someone else – maybe several people – had been concentrating on the first card out instead and overruled my wishes.

  Bill folded. "I think I'll just watch," he said.

  "Check," I said, betting nothing.

  The others all checked until it came around to Peter. "Let's make it interesting," he said as he tossed a hundred-dollar black chip onto the table.

  A lot of people folded then. Gaviota, Ryan, and Cindi each called the bet, as did I.

  I glanced at my stack of chips. I'd already put two hundred dollars on the table, a fifth of my stake. That made me nervous, but I was determined to see the round through.

  That was probably my biggest mistake. I should have just folded like Paul and watched the game develop for a bit. Then I would have learned more about it before I got sucked too far in.

  On the turn, I concentrated hard, and Misha dealt another Two of Spades.

  "Is that cheating?" Bill asked.

  "Only if someone tried to use it along with the other Two of Spades," Alejandro said. "Essentially, it makes one of the cards useless."

  I did my best not to grin.

  I peeked at my hand. Still an identical pair of deuces. I bet two hundred dollars to start the next round of betting. Gaviota raised me the same amount. I called him, as did Cindi. Ryan folded.

  Misha pulled the river from the top of the deck and turned it over. I ignored it and concentrated changing one of my hole cards to the Two of Diamonds. That would give me four of a kind, which I didn't see anyone else beating.

  The river came up the Five of Spades, and I panicked. I realized that there was a hand that could beat mine. With the Ace, Two, and Five of Spades showing, someone holding the Three and Four of Spades as hole cards would have a straight flush.

  Of course, within the three hands still standing, there could be a tie. If Gaviota and Cindi had identical straight flushes, their hands would be tossed out, and I'd take the pot. If I changed to a straight flush, I risked sharing that fate.

  I scanned Gaviota's face and then Cindi's, searching for some kind of a hint, a physical tell that would let me know what they were planning. Cindi showed me a charming, close-mouthed smile that told me absolutely nothing. Gaviota didn't even look at me or show any kind of expression. He just kept his eyes on the common cards.

  The bet was up to me, so to start the round, I took the remainder of the chips in my stack and shoved them into the middle of the table. Hoping I sounded far more confident than I felt, I said, "All in."

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 

The bet came around the table to Cindi first. She peeled back her cards to look at them and grimaced. This was the last round of betting, and I'd just shoved all my chips onto the table and dared her to call my bluff.

  At that moment, I wished I knew more about the other people at the table. I'd boxed Cindi into a corner. Was she the kind of person who refused to back down, even when the odds were against her? Or was she devious enough to lay a trap for me that I'd just charged right into? Might she be unwilling to fold to a rookie when playing in front of her friends and her boss?

  I couldn't tell. I didn't have that information. Of course, she knew damn little about me too. I worked to keep my face as impassive as I could. I'd already made my play here, and I didn't want to inadvertently show her anything on my face or in my actions that she could use against me.

  Cindi let her cards fall back down onto the dark felt and gave me one last appraisal. She reached out for her chips and shoved them into the center of the table with both hands. "Call."

  The players around the table murmured with concern, approval, and delight. Other people from around the room picked up on how quiet our table had become, and the serious atmosphere drew them closer to the moment's gravity well.

  All eyes turned to Gaviota. We already had four thousand dollars on the table. Was his hand good enough that he wanted to risk his last six hundred dollars for a shot at grabbing the pot? More importantly, was he willing to risk getting shut out of the game on the first hand?

  I suspected that losing a thousand dollars meant little to Gaviota. He probably kept that much money on him as pocket change. For him, the game was a matter of prestige. Would it be worse for him to let me knock him out in the first round or to fold in the face of my aggressive play? Which path made for the bigger personal risk for him? And what did he think I had for hole cards anyway?

  Gaviota sat back in his chair and arched an eyebrow at me, milking the moment. "Are you sure about this, kid?" he asked me.

  "The bet's already made," I said. "Your concern's a little late for me now."

  "True."

  He pursed his lips as he stared into my eyes. I willed myself not to blink and wondered how long I could hold out – or if he'd read my steely stance as a total bluff.

  While protecting my cards, I reached out with my mind and messed with one of Gaviota's cards too. I didn't know what he'd started with, of course, but I knew that if I changed one of the cards I could guarantee he'd lose. I focused on the one on top and visualized it as the Jack of Diamonds.

  "All right, kid." Gaviota pushed his chips into the center of the table with a casual wave of his hand. "Let's see what you got."

  According to standard Poker rules, since Gaviota had called my bet, I had to show my cards first. As I reached to flip them over, Misha intervened.

  "All hands gotta be shown at once," he said. "Turn them over on my count."

  This made sense. If I had exposed my hand first, there would be nothing but honor to keep the others from doing their best to change their cards around to beat me. When there's money on the table, it's best to never have to rely on the trustworthiness of others.

  "Three. Two. One."

  On the unspoken beat for "Zero," Gaviota, Cindi, and I flipped over our hole cards.

  I had my Two of Diamonds and Two of Clubs. Combining that with the cards on the table gave me a hard-to-beat four of a kind with the Ace of Spades as the kicker.

  Cindi had the exact same hand.

  "Dammit," she said. "Goddammit."

  I couldn't help but agree. I looked over at Gaviota's hand. My only hope then was that he somehow had the same hand as me. Having changed one of his hole cards, though, I knew that was impossible. I clung to the thought that maybe I had failed and not realized it – or that Gaviota had somehow changed the card to something else.

  He had turned over the Jack of Diamonds and the Six of Spades.

  "What?" I slouched back in my chair, stunned. I'd been expecting to see a straight flush, but with the common cards, Gaviota's best hand came from the single Ace as his high card. "You've got nothing but slop."

  Gaviota smiled as he raked in the chips. "Actually, I have the winning hand."

  I gaped at him, flabbergasted at how easy and fast I'd been knocked out of the game. "Why didn't you go for the straight flush?"

  I realized then that Gaviota had never even bothered to glance at his hole cards during the final round of betting. He hadn't needed to.

  He failed to suppress a tight smile. "Normally, like any great magician, I don't reveal my secrets, but since we're among friends here, I'll tell."

  He pointed at both Cindi and me. "I knew the two of you wouldn't go for the obvious win. You both are too clever for that – maybe too clever for your own good. I figured you'd find a way to tie each other if I nudged your cards in that direction. Once you did, all I had to do was sit back and watch the fireworks. And take all your money."

  Bill clapped me on the back. "That was rough. I so thought you had him."

  Frustrated with myself, I couldn't take the compliment. Feeling my face flush with emotion, I stood up and snapped Gaviota a quick salute. "Thanks for the fast-track education," I said. "I think I hear the bar calling."

  I shuffled off to a chorus of comments like "Gutsy play," "Next time," and "Ouch." When I reached the bar, my father was standing there. He didn't look happy.

  "How are you doing?" he asked.

  I pointed to his side. He was in a fresh suit, not his performance clothes, with a white shirt and no tie. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

  He waved it off. "I'm fine. You survived getting shot the other night, right?"

  "I got grazed by a bullet. You had a sword rammed through you."

  "It was only a flesh wound," he said with a British accent. "Seriously," he said in his own voice, "I've survived much worse. There's a reason those slots in the Chinese Torture Trap are positioned around my belly instead of my heart."

  I winced. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I thought for sure you had some kind of trick worked up that would keep that from happening."

  "I did." The lines on Dad's face deepened. "You foiled it."

  "But how is that possible?" The bartender shoved a beer in front of me, and I grabbed it like it might try to hop away. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. I swear."

  I meant every word of that, and I desperately wanted my father to believe me. I think he did.

  "I don't doubt that," he said. "But that's even more frightening."

  "How do you mean?"

  "I was cheating during that act. I wasn't using any tricks. I relied on magic – real magic – to phase those swords right through me. You kept that from happening, and if you weren't even trying, then you've got more mojo flowing through you than I've ever seen."

  "Maybe it was someone else," I said. I felt a swell of pride at the fact that maybe I'd trampled over my father's magic without even noticing it, but I couldn't believe it was true. "There were a lot of other magicians in that crowd."

  I took a sip of my beer as he put a hand on my shoulder. It tasted bitter and cold.

  "None of them had their hands on the hilt of that sword," he said.

  I gave him a half-hearted smile. "Maybe you just had an off night."

  He shook his head. "Your buddy Bill's blade phased right through me like I wasn't there. Didn't even leave a scratch. Yours ran straight through my guts."

  I put my back to the bar and craned my neck around to gaze at the poker table. "For someone with so much mojo, I got my clock cleaned in that game over there. I don't think I've ever busted out so fast."

  "Your magic worked fine," Dad said. "You blew the game itself. You were playing the cards, not the people. Didn't I teach you better than that?"

  I scowled. "I haven't seen you since I was thirteen, Dad."

  "Except for last night. When I helped crowbar you out of a tough spot. And then I find you right back in it. What the hell was the point of all that, Jackson?"

  "We tried, Dad. We honestly did. We changed our tickets. I can show you our boarding passes."

  "And?" He furrowed his brow at me.

  "And they caught us. A TSA agent pulled us out of the security screening line and brought us straight to Gaviota. He grabbed us and brought us here."

  Dad paled at that. I took a big gulp of my beer.

  "By 'here,' where exactly do you mean?"

  "Back to Bootleggers."

  "Where in Bootleggers?"

  I pointed straight up.

  He covered his eyes with a hand. "Houdini?" he whispered.

  I could barely hear him over the buzz of conversation in the lounge, but when his fingers slid off his face so he could look at me, I couldn't pretend that I had missed what he said. I nodded.

  "And?" he said.

  I hated that word and the way he used it. Every time I'd been caught doing something wrong as a kid, he did the same thing. He just kept prompting me to continue until I had nothing left. If I tried to skip something or – worse yet – missed the path of the chat he wanted me to follow, he kept pressing me until I either filled in the holes or he had to enlighten me about what had slipped by me.

  "He was amazing. I thought he was going to kill us. He offered us a job instead."

  "And?"

  "And what?" I didn't want to play this game anymore.

  "Did you take it?"

  I glanced over at Bill. He had just won a hand and was raking in the chips with a huge, happy grin.

  "Not yet. We have until the end of the week."

  "And?"

  "Stop that," I said with a shudder. "Just knock it off."

  "Stop what?"

  "Stop the whole Socratic shorthand thing you have going on there. If you have a question, ask it. Don't make me guess what it is. No matter how much mojo I might have, I haven't figured out how to read minds yet."

  He considered this. "All right. Which way are you leaning on the job offer then? In or out?"

  "They've been treating us well so far. Actually, that's a mild way of putting it. They've treated us like kings."

  "Sure they have." Dad's comment came across as a warning. "That's what they do. They have a lot of money. It's not important to them, and they spread it around to gain influence over those who care about such things."

  "Like me."

  He gave me a canted eye. "Money never used to be that important to you either, Jackson."

  "That was before Katrina. Before Mom died. Before you left. Before grandma had to step up and raise me on her own. Going to the University of Michigan ain't cheap."

  "Isn't."

  "Whatever. I'm paying out-of-state tuition. At those rates, it's the most expensive public university in the world. It's over thirty thousand dollars a year just for tuition alone."

  Dad's jaw dropped. "It's a great school – I loved it there – but that's outrageous. Why didn't you try something closer to home?"

  "Grandma insisted on Michigan. You and Mom filled her head with how great it was over the years, and she knew Mom would have wanted me to go there, so off I went."

  "That's ridiculous. She can't possibly afford that."

  "I know," I said. "That's why I'm here. I wanted to find a way to help pay."

  "Try going to a different school."

  I put down my empty glass. "I think I'll stick with the judgment of the adult who's been there for me for the past five years."

  That shut Dad up. I knew it wasn't fair, but I didn't care. As he steamed, I signaled the bartender for another beer. "Do you want anything?" I said. "From him, I mean?"

  Dad shook his head. "Do you know what he wants?" he asked. "Houdini, I mean?"

  I shrugged. "To run Las Vegas, I guess." I looked around the room. "Seems like he's doing a great job of it."

  Dad grunted. "He's already in charge of most of the city, whether people here know it or not. I'm talking about what he really wants. Why he's doing all this."

  I had to admit, I hadn't thought much about the matter. I wanted money because I needed it. I assumed Houdini, like most people, did too. I was probably wrong. "When you're as rich as him, I suppose it doesn't have as much to do with the cash, huh? He mentioned something about sides forming up for a big battle, but I don't think I really understood what he meant."

  "Think about it, Jackson. What's the one thing a dead man can't have?"

  "Life?" I blurted it out as a glib joke, but as the word left my mouth I realized how right I was. "But doesn't he already have something like that? He's the liveliest dead man I've ever seen."

  "He doesn't want a semblance of life. He wants the real thing. He's close enough he can taste it – or could if he was alive."

  I wanted to ask how he could manage that, but I didn't understand how he'd gotten away with escaping from his grave the first place. The easy answer was "magic," but like most easy answers it didn't mean nearly enough.

  "And?" I said to Dad.

  He started to reprimand me for sassing him – I could tell by the way he opened his mouth – but he stopped himself and answered my question instead. "And that's why he wants your help – why he wants all the people in this room. He's going to use our power to bring himself back to life."

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

"I don't see the problem with that," I said. I picked up my beer and had a drink. "The man hires us, and we do him a service. Isn't that how America works?"

  "It's not that easy, Jackson." Dad lowered his voice. "He's going to ask for a lot more than anyone here bargained for. You cannot come to work for him. Go back home. Go back to school."

  "Can't really afford it. Remember?"

  "I'll pay for it. For everything. Tuition, room, and board. I'll hire you to get yourself an education."

  I cast a wary eye at him. The thought of not having to work in the East Quad cafeteria during the day and drive pizzas at night – that's what drove me to Las Vegas in the first place. If I could somehow manage that without having to use my mojo, that seemed like a no-brainer. But I knew what taking the money from my father would mean.

  "I don't want to work for you," I said. "You pay my way, and you'll use that cash like a club. I need to make my own way."

  He put a hand on my arm. "No, Jackson, I won't. I owe you this – far more than this for leaving you with your grandmother for so long. If I'd not been so caught up here, I would have realized you needed the money, and I would have sent it. Your grandmother never asked. Not once."

  "She didn't know where to find you."

  "Is that what she told you?" He sighed. "I've been sending her money every few months ever since I left. You ever wonder how she managed to keep you clothed and fed?"

  I blushed as I realized I hadn't. "I figured she had a pension. Or money from Mom's life insurance."

  "Your mother never had any life insurance," he said. "She didn't believe in it." He choked up a bit then. "She thought I was her life insurance."

  "Guess she was wrong about a lot of things then."

  That came out colder than I meant it, but I discovered that I didn't want to take it back.

  Dad bent his head. When he looked back up at me, his eyes brimmed with tears he refused to let free.

  "Just go," he said. "Take your friend with you. I'll make sure you're taken care of."

  I looked down at him. For the first time, I noticed he was just a bit shorter than me. "What about you?" I said. "If working for Houdini is so bad, then why do you do it? If you can do it, why can't I?"

  He ran his tongue over his teeth. "I have my reasons. I don't really want to talk about them. Not here. Not now."

  "When then? Am I supposed to go home and wait for a letter?"

  He pointed at himself with both hands. "Look at me, Jackson. I'm a wealthy man. I'm at the top of my game. I have everything I need. What's the one thing I want that I can't ever have back?"

  I didn't like considering this riddle. "I don't know," I lied.

  "Your mother," he said. "I'd give anything to bring your mother back."

  I felt myself choking up now, but I refused to do that here, not in front of all these other people. Not in front of my dad. "Me too," I said.

  "That's why I came here. That's what I've been working on night and day for the past four and a half years. That's why I agreed to work with Houdini. I'm conducting my own research on how to unlock the secrets of life and death."

  "So why shouldn't I?"

  "You're young. You have your whole life ahead of you. I got mixed up in all this when I was young too, and it just about ruined my life." He squeezed my arm and looked me in the eye. "I can't have that happening to you."

  "But Mom–"

  A wistful smile spread on his face. "I especially can't have your mother ever see you doing this. If she came back from the dead to find you mixed up in this, she'd kill me – and then you'd be down to one parent again, just like that."

  "That's not funny, Dad," I said. "Not one damn bit."

  "Hey, I was just–"

  "I know what you meant, but I can't find the humor in it. I've been down two parents already, ever since the day you left. Mom couldn't help it. She died." I glared at him. "What's your excuse?"

  "Jackson." He huffed in frustration. "I just told you–"

  "You ran off here to save Mom. Right. And in all those years, you never came back home once. You never spoke to me or wrote me or even let me know you weren't dead."

  Dad gritted his teeth like the only thing that kept him from bending me over his knee was all the people standing around us. Or maybe he wanted to bolt from the place. I couldn't tell. From the look on his face, though, he wouldn't be able to restrain himself for long.

  "I'm going to go watch Bill play, Dad," I said. "I seem to have a lot to learn."

  I walked over to the Poker table and didn't look back. There were only a few players left. Gaviota had the largest stack of chips in front of him. A lot of that had come from taking both Cindi and me for everything we had, but he'd collected a lot more since then. Ryan had the second-largest stack of chips, although he trailed Gaviota by a distant second. Bill had managed to stay in the game, although it looked like he'd accomplished that by playing as conservatively as he could. Everyone else had been knocked out. They'd abandoned the table and wandered off to mingle with the others in the lounge, leaving only Misha and the three final players to grind through the endgame struggle.

  Misha looked up at me. "Care to buy your way back in, fella?"

  I shrugged at him. "Don't have the cash."

  "Your dad's here, right?" said Bill. "Why don't you hit him up for our cash?"

  "You mean for the chips you stole from the casino the other night?" Dad said as he walked up behind me.

  I frowned. "We won those chips."

  "Nothing fair and square about it though, eh, boys?" Gaviota laughed. "Not like playing Mojo Poker."

  Maybe it was the beer talking. Maybe it was my frustration with my dad. Maybe I was still embarrassed by how well Gaviota had played me. I knew I should have let that slide, but I just couldn't.

  "Sure, the first night wasn't really fair, but actually, that second night was exactly like Mojo Poker, wasn't it? Everyone at the table was a magician. The only difference is that you knew what Bill and I were doing, and we had no idea about you."

  "No, wait," Bill said in mock innocence. "I remember, there was one other difference." He scratched his head. "Help me out here, Jackson. Now what was it?"

  I knew what he was doing. Bill and I had worked this angle many times while playing Poker on campus. Angry players made mistakes. They let their emotions rather than their brains drive their decisions. So we made a lot of players angry.

  That got us into a lot of fights too – or very close to them. This became a real problem at places like frat houses where everyone else at the game would back their friend against us. It meant we had to walk a fine line between getting someone mad enough to play poorly but not so enraged that they'd attack us.

  The strategy had worked OK against other college kids. I wasn't so sure about pulling it with adults – especially members of the magic-powered Cabal – but I had started it. Bill was just helping me push things along. It was up to me if I wanted to keep going.

  I did.

  "Yeah-yeah-yeah," I said. "I remember now. It was the way we cleaned them out without really trying."

  Bill and I gave each other our best shit-eating grins, then shared them with everyone else at the table.

  "All right," Gaviota said. "All right. I took one and you took one. Let's square this up. You're in on the game now, and I know enough about you. Let's play. You and me. Mano a mano. Heads up."

  "Wish I could." I shrugged. "I can't."

  "If it's about the money, we can work that out. How about I stake you and we play for the chips you won?"

  "That's already mine, isn't it? Why should I risk it? I'd be putting up twenty-five thousand dollars against your one."

  Gaviota acknowledged that with a nod. "Granted. So how about you play against your old man instead?"

  I froze. "What? Why would I want to do that? This is between you and me. Tiebreaker, right?"

  Gaviota stood up. "I don't seem to have anything you need that bad. Your dad, on the other hand, he has exactly what you want."

  "What's that?" Dad said, unable to keep the undercurrent of suspicion out of his voice.

  "Your permission," Gaviota said with a smug grin. "If Jackson wins, you agree to let him make his own decision about the Cabal. If you win, he goes home."

  "I don't need his permission," I said. "I'm an adult."

  "His blessing then. Whatever it takes to get the two of you to quit griping at each other in the corner and get on with your lives."

  I pulled in my lips and made a face. "Still don't care that much." If I was honest with myself, I cared a lot, but I wasn't about to let Dad or anyone else in the room know that.

  "Your money then," Dad said. "You beat me, you get my blessing and all the chips I'm holding for you."

  I grunted. "That doesn't do me much good if I can't ever cash them in."

  Gaviota spread his hands wide in a magnanimous gesture. "I will personally guarantee that Bootleggers will honor your chips and pay you for them in any fashion you prefer."

  Bill gave me a shrug that said, "Why the hell not?"

  "All right," I said. "Deal me in."

  Gaviota, Ryan, and Bill gathered up their chips and stepped away from the table. My father sat down next to Misha. I took the chair across the blue-black stretch of felt from him.

  The heads-up part of a normal game of Hold 'Em is a contest of nerves. With only two players, it doesn't often take much of a hand to win a round. Often one player bets and the other folds before the flop. This happens until both players think they have hole cards worth considering.

  In a game of Mojo Poker, it didn't matter much what the hole cards were because they could change. This was going to get deadly serious fast.

  Misha counted out a thousand dollars worth of chips to each of us. "I still can't pay for these," I said.

  Gaviota waved me off. "Don't worry about it," he said. "This is for pride, not money. The chips are on the house."

  I considered thanking him and then taking the chips to a cage downstairs to cash out, but I didn't think he'd take that well. Dad and I cut cards to see who would be the first dealer. I won.

  Bill stood next to me and bent down to grab me by the shoulders and shake me as he spoke. "You can do it, Jackson," he said. "You've come a long way since we got here. I've never seen anyone work the cards as well as you."

  "You know the best part of a heads-up Mojo Poker game?" I said. "You don't have to worry about a tie letting someone else steal your pot."

  "You got it. Just go for the best hand you can make – but be sure to screw up his too. Good luck!"

  I cracked my knuckles and watched Misha deal out the cards. I peeked at mine: the Ace of Spades and the Jack of Diamonds. I was the first dealer, so I paid the small blind. The first bet was Dad's.

  To stay in the round, he'd have to pay at least the big blind – or he could fold. He hadn't even looked at his cards when he tossed a pair of green twenty-five dollar chips onto the table. "Fifty."

  "All in," I said. I pushed the chips across the table.

  He gazed at me, sizing me up. The last time we'd played poker, it had been with the two of us and my Grandpa Laveau. The game had been just after my thirteenth birthday, not too long before Katrina hit, and I'd been thin, gangly, and growing like the delta – slow but steady. Now, instead of peach fuzz on my cheeks, I had stubble on my chin.

  With my eyes, I dared him to call me.

  He did.

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

I reached out to flip my hole cards over, but Misha stopped me. "That's what you do when all the fellas go all-in with regular Poker, sure," he said. "Not in Mojo Poker. They stay down until the end."

  I nodded my understanding and left my cards facedown on the table. I looked at Dad to see if he would smirk at my error, but his face showed not one bit of emotion.

  I looked around and saw that we'd drawn a crowd. All other conversations had stopped. Every set of eyes in the entire lounge were on us now, including those of the bartender, who'd stopped serving drinks.

  Misha dealt the flop. I focused on protecting my own cards rather than trying to mess with Dad's. The cards came up Ace of Clubs, Eight of Spades, and the Nine of Diamonds. That gave me a pair of Aces if nothing changed. No flush presented itself for either Dad or me, nor did we yet have an easy shot at a straight.

  With both of us all-in, there wouldn't be any more betting. We didn't have anything else to bet. Instead, we could concentrate entirely on the cards.

  I focused mostly on protecting my Ace. I also put some effort into changing my Jack into the Ace of Hearts, since that would give me three of a kind.

  I checked my cards. The Ace of Spades was just fine, but now I had two of them. Either Dad had forced the change on me entirely for some odd reason, or he'd managed to change the suit while I had controlled the index.

  Misha revealed the turn. I protected my first Ace and ignored the other one. Then I reached out with half my mind and attacked the card coming out of Misha's hand. As it turned over, the face seemed blurry, but when it hit the table, it became the Ace of Clubs.

  That gave me four Aces, although I could only use two of them. If I changed one of my hole cards to the Ace of Diamonds or Ace of Hearts, I'd have three I could use, a good hand. I'd need to muck with Dad's hole cards at the same time, though, to make sure he didn't just do the same thing.

  I noticed sweat beading on Dad's brow. He was working hard at this – harder than me. I wasn't sure if I had that much more mojo than him or if I just didn't know what I was doing. I'd have bet on the latter if I hadn't already put all my money on this hand.

  With only one more card to go and no betting to distract us, I had to think fast about what to do. I decided to ignore the river entirely and put a minimal amount of effort into protecting one of my hole cards. Instead, I channeled every extra bit of mojo I had into messing with Dad's hole cards. If it worked, I'd win for sure. Or so I hoped.

  The final common card came up as the Eight of Clubs. That ruled out any possibility of a flush for anyone, and it destroyed any shot at a straight too. I didn't worry about it. I just kept focusing on Dad's cards as hard as I could, pouring every last ounce of my mojo into making them do what I wanted.

  "Look at that, would you?" Christian said, pointing at the common cards. "Aces and Eights. The Dead Man's Hand."

  "Not quite," Peter said. "The original didn't have double Aces of Clubs."

  "Close enough for me," Melody said with an ominous air.

  Misha shivered. "All set?" he said, struggling to stay as businesslike as he could manage.

  Dad stared straight into my eyes. "Not even going to check your hole cards?" he asked.

  "Don't need to." I never once broke my eye connection with him.

  "Fellas?" I could hear a tremor in Misha's voice. "Are you ready?"

  Dad and I nodded as one.

  "All right. Three. Two. One."

  On the silent "Zero" beat, Dad and I flipped over our hole cards.

  The Ace of Spades I'd protected had remained safe. The other had changed into the Queen of Diamonds. Using my Ace in the hole with the common cards gave me two pairs: Aces and Eights – a proper Dead Man's Hand.

  Dad wore a rueful smile as he looked at my cards. His plan, as far as he knew, had worked. I suspect he thought he had turned over a pair of Aces or a pair of Eights, which would have given him three of a kind. That would have beaten my two pair solid.

  A collective gasp ran through the crowd, seeming to suck all of the air out of the room. Dad looked down at his cards and saw what had shocked the others. His cards were blank.

  Dad shot to his feet. "That's cheating!" he said. He thrust a long finger at me. "You can't do that. It's cheating."

  I sat back in my chair. I had thought he might say that, but I was determined to ride this one out.

  "I thought Mojo Poker was all about cheating. The best cheater wins, right? I didn't hear anyone say the cards had to show any kind of faces at all."

  "Well they do!"

  "Are you sure about that?"

  "Sure I'm sure!" He turned to Gaviota. "Tell him!"

  The man shrugged. "It looks to me like you have an illegal hand there, Luke. You can't make a hand of five cards with only four available cards."

  Dad steamed. "Break out the rulebook," he said. "I want a ruling on this."

  Gaviota signaled the bartender, who pulled a little black book out from behind the bar. It had a black cover with the title "Mojo Poker: The Game and the Rules" stamped on it in gold foil letters. He handed it to the woman I'd beaten in poker down in the Bolthole the other night. She brought the well-thumbed book to Gaviota.

  "Thank you, Ming." Gaviota accepted the rulebook and began to page through it. I thought about standing up to peek over his shoulder, but I wanted to play it cool, so I kept to my seat.

  "It should be under 'Changing the Cards.' Near the middle," Ryan said. "If it's there at all."

  "I'm not seeing it," said Gaviota.

  Dad took the book from him. The other magicians in the room opened their eyes wide in surprise, but Dad ignored both them and the dirty look Gaviota shot at him. "I'll find it," he said.

  Gaviota's cell phone rang, belting out the first few bars of Frank Sinatra singing "Luck Be a Lady." He reached into his pocket and looked at its display. "It's the boss," he said.

  Everyone in the room knew what that meant, and they all fell silent to catch Gaviota's end of the conversation. Dad kept flipping through the book, still not finding what he wanted.

  "Yes, sir," said Gaviota. "You're sure?" He raised an eyebrow at me, but I couldn't tell if that meant I would be vindicated or punished. "Thank you, sir."

  Gaviota plucked the rulebook out of Dad's hands. "The boss says the boy is right. Jackson wins."

  The room erupted in cheers. I hadn't realized so many people had been rooting for me. I wondered if they were really for me or just against Dad. Or maybe they just managed to appreciate the fact that I'd been able to exploit a loophole in the rules that no one had ever found before.

  I didn't really care why they cheered. I stood up, threw up my arms, and soaked it all in.

  "This is ridiculous!" Dad flushed with embarrassment and frustration.

  "You can take it up with the boss if you like," Gaviota said. "Right now, you need to pay your boy."

  Dad glared at me like he might be able to produce lasers from his eyes to shoot right through me. Instead, he removed his watch, which had a flexible band, and turned it inside out. Then he reached in through the inverted band, and his hand disappeared. After rummaging around, he produced a zippered bag from the pocket. He opened it and upended it over the table, spilling out loads of Bootleggers chips.

  "Here's your money, Jackson." He turned his watchband back the right way again and slipped it over his wrist. "And you have my reluctant blessing. You're old enough to make your own decisions. I can only hope you make the right ones."

  I stood up and offered him my hand. "Thanks, Dad," I said. "It was a good game."

  He stared at my outstretched hand for a moment, then gave it a firm shake. "You're a clever kid, Jackson," he said with grudging respect. "That gives me hope. I just hope you don't outsmart yourself."

  Gaviota put a hand on Dad's shoulder. "He would have beaten anyone tonight. There's no shame in that. Houdini wants to talk with you upstairs though. Right now."

  "About what?" I heard a hint of fear in Dad's voice, but his irritation at being called upstairs like a servant drowned most of that out.

  "He wants your help to plug that hole in the rules."

  Dad rolled his eyes, but gave in. He reached over and gave me a hug. "Be good," he said. "Don't do anything stupid. I'll catch up with you soon."

  As soon as he left, the gawkers went back to their drinks and conversations. Bill gathered up the chips. "You were awesome, Jackson," he said. "On fire!"

  "Just playing a hunch," I said. "It could have gone the other way. I could have disqualified myself instead."

  "You showed some real balls there, fella," Misha said as he rounded up the cards and the chips Dad and I had played with. "In my book, that means you deserved to win."

  "You know what this means?" Bill asked as he scooped a handful of the chips I'd won back into his bracelet. "We party tonight!"

  "Just give me those chips," Misha said. "I can cash them out for you here."

  "Seriously?"

  Misha nodded, and Bill shoved the chips over to him with a huge, bright-eyed grin.

  "The party's on me tonight, boys," Gaviota said. "After all, now that Luke's cleared the way for Jackson here to make his own decisions, I need to do my best to woo you into joining our organization, right?"

  Neither Bill nor I were about to argue.

  Misha and most of the players from our Mojo Poker game decided to join us. Gaviota was the only one to beg off. "Someone has to stay here to mind the shop, boys. You're in good hands with Misha."

  We hit the Speakeasy first. Misha walked us right past the huge line in front of the velvet rope with just a tip of his head toward the bouncer. He waved us past the cover charge and installed us in the VIP room. A moment later, he returned with three table-service waitresses dressed in skimpy flappers' dresses that shimmered and sparkled like they were made from curtains of diamonds.

  Despite the Roaring Twenties decor, the place was as cutting-edge a club as you could find in Vegas. DJ Achilles was handling the music that night, and he had the place jumping with an eclectic electronic-pop dance mix that drew in tunes from Hollywood to Bollywood, all tied together with a brutally relentless underbeat.

  After a round of tequila shots, we hit the dance floor hard. I'd had a long, crazy day, and I needed to let off some steam. Everyone else, from Bill on down, seemed to feel the same way.

  I danced with Melody for a while, and I noticed that her dress changed colors with the music's beat. "Are you doing that?" I asked.

  She leaned in toward my ear so I could hear her over the thumping music. "Just having some fun. If anyone sees me, they'll think it's the lights."

  "That's amazing," I said with a wild grin. She kissed me on the cheek.

  I liked that a lot, and I'm afraid I changed color right then and there – all without the use of magic.

  Bill tapped me on the shoulder a few songs later. "We're heading out," he said, shouting into my ear. He beckoned me off the floor, and Melody and I followed him.

  We tumbled out of the Speakeasy, past the velvet rope, and into part of the casino free of tables and machines. No one else was there waiting for us, and our laughter echoed in the open part of the gigantic room.

  "We're heading to a strip club," Bill said. "Misha has a huge limo waiting outside for all of us."

  "Even the ladies?" I said. The thought of bringing women to see other women take off their clothes seemed wrong.

  "Everyone. They're waiting for us at the front door. Let's go."

  I glanced at Melody and shrugged. She forced a game smile onto her face.

  "Why don't you go on without us?" I said to Bill. "It's been a hell of a long day, brother. I'm beat."

  Bill waggled his eyebrows at me. "You sure?"

  "Yeah, after all that, I need some quiet. I'll just go chill out in the lounge."

  Melody took my hand. "That sounds like a fine idea to me."

  A lusty grin spread across Bill's face. "Well, all right then," he said, a little too loud. "You two have fun." He stabbed a finger into my chest. "I'll see you back at the room. You were amazing today."

  "Couldn't have done it without you having my back."

  "Sure you could have," he said as he walked away backward, "but I'm glad you didn't. Don't wait up for me!" He turned and trotted off toward the casino's entrance.

  Melody led me back to the lounge, and we drank and talked for hours. It turned out she was from Idaho Springs, Colorado, where she'd been the head cheerleader in her small high school. She had come out here to go to college at UNLV and had gotten a job working at Bootleggers. Gaviota had discovered her latent talents with magic and inducted her into the Cabal.

  At one point, I invited her back to my room to continue the conversation. She gave me a warm smile instead. "I don't know you that well, Jackson – yet."

  "Well, let's keep talking then," I said. "I want to get to that point as fast as we can."

  About three in the morning, the elevator doors opened, and Bill staggered into the lounge with Christian under one arm and a new friend who introduced himself as Owen under the other. Bill's jacket was rumpled, his shirt was untucked, and he bore traces of lipstick on his collar and cheek. He also had a huge smile that nothing could destroy.

  Melody helped me direct this trio back to the room, where Christian and Owen dumped Bill onto his bed. "Thanks, guys," I said as I walked them to the door.

  "Don't sweat it," said Christian.

  "Right," said Owen. "Magicians watch out for their own."

  As they walked back toward the lounge, Melody emerged from the room too. "I'd better get to sleep," she said. "I'm supposed to work tomorrow."

  "Thanks," I said. "For everything."

  I leaned in to kiss her. She met me halfway and gave me a reason to remember her for the rest of my days.

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 

I felt all right the next morning. I slept in and woke up thinking about Melody. I hoped she was thinking about me.

  Despite how drunk he'd been, Bill seemed to be in no pain, though moving just a hair slower than normal. He stumbled into the bathroom to get cleaned up, and I wondered if maybe he was still drunk. A moment later he howled in surprise.

  "Holy shit," he said as he stormed back into our suite's living room. "I thought I'd just dreamed this part, but there it is. What a beaut."

  He pointed to a fresh tattoo inked onto the outside of his right shoulder. It was an ankh, the lateral arms of which stretched all the way around his bicep.

  "Wild." Bill flexed his arm. "It doesn't hurt at all. I thought tattoos were supposed to hurt. How drunk was I last night?"

  "Brother, if you have to ask, then you were too drunk." I grinned at him. "Christian and some guy named Owen brought you home. You really don't remember any of it?"

  Bill sat down and rubbed his head. "I remember having such a great time I told everyone how much I wanted to stay here for ever."

  "You went straight to the 'I love you, man' stage?"

  "I was serious. I've never had so much fun in my life. Magic is intoxicating."

  "I think you mean tequila."

  "Funny you're not. I mean it. I get such a kick out of it, out of having that edge. And the Cabal magnifies that edge, especially here in Vegas."

  "So you made your decision? You want to join up?"

  Bill stared down at the tattoo. "I think maybe I already did. How about you?"

  "I thought we'd do this together." I wasn't really hurt, but I needed to give him a hard time about going ahead without me.

  "I'm sorry about that. I really am. I just got caught up in the moment."

  "Not such a big deal, brother."

  He chewed his bottom lip. "Honest? I decided during the Mojo Poker game last night."

  "And I'm just finding out now?"

  "I didn't want to influence you. I wanted you to make up your own mind. I – I want this, but I can see why you might not."

  "How's that?"

  He hesitated, then let out a deep sigh. "It's just – you've always been so much better at this than I am. It just comes to you, naturally. I have to work so much harder at it."

  "Really?" I said in mock offense. "That's why you had to pull a gun on me to get me to change the cards the other day?"

  "That's just it. If you had pulled that gun on me – if we'd swapped positions – I would be dead right now."

  "I wouldn't have done that to you."

  "You know what I mean. I didn't even have a bullet in that gun. I don't know how that thing got loaded."

  "I've been thinking about that," I said. "If you didn't put it in there physically, then one of us must have done it magically."

  "But I didn't!" Bill said. "I mean, if I had wanted to put a bullet in the gun, I'd have just not bothered to palm the bullet, right?"

  "I don't think you consciously did it, but there it was."

  "What about you? Maybe you did it."

  "You think I want to kill myself?"

  "Maybe not consciously."

  I was pretty sure I hadn't wanted to trick Bill into killing me. I've had my low moments, but that wasn't one of them – I didn't think.

  "Maybe I did, but you notice that the gun didn't go off until you threw it down?"

  "I don't think I'll ever forget it."

  "Maybe one of us put it in there as a warning – to make that little game seem that much more serious."

  "Then it had to be you," Bill said. "I could never pull something like that off. I don't have that kind of raw talent."

  "And I do?"

  "Yes! Just look at how much you've improved with the cards. There's no way I could ever get that much better at anything to do with magic that fast. Apply enough pressure to you, and you pull it out every time."

  "I'm just lucky," I said. "And lazy."

  "If you're lazy, it's because you can be. You've got a gift. I don't have that luxury."

  I winced at that.

  "Hey, I don't mean I'm jealous – well, not that jealous. Some people are just better at things than others." He stared down at his fresh tattoo. "I just mean that I don't know if you need the Cabal, but I do."

  "You can do just fine without them."

  Bill shook his head. "I hate to say this, but I've already learned just about everything I could from Ultman. I need the Cabal to help me get to the next level."

  After the chat we'd had with the professor the other day, I had to agree. The professor's lessons moved painfully slow. For a long time, I'd wondered if he'd been holding Bill and me back out of wise caution or because he'd run out of things to teach us. Now I was pretty sure it was the latter.

  Bill held up his arm. His rubber bracelet encircled his wrist.

  "How'd you manage that?" I asked. "I thought that would make your hand disappear."

  "That's just what I thought too," he said, "right up until I saw your dad turn his watchband inside out last night. That's when I realized I could do the same thing with my bracelet. Just turn it inside out, and it works like any regular bracelet."

  I stared at it. "Very cool. "

  "That's just what I'm talking about. That's the kind of thing that Ultman would never teach me but that I picked up just by hanging around here for one night. Just think how much more I can learn."

  I had to admit, I saw his point. I clapped Bill on the shoulder, the one without the tattoo. "It's all right, brother. I understand."

  He broke into a relieved grin. "I knew you would. Any idea what you're going to do? I'm sure they're going to push me to pressure you to join too. It would be great to have you along."

  I looked at the tattoo. "I don't know," I said. "I've had a great time too, but I need to talk to my dad. Man to man."

  "I think his wishes here are pretty clear. It's funny, though, that he's in but wants to keep you out."

  "He tried to explain that to me last night."

  "And?"

  "I think I need to get another opinion."

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I had a bunch of text messages, mostly from friends either back in New Orleans, stuck in school, or out on spring break somewhere else. I scrolled through them, and one name stuck out: Powi.

  I turned the phone to show Bill, and he gave me a noncommittal shrug. "What's she have to say?"

  I thumbed the message open. It read: "What the hell is wrong with you two? If you're still in town, we need to talk. NOW."

  "She sends her love," I said.

  "Right." He snorted. "Right back at her."

  I decided to skip the text back to Powi and just call her. She picked up after only one ring.

  "I already heard," she said. "How soon can you get to the Thunderbird?"

  "Give us ten minutes." I looked at Bill. "Make that twenty."

  "Meet me in front of the Sweat Lodge," she said. "Just go in the lobby then follow the wall to the right."

  She hung up before I could say good-bye.

  Bill jumped in the shower, and twenty minutes later we were hoofing it down the street to the Thunderbird, each munching on a Danish and slugging back some bad coffee as we went. We walked in through the front lobby, and a doorman directed us to the Sweat Lodge, which turned out to be a night club. At this time of day, it was closed, but Powi stood in front of it.

  As we approached, she raised the velvet rope strung across the doorway and shepherded us inside the darkened club. The decorator had tried to blend earthy Native American themes and colors with the sterile neon and glass of a Las Vegas night club with only minimal success. I guessed that when the lights were on and the music was playing and the place was packed with people it might look fantastic. It stood quiet and empty now, though, and it felt like we were walking into a cheap replica of a burial ground.

  "Did you tell anyone else you were coming here?" she asked.

  Bill and I shook our heads. She peered over our shoulders to see if anyone was following us. If they were, I knew it would be too late for us to do anything about it, but I neglected to point that out. She didn't seem like she was in the mood for any observations like that at the moment.

  "Good. Now keep your mouths shut and follow me."

  Powi guided us to a table in the back of what had to be the VIP lounge. A woman sat there waiting for us. She had long, white braids and brown, wrinkled skin that crinkled around dark eyes that seemed to have forgotten more things than I would ever see.

  Powi sat us down across the table from the old woman and said, "Jackson Wisdom and Bill Teach, I'd like you to meet my grandmother, Muatagoci Mamaci."

  "Call me Mamaci." Despite her years, her back was straight and her voice was strong, and she spoke with the assurance of someone who was habitually listened to by everyone around her. I decided to make a point of not being the exception.

  "Pleased to meet you," Bill said. I nodded in agreement.

  "I wish I could say the same," said Mamaci. "Powaqa here has told me of your troubles. Like her, I had hoped you had put this city far behind you, and I regret that your path has brought you back."

  "Actually, we never left," said Bill.

  "We tried," I said, "but Benito Gaviota stopped us and brought us back to Bootleggers."

  "And so you have already joined him," Mamaci said. She spoke as if the words tasted sour in her mouth.

  "No," I said. "They asked me to join them, but I'm still considering my options."

  "Then we are not entirely lost."

  Bill sucked at his teeth. "But we're not entirely found either," he said. "I officially joined them last night."

  Mamaci's eyes flew wide, and her lips drew back from her teeth in a pained rictus. She gripped the edge of the table before her so hard that her bony knuckles turned white. I thought she might spit in Bill's face, but she brought herself back under control.

  "What did they offer you?" she said. "What could make a young man like you take up with them? Power? Money?"

  Bill shrugged, as if to say, "If this loony old lady's going to hate me, I might has well enjoy it." He smirked. "Sure. That and the fact that they really know how to have a good time."

  Mamaci put her face in her long thin hands. "Such a fool," she said. "To have so little respect for yourself and your own power that you sell it to others for nothing more than fun."

  Bill turned to Powi. "I hate to say this, but your grandma's a real buzzkill."

  Powi slapped him. He rubbed his cheek and gave her a sadistic grin.

  "You don't get it," she said. "You have no idea what you've done to yourself. You and your friend here barge into town with an idiotic plan, and you have to learn the hard way that the promise of easy money is nothing more than a trap."

  "That makes him and everyone else in Vegas," I said. "Don't play so innocent. You work for a casino. You draw people in the same way and then suck them dry."

  Powi folded her arms across her chest. "Mamaci doesn't work for the casino. She built it for the Paiute chiefs. She runs it."

  "My people were here before the casinos came," Mamaci said. "We'll be here long after they're dust."

  "That's great," I said, "but can't we all just get along?"

  Mamaci pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at me. She stayed frozen like that for so long that I wondered if she'd had a seizure or a stroke. Then she opened her papery lips and spoke.

  "You have no idea what your Mr Weiss is up to, do you?"

  "He's working on cracking the secret of life so he can resurrect himself."

  The old woman nodded, impressed. "Very good, but do you know how he plans to go about that?"

  "I don't know if he knows yet. If he did, wouldn't he have already done it by now? He doesn't seem the sort to wait."

  Mamaci grunted. "Mr Weiss has been waiting for over seventy-three years. He can wait a little longer to make sure he gets everything right."

  I sat back in my chair and spread my arms wide. "So?" I said. "Enlighten us."

  "You may not be so glib once you know the truth," she said. "For that reason alone, I'll tell it to you."

  She leaned forward on the table, and her shoulders crept up around her ears like the crests of the wings of a gigantic vulture. "Have you ever read The Lord of the Rings?"

  Bill almost choked. I pounded him on the back until he was all right enough to push me away.

  "Sure," I said to Mamaci. "My father read The Hobbit to me when I was a kid. He got me hooked."

  "In the books, the dark lord Sauron puts a portion of his might into the rings of power. He gives them to others to corrupt them and put them under his sway. They make that trade for power, not understanding what they are giving up in return."

  "I said I read the books."

  "Why do you think he does that?"

  "He increases his power. Even the One Ring, which he keeps for himself, brings him more power because he can use it better when it's been forged into a tool."

  Mamaci smiled. "You are more clever than you appear."

  I wasn't sure if that felt like a compliment or not.

  "Are you saying that Harry Houdini has become the Sauron of Las Vegas?" Bill gaped at the old woman. "Respectfully, ma'am, you're out of your mind."

  "There are days I wish I was. It would be much easier to face."

  Bill stood up. "I don't have to sit here and listen to this."

  "Has he put his mark on you?" she asked. "Has he turned you into one of his tools of power?"

  Bill rubbed his arm where the tattoo of the ankh lay hidden under his jacket.

  Mamaci's gaze darted to his hand. "I see that he already has. Then for you, I'm afraid, it is too late."

  Four well-muscled men in black T-shirts and pants entered the VIP lounge. They stood like a solid wall between us and the only door.

  "We cannot let Mr Weiss utilize you," Mamaci said. "To keep that from happening, we must get rid of you."

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

 

I stood up between Bill and the Thunderbird thugs. "Hold on here," I said. "Let's not do anything stupid."

  "Your friend took care of that last night," Powi said. "It's bad enough that you didn't leave town, but to sign up with the Cabal?"

  "For that, you're going to run me out of town?" said Bill.

  Mamaci frowned. "No distance would prevent Weiss from finding you or using you. There is no escape from him, I'm afraid, but death."

  "You can't be serious," I said. "This is a joke, right?"

  "Grandma?" Powi gaped at Mamaci's pronouncement of Bill's death sentence.

  "I was right about you," Bill said to the old woman, his voice growing louder and higher as he spoke. "You're insane!"

  At a jerk of Mamaci's head toward Bill, the four men surged forward. I threw a punch at the first one of them, hoping to just buy Bill enough time to get away. It felt like hitting a wall.

  The man I'd struck grabbed me, knocked me down, and pinned me to the floor. Outside of a video, I'd never seen someone move so fast. He knocked the breath flat out of me, and I lay there, gasping for air as he sat on my chest.

  Bill turned and ran, trying to slip away through the back wall. He almost made it. One of the men tackled him to the ground, and he landed hard. Every part of him from his chest on up disappeared through the long couch sitting there, but Mamaci's man refused to let go. As he struggled with Bill, another of the men grabbed Bill's legs and hauled him back into the lounge.

  Bill's voice had been muffled by his head being inside the couch, but when it emerged, his screams echoed throughout the empty nightclub.

  "–ooo! Help! Jackson! Help meeee!"

  A third man stomped over and punched Bill in the face. That shut him up.

  "Grandma!" Powi said. "What are you doing?"

  The old woman pushed herself to her feet and stared down at Bill and me. "I'm sorry, Powaqa, but Mr Weiss has grown too powerful. We came here to stop him, and it is time we put that plan into action."

  "What plan? You want to kill everyone in the Cabal?"

  Mamaci did not answer. At a gesture from her, the men hauled Bill and me to our feet.

  The man holding me had an iron grip on my bicep so tight that it felt like he might rip my arm off if I tried to move away. I still had to gasp for air. It's amazing how not being able to breathe helps focus your attention on your most basic needs.

  Two of the men held up Bill while a third stood next to him, cracking his knuckles. Blood trickled from a cut on Bill's forehead. It ran down the side of his face and ran under his collar. He stared at Mamaci with glassy eyes. I wondered if he might have a concussion, but I realized that wouldn't matter much if they killed him.

  "The members of the Cabal are like Mr Weiss's rings of power. They amplify his might, but they are also his greatest weakness. Every one of them we destroy damages him too. With enough of them gone, he will finally be vulnerable, and we can put him back into the grave in which he belongs."

  "Can't you start with someone else?" I said. "Bill's not one of them really. He a poser. He just likes to talk tough."

  "Expose his right arm," Mamaci said to the brute not holding up either Bill or me.

  The man grabbed Bill's jacket and dug his fingers into its shoulder. With one vicious move, he tore the sleeve right off it. He did the same to Bill's shirt and tossed the fabric aside.

  The ankh tattoo encircling Bill's bicep glistened there on his arm as if it had just been drawn on his skin with fresh ink.

  "You bear the mark," Mamaci said. "Your fate is sealed."

  "Grandma! I would never have brought them over here if I thought it meant you would kill one of them. They're idiots, but that's not a capital crime."

  "Sometimes it is, Powaqa." The old woman had the grace to at least sound sad about it. "This is unfortunately one of those times."

  Mamaci glared at Bill with steely eyes. "With the proper ritual, we can take your power – and Mr Weiss's – for our own. At least in that way, your death will not be in vain."

  Bill brought his head back up, his eyes refocusing. "Houdini was right about you," he said. "You're just power-hungry bastards bent on taking a stab at destroying everything he's built."

  "From his point of view, I suppose there's some truth to that," Mamaci said. "But not from mine." She turned and strode out of the room.

  The men holding Bill dragged him right after her. I made a move toward the discarded scraps of Bill's clothing, but the guy with his hand on my arm hauled me back. "I just want to grab my friend's clothes," I said.

  "He won't be needing them," the man said.

  Powi scooped Bill's scrapped sleeves up and handed them to me. As she did, his bracelet – which was what I had been looking for – tumbled out. She stared at it for a half second, then snatched it up.

  She held it in her hand and stared at it. I put on my best poker face, hoping that the bracelet hadn't turned itself right-side out when it had been ripped off of Bill's arm. If not, there was a good chance she wouldn't recognize it for what it was.

  Powi dashed my hopes by peering through the center of the bracelet. She had to be able to see into the magic pocket that Bill had created inside of it.

  "Ah," she said. "Is this what you were looking for?"

  With a Mona Lisa smile, she reached out and handed the bracelet to me. I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding and hefted the bracelet in my hand. It felt like nothing. I stuffed it in my pocket with my free hand.

  "Thanks."

  "Powaqa!" Mamaci called from somewhere up ahead. "Don't dawdle!"

  The man holding me shoved me forward, and Powi followed right behind us. We laced our way through the empty club until we reached the service elevator in the back of the place. Mamaci stood there holding the door for us as we piled in next to Bill and the men holding him.

  The lone man not grabbing anyone took his thumb off the Open Door button and pressed the button marked Roof. I felt my ears pop as the elevator dragged us fifty stories into the air in under a minute. The doors opened, and we spilled straight out onto the Thunderbird's roof.

  I cringed like a vampire in the harsh midday sun. I blinked in pain until my eyes finally adjusted to the unforgiving brightness.

  The roof of the Thunderbird was flat, but someone had painted all sorts of different designs on it. Most of them seemed to have a Native American theme, but I didn't understand any of them – except for the big yellow H on which a private helicopter sat. It was painted a brilliant turquoise and had the casino's logo emblazoned on the sides.

  Mamaci led her procession around the helipad to a small geodesic dome that sat toward the back of the roof. It looked like an igloo or a wigwam made of layers of translucent plastic stretched over a steel frame of triangles only a few inches across.

  The free man went to the wigwam's hatch, which sat near the ground, and undid the steel latches on it. When he opened it, smoke came pouring out of it.

  "What the hell is that?" I said.

  "A smoke house," Powi said. She gave me a nervous glance, then looked away. "We sometimes use it to cure the meat of wild game we catch on native lands."

  A cruel smile curled at the corners of Mamaci's lips.

  The man stepped away from the hatch, then patted Bill down and turned out his pockets. He tossed aside Bill's phone, a few business cards with scribbled notes on them, some loose change, and a thick roll of cash. Then he jerked his head toward the dome, and the men holding Bill duck walked him over to it and tossed him inside.

  "This is how you're going to kill him?" Powi said. "By smoke inhalation?"

  Mamaci nodded. "That or the heat. The temperatures in there can reach two hundred degrees. It's like leaving a dog inside a car on a summer day."

  "No!" Bill screamed. Getting tossed into the smoky dome seemed to have revived him. Silent and beaten for the entire way up here, his survival instinct had kicked in. "Nooo!"

  The man who'd frisked Bill slammed the hatch shut and latched it.

  I reached into my pocket and felt the bracelet there. I started to pull it out when the man at the hatch turned and spotted me.

  "Stop him!" he said.

  The man holding me grabbed both of my arms in a viselike grip. I tried to wrench myself free, but he headbutted me in the back of my skull. Stars exploded in front of my eyes, and I felt myself pitch forward, dizzy on my feet.

  "Jackson!" Bill screamed. "Jacksooon!"

  I raised my head to see Bill's arms sticking out through two of the steel triangles. They were slicked with sweat. They pulled back and grabbed at the triangles. Bill's nose and mouth appeared at a triangle between and above them.

  "Help! Heeelllp!"

  A man strode forward and kicked Bill's face back into the dome. Then he stomped on his fingers until they disappeared too.

  One of the men pulled my hands out of my pockets and patted me down. They tossed my things out onto the roof.

  "What's that in his hand?" one of the men said.

  Someone snapped the bracelet from my fingers. "It's just one of those rubber bracelets," a man said. "You know, like that 'Livestrong' thing."

  "Or 'Wriststrong,'" another said with a laugh.

  "Let me see that," said Powi.

  "No!" I said. "It's mine!"

  One of the men punched me in the jaw and then the guts. I bent over and retched.

  Powi put her hand into the bracelet.

  "Ah," Mamaci said, impressed. "A spirit world pouch? Excellent work, Powaqa. Bring it here."

  Instead, Powi pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the man holding me.

  "Let him go," she said.

  Mamaci growled. "Powaqa! Such insolence! Put down that gun and bring the bracelet to me!"

  "You can't shoot me," the man holding me said. "You'll hit your little friend here."

  "Heeelp!" Bill screamed. He had shoved his face out through another part of the dome. "Jacks–!"

  A fit of coughing cut him off. I knew he wouldn't last much longer.

  I planted my feet on the ground and tried as hard as I could to break free of the man's grip. I stomped on his foot and came down on steel-toed boots. Nothing I could do would get me free.

  "Let him go!" Powi cocked the pistol. "Now!"

  "Granddaughter!" Mamaci said. "Give me that gun!"

  "Jackson!"

  "He's dying!" I said. "Do something! NOW!"

  Powi turned and fired a shot at the man nearest the hatch. The man holding me froze in surprise. I put everything I had left into one last try, and I wrenched myself away from him.

  I stumbled across the roof and landed on my hands and knees. Without pausing, I scrambled over to the smokehouse and fumbled with the latch.

  "Stop him!" Mamaci said.

  "Freeze, Walter!"

  Powi fired the pistol, and my captor – who'd been chasing after me – dove face-down onto the roof and covered his head with his hands.

  "Don't shoot, Powi!" he said.

  "Then don't move!" She waved her gun at the others, and they all put their hands up. "Andy, Robbie, and Danny! Go lie down next to Walter." The men moved to comply.

  "What in the names of all the spirits are you doing, Powaqa?" Mamaci said.

  "I've had enough, Grandma," Powi said. "These boys may be idiots, but they don't deserve to die for it."

  I got the latch open, and Bill tumbled out through the hatch. He hit the roof coughing and wheezing. He was sweaty and flushed, gasping for air, and his eyes were wide and bloodshot.

  "This is a war," Mamaci said to Powi. "There are going to be casualties. Would you rather have them on our side or theirs?"

  "I'd rather have none at all, Grandma."

  "Put down the gun, Powaqa. Right now!"

  "I am not a little girl, and I am not one of your goons."

  "Hey!" one of the men said.

  "Sorry, Walter, but that's what you are."

  "Powaqa. I understand why you're upset. This sickens me too, but Mr Weiss has backed us into a corner. We do not have any other choice."

  "You've told me that before, Grandma, and I believed you. Now I'm not so sure. Killing boys who make stupid decisions? Just because they wind up on the wrong side of the line? That's something Houdini would do. Not us."

  I hauled Bill to his feet and put his arm around my shoulders. Together we staggered toward the elevator, and I hit the call button. Bill wheezed the whole way, but he'd stopped trying to hack up his lungs. I had high hopes that he would be all right, especially if I could get him to a doctor or a healer fast.

  "Powaqa Annachiara Strega! We are done talking. Give Walter the gun and leave." If Mamaci had been able to manage it, I think fire would have shot out of her eyes right then.

  Powi backed toward Bill and me, keeping the pistol trained on the men on the ground.

  "She is not going to shoot you," Mamaci said to her men. "Get up and grab her!"

  Walter rose to his knees, and Powi put a bullet right over his head. He hit the roof again.

  "Stay down!" Powi said. "I'm not that good with this thing. I might hit you by accident."

  The men all tried to lie flatter. Mamaci snarled at them and stalked toward Powi. "This is ridiculous," she said. "You wouldn't dare to shoot me. You can't hurt me even if you did."

  "Don't make me try." Powi's voice shook but her hands stayed steady.

  The elevator dinged. The doors opened, and I hauled Bill in. "You staying or going?" I said to Powi.

  Mamaci strode up and grabbed Powi's wrist. "You have disobeyed me for the last time, Powaqa."

  Powi wrenched her arm free, and Mamaci tumbled backward onto her rump. "I wouldn't count on that, Grandma," Powi said as she joined Bill and me in the elevator and thumbed the button for the ground floor.

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

 

"Thank you," I said. "You didn't have to do that." Bill coughed in agreement.

  "Of course I did, dammit. I couldn't just let her kill you." Powi smacked her head against the elevator doors. "I am in sooo much trouble right now. I don't know if Grandma will ever have me back."

  "We haven't quite gotten out of here yet," I said. "Let's worry about that first."

  "Right. Right." Powi pressed the button for the fifth floor.

  "Why are we stopping there?"

  "I screwed up." Powi handed me Bill's bracelet. "If we just head back down to the club, Grandma will have a team of security guards waiting for us there. We have to find another way out."

  "Can you fly?" I asked.

  She goggled at me. "No, can you?"

  "I saw Houdini do it. I figured if you knew how to do that, we could just find a balcony and take off."

  "Not many magicians can fly. I've seen Grandma do it, but that's about it. Even so, she only does it at night. Too many cameras around in Vegas. During the day, she'd get caught."

  We reached the fifth floor, and the elevator doors opened. Powi stepped out, scanned the area, and then beckoned for us. Bill was still having trouble breathing, so I helped him out into the service hallway and leaned him up against a wall.

  "Can you help him?" I asked. "Like you did for me?"

  Powi squinted at him for a moment, then nodded. Without a word, she put one hand on his chest and another on his head. She closed her eyes and began to hum softly to herself.

  I couldn't see her glowing in the well-lit hall, but I could tell when Bill started to feel better. The red tint faded from his skin, and he began to breathe easier again. He closed his eyes too, and when he reopened them, they were as clear and sharp as ever.

  "I think you took away my hangover too," he said to Powi as she removed her hands and stepped back to examine her handiwork. "Thanks."

  She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. "Let's move," she said. "They'll be after us any second."

  She charged off without bothering to see if we'd follow, and we stuck as close to her as we could. She shoved her way through a doorway and into a long, curved hall lined with guest rooms. She sprinted along it at top speed, and Bill and I struggled to keep up with her.

  "Where are we going?" I asked.

  "Parking structure," she said. "We can't get out through the casino. They'll have every exit blocked for sure."

  When we reached the far end of the hall, Powi slipped through a glass door and snaked through a short corridor that emptied out into an open-air concrete

parking structure.

  "Don't they have cameras out here too?" I asked.

  "Not as many." She dashed down the ramp and into a concrete encased stairwell.

  We raced down the steps, pushing past a group of spring breakers coming up toward us. When we made it to the second-floor landing, we heard voices below.

  "Yes, ma'am!" a woman said. "We are in place and prepared for contact."

  Instead of continuing down, Powi yanked open the door and ushered us back into the parking ramp. "That was Lieutenant Nodda from security. She'll have a team of people helping her."

  "Can we just run past her?" I asked.

  "Only if you like getting Tased then pepper sprayed by a dozen people at once."

  "So that's a no," I said.

  "Can you two go stealth?" Powi asked. "Silent and invisible?"

  I glanced at Bill, who shook his head. I remembered the silenced pistol Gaviota had shot me with, but I hadn't thought yet about trying to duplicate the effect. "We've never tried," I said.

  She reached out. "Hold my hands," she said. "Normally I couldn't manage to affect so many people, but since you're magicians too, it might work."

  Bill and I complied, and Powi closed her eyes. Bill still seemed pretty shaken by nearly getting killed. I could see his hand shivering in Powi's grasp.

  The world grew dim around us, and everything went quiet, as if someone had stuffed plugs into my ears. I could still see Powi and Bill, but they looked blurry around the edges.

  Powi opened her eyes and nodded toward the stairwell. I reached out and opened the door, still holding onto her hand. It swung on its hinges without a sound.

  The three of us crept down the stairwell, me in front, Powi right behind me, and Bill in back. When we reached the ground floor, a woman in a dark suit and sunglasses blocked our way, an automatic pistol at the ready in her hand. A pair of security agents stood out on the ramp beyond her, scanning the area as intently as her.

  I looked back at the others and shrugged. I didn't see how we could get past her. Powi jerked her head around to suggest that I continue on down into the basement, so I pushed on in that direction.

  We emerged into a well-lit sublevel ramp packed with cars. Once we were in the open, Powi took the lead, dragging Bill and me along by her hands. She brought us deeper into the ramp until it came to a dead end in which stood a rusty steel door that had once been a brilliant green. A large steel bar had been padlocked across it.

  At that point, Bill yanked his hand away from Powi. He'd been trying to say something, but Powi's spell had silenced him.

  "This isn't going to work," he said. "We're trapped."

  Powi let go of my hand, and I immediately missed that sensation. "If you have any better ideas, feel free to share them," she said.

  Bill held out his hand to me. "Give me my bracelet. We'll get out our guns and shoot our way through them."

  Powi raised a hand to stop me. "No, we will not. Those guards are only doing their jobs."

  "Just like the ones upstairs?" Bill said, his voice trembling. "The ones who nearly killed me?"

  "That woman had a gun," I said. "Not a Taser. Not pepper spray. We go up there and start shooting, we could all end up dead."

  "We can make their bullets go away," Bill said. "They can't say that for themselves."

  "Can you honestly stop a barrage of bullets coming at you from three or four different directions at once?" said Powi. "If so, you're a far better magician than you seem."

  "Let's just go stealth and find another way out," I said.

  "Where?" said Bill. "How? This place is crawling with security. We should call Gaviota for help."

  He reached into his pocket and came up empty. "Shit. We left our phones on the roof – along with all our money!"

  "We left most of it back in the suite," I said.

  "You know what I mean. Dammit!"

  "Hey, you're still breathing," Powi said.

  Bill stuck out his hand at her. "Give me your phone."

  "So you can call the Cabal over here and get us caught in a full-scale battle? Forget it."

  He moved to grab her, and I stepped between them. "Come on, Bill," I said. "She's on our side."

  "She called us over here and then handed us to that witch!"

  Powi didn't back down an inch. "That's my grandma you're talking about."

  "Stop," I said. "Both of you. Bickering about this doesn't get us what we all want: out of here."

  "It's about as useful as anything else," Bill said. He fell silent for a moment. "I'm – I'm sorry. I just – let's get out of here, all right? Somehow?"

  "There aren't any cameras down here," Powi said. "That's why I brought us here. We could just wait them out here. Go stealth and sneak out later when their guard is down."

  "And what do we do if they sweep down here?" asked Bill.

  "Just go stealth until they leave."

  "Can other magicians see us then?" Bill asked. "Because I could see both of you just fine."

  "That's because you were part of the spell with us," Powi said. She grimaced. "If they sent a magician down here, though, she might spot us. Especially if she was a diviner like your dad."

  "Where's that lead?" I asked, pointing at the rusty door.

  Powi shrugged. "I don't know. I've never asked."

  "Can't hurt to try it," I said. "Right?"

  Bill shuddered. "I don't know, Jackson. That door's barred on this side. It looks like it's meant to force whatever's behind it to stay there."

  "All the more reason no one would look for us beyond it." I liked this idea more every moment I thought about it.

  Powi walked over to it and touched it with her fingers. She pressed her hand against it hard. "It's been treated to keep anything from phasing through it."

  I ignored Bill's sigh of relief and walked over to stand next to Powi. "The metal might be phase proofed," I said. "What about the wall next to it?"

  I pressed up against the cement wall, and my hand went right through it. I drew it back and looked at the others.

  Somewhere up the ramp, a woman was shouting orders. "Fan out! Search everything! A thousand-dollar bonus to whoever finds them!"

  "Come on," I said to Powi and Bill. "What do we have to lose? We get caught, they'll kill Bill for sure."

  "You don't have to come with me," Bill said. "I'll go – by myself. I'll be fine."

  He might have been a decent poker player, but away from the table and shook up like this he was a rotten liar. "Ain't no way you're leaving me behind, brother."

  I glanced at Powi, and she shook her head. "No way I'm going back right now. There can't be anything down there more frightening than Grandma."

  I pressed my hand through the wall, right where I'd done it before, and then I followed it through.

  On the other side, there was nothing but blackness. I could hear water dripping somewhere off in the distance, but otherwise the place I found myself in was as dark and silent as a tomb.

  Bill bumped into me from behind and stumbled forward to the ground. He knocked me forward a bit, but I kept on my feet. We both moved out a bit farther so that Powi wouldn't smack into us as well. I put my hands out in front of me and moved cautiously, afraid that every step might throw me into an unseen pit.

  As if confirming my fears, Powi came through and immediately tumbled forward into some sort of hole. I heard her squeal in fear and then smack into the ground not too far below.

  "Ow!" she said. "What the hell? Why didn't either one of your warn me about the drop?"

  "What drop?" I said.

  "The one Powi and I fell into," Bill said. His voice came from lower than I would have expected. "I would have twisted my ankle if I hadn't grabbed on to you as I fell."

  "Guess I missed it." Not wanting to find the drop-off the hard way, I froze. "Anyone got a light?"

  "I'd use my phone if I still had one," said Bill. "You got yours, Powi?"

  "Sure," she said, "but I have something far better than that."

  Something near her voice lit up, and the beam blinded me as my eyes adjusted to the brightness. As I blinked at the light, I saw that it projected from the palm of her hand. As she turned her hand, the beam of light moved with it.

  "Cool," said Bill. "How do you do that?"

  "Pick a sunny spot somewhere away from here and move the light from it over to your hand," she said. "Nothing to it."

  "Easy for you to say," Bill said.

  It didn't sound too hard in theory, so I decided to try it. I thought about the roof of the Thunderbird, right in the center of the helipad, and I imagined pressing my hand against its hot, gray surface. As I did, my hand started to glow.

  I pointed my palm away and swept my surroundings with it. We were in a long cement tunnel tall and wide enough that you could drive a truck through it. The floor sloped to a shallow trench in the center, through which a slow trickle of water flowed. Trash and debris of all sorts littered the place as far in either direction as my handlight's beam could reach.

  "Oh my god! Jackson!" said Bill.

  My handlight caught Bill staring up at me, and he winced at the sudden light. "What?" I said.

  "Look at you!" he said.

  "What?" I played the beam from my handlight on my arms, chest, and face. "Am I bleeding?"

  Powi turned her handlight on me and gasped. "No," she said. "You're flying."

  I looked down between my feet and saw four feet of nothing between me and the cement floor. I was so surprised I fell right out of the air.

  "Ouch!" I landed on my butt, hard.

  Powi and Bill gawked at me until I sat up and said, "I had no idea."

  Then they started laughing. They cackled until tears rolled down their cheeks.

  "I've never seen anything so funny in my life," Powi said. "You just hung there in the air like Wile E. Coyote!"

  "Until he looked down!" Bill said once he could catch his breath. "Priceless!"

  "Real funny," I said as I got to my feet. Despite the growing bruise on my backside, I couldn't help but smile.

  Then someone started pounding on the other side of the rusty door. A short set of cement stairs led right up to it, which we'd missed entirely by cutting around the doorway. The door vibrated from the blows, and the thumping echoed down the tunnel in both directions.

  "Someone's down there," a voice on the other side of the door said. "Get a set of keys over here, now!"

  Bill, Powi, and I turned and ran.

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

 

"This sucks in so many ways I've lost count," Bill said as we raced down the storm tunnel.

  Far behind us, the door opened. "There!" someone shouted.

  Gunfire cracked the stillness of the tunnels. I heard the bullets ricochet off the walls and ceiling and sail past us.

  "Put out the lights!" Bill said. "They're shooting at the lights!"

  "But then we won't be able to see," I said. I held my handlight in front of my body to try to shield the light from the people shooting at us. In this otherwise pitchdark tunnel, though, it didn't take much at all for them to see the glow of the light reflecting off the cement around us, and they kept firing.

  "Over there!" Powi said. Her handlight played on a series of wide rectangular holes cut into the bottom of the right wall. She focused on one of them, and Bill ducked through it. I chased after him, and she followed behind us.

  "They cut parallel tunnels in case one of them gets clogged," I said. "These holes let the water flow between them when that happens."

  "How do you know stuff like that?" Powi asked.

  "If you were living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, you might develop an interest in how places get rid of excess water too."

  "Shh!" Bill said. "Let's not let them track us by sound instead of light – and let's get the hell out of here either way."

  I spotted another set of crossflow holes and led the others through them. "Where does this go?" I whispered to Powi.

  She shrugged as we trotted down the new tunnel. "There's a whole network of these under the city to deal with flash floods. We could wind up anywhere."

  "Just keep moving, dammit," Bill said. "We'll figure out where we are when we get there."

  I pulled Bill's bracelet out of my pocket and handed it to him. He hauled a pistol out of it.

  "Still got that silenced one?" I asked. The tunnel forked in front of us, and Powi led us into the one that bent to the right.

  Bill yanked that gun out of the bracelet too and handed it to me. Then he turned the bracelet inside out and slid it over his wrist.

  "Do you really need those?" Powi asked.

  "You've got one." Bill nodded at the gun she still toted in her hand. "And people are shooting at us. I think it's time."

  I checked the action on Gaviota's gun and chambered a bullet. I didn't want to shoot anyone, but I wanted to be shot even less.

  We wound our way through the tunnels, taking turns whenever we could. At one point, sunlight streamed through a large grate high over our heads, and I could hear the steady thrum of traffic. I called a halt there.

  "I think we've lost them," I said.

  "Don't bet on it," said Powi. "Grandma's tenacious. She'll find us eventually."

  Her phone beeped. "Voice mail," she said, pulling it out of her pocket. "It's from Grandma."

  Bill groaned. "I'm sure it says, 'Come home with the heads of those boys, honey, and all is forgiven.'"

  She ignored him and listened to the message. She gasped in horror, then hit the speakerphone button and replayed it. "You're going to want to hear this."

  Mamaci's voice played over the tinny speaker, echoing in the tunnel. "Powaqa. Mr Weiss detected our attempt to sacrifice his pawn, and he has decided to launch his scheme now rather than wait for us to try to stop him again. The battle has begun, and we must launch our final assault tonight."

  The old woman's voice broke as she swallowed her pride. "Please leave those boys and come back to take your place at my side. In the face of this threat, all is forgiven. I need you, Powaqa. We must face Mr Weiss as one, with everything we have, or he will destroy us."

  Mamaci sighed. "I only hope you get this message in time. Come home. Please."

  Tears streamed down Powi's face as she broke the connection. "I did everything I could for you two. I have to go back to her. Now."

  "After what she did?" Bill was ready to say more, but I shushed him with a savage glare.

  I put my arm around Powi, and she leaned into it. "You did more for us than we deserved. We'll get you back to her." I looked up at the sunlight streaming through the grate high above us. "Just as soon as we figure out how to get out of here."

  Bill growled and threw up his hands. "All right," he said. "I think you're nuts to go back to that woman, but I'm not ungrateful for how you saved my life. We'll get you home – and then I'm going back to Bootleggers to fight for the other side."

  Powi gave me a sidelong hug and then pushed away. "Whatever," she said to Bill as she stared all around. "After all those turns, I don't have any idea where we are anyhow."

  "You got GPS on that thing?" I pointed at her phone.

  She shook her head. "I live here. I know the city. Why would I need directions?"

  "Every cell phone has GPS. You just need the right program to use it. Let me see it."

  She handed her phone to me, and I was able to get a good enough connection to download a GPS program and figure out where we were. "Right next to the Wynn golf course," I said.

  "So where do we go from here?" she asked.

  I pointed in the direction we'd been heading. "We got turned around. That's north, which is the way to the Thunderbird, but there's no guarantee we can get there from here. They don't have maps of the storm sewers on this thing."

  "Let's give it a shot anyhow," Bill said. "It's the right direction at least, even if it does mean heading straight back toward the people who were shooting at us."

  "I'm sure Grandma has ordered them all back to the Thunderbird by now to help prepare for the assault," Powi said.

  "Sure," I said. "If they can get a signal down here. I think the only reason we got one now is because we're standing under that grate. As soon as we move on, it's going to go away."

  "Then let's move. If we spot a way to the surface, we take it."

  Bill stared up at the grate. "Think you could fly up there?" he said. He wasn't looking at me, but I knew who he meant.

  "I wasn't exactly flying before," I said. "And it happened by accident."

  "All the best things do."

  I stared up at the grate and imagined myself lifting up into the air. I closed my eyes and concentrated on it as hard as I could. Having to shut out the sounds of the sewer and ignore the fact that Bill and Powi were counting on me didn't help me any. Nor did the fact that I didn't know what I'd do once I got up to the grate if I could manage it. I didn't think I could push up on it without any leverage at all – but that was the rational part of my brain talking to me, not my mojo.

  I kept at it until sweat poured down my face, but I hadn't bumped my head on the top of the tunnel yet. I opened my eyes to glance down and saw that I'd made it about two feet off the ground. This was two feet higher than I'd ever willingly made it before, but it wasn't nearly enough.

  I was about to give up when I spotted the first one of them behind Bill and Powi.

  I think I smelled it before that but had just chalked up the stench of rotting flesh to the fact I was walking through a storm sewer. Things probably crawled in here to die all the time, and I didn't want to have to think about them much further than that. The thing shambling up behind my friends, though, wasn't the decaying corpse of a raccoon or cat.

  It was human – or had once been. Its flesh had mostly fallen from its face, but it still wore a blue-haired wig and a once-pink track suit. I had no idea how long the woman had been dead, but she should have been rotting away in a grave instead of roaming around the storm sewers.

  I admit it, I screamed in sheer terror. I dropped to the ground and landed on stiff legs. Before I even knew what I was doing, I brought up my silenced pistol and pumped three shots between Bill and Powi. The slugs smacked into the shuffling corpse and drove it back.

  Bill dove to the side to get out of my way. Powi, stone faced and cool, swung around and spotted the skull-faced creature collecting itself for another charge. She aimed her gun and put a bullet right through the thing's skull.

  "A zombie?" Bill held his gun before him in a twofisted grip. His hands shook so badly I thought the pistol might go off without him pulling the trigger. "You cannot be serious!"

  "Shh," I said.

  "Don't shush me!" Bill said, growing more hysterical with every word. "We're lost here in this labyrinth of tunnels snaking under Las Vegas, while open war between magicians is breaking out above us – and we just got attacked by a zombie!"

  "Shut up," said Powi.

  "It's not fair!" said Bill. "It's just not fair!"

  "Shut up!" Powi and I said in unison.

  Bill closed his mouth and glared at us.

  "What's the first thing you learn about in zombie movies?" I asked.

  "Shoot them in the head?" Powi said.

  I ignored her smug tone. "No," I said. "It's that there's never just one."

  Bill started to moan, but I cut him off with a hiss. "So shut up," I said, "and listen."

  "Where the hell did they come from?" Bill whispered. "Walking dead don't just come to Vegas for a convention. Do they?"

  "Houdini's dead," I said. "So were Gaviota's bodyguards."

  "You work for a man with undead bodyguards?" Powi said to Bill. "And zombies surprise you?"

  I shushed them again, and they fell silent. I listened as hard as I could, and I heard something moving out there in the inky blackness. I tried to dismiss the noises as the sound of the wind blowing through the tunnel or the traffic zooming by overhead, but now I could not mistake them as anything other than the limping footsteps of a small army of the dead shambling toward us.

  Using one hand to keep my gun trained into the darkness before me, I opened my free hand and let a bright beam of light shine out of it, past the fallen corpse. Powi did the same thing, but in the other direction.

  "Anything back there?" I asked.

  "I see three, maybe four sets of eyes coming at us," she said. "How about you?"

  Bill started in with a low moan. I wanted to elbow him into silence, but I just couldn't blame him.

  "We got more like a dozen over here," Bill said, "and much closer."

  I stared at the zombies. I didn't want to, but I couldn't take my eyes off them. They looked like they'd come from every walk of life. Some of them wore business suits. Others shuffled along in vacation clothes. A pair of young ladies wore little enough to make me think they must have once been either cocktail waitresses or strippers. Three looked like they had once been dealers.

  "Time to make all those hours we spent playing Left 4 Dead pay off," I said.

  "We can't shoot them all," Powi said. "We don't have enough bullets."

  "I have extra ammo in my bracelet," Bill said. A note of hope crept into his voice.

  "For all three guns? Or just yours?"

  "Shit."

  One of the zombies – a man dressed like Fat Elvis – broke free from the pack and charged us at top speed. I aimed at its head, squeezed off a single shot, and missed.

  Bill opened up at the thing and emptied his revolver. One of the shots blew off its head, but Bill kept pulling the trigger on three more empty chambers.

  "Reload!" I said.

  "There are only four to the north," Powi said. "I say we break through them and keep running."

  Bill flipped open his revolver's cylinder and started shoving bullets into it. "Just give me another three seconds," he said.

  "Hustle it up, brother," I said. "Not all these things move that slow."

  "Couldn't we just phase through them?" he asked.

  "Didn't work with Houdini's bodyguards, did it?" I said.

  He dropped a bullet. It bounced on the cement, and he scrabbled after it. "Stop being so right."

  Two of the creatures to the north sprinted toward us, screaming as they came. I spun around and helped Powi shoot them down.

  "Take the right!" she said. She pumped a single shot into the ex-high roller coming at her, and he crumpled to the ground. I had to use two bullets to drop a woman wearing what was left of a little black dress. That only left two zombies in front of us and maybe still a dozen of them behind.

  Bill slapped the reloaded cylinder back into his pistol. "Ready!" he shouted. "Let's go!"

  Bill, Powi, and I charged toward the two zombies in our path, an older couple who'd maybe been in their sixties when they'd died. They'd probably come here on a vacation, maybe to celebrate their retirement. They figured they'd play the slots, perhaps some Blackjack, grab a decent meal or three, maybe take in a show. Instead, they'd died, and their bodies had wound up strolling through the network of storm sewers that riddled this desert oasis.

  I don't remember who shot who. I fired at the woman, who was right in front of me. Powi probably aimed at the man. Bill blew through all the bullets in his gun again, spraying them both.

  They went down. I did my best not to step on the couple's shattered bodies as we stormed past them.

  The zombies behind us howled in frustration or anger or maybe just insatiable hunger for the prey that was racing away. They started to sprint after us as fast as their warped but tireless gaits would carry them, and we ran into the darkness for our lives.

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

 

"They're still coming after us," Bill said. "Keep running!"

  "Eventually they're going to catch us if we don't find some way out of here," Powi said. "The dead don't get tired."

  I glanced down at Powi's phone, which I still had in my hand. "No signal down here," I said. "Just keep going."

  "We could be running right into more of them," Bill said.

  "Are you suggesting we stop?" asked Powi.

  Bill glanced back at the snarling mass of zombies chasing us. "No!" he said. "But I had a long night. I can't keep running like this for ever."

  Powi sprinted out into the lead.

  "Hey!" Bill said. "Wait for us!"

  She didn't respond.

  "What's that old joke?" I said. "Two friends meet up with a bear in the woods. One friend stops to put on running shoes."

  "Right," said Bill. "'Those shoes won't help you outrun the bear.'"

  "'I don't have to outrun the bear, just you.'"

  Panting hard, Bill managed a bitter laugh. "Not so funny when you're the one left behind."

  I grabbed his arm and pulled. "Come on. Let's catch her."

  Up ahead, Powi skidded to a halt and raced up a short set of stairs, much like the ones that had led down from the parking structure under the Thunderbird. She started pounding on the door. "Help!" she shouted. "Help!"

  "Just phase through the door!" I shouted.

  I yanked on Bill's arm and dragged him into a last desperate sprint that put a bit more distance between the zombies and us. When we reached Powi, she was still banging on the door with her fists.

  "I can't get through the door, and we don't know what's on the other side of that wall," she said. "It might be nothing but dirt, and then we'd be trapped inside it."

  "Better trapped than torn to pieces," Bill said as he made for the wall. He bounced right back off it.

  "What the hell?" he said as he rubbed his head where he'd banged it. "I can't get through either. Damned wall!"

  "Then we'd better start running again," I said, "because here they come."

  Before Powi could even get down off the steps, the door she'd been banging on swung open, and a blinding light spilled into the tunnel through it. A man stood framed in the doorway, and he called out to us. "Then get your asses in here!"

  Powi hesitated, but Bill shoved past her and the man to dive across the threshold. I came up behind her and escorted her though right after Bill. As soon as we were clear of the doorway, the man slammed the door shut.

  He slapped a bar across the door and then clamped it down on both ends. The zombies smashed into the door, pounding on its rusty steel harder than any living creature could manage without the fear of fracturing a bone. One started in, then another. Soon I couldn't tell how many fists were beating on it, and the noise sounded like thunder.

  We were in a large room about the size of the common space in the suite that Bill and I had at Bootleggers. It seemed more like a bomb shelter than a home, but one that someone had lived in for years if not decades. A pair of couches sprawled in the middle of it, cutting off the main section of the room from a sleeping area. A TV sat in front of a chair near the couches, atop a workbench littered with papers and pens.

  With the exception of the couch and chairs and a great deal of trash, everything in the room was at least three feet off the floor. This included the bed in the back corner, which sat atop a loft, the kind that Bill and I had set up in our dorm room. The floor bore water stains, and the high-water mark in the room came up to just under that three-foot level at which everything important sat over.

  Satisfied that the door would hold, the man turned to scowl at us. He was tall and thin, but with the shoulders of a weight lifter. His hair and beard were long, scraggly, and gray, and he smelled as if he'd not bathed since the last time the waters rose in the storm sewers. He stood dressed in black slacks and a sleeveless undershirt that had no doubt once been white.

  "What the hell are you doing down here?" he asked, his voice as gritty and low as his home.

  "Escaping," I said.

  "Then you're doing a damned rotten job of it."

  "We got chased out of the Thunderbird," Bill said. "The zombies came later."

  "I'd wondered where they'd wandered off to," the man said as he lumbered over to sit on the chair in front of the TV. "It got quiet around here."

  "Are they yours?" asked Powi.

  He snorted. "Hardly. Does the wolf that comes sniffing around your door belong to you?"

  "Maybe if you feed it," I said.

  "That, young sir, is one thing that I take care never to do."

  "Is there another way out of here?" Powi said. "I need to get back to the Thunderbird."

  "I thought you said you just escaped from there."

  "She's going that way," Bill said. "I'm heading for Bootleggers."

  "Ah." The man arched an eyebrow at us. "So it's begun."

  "What?" I said. "What's begun?"

  "All right." The man waved me off. "So it's more like 'started up again' than 'begun,' but it's all the same thing. War between wizards, right?"

  I'm sure Bill and Powi had the same question on their minds, but I was the first to voice it. "Who are you?"

  The man chuckled. "Nobody important. Not anymore."

  "Prospero." Powi kept her voice soft and low, but I still heard her over the pounding of the zombies. "You're Prospero, aren't you?"

  "I have been known to answer to that name," the man said.

  I checked the GPS on Powi's phone and was surprised to find it worked. "We're underneath what used to be the Frontier."

  "That's just an empty lot now," Powi said. "Nothing but dirt."

  "It wasn't always that way," Prospero said. "For decades, it was one of the finest joints in the entire city, but time passed it by – much like it has me."

  "How long have you been down here?"

  Prospero tugged at his beard. "Since 1992, I think." He saw us gawking at him. "Why? What year is it now?"

  "It's 2010," I said. "You've been down here since the year I was born."

  "Ah." He smiled. "I suppose that seems like a long time to you. From my point of view, it's not so much. And I haven't been down here the whole time. I come up for supplies from time to time."

  "Either way," Bill said, "we need to get out of here. Now."

  "What's the rush?" Prospero said. "It's safe down here, and we have everything we need. Wait out that war. Far better to hunker down here than be killed up there."

  "That's a coward's way of looking at it," said Powi.

  Prospero's smile faded. "And who are you to call me a coward?

  Powi stuck out her chin and put her hands on her waist. "Powaqa Strega."

  "Ah. I knew your parents. They were as brave as you are, and they paid for that with their lives."

  Powi softened for an instant at the mention of her parents, but she stiffened the moment Prospero spoke of their demise. "I'd rather die out there than live down here like a rat in a cage."

  "Of course you would, but how about your friends? Maybe they're not so eager to march to their deaths." He pointed at Bill. "You're going to fight for the Cabal? And yet you're here with her? I'm surprised one of you isn't dead already."

  "I just joined yesterday."

  "That is an epic case of poor timing, my boy. Do you yet bear the mark?"

  Bill had been keeping his exposed arm away from Prospero, but now he turned it in that direction, putting his fresh tattoo on display.

  "Ah." Prospero grimaced. "Then for you it may already be too late. Has it started to burn?"

  Bill rubbed the ankh and nodded. "I thought it was just getting itchy because it was beginning to heal."

  Prospero shook his head. "That mark is no ordinary tattoo. It will never heal, and its ink will never fade."

  The man sat up and swung back his long hair, pushing his own shoulder into the light cast by the task lamp clamped over his workbench. An ankh sat on the middle of it, as dark and sleek as the identical one on Bill's arm."

  "You don't have a circle around your arm though," I said.

  "Good eye, my boy," Prospero said. "That's because I made my mark myself. I refused to let anyone bind me to him in the process."

  "By anyone, you mean Houdini."

  "Of course. No one else but Harry and I know how to make it. I came up with the magic behind the mark, and he thought of the cuff. I should have used it to bind him to me back then. Then we wouldn't have any of this nonsense."

  Powi, Bill, and I glanced at each other. "You came up with the mark?" I said.

  "Of course I did," said Prospero. "How do you think I've lived so long?"

  "It – it makes you immortal?" asked Bill.

  "Well, of course it does." Prospero glared at Bill. "That's the deal: live for ever but be bound to the Cabal for that entire time. Don't they bother to tell you anything when you get it?"

  Powi and I stared at Bill. He gave us a sheepish shrug. "I was pretty drunk."

  "So you live for ever?" Powi asked, her tone dripping with skepticism. "How old are you?"

  "Hold on." Prospero rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as he ran the math. "Yes. That's right. I'll be one hundred and thirty-four years old this week."

  "You don't look a day over one hundred," Powi said. "But that's hardly for ever."

  "Granted," Prospero said with a dismissive wave. "Time will put this to the true test, but so far it's worked all right."

  "Who are you?" I asked. "I mean, really. Your real name. Not the one you stole from The Tempest."

  Prospero squinted at me. "Now that's a loaded question, my boy. I do hope you're not one of those magicians who goes prattling on about the power you can have over someone if only you can learn his true name. You should know by now that's a load of hogwash."

  "I just like to know who I'm talking to."

  "Fair enough," he said. "I was born Ferencz Dezco Weisz, in Budapest, Hungary. We moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, when I was but two years old. I took on the name Theodore Weiss in our new home. My family called me either Theo or Dash, but when I grew up and took to the stage, I was known as Theodore Hardeen."

  My breath almost caught in my throat, but I managed to croak out, "You're Houdini's little brother."

  He stood and bowed. "In the still-living flesh. But I don't think I got your name yet either, my boy. Fair's fair."

  "Wisdom," I said. "Jackson Wisdom."

  Hardeen narrowed his eyes at me. "You wouldn't happen to be related to Luke Wisdom."

  "I'm his son."

  A wide grin burst through his beard, and he stuck out a delicate hand. "My boy. You don't know how good it is to meet you. How is your father?"

  I shook his hand. Despite how grizzled he appeared, his hands were warm and soft. "He's – he works for your brother."

  "Oh." The grin disappeared. "Then things must have become very dire indeed. I had hoped that Luke would never return to Las Vegas again."

  "He came back here after my mother died. He wanted to work with Houdini to bring her back to life."

  "After they figured out the same for Harry, of course. It's one thing to keep someone alive, but another thing entirely to bring them back from the dead – especially when they've been gone as long as he has."

  "But not impossible?"

  "You can't create something out of nothing. If the spark of life is gone, we mere mortals cannot reignite it."

  "What about those zombies?" asked Bill.

  "Those are the results of Harry's failed experiments. He dumps them in the storm tunnels here to keep others out – and to keep me in."

  "Then what's with Houdini?" I said. "He's a lot more articulate than any of those zombies."

  "Can't say the same for his bodyguards though," said Bill.

  "I'm the one who brought him back to the land of the living," Hardeen said. "It was the hardest bit of magic I'd ever done, and I couldn't have managed it without his help."

  "He reached out to you from beyond the grave?" Bill said.

  "No. He and I worked on a lot of these theories before he died. We even worked out the secret of the ankhs and applied them to ourselves. While the ankh might keep you from dying, it doesn't stop you from getting killed. If he hadn't already had an ankh on him, though, there's no way I would have been able to bring him back to his current semblance of life."

  "And now he wants to finish what you two started," I said.

  "That's what we both wanted at first. But that was back in the days when we both got along. When we realized what it would take to bring him back to life, I balked, but he decided to press on. That's what finally drove the wedge between us."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" asked Bill. "What price would be too high to bring your brother back?" He looked at me. "Or to have your mother back, Jackson? Did they want you to eat babies?"

  "Much worse than that, I fear." Hardeen didn't want to meet our eyes. "The wall between this life and the next has proven impenetrable. To remedy that, Harry plans to destroy that barrier."

  Powi, Bill, and I stared at Hardeen.

  "And – and what happens then?" I asked.

  "Are you God-fearing folks?" Hardeen said.

We all shook our heads.

  "Well, if Harry manages to break down that wall, I suspect you will be."

 
 

CHAPTER THIRTY

 

Bill cried out in agony. He clutched at his arm as he fell over into one of Hardeen's musty couches.

  "What is it?" I rushed over to him. He had turned pale and clammy. His teeth were clamped together too tight for him to do anything other than growl in pain.

  I pulled his hand off his arm so I could get a look at it. The skin under and around the band of his tattoo had grown an angry red, and it was spreading.

  "Oh, no," Powi said. "I've heard about this before."

  Hardeen grunted. "That's what it looks like when Harry decides to drain one of his people dry. He steals all of their magical energy."

  "Is that fatal?" I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.

  "Life is magic. Magic is life," said Hardeen. "You can't separate them. You lose one, you lose the other too."

  "I thought Houdini could only do this with people in the same room with him though," said Powi. She glanced around the bunker, suspicious. "He's not here is he? Or are you doing this?"

  "It's not me," Hardeen said. "Now that the Indian shamans have finally decided to launch their assault against Harry, my guess is that he's decided it's time to put his ultimate plan into action. Otherwise, he risks losing everything."

  "What does that have to do with what's happening to Bill?" I asked.

  "Harry needs as much magical energy as he can control to pull off a feat of this magnitude. To get that, he'll have to drain every one in the Cabal at once. It makes him both incredibly vulnerable and monumentally dangerous at the same time."

  Powi nodded. "He won't have anyone to protect him, but he probably won't need it."

  "He's going to kill everyone who works for him? At once?" I said. "Bill? Dad too?"

  "If he's working for Harry, I'd bet on it," said Hardeen.

  "How can we stop him?"

  "My guess is that you can't. Once Armageddon starts, there's no stopping it."

  Powi and I gaped at him. Bill rolled on the couch and groaned in heartbreaking agony. Somewhere in Las Vegas, my father – and all the people I'd met in the magician's lounge – were probably doing the same.

  "You can stay here with me if you like," Hardeen said. "It's not much, but we can probably hole up here indefinitely. I can even show you how to put the ankhs on yourselves."

  I rushed Hardeen, grabbed him by the front of his greasy shirt, and shoved him up against his worktable. "That is not an option," I said through gritted teeth. "You're going to get us out of here, and we're going to stop that bastard or die trying."

  He smiled up at me. "Death it is then. There's no stopping Harry. He'll kill us all for sure."

  "And then he'll break down the barrier between this world and the next, and we'll come back and try it again," Powi said. "What do we have to lose?"

  I pushed myself away from Hardeen and gave Powi a high five that pulled us into a hug. We looked at each other, scared as hell, and smiled. "I like the way you think," I said.

  Bill bellowed in pain, and I turned toward Hardeen again. "Just get us out of here then," I said. "If the rest of the Cabal is in the same kind of shape as Bill, we should be able to just walk into Houdini's home and put a bullet in his head."

  "It's not that simple," said Hardeen. "It never is. Even without his magicians, Harry commands a good-sized army of well-trained, fully armed security guards."

  "I have just the thing for them," I said. "How many of those zombies are out there anyhow?"

  Hardeen goggled at me while he worked out what I meant. The pounding on the door outside of the bunker hadn't slowed down one bit. Then he hazarded a small smile. "Maybe just enough."

  Powi stared up at the ceiling. "We can't just run out past them though," she said. "They'll catch us for sure."

  "There's a back door right there," Hardeen said. "Straight back beyond the bed. It opens onto a stairwell that ends in a steel shack on the edge of the empty lot up above us. From there, it's a straight shot to Bootleggers."

  "Right down one of the busiest streets in Las Vegas." Powi put her head in her hands. "But I don't have any better ideas."

  "We need to keep them as focused on us as we can," I said. "Hopefully everyone else will get out of their way."

  "What about Bill?" Powi said. "We can't just leave him here. They'll kill him for sure."

  "Of course you can," said Hardeen. "That will give us the head start we need."

  "Forget it," I said. "We're not leaving him behind. I'll carry him the whole way if I have to."

  "Wait," Powi said. "'We'? Are you coming with us?"

  Hardeen smiled. "I can't very well stay here while you lead a horde of zombies through, can I?"

  "Does that mean you're going to help us?"

  Hardeen's smile morphed into a grimace. "I'm responsible – at least in part – for what Harry's become. At this point, I don't know that all the magicians in the world banded together could hope to stop him. But I've had a long, miserable life, and I gave up on hope long ago anyhow, so I don't see why that should stop me."

  "That's great," I said, "but I'm still not leaving Bill behind."

  "If you insist." Hardeen sighed. "Come upstairs with me. I have something that should make the journey a little easier."

  I hauled Bill to his feet. While Powi held him steady, I bent down to grab him around the waist. With a grunt, I threw him back over my shoulder and then stood up. "Let's go," I said to Hardeen.

  He led us through the debris in his sleeping area and unbolted and unbarred another steel door for us. He brought us up the stairwell beyond and opened an aluminum hatch that capped it. That brought us into a small, sweltering shed made of corrugated steel. He opened its lone door, and we emerged into the dying rays of the Las Vegas day.

  The sun had already set behind the mountains, leaving the sky a bright but darkening blue. A few stars shone in the eastern sky, chasing growing streaks of orange and purple across the cloudless expanse.

  "Here you go." Hardeen pushed a shopping cart over to me. "Put him in here."

  "You have to be kidding me." I said.

  "I had a bellhop's cart up here for a while," he said. "But some college kids absconded with it."

  I looked north up the Strip toward Bootleggers. To get there, we'd have to cross a major road, then hoof it past Revolutions and Circus Circus before we reached Bootleggers.

  "How are we going to clear the sidewalk between here and there," I asked.

  "What time is it?" Hardeen asked.

  "Almost six o'clock," I said.

  "Then hurry along, but leave the clearing of the street to me," Hardeen said. "Go down there, and open the lower door. The trick will be not getting so far ahead of the creatures that they decide to wander off after easier prey."

  "But not so close that they catch you," said Powi. "I'll go open the door," she said to me. "You push Bill."

  "No," I said. "I'm faster than you. We proved that in the tunnels. I should do it."

  "What are you talking about? I outran you."

  "Only when I was helping along Bill."

  She screwed up her face at me.

  "Look," I said, "you probably know this street better than any of us. I need you out there looking after Bill. If I push him in the cart, I'm liable to run into a car or a curb, and then we'll both be dead. If you take care of him, we have a chance."

  "All right," she said. "Just as long as you don't go around saying you're faster than me."

  "As you wish."

  "Is that some kind of Princess Bride reference?" she asked.

  I felt my cheeks redden. She leaned over and kissed me on the lips. "You're too cute," she said.

  My heart beat faster, and it was only partly because of the pack of zombies I was about to let loose. "I better go do this before I lose my nerve," I said.

  She kissed me again, longer. "For luck," she said.

  "A Star Wars quote," I said. "Better yet."

  She winked at me, and I ducked into the shed, ready to dare anything.

  "Give us a thirty-second head start," Hardeen called after me. "That should be enough."

  I started counting out to thirty in my head as I made my way toward the still-locked door. The zombies on the other side had not stopped pounding on it for an instant. I wondered if they somehow knew what Houdini was up to. Had his experiments that put them on the fence between life and death made them sensitive to the fact he was about to bring that barrier down?

  I decided it didn't make any difference. I undid the clamps on the bar and stood back. I considered just leaving then and hoping that the zombies would be able to knock the bar loose in time, but there was the chance that they might never pull that off.

  I grabbed a stick from underneath Hardeen's workbench and reached out to place the tip of it right under the bar. I held my breath, then flicked the pole up to knock the bar off the door. It burst open under the pressure of a dozen sets of dead hands shoving at it, and the zombies attached to those hands poured into the room, pulling themselves over their fallen fellows to come after me.

  I turned and ran.

  I made it up the stairs so fast I can't swear my feet actually touched the steps. I threw myself out of the shed and spotted Powi and Hardeen sprinting up the street toward Bootleggers, the shopping cart with Bill in it racing before them.

  Hardeen had thrown his hands in the air and was shouting at the people between him and his brother. "Run!" he bellowed. "Run! The gates of Hell have been flung open, and Armageddon is here!"

  Most of the people on the streets of Las Vegas had seen someone like Hardeen before, I'm sure: a ratty gray-haired madman screeching about the End Times. But I'd bet that none of those other nutjobs had come complete with his own personal Apocalypse.

  The air before Hardeen warped with huge gouts of fire that soared fifty feet over his head. Even from as far behind them as I was, I could feel the scorching heat and hear the terrifying crackling of the blaze.

  Traffic on the street screeched to a halt. Some of the cars pulled U-turns and squealed away. Others that were already heading in the right direction zoomed off at top speed.

  The people on the streets screamed and ran. Some of them raced into Revolutions or the Riviera, while others just sprinted away down the street. I worried that someone might be hurt in the stampede, but they were bound to be better off that way than they would be if the column of zombies chasing me caught them.

  I wondered how Hardeen could have tapped into so much firepower – literally – at once. It was impossible to just conjure up a blaze like that. The heat and fuel had to come from somewhere.

  I glanced back over my shoulder and spotted the Mirage in the distance behind us. Then I knew what Hardeen had done. It was six o'clock, but the volcano outside the Mirage stood silent. The master magician had stolen its sound and fury and repurposed it to his own ends.

  The zombies slammed out of the shed and came after me then. After the first few, a couple of them got stuck trying to get through the door at the same time, but the ones behind them shoved them out of the way and trampled them flat.

  I trotted to the corner and concentrated on making the lights that ran along Las Vegas Boulevard green and the ones on the cross street – Desert Inn Road – red. I wanted to make sure that both the zombies and I had a clear shot across the street. Once they made it past the light, it was a simple matter of luring them up the street and into Bootleggers.

  Well, not so simple, but at least I wouldn't be fighting traffic.

  I stood in the middle of the crosswalk and watched as the zombies streamed out after me. I felt like the lead runner in a foot race. If the creatures had only had numbers on their chests, the illusion would have been complete.

  Once the zombies made it to the curb, I took off toward Bootleggers. Powi, Bill, and Hardeen had a good twohundred-yard start on me and were passing by the main entrance to Revolutions as I made it across the street.

  The art-deco tower of Bootleggers beckoned to me from the end of the block. Because of its huge size, it looked like it was only a short hop to the place, but I knew from my other walks down the street that it was really over a half-mile away. That meant that this was about to be the longest four or five minutes of my life.

 
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

 

The zombies didn't seem at all perturbed to be running around in the open. They just kept right after me, hot on my tail, ignoring anyone screaming at them from the few straggling cars zipping by on the Strip. They all moved at roughly the same pace, the few fast ones apparently stuck somewhere in the middle of the pack.

  I couldn't tell how many zombies there were. They numbered in the dozens at least, but there might have been more of them still streaming up through Hardeen's hideout.

  Fortunately, the entrance to Revolutions was set far back from the street. The same couldn't be said for the Slots-A-Fun part of Circus Circus, which came right out to the sidewalk. Lots of people had ducked in there when Hardeen and his insane fire show blasted past them, but a few heads began sticking out to see what was following in the madman's wake.

  I sprinted ahead of the zombies and started shouting at a pack of college students who had poked their noses out to rubberneck at the show. "Get back!" I shouted at them. "There's a horde of zombies coming after me!"

  "Dude!" one of them said. "That's so awesome! What movie is this for?"

  That brought me up short. I stopped in front of them, panting, and said, "What?"

  They were all dressed in shorts and sandals with the girls in tank tops and the boys in polos. Every one of them had a drink in their well-tanned hands. A pretty girl with the group grinned at me. "Are you actually shooting the movie right now, or is this just a promo? I did the Zombie Walk in Chicago last year. It was a riot!"

  "This isn't for a film," I said. "It's real!"

  The girl and her friends all laughed. "This rocks!" one of the boys said. "Look! He's even got a gun. It's so real!"

  The creatures behind me were closing the distance fast. A speedy zombie finally broke free from the pack and sprinted toward me.

  "Aw, c'mon." One of the boys pointed at the zombies barreling down at us. "Those makeup jobs are awful. Have you ever seen dead people so fake?"

  I raised my gun, took aim, and fired a single bullet at the oncoming zombie, a man who looked like he'd once been a bouncer for a cutting-edge nightclub. The shot smashed into his shoulder and knocked off his arm, but he kept coming.

  "Oh my god!" another girl said. "How do you do that? Those are the best special effects ever!"

  "This isn't some kind of live-action roleplaying game. It's–" I pointed my gun at one of the security cameras. "It's a hold-up!" I shouted.

  I fired my gun at the camera, and it smashed straight off the wall. The college students next to me screamed and ran for cover. A security guard inside smashed a button, and steel roll-doors unfurled over the casino's entrance.

  I started to smile, but something at my left snarled. I spun about and brought up my gun just in time to see the one-armed bouncer nearly on top of me. I pointed the gun right at his mouth and pulled the trigger. His head disappeared, and his body tumbled forward to land on my feet.

  Just inside the casino's lowering doors, I heard someone say, "Cool!"

  I started off toward Bootleggers again, the zombies much closer to me now than I would have liked. I ran as hard as I could, happy to see that Hardeen had done an excellent job of clearing the way from here. I had a clear shot to Bootleggers' front doors.

  When I arrived there, though, security had already grabbed Hardeen. A trio of tall, muscular men spoke to him in heated tones outside of the casino's front doors.

  I stuffed my gun into the pocket of my jacket, hoping that the guards were too busy with the shaggy old magician to have spotted the weapon. As I did, I heard sirens approaching in the distance. I glanced back to see the zombies take the corner up to the casino's entrance, and I started to shout.

  "They're coming!" I said. "There are hundreds of them! They already killed everyone at Revolutions! Bootleggers is next!"

  One of the guards broke away from the conversation with Hardeen to have a word with me. "Sir!" he said. "You can't come screaming in here like that and cause a panic."

  I turned and pointed back at the zombies. The front of the column of creatures had already made it halfway from the street to the door. "I'm not the one causing a panic," I said. "They are!"

  The guard's eyes grew wide as he tried to count the number of people coming at him and failed. He reached up to tap his headset. "Control?" he said. "We have a priority-one emergency. Repeat: a priority-one emergency!"

  I raced over to Hardeen. One of the men with him said, "You are not to enter this casino under any circumstances, Mr Weiss. Our standing orders regarding you are painfully clear. I don't even want to be seen talking to you about this."

  "You can't leave him out here with the zombies attacking us!" I said.

  The other guard stiff-armed me away. "Stay out of this, sir," he said. As he spoke, his gaze shot past me to the horde of creatures stomping up the driveway toward us. Without taking his eyes off them, he reached out and tapped his partner on the shoulder. "We got trouble, Sean," he said.

  "Handle it, John."

  "I mean serious trouble." John grabbed my arm and pushed me toward the casino's front doors.

  "Is it really something that Ken can't handle?" Sean glanced toward the zombies and froze.

  "I think we're going to need all hands for this one," said John.

  Sean grabbed Hardeen and hauled him inside. I was already three steps ahead of them. "You're behind this, I'm sure," Sean said to Hardeen, "but either way, you're going to stand here quietly or the next person I shoot will be you."

  "Very kind of you," Hardeen said. He stuck a hand around Sean's back and waved me toward the elevators. I took the hint and ran.

  A moment later, the zombies smashed into the wide row of glass doors that fronted the casino. Some of the glass gave – mostly from raw bones being shoved through it – but most of it held. Gunshots rang out as the security team gave up on any chance of talking their assailants down, and people throughout the casino began to scream.

  At the first bank of elevators, I spotted Powi. She'd gotten the shopping cart with Bill in it stuck in an elevator's doorway. The elevator's alarm rang as she struggled with the cart, and a cluster of guests were shouting at her to fix the problem and get moving before they all were killed.

  "Coming through!" I said. "Excuse me!" I shoved my way from one side of the crowd to another, and when I reached Powi I lowered my shoulder and hit the shopping cart hard.

  The cart popped free from where it had been wedged and bounced off the elevator's back wall as I tumbled in after it. Powi slipped in after me, and the doors closed behind her. The alarm stopped.

  "I did that on purpose, you know," Powi said. "I wasn't really stuck."

  "I never said otherwise." I got to my feet and looked down at Bill in the cart. "How is he?"

  In response, Bill groaned, softer now than he had sounded back in Hardeen's bunker. He seemed to be in more pain than before but lacked the energy to complain as loudly about it.

  "Bad," she said, "but he's not dead yet."

  I pushed the button for Houdini's penthouse.

  Nothing happened.

  "We need a passkey to get up there," Powi said. "Don't you have one?"

  "Like Houdini would give me the keys to his home?" I pulled out the keycard to my suite. "I guess it's worth a try."

  I pushed the button again. Still nothing. I thumbed the button for the floor on which my suite was instead. The elevator leaped into motion.

  "Bill," I said in a loud clear voice. He shivered in pain, which I decided might pass for a nod, so I decided to try my question. "Did your keycard get upgraded?"

  "N-no." That was all he could get out.

  Powi watched the floor indicator number climb as we rose through the building. "Any ideas about how to get up there then?"

  "The magicians' lounge is six floors under Houdini's place, and I have no idea what's between them. Let's get up there, and see if we can find a service stairwell and climb the last six flights on foot."

  Powi jerked her head at Bill. "What about him?"

  "We'll have to leave him in the lounge – or maybe our suite. He should be safe from the zombies there at least."

  "Until Houdini busts open the gates to the spirit world."

  I frowned. "At that point, our locations won't matter much."

  The doors opened, and I pushed Bill's cart into a lounge filled with people moaning, groaning, and even whimpering in pain. They lay scattered about the place, most of them in chairs or on couches, but some had simply balled themselves up on the floor as they clutched at their aching arms.

  For an instant, I flashed back to Katrina, to those long, terrifying days in the Superdome with all those people clustered in that wet filthy cavern of a place. We waited there for days, wondering when help might come – if help might come – or if we'd been written off entirely.

  But then it passed. I'd survived that. I would survive this too.

  "It's all right," I said to Powi. I reached back for her hand and led her out of the elevator and into the lounge. Before the elevator could leave, I grabbed a low table from next to the elevators and dropped it so that it blocked the doors, keeping them open. After a while, the alarm would start ringing again, but I didn't care. If we needed the elevator again, I wasn't about to sit here and wait for it.

  "Look for service stairs or a service elevator," I said. "There has to be some other way up. If you find someone important – someone who probably had access to the penthouse – let me know. We can see if they have a keycard with access to the top floors."

  "I don't really know these people," Powi said.

  "Stick to looking for a way up then," I said. "I'll search through the people."

  After one last check on Bill, I made my way through the room, looking at the faces of the stricken. I recognized several of them from the poker game the other night and from the Brazilian dinner and my father's magic show before that. I didn't see him anywhere, though, and I wondered where he might be.

  I pulled Powi's phone out of my pocket to call him, but I realized then that he'd never given me his number. I didn't even know if he had one. On a whim, I scrolled through her numbers, and there he was.

  Before I could call him though, someone grabbed my leg, and I almost jumped out of my pants. I looked down to see Melody writhing on the floor in pain.

  I knelt down next to her and swept her hair back from her face. She wrenched open her eyes and stared at me. Being in such terrible pain, she couldn't manage to smile, but she frowned a little less.

  "I'm sorry," she said. Fat tears spilled out of her eyes, and her mascara left dark tracks on her face. "So sorry, Jackson."

  "You didn't do this." I kissed her forehead. "I'm going to make it stop."

  She switched her grasp from my ankle to my hand and squeezed it hard enough that I worried for my fingers. I just gritted my teeth and put up with it though. She was in far worse pain than me.

  "Run," she said, gasping for air. "Run and hide. He's here. He's here!"

  "Houdini's here?" I said. "Where?"

  "Not Houdini," Melody said. "Him!"

  I didn't have any idea what she meant, but her desperation put me on edge.

  "I'll stop him," I said as I stood up. "Trust me."

  At that moment, Gaviota came out of the back room behind the bar, whistling as he went. He carried a bottle of scotch in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. He stopped in mid-note when he saw me.

  Part of me wanted to race back for the elevator, but I had no time left for running. I squared up against him instead.

  "Well," he said, "here's something I didn't expect at all. How you doing, Jackson?"

  "I've had better days," I said.

  Gaviota laughed. "I'll bet you have. Just wait though. It's going to get better."

  "For who?"

  He pointed the bottle of scotch at me. "That, kid, is the question of the day."

  He set both the scotch and the champagne down on the bar and pulled out two glasses and set them down in front of him. He uncorked the scotch and poured a couple a couple inches of the golden drink into each glass.

  "Join me," he said. "We have a lot to talk about."

  "Jackson!" Powi walked into the lounge from one of the wings. "I've been up and down these halls and haven't been able to find–" She stopped cold when she spotted Gaviota.

  "And you brought young Miss Strega." Gaviota smiled as he pulled out another glass and filled it. "I thought you had a thing going with Melody over there. Didn't I see you talking with her when I came in?"

  "Why would you think we were involved?" I asked.

  "Because I told her to wrap you around her finger."

  I glanced down at Melody, too stunned to speak. She moaned in pain, refusing to meet my eyes. When I looked back up, I saw Powi staring at me, and I flushed in embarrassment.

  "I guess it didn't work out." Grinning, Gaviota pushed the third glass across the bar to Powi. "Join us. We were just about to discuss what's going to happen next."

  "And what's that?" Powi edged into the room, still keeping her distance from the man.

  "The end of the world, of course."

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

 

"You seem pretty damned relaxed, all things considered," I said to Gaviota.

  He took a sip of his scotch and squinted at me. "How do you figure that, kid?"

  "You just said. It's the end of the world as we know it."

  "And I feel fine." He grinned. "It always helps to be on the winning side."

  "Aren't you going to be swept up and killed in the Apocalypse along with the rest of us?" Powi said.

  Gaviota shrugged. "There's that possibility, sure. Or I might just end up being king of the world. At the moment, I figure each is about as likely. Either way, my say in the matter is done. I made my rather luxurious bed a long time ago, and I'm eager to finally get the chance to stretch out in it."

  He stared at us both. "The real question, lady and gent, is not what's going to happen to me. It's what side do you want to be on when it all goes to hell?"

  "We're here to stop this," Powi said, "by any means necessary." She didn't point her gun at Gaviota – she just readjusted her grip on it – but her message was clear.

  A smug smirk grew on Gaviota's face. "Let's try talking about it first."

  "He's just trying to slow us down, Jackson, to give Houdini the time he needs to pull this off."

  "Christ, you kids really don't know anything, do you?" Gaviota said. "Why do you think it hasn't happened already? Nothing's going to get started here until after dark."

  I glanced out the window. The sky had grown much darker. Up here, on the sixtieth floor, I could see the sun setting over the mountains again, but it wouldn't be long before it disappeared.

  "It's hard enough to pull off something like this without anyone watching," Gaviota said. "The fewer the eyes on us when this happens, the better. Just like stage magic, it's about secrecy and misdirection."

  "That's one of the principles of quantum mechanics," I said. "The observer affects the thing observed. We all live in an entangled state with our world."

  "And as it is in science, so it is in magic."

  "We'll stop you." Powi leveled her gun at Gaviota. "One way or another."

  I held up my hand to stop her. "That's not going to–"

  She started firing before I could finish. The bullets disappeared long before they hit Gaviota, of course, replaced by speeding blasts of air that did little more than ruffle the man's hair.

  "Did your grandmother not teach you anything before she died?" Gaviota said.

  Powi lowered her gun, stricken. "What? Grandma's still alive."

  Gaviota cocked his head. "Not as of about an hour ago. She led her crew of magicians over here, and we made pretty quick work of them. They were the last people who had any real chance of stopping us. Once they were gone Mr Weiss decided to tap out the Cabal's magicians and start in on the ritual."

  "That's a lie," Powi growled in defiance.

  Gaviota shrugged. "Think what you like. If you look out the window over there though, you might still see a body or two floating in the outdoor pool. Or not."

  "What's your angle here?" I asked Gaviota. "If you have it all figured out, why don't you just kill us and be done with it?"

  Gaviota nodded. "Oh, I could. But I see a lot of promise in you, Jackson. You were smarter than your friend over there. You didn't just sign up with the first crew to pay any attention to you. You sat back and got the lay of the land first."

  "And that's enough to earn your respect?" Powi said, incredulous.

  Gaviota sipped at his drink. Powi and I hadn't touched our glasses yet.

  "That and the fact that I cleaned his clock at Blackjack," I said.

  Gaviota nodded. "I did clean you out at Mojo Poker pretty quick."

  "I didn't really understand the game then," I said. "Taking out noobs is always easy. I don't think you'd manage it a second time."

  "You willing to stand up behind those words?"

  "What?" I said. "You want me to stop and play cards with you right now? While the world is about to end around us?"

  "Come on, Jackson," Powi said. "I'll bet we can find the way up."

  "I'll make it worth your while," Gaviota said. "Headsup No Limit Texas Hold 'Em Mojo Poker. You and me."

  "I'm not interested in your money," I said. "Not any more."

  "If you beat me," Gaviota said, "I'll show you the way up to Houdini's penthouse – and I'll step aside and not interfere in whatever you do once you get there."

  "And if I lose?"

  "Then you join us. You let me bind you to the Cabal."

  "So I can suffer along with every other member – except you." I narrowed my eyes at him. "Why is it that you're not writhing on the floor in agony?"

  "Houdini had enough power without me," he said. "Besides which, he needed someone to guard his rear flank from surprise guests."

  "Like us."

  "Exactly."

  "I'm not joining up just so Houdini can use me as his personal power battery."

  "It won't work like that. You'll be with me. You won't be drained a bit."

  I sized Gaviota up. He seemed serious, but he was a good enough poker player that I knew not to trust him. "And if I refuse to play?"

  Gaviota polished off the last of his scotch, turned the glass over, and slammed it down onto the bar. "Then we'll throw down here and see who walks away. When I'm through with you, you'll wish you were as comfortable as the people lying on the floor here."

  "He's bluffing," Powi said. "We can take him, Jackson."

  Having been chased out of this building by Gaviota before, I wasn't so sure about that. I stared deep into his eyes as I tried to figure the odds.

  "All right," I said. "Let's play."

  "This is insane," Powi said. "We have zombies tearing up the casino floor, and Houdini is about to bring about the end of the world in the penthouse – and you two need to stop to play cards?"

  "We'll play fast," I said.

  Gaviota came around from behind the bar and led us over to the poker table. He sat down across from the dealer's chair. I took the seat next to the dealer's chair, almost straight across from him.

  "Miss Strega," he said. "There are several fresh decks of cards at the dealer's position. Would you care to deal?"

  "Don't you think she'll cheat for me?" I asked.

  "I expect her to," he said. "But it won't matter a damned bit. That's the beauty of Mojo Poker."

  "All right." Powi sat down next to me at the table and unwrapped a deck of cards. "Let's do this quick."

  Gaviota flashed a smirk without any joy in it. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

  I knew from the tone of his voice he hoped to psych me out. I wasn't about to let him. "At this point, I'm terrified enough about confronting Houdini that I'm not too worried about his second in command."

  "The secret is in the name," he said. "I chose it well. Nobody ever gets it."

  "Ben? That's a common enough name. Or should I call you Mr Franklin?"

  "He means Gaviota," said Powi. "It's Spanish for 'seagull.'" She dropped the cards. "Oh. Oh my god."

  "Is the seagull supposed to be some kind of threatening bird?" I asked. "We have thousands of them around New Orleans. They're nothing but pests."

  Powi gathered up the cards she dropped. As she did, I felt one of her feet rub against mine. I thought this was an unusual time for her to want to play footsie with me, and I shot her a look that she totally ignored.

  "Seagull," she said. "Benjamin Seagull." She kicked me in the shin, hard. I gritted my teeth to keep from yelling out in pain.

  "Don't you get it?" she said. "He's Benjamin Siegel. Bugsy Siegel."

  I gaped at her and then at him. "You're kidding, right?"

  Gaviota grinned at me. "Not at all, kid. She got it in one. But don't call me Bugsy. I hate that."

  "He built the Flamingo, the first proper casino in the entire city. He practically founded this town." Powi turned to Siegel. "But you're dead. You were shot back in 1947."

  I winced. "Please don't tell me you're a talking zombie too."

  Siegel snorted. "Hardly. I faked my death back then. I made a few bad deals – trusted the wrong people a little too much – and I knew Lansky would send some of his boys around to take care of me.

  "It wasn't anything personal. Meyer had already stood up for me for as long as he could. Years, it seemed like. It was either take me out or deal with an all-out war in his ranks.

  "Houdini offered me the chance for a new start with him, and I took him up on it. He helped make my substitute so convincing, the poor guy. I've been working for Harry ever since."

  I didn't know too much more about Bugsy Siegel than I'd seen in the movie Bugsy, which Dad had watched with me more than once. I suspected now that he'd been researching the man and taking me along for the ride. He was a charmer – and a sociopathic killer. That fit Gaviota to a T.

  "Are we here for a social visit or to play cards?" I tried not to show that I was impressed at all. I figured Siegel had revealed his true identity to rattle me. If that was so, my best chance to shake him was to pretend I didn't give a damn about him at all.

  Powi made a great show of counting all the cards in the deck and then shuffling the cards several times. As she did, she kicked me in the leg again. I knew she was mad at me, but I figure that this had to be about more than just that. She wasn't the sort to act petty in the middle of something as serious as this.

  I felt around with my shoe and realized that there was something on the floor under the table in front of me. I slipped off my shoe and sock and felt around with my toes. I found two playing cards sitting there.

  Powi must have dropped them when she'd spilled the deck earlier. I'd watched her count the cards earlier, and unless she was a lot slicker with card tricks than I suspected, she had found all fifty-two of them.

  Then I remembered that there were two other playing cards in any Poker deck, ones that didn't get used in most games, especially in Vegas: the Jokers.

  I picked the two cards up with my toes and guided them into my lap. I figured I'd stuff them into one of my shirt sleeves when Siegel wasn't looking. For that, I might need a distraction, but I suspected that Powi would be willing to provide one for me when I needed it.

  "We going to cut for the deal?" I asked.

  Siegel snorted at me. "Like it matters in a game like this? You can have it."

  Powi made two stacks of chips from the tray in front of her. She gave us each ten of the yellow chips worth a thousand dollars each. Then Powi dealt two hole cards to each of us.

  Instead of worrying about what my hole cards might be, I focused on the two in my sleeve. I turned them into a pair of Knights, both red – the Suicide King and the Man with the Axe.

  Siegel didn't bother to look at his hole cards, but I peeled mine back out of sheer habit. A pair of Jacks – the one-eyed ones: Hearts and Spades – stared back at me.

  In a regular game of Hold 'Em, I'd have been thrilled to find a couple of Knaves looking after me from the hole. In Mojo Poker, though, I knew they weren't likely to last long.

  Since I had the deal, I tossed a single chip into the center of the table as the little blind. Siegel threw in two for the big blind. Since it was before the flop, it was my bet.

  I shoved everything I had into the middle of the table. "All in," I said.

  Siegel responded in kind, shoving his chips in without saying a word.

  "None of that card-erasing bullshit," Siegel said. Now that the chips were down, he dropped his casual demeanor and let his naked determination show. "Mr Weiss plugged that loophole as soon as you found it."

  "Do I need to consult the rulebook on that?"

  "Take my word for it."

  "All right."

  Powi dealt the flop. I concentrated on making the cards come up the way I wanted them to. I figured Siegel would try to shove through on all three cards, so I let him have the first one and focused my efforts on the last two.

  They came up the Aces of Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs. From that, I knew that Siegel was going for the same kind of hand that I wanted him to think I was shooting for: four Aces.

  I left my two Jacks unguarded. Let Siegel play with them as much as he liked. I just needed to get one of the next two cards to show up the way I wanted.

  The turn came up the King of Clubs.

  Siegel stared at the card and then at me, both concerned and confused. This was not what he had expected.

  I focused on the river, and it popped up as the King of Spades. That left a Full House on the table, Aces full of Kings. Normally that would be tough to beat, and we'd probably have to split the pot. Not in this game though.

  "Ready for the showdown?" Powi asked.

  Siegel and I both nodded as we picked up our cards. Powi gave him a vicious smile, and while he leered at her, I pulled the cards out of my sleeve and swept the other two into my lap.

  I winked at Powi with my right eye, the one that Siegel couldn't see.

  She pointed at both of us. "Three. Two. One."

 
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

 

On the unspoken beat for "Zero," Siegel and I flipped our cards. While he was looking at my pair of Kings, I reached out with my mind and altered the cards on the table.

  "Too bad, kid," he said. "Four Kings aren't going to cut it tonight." He reached out to shake my hand. "It's going to be good to have you in the Cabal."

  "Hold on a second," I said. "Don't you need to show me your hand first?"

  "Sure thing, kid." He turned over his Aces. "Read 'em and weep."

  "But that only gets you a Full House," I said. "Looks like you need to show me the way upstairs."

  "What?" He looked at the common cards. Instead of the two Kings and three Aces he'd been expecting, he saw two Kings and three Jacks.

  He stood up and stared down at the cards again. "That's not possible," he said. "Those were Aces."

  "Maybe you need to get your eyes checked," I said. "How old are you again, Bugsy?"

  "Don't call me that." A menacing sneer grew on his face. "Nobody calls me that. Everyone who ever called me that is dead."

  "Don't call you what? Bugsy?" I put the smuggest grin I had on my face. "All right. How about 'Loser' instead?"

  "Look here, you little punk." His eyes blazed as he loomed over me. He punctuated every beat of his words by stabbing a finger down at me. "I don't care who your dad is or how bad your mojo might be. No one talks to me that way. One more word out of your cheating lips, and I'll stop your heart in your chest."

  I put my feet up on the table between us, cocked my head to one side, and said, with perfect enunciation, "Loser."

  Siegel grabbed my feet and tipped me and my chair over onto my back. I scrambled away, sure he might try to kick me while I was down.

  "Fine!" he said. "The game is yours. You win. But you'll never be able to collect because you'll be dead!"

  As he surged toward me, Powi unloaded her pistol into him.

  I'd distracted Siegel too much for him to have time to make the bullets disappear. They knocked him sideways as they tore through him, ripping holes in his lungs, neck, and heart.

  He hit the ground like a slab of meat, the blood pouring out of him. I got to my feet and stared down at him. His eyes were open and rolled back into his head, and the pool of crimson in which he lay kept growing. If he wasn't dead, he was doing a fantastic job of faking it.

  Powi made a choking sound and dropped the pistol on the table. It landed on top of the chips and sent them scattering. I came around to her and saw that her hands were still shaking.

  "Thank you," I said.

  "I've never killed anyone before."

  She shuddered, and I put my arm around her. "Me neither."

  "He deserved it." Her voice started out soft and kept rising as she spoke. "I mean, if anyone had a violent death coming to them, it was him. I just– I just–"

  I hugged her. "It's all right. You're right. He would have killed me."

  "You provoked him."

  "He would never have let us upstairs to stop Houdini. We had to get past him."

  She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it and hugged me back. We let each other go, and she walked around the table to kneel down next to him. "I'm sorry," she said. She reached out and closed his eyes.

  I reached into his pockets and turned them inside out. They were empty. I tried the pockets of his jacket. Nothing.

  "This can't be," I said.

  "Don't tell me we killed him for nothing," Powi said. She put her hand over her mouth.

  I stared at the dead man. This made no sense. A man like Siegel wouldn't walk around without anything on him. I'd expected a wad of cash and maybe even a gun to go along with the key card.

  "You think he kept all his things with Misha?" I asked.

  "I saw him curled up at the far end of the bar," Powi said. She got up to go check on the man.

  I stared down at Siegel and realized what I'd been missing. I slipped his Rolex off his wrist and turned the band inside out. A pocket appeared inside of it.

  "Don't worry about it," I called to Powi. "I found it."

  I turned the pocket over on the table, but nothing happened. Wherever the space on the other side of the watchband actually was, it respected its local gravity.

  I peered inside the pocket and spotted a tin of breath mints, a switchblade, an automatic pistol – identical to the one I'd taken from Siegel before – a couple boxes of ammunition, a huge roll of hundred-dollar bills, and a keycard.

  I grabbed the keycard and handed it to Powi, along with the gun. I took the ammunition and used it to reload my pistol, which only had a single bullet left, the one already in the chamber. Then I twisted the watchband back and slid it onto my wrist.

  "Let's go," I said.

  "What about Bill?"

  I looked over at my friend, who was still curled up in agony in the shopping cart. "He's safer down here for now. We'll come back for him after we stop Houdini."

  "I like your confidence, Jackson." She shook her head. "I just wished I shared it."

  We strode to the elevator and removed the table that had been blocking its door. I waved the keycard over the authorization spot and pressed the button for the penthouse. The doors closed, and the elevator started on its way up.

  Houdini's home looked much like it had the night before. The only real difference was that someone had cleared off his desk. Without the computer or papers on it, it now looked like an altar.

  Houdini and my father sat on top of the altar, each in the lotus position, meditating. Their eyes opened as we walked into the ballroom-sized living room.

  "Welcome," Houdini said. "I've been wondering where you might be. I had thought Mr Gaviota would be with you."

  "He's been detained," I said. "Permanently."

  Houdini nodded, impressed, as he unfolded himself and hopped down off the altar. "Well done," he said. "I didn't think you two had that in you."

  "Get out of here, Jackson," Dad said. "You shouldn't be here."

  "How about you, Dad?" I said. "You're actually helping bring about Armageddon?"

  He remained on the altar, unmoved. "Don't be melodramatic. You know why I'm here."

  "I don't think Mom would appreciate what you're doing in her name."

  "If this all works out, we can ask her ourselves in a few minutes."

  "What?" I said to Houdini. "You haven't already taken care of this? I figured I'd come up here, and you'd pull a Watchmen on me."

  He gave me a blank look of mild amusement.

  "You know," I said. "'Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome?' No?"

  Houdini shook his head at me as if I were a sweet but slow child. "There's no chance of anyone stopping me at this point," he said. "I have been preparing for this moment for years – decades, even. We only needed one more element to fall into place: the sacrifice."

  I didn't like the sound of that at all. "So what are you planning to sacrifice? A virgin?"

  "Why?" Houdini raised any eyebrow. "Are there any here?"

Powi shuddered. "That's just wrong."

  Houdini smiled. "Actually for this part of the ritual, I need something a bit rarer than a virgin in Las Vegas. I need an extremely powerful magician."

  "Draining the powers from your entire Cabal wasn't enough?"

  Houdini snorted. "They are fine people, good and loyal servants, but they barely have enough magic among them to pull off a good illusion, much less break down the barrier between life and death. No, for that I need someone with far more raw power."

  I did not like where this was heading.

  "I think Gaviota – I mean, Bugsy – is still breathing. We can bring him right up for you."

  Houdini shrugged. "To be honest, he was my backup plan. In a worst-case situation, I might have decided to sacrifice your father to the cause instead. Now that you're here, though, I won't have to go so far."

  "Harry, wait." Dad looked like someone had just kicked him in the stomach.

  I took a step back. "What the hell are you talking about? I'm about as below-average a magician as you'll ever find."

  Houdini smirked. "How ironic that you honestly feel that way. That you've been taken in by all the others, seduced by your damaged sense of self-worth into thinking that anything you can do anyone can do better."

  He shook his head and smiled. "Honestly, I've rarely seen such a powerful magician in all my many years in this world."

  "Flatter me all you want," I said, "I'm still not letting you sacrifice me."

  Houdini shrugged. "Perhaps I could start with young Miss Strega then?"

  I'd had enough of this game. I stepped up, swapped my pistol into my off hand, and socked Houdini in the jaw.

  "Jackson, no!" said Dad. I ignored him. At that point, I wasn't sure if he wanted to protect Houdini or me more, and I didn't much care.

  I'd always considered myself more of a lover – alright, a geek – than a fighter. I'm not built like a linebacker, and I'm not especially tall or fast. The only thing I really have going for me in a fight is raw determination coupled with the ability to take a beating.

  Growing up in New Orleans, I'd had plenty of opportunities to get into fights. The first year after Mom died, I accepted most of those.

  Eventually, my grandmother drilled it into my head that fighting was the last resort of someone too damned stupid to come up with another solution. If you offended someone, you apologized. If someone offended you, you took control over your anger and never gave into it.

  In this case, though, I think Grandma would have cheered me on. This wasn't just my pride at stake, but the fate of the world. Not that her encouragement would have done me any good.

  I gave Houdini my best punch – probably the best punch of my life. I felt the papery skin on his jaw give as my fist slammed into it and shoved his head hard and fast enough back on his neck to snap it. Had I hit a living person that hard, I think it might have killed him.

  Houdini's head flopped back on his broken neck, and he staggered backward several steps before coming to a halt. Then he reached up with his hands and put his skull back where it was supposed to be. He rubbed his neck with his hands and ran his fingers over the flap of skin I'd torn loose from his jaw, smoothing it over as if it were a bit of piecrust that could be pressed back into place.

  When he removed his hands, Houdini was intact. He looked as good as if I had never touched him. My hand hurt like hell.

  "Now, Jackson," he said. "There's no profit in being like that."

  I leveled my pistol at him. Powi did the same with hers.

  Houdini cracked a smile. "Do you really think that you could hurt me with something like that? That I would fear something as trivial as bullets?"

  "Everyone makes mistakes," I said. "Just ask Bugsy – or go pick the bullets out of his corpse."

  He rolled his eyes at me. "You know, you have the solution to your problem in your hands." He nodded at my gun. "To foil me, all you have to do is shoot your father and then yourself. To be sure, you might want to kill Miss Strega first for good measure."

  "Harry!" Dad said. "That's enough!"

  "And that would leave you without the power you need to finish your ritual?"

  "Possibly." Houdini shrugged. "Until someone else powerful enough to try to stop me gives it a shot. Taking that chance is up to you."

  "I think I'll stick with the odds that still breathing gives me," I said.

  "However you want to play it," he said. "Why don't the two of you come with me?"

  Houdini walked out onto the wide balcony that ran around the perimeter of his penthouse.

  "Jackson, don't," Dad said. "Let him take me."

  I goggled at him. "Are you insane, Dad? You'd let him kill you so he could bring Mom back to life?"

  "If it works, I'd come back to life too. I'm willing to take that risk if it means I might be able to have your mother back here with us."

  I couldn't look at him. I couldn't bear to be in the same room with him. I stalked after Houdini, and Powi followed, keeping half an eye on my father for me.

  "What's your angle?" I asked Houdini.

  He pointed south down the strip. "I thought the view from here might help you to put this all in perspective. Do you see the light spearing out of the Luxor? It's the one manmade artifact that's actually visible from orbit. Imagine that kind of power."

  He turned back to talk to me. "Do you see how every casino on the Strip can harness enough of that power that it could do the same? Doesn't that give you a sense of just how insignificant each of us – every human being – is compared to that? Our lives are nothing more than twinkles in the sky of history."

  I shook my head. "It tells me that our achievements mean something. What we do matters. We affect each other. We can even alter the view from space."

  "I'm about to do something monumental," Houdini said to both Powi and me. "You don't want to be on the wrong side of history with this. It's going to happen with or without you."

  "I thought you said you needed us as your sacrifices," Powi said.

  "You, or someone just as powerful," he said. "Fortunately, someone else who qualifies has just arrived."

  I heard it before I saw it. The sound of the helicopter's spinning rotors drowned out his last words as the machine rose from below us and appeared off to our left. It trained its spotlight on us, almost blinding me, but I recognized its markings just before that. It had come from the Thunderbird.

 
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

 

The helicopter turned to the side, pointing itself south down the Strip. The side door of the rear compartment had been removed, and a man – I recognized him as Walter – stood there in the gaping hole with a rocket launcher braced over his shoulder.

  I sprinted in the other direction, toward the far corner of the balcony. Houdini stepped forward and held out his arms toward the helicopter as if he was greeting some long-lost friends. "Welcome, Mamaci!" he shouted over the roar of the helicopter's thrumming rotors. "I've been waiting for you!"

  Walter fired the rocket.

  Houdini waved his arms upward, and the rocket veered straight up into the sky. It zoomed up toward the stars – barely visible against the light the Strip threw up into the stratosphere – and kept going, hunting for a target it would never find.

  A man with a machine-gun – one of Mamaci's other thugs – appeared next to Walter and opened fire while Walter reloaded the rocket launcher. The bullets traced a line of chipped stone across the balcony's floor,

reaching for Houdini.

  Rather than make the bullets disappear, Houdini charged the balcony's railing at top speed. He leaped atop the railing without breaking stride, spread his arms wide, and kicked off like a cliff diver hanging high over some distant ocean. He hung there framed in the spotlight for a picture-perfect instant, and then gravity reasserted its grip on him and hauled him out of sight.

  The machine-gun fire continued straight ahead and then angled toward me. Concentrating, I visualized a sort of force field in front of me. As the bullets struck it, they disappeared, replaced with nothing but air.

  The bullet-sized bits of high-velocity air hammered at me, threatening to ruin my focus. The moment I let my guard down, though, I knew my shield would disappear, and the real bullets would tear through me. I glared at the space before me and kept my attention sharp on the task at hand, refusing to let the battering air-storm distract me.

  I hoped that I could keep this up until the man with the machine-gun ran out of bullets. When he stopped to reload, I planned to dash inside the penthouse and make my escape.

  Before that happened, though, Walter fired another rocket.

  If only I could have phased through the floor. I would have appeared in whatever Houdini kept housed right underneath his home, lost and cut off from Powi, but that would have been easy enough to fix, I think. Of course, in the time it took me to switch my mojo from one task to another the machine-gun might have put an end to me.

  Instead, I focused harder on the field in front of me, so much so that sweat ran down my face and I bellowed with the effort. The rocket slammed right into the field and disappeared.

  I would have crowed in triumph had the force of the rocket-sized blast of air that hit me not knocked me backward off the balcony.

  The thing that surprised me most about falling out into space, sixty-six stories up, was the silence. The racket from the machine-gun and the helicopter faded away fast, and I was too terrified to draw the breath to scream. The air rushing past me – or, actually, that I was rushing through – drowned out the sounds floating up from the Strip below.

  As I hurtled down toward the wide expanse of concrete that served as the casino's entryway far below, I wondered how much this was going to hurt. The blazing lights scattered about the entrance gave me a sharp glaring view of where I would land. I'd miss the artdeco fountain out front by about fifty feet, I guessed. For an instant, I regretted that the air-rocket's blast hadn't hit me harder, but I realized that at this height the fountain could have been as deep as an ocean and the landing would still kill me.

  I wondered what would happen if I tried phasing through the ground. How far down would my momentum take me? Would I ever stop, and if I did how would I get back to the surface? Would I suffocate before that happened?

  I heard sirens in the distance. I saw people streaming out of the casino, some of them screaming, and I remembered Prospero and the zombies. I hoped I wouldn't land on any innocents.

  I knew that my only chance at survival would be figuring out how to fly. I would have preferred for my first flight to be under better – read: nonlethal – circumstances, but at the moment I'd run out of options for deferring it.

  I tried to focus, but the rushing wind, the screams coming from below, and the sheer terror racing through my head made it hard. I had to do it. I had to.

  Facing the ground, I put out my arms like a bird, and I brought my feet together like a diver. I closed my eyes and let the wind push back my head. I felt the pressure from the air and how it pushed me up, how it wanted to keep me away from the ground. I reached out with my mind, and I gave in to the air. I let it push me up harder and harder, and I felt myself falling slower and slower until I came to a complete stop.

  The rushing stopped. The pressure stopped. The air and I had become one.

  The screams, though, got louder.

  I opened my eyes and saw that I was only thirty feet from the ground, lower than the casino's marquee. A crowd of people stood in Bootleggers' driveway, craning their necks back and pointing up at me. A small circle had opened up in my most likely landing place, and I looked down and laughed at it.

  Then I pointed my head toward the penthouse and raced back up into the sky.

  I picked up speed as I went, willing myself to move faster and faster. By the time I reached the penthouse, I shot right past it into the open night sky. The spotlights that illuminated the sides of the building seemed to follow me right up, catching me like a firefly in a flashlight's beam.

  I hollered in wordless triumph as I reached the apex of my rise. I just couldn't help it. I felt like I'd been released from a lifetime in prison and now had the whole world before me.

  I looked down at the casino and saw the helicopter hovering right over Houdini's balcony. Walter leaped out of it first, carrying a shotgun rather than a rocket launcher. A moment later, he turned back and helped Mamaci down from the aircraft.

  As the pair walked across the balcony toward the main entrance to the penthouse, I heard something coming up behind me. I spun around and spotted Houdini heading my way, silhouetted against the Strip. The rocket he'd diverted earlier zipped right after him on a column of flame.

  Houdini flew straight at the helicopter. At the last instant, just when I feared he might get pureed by the helicopter's blades, he turned ninety degrees straight up. The rocket continued on the same path as if he'd put it on rails.

  The helicopter exploded in a fiery blast. Even from where I hung in the air, the explosion hurt my ears, and the shockwave tried to shake me out of the sky.

  Pieces of the helicopter rained downwards, but the bulk of the craft's structure crashed right into the penthouse's balcony and smashed through the tall windows that separated the living space from the night. It sat there and burned, consuming itself and blackening the building's stone facade.

  I stared in shock at the destruction, unsure of what to do next. I decided to fly down to the balcony to check on Powi and my dad, but before I could move, Houdini appeared beside me in the air.

  "Nice work," he said. "You're like a baby bird that got tossed from its nest."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Having a conversation some seven hundred feet in the air gave me just a bit of vertigo.

  "You already had the wings," he said. "You just needed the right inspiration to figure out how to use them. I applaud your performance."

  "You're insane!" I said. "You killed everyone in the helicopter."

  "Don't forget about all the gawkers on the street below," he said. "I'm sure a few of them were hurt too, maybe even killed."

  "And that doesn't bother you at all?"

  He shrugged. "Dead? Alive? Very soon it won't make a difference."

  Then he fell out of the sky. As if riding down a slide, he slipped right onto his balcony and landed well away from the burning wreck. He stared into the room, adjusted his tie, and disappeared inside.

  I followed right after him, taking a bit more care with my landing. I came in slow and tiptoed in right from the very edge of the balcony. Once I hit the ground, I sprinted for the penthouse, but I hauled up short at the sound of gunfire. I realized then that I'd dropped my pistol when I'd been knocked off the balcony.

  Mentally readying my shield before me, I crept into Houdini's place. I saw Powi kneeling beside my father, using the stone altar as protection, her pistol in her hand. She popped up over the edge of the altar and fired her three last shots at Houdini, but he waved them away into puffs of air. She fired at him again, but her gun's hammer clicked down onto an empty chamber. Without any more bullets at hand, she tossed the weapon aside and hunkered down behind the altar again.

  Walter crouched among the couches, using one for cover as he pumped another round into his shotgun. Mamaci stood behind him, chanting something in a language I'd never heard before. Her hands glowed a dark red that grew in strength and intensity as she spoke. Houdini stalked toward them, undeterred by Walter's threats.

  "Come on!" Walter shouted. He let loose another blast at the dead man, but the buckshot disappeared before it ever had a chance to reach him. "Let's finish this, you vampire!"

  Houdini smiled. "I am nothing so cartoonish as that." He spread his arms wide in front of him and strode right toward the armed man.

  "Walter!" Powi shouted. "Knock it off! You can't hurt him that way."

  The chaos didn't seem to disturb Dad at all. "Just a little bit longer, baby," he said. "We're almost there."

  Houdini stopped right in front of Walter, his arms still spread wide. "Please," he said. "Give it your best shot."

  "No!" I shouted. "Don't!"

  Walter's gaze flicked toward me for an instant, but he ignored my warning. He jabbed his shotgun at Houdini's chest and pulled the trigger.

  The shotgun boomed, but Houdini didn't move an inch. Instead, Walter shouted out in agony and fell to the floor, blood blossoming from the gaping wound that had appeared in his chest.

  "You monster!" Powi charged from around the altar. "What did you do?"

  I stepped between her and Houdini, grabbed her by the arm, and swung her about. She had been too focused on Walter to notice me before, and she gasped in surprise and then hugged me. Holding her to me, I backed her away from Houdini.

  "I didn't pull the trigger that killed your friend here," Houdini said. "He did. I merely arranged for him to suffer the effects he intended for me."

  Mamaci glowered at Houdini. "Walter was a good man," she said. "You will pay for his death, Weiss, and for the harm you have caused so many others over your too-many years."

  "He can take up that topic with me in a few moments," Houdini said. "In the meantime, I need your help with a project of mine."

  "I will never lend aid to you," Mamaci said. She brought her hands up in front of her. They glowed with so much power that I had to shade my eyes to look at them.

  "How darling," Houdini said. "You actually think I was giving you a choice."

  Mamaci charged at Houdini, her hands spread wide, and he leaped into the air and kept going. He stopped just short of the room's high ceiling. She dashed straight beneath him and came skidding to a halt after she passed him by, like a bull grazing past a toreador. She spun around and saw him sitting lotus-style in mid-air, gloating down at her

  "You cannot escape me up there," she said. She rose into the air herself, and once she was level with Houdini she came at him again.

  He did nothing to avoid her. Instead, as she closed with him, he put up his hands to meet hers.

  Mamaci let loose a furious howl and struck at Houdini with all she had. Instead of dodging the attack, he grabbed her by the wrists and held her away from him at arm's length.

  "I will destroy you!" Mamaci said.

  Houdini let loose a humorless laugh. "Use your power," he said. "Pour it into your efforts against me. Do your worst!"

  Mamaci did just that, struggling against Houdini with all her might. Every muscle in her body strained with the effort. Her nostrils flared wide, and her lips drew back from her gritted teeth. The air crackled with power between them.

  Despite that, nothing Mamaci did seemed to affect Houdini in any way. The glow around her began to fade, and I wondered how much more she could possibly have in her.

  "Powaqa!" Mamaci said. "I need you!"

  Powi stared up at the two people wrestling in the air. "We need to help her," Powi said.

  "How?" I asked. "Nothing she's doing seems to be working."

  Mamaci screamed in horror and pain.

  "We have to do something!" Powi said.

  She broke away from me and dashed over to where Walter's shotgun lay next to him on the floor. Houdini had already shown how dangerous it would be to use a gun against him, but Powi seemed too desperate to worry about that.

  I couldn't let Powi suffer the same fate as Walter though. "I'm on it!" I shouted.

  I crouched down to leap up at the pair. Maybe if I flew at them hard enough and fast enough I could knock them apart. Or maybe I'd just get tangled up with them and find myself in the same dire trouble as Mamaci.

  "Jackson, no!" Dad shouted. I looked back to see him still sitting on the altar. Now, though, he wore the same reddish glow as Mamaci. While the glow around her had faded, though, his had grown.

  I knew then what was happening – and that I'd been about to attack the wrong person. I lowered my shoulder, leaped forward, and rocketed straight toward my dad instead.

 
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

 

I slammed into my father hard and knocked him backward off the altar. Together, we smashed through a window behind him and careened into the wraparound balcony just beyond. We didn't come to a stop until we hit the stone and steel railing.

  Dad bellowed in pain and frustration as we fell into a tangle on the balcony. "Jackson!" he said. "You idiot!"

  I shoved myself away from him and scrambled to my feet. "I can't let you do this, Dad. I don't care how good you think your reasons are. It's wrong."

  Dad's face fell. "You think I don't know that? I've thought about nothing other than that for years. I still haven't made my peace with it, but I'm going to do what has to be done."

  "Then I'm going to stop you."

  Dad spoke in a sad, quiet voice as he got to his feet. "You're too late, Jackson. It's already done."

  I turned to peer back in through the window, and I saw Houdini standing over Mamaci's body. Despite the fact she barely came up to my shoulders in life, I'd never thought of the woman as small. Crumpled into a heap, she looked tiny and shriveled.

  Powi charged at Houdini. Instead of firing the shotgun at him, she grabbed it by the barrel and swung it like a club. He reached up and caught it in one hand, and it bent around his grip as if it had been made of rubber.

  Powi was too surprised to stop Houdini as he twisted the shotgun out of her grasp. It clattered on the floor.

  "Please don't, Miss Strega," Houdini said to Powi. "For your own sake, you need to recognize that it's already too late. You've lost."

  "What do you mean?" Powi said. "Nothing's changed. Not one damned bit."

  I climbed back in through the window, keeping half an eye on my dad. I didn't think he'd try to sucker punch me if I turned my back on him, but if the night had proved one thing to me it was that I didn't know him as well as I thought I had. The man I knew would never have gotten involved in a scheme like this, especially if it meant that someone would have to die.

  "Of course it has," Houdini said. "Death no longer holds sway over any of us. The barrier between this world and the next has finally fallen. We have conquered eternity."

  A smile spread so far across his face that I thought it might split open his head. He looked at me and said. "We are all immortals now."

  I strode over to Powi's side. Tears streamed down her face as she glared at Houdini. "You murderous bastard," she said in a raw, low whisper. She pointed down at Mamaci. "Does she look immortal to you?"

  Houdini nodded in sympathy. "I needed her mojo for the spell. All of it, I'm afraid. She had to die – permanently – so that the rest of us could live."

  Powi launched herself at him, but I grabbed her by the arms and held her back. I knew that he would take her apart. We might not be able to die anymore, but I was sure Houdini could make it so that we wished we could.

  Powi spun around to snarl at me, then saw who I was. The grief for her grandmother shoved aside her fury for the moment. She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder as she sobbed. I held her close and comforted her the best I could.

  As Powi wept, I cocked my head at Houdini. "Shouldn't there be a pealing of horns announcing a heavenly host right about now?"

  "That's a foolish tale told to fool fools," Houdini said. "A fairy tale meant to make people feel safe as they face down the facts of their own inexorable mortality. The reality we've engineered today is much simpler and more beautiful than that."

  "How so?"

  Powi stopped crying and wiped her tears on my shirt.

  "Death no longer has dominion over humanity," Houdini said. "Our indestructible souls – for lack of a better word – those essential sparks of energy that make us who we are, they can no longer be forced from our bodies. We will all live for all eternity – and the dead will come back to join us."

  "And you really don't see how badly this might go?" Powi asked, her voice thick and raw.

  "The tragedy is that you don't see how right it will be."

  "Jackson." Dad spoke from behind me, his voice trembling with raw emotion. "Son. I need your help."

  I looked back to see Dad standing behind the altar, his hands splayed across its wide stone surface. He seemed to be trying to stare straight through it.

  "I think you've done enough today," I said.

  "There are a few details left," Houdini said.

  "I did this for you." Dad stared at me with wide, red eyes, then caressed the stone under his hands. "You and your mother."

  I felt ill.

  "You're out of your mind. Even if you defeated death, what good does that do Mom? We never found her body. You want to just go back to Grandma's and wait for Mom's rotting corpse to drag itself out of the delta and come dripping up to the door?"

  "There's no need for that," said Houdini. "You don't need to hunt for her. She's already here."

  I goggled at him and then at my dad, who stood next to the altar. He couldn't meet my eyes.

  "I spent the better part of a year finding her. Recovering her," he said. "Once I found her, I knew – I knew what I had to do."

  A pounding sound came beneath Dad, and I almost jumped out of my skin. Looking down, I realized I had started to fly off in my terror and was hanging a full foot off the floor. Powi pulled me back down.

  The pounding sound came again and again. It started off slow and hesitant but became louder with every beat.

  "Desiree?" Dad threw his arms wide across the top of the altar. "I'm right here, baby."

  "Who?" Powi said. She was still angry, but the way Dad was acting had given her pause.

  My mouth had run dry, and I had to swallow before I could reply. "My mom."

  Houdini came over to stand at the altar, directly across from my dad. Dad looked up at him with tears welling in his eyes, and Houdini nodded. They each reached down and put their hands under the top of the altar, then lifted.

  The lid came right off. Made of a thick slab of stone, it had to have weighed hundreds of pounds. I would have needed a forklift to move it – without magic.

  Dad and Houdini hoisted it up and slid it over to an open spot on the floor as if it were made of Styrofoam. When it hit the floor, it sounded like an explosion.

  "Luke?" The voice came from within the exposed center of the altar. I recognized it right away.

  The granite box sitting in Houdini's office all this time had not been a desk or an altar.

  It was my mother's tomb.

  "Oh, Dad," I said. I wanted to say more, but horror choked me off.

  "Desiree?" Dad leaned over the edge of the crypt to peer in at my mother. "Oh, baby. Oh, no. It's going to be all right."

  I didn't want to look. I wanted to remember my mom as the sweet and beautiful lady I'd always known her to be, not a bloated, bug-eaten corpse. Then she called my name.

  "Jackson?" she said. "Where's Jackson?"

  "He's right here, baby. We're both right here."

  Dad glanced at me, but all I could do was stay with my feet rooted to the spot. I shook my head at him. The fact that he'd worked so hard for this – that he'd abandoned me in New Orleans for so long – meant that he needed this to be a success. Even if everything went wrong, this had to be a success in his mind, or he might entirely snap.

  Dad reached in to the crypt and hauled Mom up to a sitting position so he could hold her in his arms. That's when I finally saw her.

  She looked better than I had expected. Her skin seemed rubbery and gray, but it had not decayed much over the years since she had died. She reeked of formaldehyde. I noticed a bit of vapor rising from the crypt, and I realized the interior must have been refrigerated, keeping Mom as well-preserved as possible for all that time.

  Her eyes, though, were gone. Empty sockets gaped back at me instead of the beautiful brown orbs I'd looked to as a child for love and guidance. She opened her mouth to speak, exposing blackened gums holding crooked teeth where there had once been a dazzling smile.

  "Where are you, Jackson?" she said. "Where's my baby? I'm so cold. Can someone turn on the lights? Why can't I see my baby?"

  "We need to heal her," Dad said. He held out a hand to Houdini. "We have to heal her now. We can't leave her like this."

  Houdini frowned. "I have been waiting for far longer than your wife, Luke."

  "But you're not in the pain that she is. Look at her."

  Houdini scoffed. "She is beyond pain. The discomfort she feels is only in her mind."

  "Who is that?" Mom said. "Luke? Who's speaking?"

  "Shh, Desiree." Dad stroked her hair, some of which came out in clumps. "Don't fret. He's a friend. He's here to help."

  "It's Houdini, Mom."

  "Oh, god, Jackson! Is that you, honey? Where are you?" She reached out for me, and there was little I wanted more than to run into her arms and hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right. But I couldn't. This wasn't my mother, I knew – just her hollow, tortured shell.

  "I'm here," I said. "I'm fine. I miss you."

  "You miss me? Jackson, honey, I've only–" Confusion furrowed her brow. "Wait. What happened? What day is it? The last thing I remember is the hurricane and the floods and–"

  She froze.

  "Don't think about that, baby," Dad said. "That's all over now. The hurricane is over."

  "What happened to me?" Mom put her hands up to her cheeks and felt her dead skin, then to her empty eyes. Her face twisted into a mask of fear, and her voice rose in hysteria. "What's going on?"

  "Harry! We need to take care of her now!" Dad clutched Mom to his chest, and her fingernails cut long scratches into his neck. He didn't seem to notice.

  "She can wait, Luke," Houdini said. "We will take care of my needs first."

  "Who is that?" Mom whipped her head around. "Who else is here?"

  "It's all right, Desiree," Dad said. He tried to sound calm and soothing, but the fear in his voice betrayed him.

  "You said – what did Jackson say? You said Houdini. Houdini is here?"

  "It's OK, honey." He glared at Houdini, furious. "He's here to help us."

  "Luke!" Mom said. "You told me about him. You told me what he did. We can't – get me out of here!"

  "Calm down, baby. We have to–"

  "No! Luke, no! What's he done to you?"

  Dad held her tighter than ever and shushed her softly in her ear. "If you can't trust him, then trust me, baby. Believe in me, Desiree, and we can get through this."

  Mom shuddered in Dad's arms, and tears rolled down

his face. He was doing everything he could to hold himself together, but he was seconds from falling apart.

  "I understand how you feel, Luke," Houdini said, growing more emphatic with each word, "but I refuse to wait any longer. Get over here and help heal me. I've defeated death, and I want my life back. Now!"

  Dad cringed at Houdini's words, but he could not bring himself to leave Mom's side. I knew that if this came to a fight Houdini would destroy him and probably Mom too.

  I moved between them, facing Houdini, meeting his angry eyes. "You," I said, "are going to have to wait."

  Shaking with rage, the still-dead Houdini reached out a hand toward me. He forced himself to speak to me in even, clipped tones. "I believe I've been patient enough."

  I brought up my fists and braced myself for whatever it was he planned to do to me. I only knew that it wouldn't be pretty.

  Powi stuck a hand between us. "Maybe I can help?"

  Houdini and I both glared at her. To her credit, she didn't flinch.

  She spoke to Houdini. "If this is the first time you've tried this – and as far as I can tell, it's the first time anyone has attempted anything like this – doesn't it make sense to test your theories on someone else first?"

  Houdini paused to contemplate this. I considered punching him in the guts. It hadn't worked all that well the last time I'd tried it, but I'd stopped. I'd let him recover. Maybe if I just kept pummeling him into dust, it would work.

  Or maybe not.

  "Let's heal Desiree first," Powi said. "Just to make sure you're not rushing into a mistake. Just in case."

  "Who's that?" Mom asked.

  "She's a friend, Mom," I said. "Her name is Powi."

  "She sounds wise."

  Houdini gave a reluctant nod at the undead woman's words. He walked around Powi, me, and the tomb and put a hand on Dad's shoulder. Dad bent his head and wept with gratitude and relief.

  "This will require all of our considerable talents," Houdini said. He looked to Powi and me, daring us to defy him. Instead we joined him and Dad at the side of Mom's crypt. The smell of the formaldehyde made me want to vomit, but I swallowed my bile and put my hands on Mom's arm. Powi put her hands next to mine, and Houdini put his hands on Mom's head. Dad continued to cradle her in his arms.

  Houdini did not say a word. His hands just started to glow. Powi closed her eyes, and soon her hands glowed the same golden color as Houdini's. Dad brought the same glow into his hands too.

  I had never healed anyone or anything before, but I was determined to give it my best shot.

  I closed my eyes, and I thought about my mother the way she'd been when I'd last seen her: happy, well, and as full of life as anyone I'd ever seen. Her soft brown skin had glowed with health, and her wide brown eyes had danced with life. I wanted her to have that back, and I put every bit of mojo I had into giving it to her.

  I felt a wonderful warmth surge out of my own blood and surround my hands. I cracked open my eyes to see the telltale golden glow surging around my fingers and flowing from me into my mother. I pushed it out of me – I willed it to move into her – as fast as I could.

  Beneath where my hands touched, I felt my mother's flesh come to life. It became warm and soft, and somewhere beneath it a pulse began. I heard her begin to breathe – not just so that she could speak but to bring oxygen back into her blood.

  I closed my eyes again and reached deeper inside me to find more and more of that healing power that Mom needed. I went back again and again until I had nothing left to give. Even after that, I kept at it, determined that no matter what happened here I would not fail my mother.

  "It is finished," Houdini said.

  I opened my eyes and saw my mother looking back at me.

  I reached into the crypt and hugged her tight, my father on one side of her and me on the other. Powi and Houdini stepped back to give us some room. I'm not ashamed to admit I wept like a little boy – like I hadn't since the day I'd been told she'd died.

  My heart felt like it might burst with joy and wonder, and for a moment I forgot all about the troubles with Houdini and the zombies and Mamaci and Siegel and the rest. I just reveled in the sensation of my family being together once again, and I found it impossible to give Dad any grief for what he'd done.

  "I love you," she said. "I love you both so much."

  Then it all went wrong.

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

 

Mom started coughing. The coughing turned to hacking, and the hacking brought up blood. Her body stiffened up, and she fell backward into the tomb, shaking as if having a seizure.

  "What's happening?" I said.

  "Desiree?" Dad grabbed her and tried to look into her eyes, but they had rolled back into her head. "Desiree!"

  I spun around and grabbed Houdini by the front of his shirt. "What's happening?" I said. "We healed her! She should be fine!"

  He frowned and said, "I'm sorry. I – I warned your father about this. Bringing the dead back to life is very difficult, even under the best of circumstances."

  "No." I pushed him away from me. "No!"

  I went back to Mom and held on to her. I closed my eyes and tried to heal her again. I shut out the thrashing and hacking and the scent of fresh blood to concentrate on this, and I felt the now-familiar golden glow grow in my hands. It stayed there, though, unable to move into her dying form. It felt like her body had decided to reject my efforts, and nothing I did could change that.

  "You're wasting your time." Houdini spoke quietly and confidently, with the determined detachment of a sympathetic doctor who had seen far too much of death. "Her body has been as healed as it can be. It will not accept any more such magic."

  "Can't you do anything?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "If it was in my power, I would."

  Dad clutched Mom to him as she continued to shiver and shake, his moans drowning out her death rattle. She was going fast, pulling away hard, but Dad kept trying to use his magic to haul her back.

  I looked at them both, my mother and father. At one point, I'd loved them more than anything. They'd given me a happy life, a safe home, and a wonderful childhood – right up until the storm had taken all that away. Watching them now, seeing them suffer, I knew what had to be done, much as I hated it.

  I reached across the crypt and put my hand on Dad's arm. "Let her go," I said.

  "No." He glared at me with wild, bloodshot eyes. "Don't you give up on her, Jackson. We can't give up on her. Help me!"

  Mom's back arched in unspeakable pain. She clutched at Dad's arms, her jagged nails drawing blood through his shirt. She threw back her head and gagged on the air trying to find its way into her lungs.

  "She's gone, Dad." I spoke so softly I could barely hear myself. "She's been gone since the storm."

  "No. No, she's not!" He held her tighter, but he could not settle her shuddering. "She's right here."

  Mom's body relaxed then, crumpling forward, the fight gone out of her spine. She shuddered as if her nerves were trying to worm their way out of her skin. The end was near – or it would be if Dad would let it.

  "You're hurting her," I said. "The longer you drag this out, the worse it gets."

  Dad buried his face in Mom's hair. His sobs wracked both their bodies. She was already too far gone to notice. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no, no, no."

  At some point, she stopped shaking on her own and fell still, her body as limp as a rag doll in his arms. I squeezed Dad's shoulder with one hand and stroked Mom's hair with the other.

  "Good-bye, Mom," I said. "I'll always love you."

  I leaned over and kissed her on her forehead and then did the same for Dad.

  "At least this time we were with her," I said.

  He gazed up at me with tear-flooded eyes. "I know, Jackson," he said, holding on to that slim thread of comfort. "I know."

  Then I left him to grieve his love's death all over again. Powi reached out and embraced me, and I held on to her for all I was worth.

  "Once you have recovered," Houdini said, "there's the matter of my own life to attend to."

  I let Powi go and gaped at the man. "After what happened with my mother, you still want to go through with it? You want to risk that?"

  "The circumstances are different," he said. "My soul never departed from my body. I never allowed my flesh to rot. For me, it will be different."

  "Or so you think," said Mamaci.

  Powi squealed in surprise at hearing her grandmother's voice.

  The old medicine woman pushed herself to her feet. The color had already drained from her skin, and she looked worn and weak. "After all, you have been wrong about so many things," she said to Houdini.

  Powi rushed to her side and held her steady. "Grandma!" she said. "I thought I'd lost you."

  "You might as well have." Mamaci scowled at Houdini. "My powers are gone – stolen along with my life."

  "But look what we have done with them, madam," Houdini said. "With your powers, we have wrought a world of good."

  "Don't pretend you did this for the world. You thought only of your own selfish needs," she said. "You have created a world filled with abominations in which you are the worst of them all."

  "Shh, Grandma," Powi said. "Let me help you. You've not been gone so long. There's still hope."

  "Don't worry about an old woman like me," Mamaci said. "I've lived a good life. My time was near. Look to Walter instead."

  "Walter?" Powi gasped. "Oh, no." She dashed over to where he'd fallen among the couches and chairs.

  The man had started to sit up on his own by the time Powi reached him. "Wow," he said. "That really hurt."

  "Are you OK?" Powi said. She put a hand over her mouth to cover her gasp as she got a good look as him.

  Walter followed her gaze and looked down at the gaping hole the shotgun had blasted into his chest. He put a tentative finger into it and tested the flesh. "Yeah," he said, "although I don't understand why. This doesn't hurt a bit."

  Without another word, Powi put her hands over Walter's mortal wound. The golden glow grew in them and soon passed over into Walter's chest and then suffused his entire body. When the glow finally faded, Powi brought her blooded fingers away. The injury had healed over entirely, leaving a large and livid scar on the man's chest.

  "You see," Houdini said to no one in particular. "It can work."

  Walter gaped at his healed flesh, visible through the massive hole that had been blasted in his shirt. The color had returned to his skin, and he was breathing again. "Thank you, Powi," he said in awe. "I – thanks."

  "Anything for my big brother," she said with a wistful smile.

  I caught my breath at that. I had known that Powi had been close with the men who'd tried to murder Bill in that steel wigwam atop the Thunderbird, but I hadn't even thought that any of them might be her brother.

  "Wait," Walter said. His face fell from gratitude to despair. "What about Andy, Robbie, and Danny?"

  I walked out toward the wreck of the helicopter, which still burned out on the balcony. "Oh, no." I spied some movement in the cockpit. Something thin and blackened was stuck in there, trying to get out.

  Powi joined me. She covered her mouth in wordless horror as she scanned the wreckage. Another form flailed about in the passenger compartment, some part of its crisped form apparently trapped under something too heavy to move.

  "Where's the third one?" Walter said as he came up behind us, his voice fearful and quiet.

  "The rocket might have blown him out of the helicopter," I said. I wondered if his shattered body might be down there in the driveway of Bootleggers, trying now to rise on dozens of broken bones. I had nearly shared that fate.

  "Can – can you help them?" Walter said.

  Powi grimaced. "I don't know. They – they're so badly hurt." She turned away, unable to bring herself to keep looking at the wreckage.

  Inside the penthouse, Dad wailed in grief. I closed my eyes. This was all too much to take.

  "We can't just leave them there," Walter said. "What can we do?"

  I opened my eyes and saw that he was talking to me. "Nothing," I said.

  I took Powi's hand and walked back into the penthouse. Houdini was waiting for us there.

  "Are you ready to get started?" he asked. "With your help, I should be breathing as easily as your man Walter in no time at all."

  Powi slapped him in the face. Dust rose from his skin.

  "What about Andy, Robbie, and Danny? What about Jackson's mother? What about Mamaci?" Her voice rose with every word until it came just short of a fullout scream.

  Unruffled, Houdini smoothed the skin of his cheek back into place. "The discomfort of a few is a small price to pay to kill death, I think."

  "What about all the people buried in graves around the world?" I looked back at Dad laying Mom to her final rest. He still cradled her in his arms.

  She was trying to push him away.

  Although life had left her, it seemed that the unlife that Houdini had given all corpses had returned. I shivered with revulsion.

  "No, Luke," Mom said to Dad. "This is wrong. Wrong. I don't want to go on like this. I don't want Jackson to see me like this."

  Of course, it was too late for that. Blood covered Mom's face and chest, and her eyes had rolled back into her head, showing nothing but whites. The pallor of death had already returned to her skin, and anguish had once again twisted her beautiful features into something desperate and ugly.

  I clutched at my stomach and wondered how long I could last without being sick.

  At that moment, Hardeen walked into the room from behind the elevator shaft, red faced and breathing hard. "It's over, Harry," he said. "You won. Let these people go."

  "Dash!" A wide and honest grin spread on Houdini's face, and he flung his arms wide to greet his estranged brother. "It's damned good to see you. I'd long since given up on having any family around to share my triumph."

  Hardeen did not respond in kind. "This isn't a social visit, Harry. I'm not here to congratulate you. I just ran up sixty-six flights of stairs to get here, and I'm too tired to make nice."

  Hardeen glared down at his shorter brother. "It's time to see what your grand plot here was all about, Harry. You always claimed you only wanted to bring yourself back to life. What are you waiting for?"

  Houdini looked down at his cold, wrinkled hands. Then he looked over at my mother, still in my father's arms, now weeping tears of blood over her own death.

  "Do you mean something like 'Now that I have power over death, would I prefer to become the zombie king?' You know the magic doesn't work like that." He spoke to Hardeen but never took his eyes off my mom.

  "Even if it did, I don't know that I could bear it." Houdini turned back to Hardeen now. "I felt horrible about every one of those experiments of mine that went bad. I wanted them all to live."

  "But you didn't let that stop you," Hardeen said in a hard voice.

  "I know," Houdini said. "But if anything, the failures spurred me on even harder. I hoped that if I could solve my own predicament I could save them too." He winced at another moan from my mother. "I regret to say it appears I was wrong about that too. I – I only sent those failures of mine to keep you away from me because you were so damned hardheaded about it. I knew they wouldn't hurt you."

  "Not for any lack of trying."

  "I'm sure. I–" Houdini's voice faltered. "I'm sorry."

  Hardeen's face softened. "What's it going to be then, Harry? Now that you've succeeded, what's keeping you from collecting your prize?"

  Harry glanced over at my mother again. "Would it be all right if I admitted I was scared?"

  Hardeen scoffed. "You, scared? The great daredevil Harry Houdini? The man who defied death countless times, sheerly for the entertainment of others?"

  Houdini mustered a weak but game smile. "I haven't been able to feel much of anything over eighty-three years, Dash. I've been dead longer than I've been alive."

  "That's fine," Hardeen said, "but you can't let it stop you." He reached over and put a hand on his brother's shoulder. It was glowing.

  As the golden glow moved into Houdini from his brother, Houdini cried out and crumpled to his knees. Hardeen followed him down, never taking his hands off him for an instant. Houdini howled in agony, but he never once tried to get away or asked Hardeen to stop.

  The glow crept along until it covered every inch of Houdini's form. His flesh began to fill out, erasing the cracks and wrinkles that had marked his desiccated skin. The color returned to his cheeks, his lips pinked up, and his hair even grew dark once more. His pained cries went from a raspy hiss to a guttural groan.

  The glow soon faded from Houdini and then from Hardeen as well. "That's all your body will take, Harry," Hardeen said. "I hope it's enough."

  Houdini lay strewn across the floor, his lungs unable to quite catch the breath that had returned to them. I wondered if he might die again at any moment, just like my mom – and if that happened, what would that mean?

  The elevator bell dinged. The doors opened, and Siegel and every one of the magicians of the Cabal poured out of it. They all bore the pallid skin and empty eyes of the walking dead.

  "Harry Houdini!" Siegel stabbed a waxy finger at the great magician. "You murdered all of these people, and now you're going to pay!"

  Walter stepped up with his shotgun, which he'd collected once again. He pumped a shell into the chamber and leveled it at Siegel. "Back the hell off!" he said. "I know how to deal with zombies."

  "Don't try it, Walter." Powi pointed at the weapon's bent barrel.

  He dropped the weapon as if it had become hot enough to blister his hands. He rubbed his chest through the hole the gun had made in his shirt, and he backed up a step. "Never mind then."

  Hardeen rose to his feet between the zombies and his brother. I saw Bill standing there behind Siegel, along with Misha, Melody, Ryan, Cindi, Christian, Owen, Peter, Ming, and all the rest, every one of them murderously mad.

  Houdini was too weak to stand. The blood in his veins had not flowed for over eighty years, and despite the preparations he'd made before his death he was in no shape to fight, only to roll over on his side. Still, he looked far better than my mother had, and he seemed like he might manage to stay alive – unless Siegel and the others destroyed him first.

  "It's over, Bugsy," Hardeen said. "He did it. He won. He's alive."

  "Not for long!" Siegel launched himself at Hardeen, and the rest of the Cabal followed after him, snarling for Houdini's blood.

  "Can't you control your dogs?" Hardeen said. "Isn't that why you bound them to you in the first place?"

  Houdini struggled to his knees. He may have seemed weak, but he spoke with a voice that could command armies. "I can understand why you and the others are upset, but you cannot speak to me this way. Stand down!"

  Siegel laughed. "Those tattoos only bound us to you for the rest of our lives. They've expired. We may be dead, but at least we're free – to kill you!"

  The Cabal magicians surged forward behind Siegel as he stalked toward their prey. Hardeen helped his brother to his feet, and the two of them braced themselves for the inevitable assault.

  "Hold it right there!" Dad shouted the order at the top of his lungs, and every set of eyes in the room – living and dead – turned to watch him. He stood there behind the crypt, still holding my undead mother in one arm as she wept on his shirt.

  "I cast this spell, the one that brought you all back," Dad said. "And I can break it. So help me, if you harm any one of us, I'll send you all straight back to hell!"

  The dead magicians all froze, unsure of what to do. Their fury at their fate demanded revenge, but not at the cost of the last shreds of their existence.

  "And send your precious wife there with us?" Siegel sneered. "You're a bad bluffer, Luke. You haven't got it in you."

  "Don't make me do this!" Dad said. "Stop!"

  "You must do it, Luke," Houdini said. "Break the spell!"

  Powi moved to protect Walter and Mamaci. "You can't just kill them all," she said to my dad. "Can you?"

  "He doesn't have a choice!" Mamaci said.

  Siegel laughed. "By the time we're done here, everyone in Las Vegas will be dead – and then we'll branch out to the rest of the world. If we have to be dead, we might as well rule. And no one will be able to stop us." He spoke over his shoulder to the other dead magicians. "Take them apart," he said. "Tear them into pieces. Kill them all!"

  Hardeen charged straight at Siegel.

  Walter put up his fists, ready to take on the undead with his bare hands. "Bring it on, zombies!" he bellowed at them.

  Powi joined Walter at his side, ready to defend the brother she'd just brought back to life, even if that meant they both died in the process. Rather than rally with her grandchildren, Mamaci launched herself into the fray. Misha charged at her, swinging hard, but she dodged his clumsy attacks. Death had not been kind to his reflexes.

  Dad climbed into the crypt next to Mom and held her tight. "What's happening?" she kept saying. "What's happening?"

  I could hear Dad wailing in a plaintive voice, "No, no, no. No, no, no."

  I ran straight at Bill. He was so furious, he was frothing at the mouth.

  I grabbed him by his shoulders and shook him hard. He snarled at me, not a hint of recognition in his eyes. There didn't seem to be anything human left.

  "Bill!" I shouted into his face. "It's me! Jackson!"

  He formed his hands into claws and tried to tear off my face.

 
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

 

I brought my arm up in time to block Bill's attack, but he wasn't the only one coming after me. Melody grabbed me from behind and sank her teeth into my shoulder. I yowled in pain and hit her in the face to try to knock her off.

  It didn't work, and it gave Bill the opening he needed to get his hands around my throat and start throttling me. While I tried to get my fingers under his hands enough that I could breath, Ryan stormed up and started punching me in the gut.

  I knew I wouldn't be able to take much more of this. They weren't the people I'd once known. They were undead killing machines, and I needed to get away from them as fast as I could.

  Unable to phase through the floor, I tried to take to the air, but both Bill and Melody clamped onto me and held tight. Bill weighed more than Melody, so I pitched over in his direction as I took off. I slammed into the ceiling as hard as I could. That dislodged Melody, but she tore a chunk out of my shoulder as she fell to the ground.

  "Time to die," Siegel said. "Time for everyone to die!"

  Looking past Bill, I saw Houdini standing back to back with Hardeen. The two of them battled a circle of zombies trying to bring them down. Hardeen reached out with a red-hot hand, and his touch set clothing and flesh ablaze wherever it landed. Meanwhile, Houdini caused a hole to open up beneath one of the zombies – Alejandro – who disappeared into the room below.

  With Bill choking me, I was starting to black out. I had to move fast.

  I flew toward the crypt and tried to scrape Bill off of me by zipping right over the top edge of it as he hung from my neck. He hit the stone side of the tomb hard, but he refused to let go. I smashed into the edge of the crypt myself and tasted blood in my mouth.

  The impact loosened Bill's grip for a moment, and I managed to croak out a cry for help. "Dad," I said, "he's killing me. You have to break the spell."

  "No." Dad held Mom tight and buried his face into her neck. This close to her, the smell of the formaldehyde might have made me ill if I hadn't been so focused on keeping Bill from killing me.

  "Luke!" Mom's voice sounded like she was underwater. She cleared her throat, and blood dribbled down her chin. "That's Jackson, Luke. You have to save him."

  "I can't," Dad said. "I can't lose you. Not again."

  Bill closed his hands around my throat again. The last thing I managed to croak out was "Mom!"

  "I'm already gone, honey, but Jackson's right here. He's still alive. You have to save our baby!"

  I took to the air again aimed for the window that Dad and I had smashed open earlier. I managed to wrestle Bill around so he took the brunt of the impact when we smashed into the railing. He still kept his grip around my neck.

  Desperate to try something – anything – that might work, I grabbed Bill by the sides of his head. I tore at his hair and his ears, but he never flinched. No amount of pain could distract someone who was already dead. He just kept throttling me, and I knew I wouldn't be able to take it for much longer.

  A roaring sound started in my ears as my vision began to go black. It seemed like I was falling away from the picture formed by my eyes, which became the light at the exit of a lengthening tunnel I would never see the end of again.

  Since I couldn't hurt Bill, I did the one last thing I could think of.

  I healed him.

  The golden glow flowed out of my hands and straight into Bill's head. From there it poured down into the rest of his body. As it went, I saw the pallor fade from his skin, and the madness drain from his eyes.

  I pumped as much of my mojo into the healing magic as I could. When the glow finally reached Bill's heart, he froze like a statue. A moment later, the glow kickstarted his heart, and he let go of my throat.

  Coughing air into my lungs, I shoved myself away from him and glanced back through the smashed window.

  I spotted Powi fighting alongside Walter. She broke Misha's neck with a savage kick, but he kept coming at her anyway. Cindi grabbed her from behind, while Christian and Owen tackled Walter.

  Powi screamed in frustration and fear. I charged in through the broken window, determined to save her. As I went, I took off Siegel's watch, inverted the band, and reached inside. I felt my hand close on his pistol.

  Before I could draw the gun, though, Siegel dashed up and kicked me in the side of the head. Stars spun in my eyes.

  "This is it for you, kid," Siegel said, his voice reverberating with his fury. "Nobody kills me and gets away with it."

  Siegel roared as he slammed into me, driving me backward and knocking me off my feet. I grabbed onto him as I fell over, but instead of letting him crush me against the floor, I took to the air.

  Still clutching Siegel to me, I zipped backward as fast as I could. My trajectory took me straight toward the elevator doors. As we reached them, I curled myself up into a ball as best I could and twisted around to put Siegel between me and the oncoming sheets of steel.

  We slammed into the doors with a resounding clang. Despite the fact he'd taken the brunt of the blow, Siegel's grip never faltered for an instant. He cackled at me, holding on tighter than ever. "Go ahead!" he said. "You can't hurt me!"

  I yanked his gun out of his watchband, and shoved it up under his chin. "Let's test that theory out."

  I pulled the trigger, and the hammer fell. Before the bullet hit him, though, he turned it into air.

  Then I realized that Powi and I had killed him before Dad had helped Houdini complete the spell. No one had ever drained his power, which meant that unlike all the other Cabal magicians in the place, he still had his mojo going.

  Despite that, the force of the air being blown out of the gun's barrel managed to snap Siegel's head back at an unnatural angle. The shock from that forced him to let me go, if only for an instant.

  For a second, I considered just flying off into the night. No one could stop me, I was sure, and I could get away. I'd be safe. I might even be able to snatch Powi up as I went and save her life too.

  But that would mean leaving Bill to the tender mercies of the Cabal wizards, as soon as they figured out he was no longer one of them. It also meant my mother – along with every other dead person around – might be stuck in this horrible state of undeath for all time, and I just couldn't stomach that.

  I glanced over to see Bill shouting in my father's face. While I'd been dancing with Siegel, he'd gone right to the heart of the problem, to the only man who held the answer to our dilemma. I realized that's what I needed to do too.

  "Come back here, kid." Siegel grabbed at my ankles. "I'm not done with you yet!"

  I ignored him. Instead, I aimed the pistol, and I shot my dad.

  He was too busy arguing with Bill and my mother to notice I had the gun. He never even thought about the bullet until it lanced through him. By then it was too late.

  I kicked Siegel in the head until he let go, and I flew over to Mom's tomb. The bullet had caught Dad in his right shoulder, and he lay there next to her, going into shock as his blood poured from his wound. He looked up at me and saw the smoking gun in my fist.

  "Jackson?" he said. "You shot me?"

  I refused to apologize. This wasn't about him and me anymore. Maybe it never had been. Now it was about everybody else, and I'd run out of time for being polite. I leveled the gun at his face.

  "You have to break the spell, Dad, now!"

  "You do not talk to me that way!" His voice cracked from the pain. "I am your father!"

  "I'm through asking," I said. "If you won't break the spell, then I'll have to break you."

  "You're insane."

  "One."

  "Listen to him, Luke," said Mom. "Do what he says."

  "Forget it!" said Dad. He clutched at the horrible pain in his shoulder. He couldn't argue that he knew I wouldn't shoot him now.

  "I don't want to do this, Dad," I said. "Two."

  Powi screamed from somewhere over my shoulder. I refused to glance back. I knew if I did, I'd go running to rescue her, but that wouldn't do her any good. Unless I took care of Dad now – unless I managed to break the spell, one way or the other – she'd be dead soon enough anyhow.

  "You're dead, Jackson!" Siegel said, as he raced up behind me. "When I get my hands on you, you're dead! You and your friend and your girlfriend too!"

  "Please, Luke," Mom said. "Please. Don't let them kill our son."

  Dad stared up at me in horror. I suppose it was one thing to have an argument with your son about something so important as this, and something altogether different to discover you'd managed to push him to the point that he felt he had no choice but to shoot you. "I will never forgive you for this," he said.

  "Jackson!" Houdini said from a different direction. "What are you doing?"

  "Fixing this," I said. "Three."

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

 

"All right!" Dad said as he clutched Mom to him tighter than ever. "Don't shoot! It's done!"

  Something heavy hit me in the back of my legs, and I pitched forward against the tomb. Behind me, I heard a number of other bodies slump over to the floor. I didn't pay any heed to any of them though. The only thing that had my attention was Mom.

  Dad cradled her head in his arms and kissed her gently and stroked her hair. His tears cascaded down from his cheeks and onto hers so that it seemed like he was crying for them both. Between the two of them, he was the only one who could do it.

  He glanced up at me with eyes that burned with unmitigated hatred. I'd lost both my parents in one go.

  I would mourn Mom later. Right now, I still had business I had to finish.

  As I shoved off from the tomb and stood up, I looked down to see that Siegel had been the one who had landed on my legs. He'd been that close to stopping me.

  The rest of the Cabal wizards had fallen over dead. The only exception was Bill, who'd been healed before the spell had ended. He came around the tomb and clapped me on my shoulder. He didn't say a word.

  I spied Powi pulling herself free from a tangle of dead limbs and staggering to her feet. Right next to her, Walter did the same. They spotted Mamaci's body, and Powi gave out a little cry.

  Bill and I walked over to Hardeen and Houdini, who stood leaning against each other in a circle of charred corpses strewn about a hole-ridden section of floor. "Well, Harry," Hardeen said, "you've made a fine mess of this, haven't you?"

  Houdini grunted at his brother, then turned to face me. Soot and blood covered his face, and he stood on unsteady feet. He scowled at me.

  "Do you have any idea what you've done here tonight?" he asked me. "Decades of work – nearly a century all told – wasted."

  "You're breathing, aren't you?" I said. "Don't complain."

  I gazed out at the carnage all around us. There were so many dead up here, and countless more downstairs, I was sure. Who knew how far the spell's effects had spread? Had it really conquered death for the entire world? I could not force myself to think about the horrors that would involve.

  "I should kill you for this," Houdini said.

  I don't remember planning to hit him. My hand just came up and pistol-whipped him all by itself.

  As he staggered back, clutching his bloodied face, I dove at him and tackled him to the floor. He half fell into one of the holes he'd created, his head and shoulders dangling into the open air. I scrambled up to where I could sit on his chest and kneel on his arms, and I jammed the gun into his cheek.

  "You want to kill me?" I said. "How about you give it a try?"

  Houdini's eyes opened wide with terror. He'd been beyond death for eighty-three years. This was probably the first moment since his death that he'd been afraid for his life.

  "Don't do it!" Powi said. "You saw what he did to Walter!"

  "Walter's no magician," I said.

  I glared down into Houdini's eyes, and I saw that he knew what I meant. It was easy for him to turn aside bullets from a distance, but here, this close to him, it would be a matter of my mojo versus his. The winner would determine where the lead wound up.

  On most days, I don't know if it would have been much of a contest. Houdini himself said I was the most powerful magician he'd seen in decades, but that doesn't mean I could outdo the greatest magician who'd ever lived.

  Today, though, Houdini had just come back from the dead. It had to have drained him, made him feel vulnerable again for the first time in for ever. After everything I'd been through, I was probably just as wiped, but I didn't have to let him know that.

  "What do you think?" I asked Houdini. "Care to test your luck?"

  "I–" Houdini twisted his head back to g et away from the gun. Looking past him, I saw a pair of bodies, one on top of the other.

  I pressed the barrel of the gun into the cut on his cheek and watched the blood run down his face and drip into the hole below.

  "Come on," I said. "Step on up and take your chances. Let's see which one of us cashes out today."

  He locked eyes with me, trying to see if I was bluffing. I guess he didn't like what he saw. All the fight drained out of him. He opened his mouth and whispered one word.

  "Mercy."

  I kept the gun on him, refusing to relax. "Why?" I said. "Why should I let you live?"

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Because you're no killer," Powi said.

  I grimaced. "Today is a new day."

  In my heart, though, I knew she was right. I would have killed Dad to break the spell if I'd had to, but only because it would have saved so many other lives. This was different. Houdini had already committed his crimes. Killing him now would only be revenge.

  I moved off of Houdini and stood before him, keeping the gun trained on him the entire time. Powi put her arms around me, and Bill stood by my side. Walter came up behind us. None of them said a word.

  Somewhere behind me, I could hear my father still weeping.

  Hardeen helped his brother to his feet. Houdini seemed smaller, weaker now than he ever had before.

  I recognized the look in his eyes. He'd been beaten.

  "Here are the terms of your surrender," I said. "First, you release Bill here from his bond to you."

  "Already taken care of," Houdini said. "The bond does not survive death, although your fortunate friend here has."

  Bill rolled up his sleeve. The ankh still showed there, but the circle around his arm had disappeared.

  "Second, you swear to never harm or move against any of us or the Thunderbird again."

  Powi squeezed me tighter at that, and Walter gave a satisfied grunt. Houdini looked at them both, then over to where Mamaci's body lay. He grimaced and said, "Done."

  "Third, you keep all mention of us out of this when the police come around."

  Hardeen glanced over my shoulder at the smoking wreck of the Thunderbird's helicopter still smoldering on the balcony. "That might take some doing, even for Harry."

  "He's a genius," I said. "He'll figure it out."

  Houdini cracked a weak smile at that. "Done."

  Hardeen's intervention on his brother's behalf gave me another idea. "Fourth, you bring Hardeen back into your business as an equal partner."

  Both Hardeen and Houdini put up their hands at that.

  "Now just hold on a minute," Hardeen said. "No one ever said I wanted anything like that."

  I pointed at Houdini. "You're the only one I even remotely trust to keep him in check," I said, "and given the mess around here, he's going to need every bit of help he can get."

  Houdini looked at Hardeen, a wisp of a smile spreading across his face. "It'll be like old times." He stuck out his hand. "If you're willing, Dash, then so am I."

  Hardeen grabbed Houdini's hand in a hesitant grip and shook it. "Done."

  "I still don't like this." Powi stabbed a finger at Houdini. "How can you trust him? He's not an honorable man."

  Houdini winced at that but did not open his mouth to deny it.

  "We know who he is, and we know what he's done," I said. "If he breaks any of his promises, we expose him to the world."

  I turned to Bill. "Can we set that up to happen even if we happen to die?"

  "Piece of cake," he said with a grin. "I can do it from my phone."

  Houdini frowned at this but nodded. He threw open his arms in a magnanimous gesture. "Is there anything else?"

  "One last thing," I said. "Bill and Walter are going to walk out of here, and on their way out you're going to let us cash all the chips we won here."

  Bill grinned at that one, his eyes dancing.

  Houdini sighed. "Done. Assuming that the casino cashiers are open."

  "If not, I'll cash them at the Thunderbird and come back and exchange them later," Walter said.

  Houdini nodded his assent.

  I turned to Bill and gave him a man-hug. We clapped each other on the back. "You done good, brother," he said.

  "Take Walter and get going," I said. "I'll meet you at the Thunderbird."

  Once the elevator doors had closed behind Bill and Walter, I turned back to Houdini and Hardeen. I stuck out my hand. "So, we have a deal?"

  Houdini shook it. His grasp was warm and soft – alive.

  "You're an amazing young man," he said.

  I cracked a smile at that despite myself. I put the gun back into Siegel's magic pocket, then inverted it and put it back on my wrist. It looked great.

  "I'd like to ask you both one other thing," I said.

  Houdini arched an eyebrow at that. "I thought our deal had been concluded."

  "Consider this a personal request." I looked back at Dad, who still sat in Mom's tomb with her, moaning in misery. Despite everything that had happened, everything he had done, I knew I still loved him – even if he would always hate me.

  "Take care of him if you can," I said.

  "Done," said Hardeen.

  "Thank you."

  I turned to Powi then and gave her a squeeze. "Are you ready to get out of here?" I said.

  She smiled at me and gave me a kiss. "I thought you'd never ask."

  I held her close to me and rose into the air. An instant later, we zipped out through the balcony doors and spiraled high into the dazzling Las Vegas night.

 
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Matt Forbeck has worked full-time on fiction and games since 1989. Frankly, he is a creative machine, and thus utterly perfect for Angry Robot. His many publishers include Adams Media, AEG, Atari, Boom! Studios, Atlas Games, Del Rey, Games Workshop, Green Ronin, High Voltage Studios, Human Head Studios, IDW, Image Comics, Mattel, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Playmates Toys, Simon & Schuster, Ubisoft, Wizards of the Coast, and WizKids. He has written novels, comic books, short stories, non-fiction, magazine articles and computer game scripts. He has designed collectible card games, roleplaying games, miniatures and board games.

  Matt is a proud member of the Alliterates writers group, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and the International Game Developers Association. He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, USA, with his wife Ann and their children: Marty, and the quadruplets: Pat, Nick, Ken and Helen. (And there's a whole other story.)

 

www.forbeck.com

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

Many thanks to Christian Moore for sharing his endless expertise on all things Las Vegas. Also to my many partners in crime in my countless trips to Sin City over the years, including Peter Adkison, Ryan Dancey, Pete Fenlon, Doug Ferguson, Marcelo Figueroa, Shane Hensley, Ken Hite, John Kovalic, Sean Lashgari, Hal Mangold, Lou Rexing, Cindi Rice, Dave Seay, Owen Seyler, Martin Stever, Adrian Swartout, Bob Watts, Mike Webb, and John Zinser, plus countless other compatriots. But most especially to Will Niebling for bringing me on my first trip to Las Vegas and introducing me to that uniquely American city.

  Thanks to the members of my writers group, the Alliterates, for their feedback, especially to Tim Brown for his comments. Also thanks to Elena Johnston and Cindi Rice (again) for their generosity with both their time and expertise. My deep gratitude to Jordan Weisman for his inspiration in getting me to think about mixing poker and magic.

  Even more thanks to all of my family, friends, and fans who have believed in me for so long, especially my parents. You have my undying gratitude.

  Special thanks to the fine and faithful people at Angry Robot: Lee Harris and my old friend Marc Gascoigne. No one loves great stories more or treats them better.

  Last but not least, thanks to you who took a chance on this book and bet on it with your time and your money. I hope it pays off for you big.

 
 

Extras...
 

AUTHOR'S NOTES

 
Vegas Knights started out as a game.

  Way back in 2004, Jordan Weisman of WizKids had an idea for a collectible card game based on Poker, which had reached the height of its popularity at that point. Someone had figured out how to televise Texas Hold 'Em by putting a camera under the hole cards, which gave the rest of us a way to understand the drama that unfolds at a table, and it took off at warp speed.

  Jordan is one of the sharpest guys I've ever known. In the '80s, he founded FASA and created games like BattleTech and Shadowrun. He got into networked computer games early on and sold that spin-off business – FASA Interactive – to Microsoft. While there, he helped launch the X-box and spurred alternate-reality games (ARGs) into the mainstream with The Beast, a massive game set up to promote Steven Spielberg's A.I.

  He went on to found WizKids and create the collectible, prepainted miniatures game category with Mage Knight and its follow-up Hero Clix. He's since moved on from there to found Smith & Tinker, which created the handheld/online game system Nanovor, and another tabletop game company, Wells Expeditions. Meanwhile, he also co-wrote interactive novels like Cathy's Book and Personal Effects: Dark Art and led other ARGs that promoted things like Halo and The Dark Knight. 

  Most people only get one or two great ideas in their lives, and if they're lucky they get to ride them until they end. Hopefully they make enough to retire on, and you might never hear from them again. Jordan's a serial entrepreneur who not only gets lots of these ideas but manages to put them into action and make something both cool and profitable. 

  I've been friends with Jordan since his FASA days. I worked with him on a few things over the years, and I even helped him out with that A.I. ARG, writing text for a number of the websites and lending a hand with a Japanese cell phone game that became part of its monstrous network of clues. So, when Jordan asks me to help him with something, I dive right in.

  Jordan wanted to make a collectible card game out of Poker, and he asked me to tackle the challenge of designing the game. I hammered away at it in several different incarnations, each time getting closer to the goal.

  The first version of the game was called Battle Poker, in which warring factions from across all time and space fought it out for supremacy. It hit all the design requirements, and it played well enough. The problem was it just wasn't fun. The collectible bits threw off the Poker bits enough to make it not intriguing but annoying.   Ironically, I'd helped out with another collectible card game with Poker mechanics a few years before. Doomtown was based on Deadlands, a hit roleplaying game published by Pinnacle Entertainment, of which I was the president at the time. My business partner – company CEO Shane Hensley – had come with Deadlands, this brilliant game about the Weird West, featuring zombie cowboys and far stranger things. It used Poker mechanics, so when Dave Williams (then of AEG and now with Red 5 Studios, designing the massively multiplayer online game Firefall) sat down to design Doomtown, he plugged it full of Poker bits as well. Shane and I helped polish up Dave's excellent design a bit, and we played the hell out of that game.

  So, I knew Poker well, and even had some experience working it into other games. Battle Poker, though, just didn't work. Mechanically, it was great, but the fun never showed up.

  At Jordan's request, I gave the game another shot, and it morphed into Battle Champs. In this version, you managed a team of heroes and monsters battling against each other in gladiatorial combat for the amusement of the evil bastards who'd crushed the planet under their collective heel. You not only set up the battles but bet on their outcome. 

  Again, the game played well enough. It beat Battle Poker hollow. But it still wasn't the kind of fantastic fun such a game demands.

  Late in 2004, I gave the game another shot. This time, I came up with the title Vegas Knights. This version of the game worked a lot like Battle Champs, but with some key differences. 

  In working through the earlier versions of the game, we'd been trying to replicate the tensest dramatic moment in Poker: the reveal at the end of a hand. In a collectible card game, though, you can customize your deck, and that threw all that off horribly. The reveal became too difficult to predict.

  In Vegas Knights, I concentrated on the other dramatic part of Poker: the betting. The quick movement of cash, the bluffing, the attempts to read your opponent and figure out what he's really up to, that all got turned up to eleven. 

  And the game worked. It sang. Best of all, it was fun.

  As "The Object of the Game" from that draft read:

  In Vegas Knights, you are a manager of a team of wizardly gamblers in a modern world filled with monsters and magic. You coordinate the efforts of your team to win the big prizes and come home from Las Vegas with the ultimate jackpot.

  As a team manager, you pit your knights against others in gladiatorial contests of fate and fortune in Las Vegas. As you do, you bet on the outcome of each contest. The object of the game, then, is not to win the contests, although that can help. What you really want to do is make the most money.

  At that point, Jordan accepted the game and brought it in-house for his team of developers to tinker with and polish. By the time they were done with it, they'd ditched the Vegas Knights background in favor of an Old West theme, which was something I'd suggested early in the game's development too. I just love that era. Besides developing Deadlands, I'd also written two other Western roleplaying games – Western Hero and Outlaw – essentially the same book reworked for two different rules systems: the Hero System (Champions) and Rolemaster, respectively. 

  With the game now titled High Stakes Drifter – which it came out as in 2005 – I looked at the concept work I'd done on Vegas Knights and thought it would be a damn shame if it all got thrown away. I had an idea for a novel that mixed elements of Harry Potter and Ocean's 11, and while it wasn't exactly like the Vegas Knights game background, it shared enough themes that I didn't want to have any qualms about stepping on that old material's toes. 

  Plus, I just loved the title.

  I asked Jordan if he'd be willing to release that unused material back to me, and he did so with one condition: I couldn't make a game out of it first. Since I'd been thinking a novel anyhow, we had an instant deal.

  That fall, I pitched Vegas Knights to Solaris. At the time, it was a new imprint for original novels being published by the Black Library, set up under the guidance of an old contact of mine, Marc Gascoigne. I'd written a number of humorous novels for them already, based on Blood Bowl, the game of fantasy football – the kind in which elves, dwarves, vampires, zombies, and so on battle for possession of a spiked ball on an Astrogranite field. I figured Vegas Knights might be a good fit for Solaris, but it was declined. 

  In 2006, I set about developing a treatment for Vegas Knights as a possible screenplay. I didn't get too far with it, but the experience helped the story gel a bit in my mind. 

  Then in 2009, I pitched a number of books to Marc again, who'd since moved on from Solaris to set up Angry Robot. This time he didn't hesitate – he liked Vegas Knights, and he signed me up to write it, along with Amortals, which came out just a few months ago.

  I think he made the right decision, and by the time you've gotten to this part of the book, I hope you agree.

 
 

UNDER THE HOOD:

The Original Pitch for Vegas Knights

 

When I pitch books around to publishers, I like to start with something short and punchy. There are so many reasons for a publisher to reject a book, a lot of which they can tell you after reading just a few lines about it. Many of these things are beyond any author's control: there may be another book like it in the publisher's line-up, the publisher may be tired of such books, it may just be a rotten premise.

  Rather than write a whole book to figure that part out, I prefer to test the waters with a short piece of only one to three paragraphs. I then send in a half dozen or so at a time, and if the publisher shows interest in any of them, I write up a longer synopsis to show them where I hope to take the premise.

  Here is my first pitch for Vegas Knights, the one Solaris rejected in 2005. You'll notice I eventually ditched the idea of mathemagics entirely, but some of the basic themes are still there.

 

Vegas Knights

  Dabblers in the arcane arts stumble upon a field of study known as mathemagic. This allows knowledgeable souls to alter the nature of reality at a quantum level making the unlikely all too possible. One group of mathemagicians realizes that the best place to use their new powers is in the one city where even subtle changes in the odds can pay off big: Las Vegas.

  The casinos discover this plan soon enough and then recruit mathemagicians of their own. At first, they just stop others from stealing from then, but then they send these men and women out to ruin their competition as well. Bitter and secret battles break out among the casinos and their most mysterious employees.

  This all comes to a head when a young college student in town on Spring Break learns that he has a latent, wild talent for mathemagic that's sure to disturb the tenuous balance of power in the City of Sin. Which side will he choose – or will he make his own deal instead? 

  Think: Harry Potter/Ocean's Eleven.

 

THE FILM TREATMENT

Here's the film treatment I came up with for Vegas Knights back in 2006. You'll recognize the name Bill Chancey, whose surname I borrowed from my childhood doctor. Erik Weiss, of course, is called that in honor of Harry Houdini's birth name, but in the final book he became Jackson Wisdom, only partly because Houdini himself assumed a huge role in that story.

  This version includes all sorts of Arthurian references, none of which made it into the final book. However, it sets up the basic structure of the story and introduces the idea of wizards playing poker against each other and messing with the cards.

 

Vegas Knights

  Two teenagers sit across from each other at a table in a hotel room, playing poker. BILL CHANCEY deals the cards to his friend ERIK WEISS. Bill goes all-in. Erik calls. They show their hands.

  Bill grins as he produces four aces. Before he can collect, Erik throws down his hand: five aces, all spades. The two laugh at each other. They're ready.

  Bill and Erik strut into THE CAMELOT, a Las Vegas casino with an Arthurian theme. They sit down at a blackjack table and win big. They take almost every hand. They cannot lose. 

  That night, the boys party large. They have hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the casino has comped them a highroller's suite, free meals, and admission to their top nightclub. 

  The next morning, as the boys recover, MERLE – a handsome man in smoked, John Lennon glasses – barges in, backed by a trio of dark-suited legbreakers with Camelot security badges. He explains to the boys that he know they've been cheating, and how. They're going to play again today, against him.

  Merle and the others leave, and the boys try to run. Security blocks them at every door. They give in and agree to play. 

  The boys do their best in the game, but Merle beats them at every hand. Soon he cleans them out. He offers them a marker, which Bill insists on accepting. Erik watches as Merle polishes off that as well. In the last hand, he calls Bill's best effort, then peels off his cards one by one for a devastating win.

  As the game ends, the leg breakers converge on the table and escort the boys from the casino. On their way out, Merle informs the boys that they've been banned from the casino for life. If they return, they're sure to lose more than mere money.

  Sitting on the casino's curb, Bill is ready to leave, but Erik refuses to go down so quietly. They're going to get their money back and then some. He just doesn't know how.

  A limousine pulls up, and MORGAN beckons to them from the back door. The boys recognize her from the blackjack table last night and join her.

  Morgan already knows all about the boys' problem. She can help them win back their money – and Bill's marker. The boys start to refuse, but Morgan asks what they think Bill backed up his marker with. It turns out to have been his soul.

  Erik's all for leaving anyhow, as he doesn't believe in souls. Bill's less sure and begs his friend to help him out. Erik relents, and they discuss with Morgan what to do next.

  Morgan uses her magic to disguise the boys. (They'll need all their magic to play in the casino game.) They look the same when they look at each other, but in a mirror they can see the images they show to the rest of the world. 

  Morgan fronts the boys a gambling stake. She insists on Erik signing for the marker. At first, he balks, but Bill begs him. 

  Erik asks Morgan for a partnership instead. She gets half of what each of them win while they're in Vegas. With a smirk, she agrees.

  The boys go back to Camelot and play blackjack again. They're up over a quarter million dollars when they notice the security men closing in on them. They get up and race for the door.

  The boys manage to lose the guards by tossing some chips into the air. In the chaos that ensues, they drop their disguises and saunter out of the casino. When they reach the exit, they find Merle waiting for them.

  Merle holds out Bill's marker, and the boys try to buy it back. Merle laughs at them. This marker's worth more than money. He flexes it in his hands, threatening to break it, and Bill falls to the ground, writhing in pain.

  Erik dares Merle to play him in poker. Merle agrees, but only if Erik's willing to put up his own marker against Bill's. Erik nods yes.

  Erik and Merle face off in a heads-up (two-player) game of No Limit Texas Hold 'Em. They start out playing with money, but the game goes down to the wire fast. Soon Merle goes all-in, but instead of taking the challenge Erik folds. 

  This happens again, then again. Merle snarls that the boy will run out of cash eventually. Then he'll have to play the marker.

  On the next hand, Erik goes all-in, putting everything but his own marker into the pot. Merle bears his teeth at him like a hungry tiger, then matches Erik's bet and tosses Bill's marker into the pot. Erik puts in his own marker, then tosses another dollar from his own pocket in for good measure. Merle calls.

  Erik shows his cards. He has a decent hand, but it's far from unbeatable. Triumphant, Merle peels his cards off one at a time, forming a Royal Flush. As he reveals the last card, though, it comes up a 2 of Spades.

  Erik waited for the right moment, then used his magic to affect Merle's hand instead of his own. The boys win the game and leave with a half-million dollars of Merle's money, half of which they give to Morgan, just before they drive off into the sunset.

 

THE NOVEL PROPOSAL

I actually had two versions of this proposal that I worked up for showing around back in 2008 and early 2009. They're substantially the same, but for the final one I trimmed off the last paragraph. That was the version that Angry Robot liked enough to offer me a contract to create this book. 

  In the course of writing the actual book, I changed many things around. Notably, the names of the casinos involved are all different. Okinawa became Bootleggers. Reservations became the Thunderbird. Marko Hedeon transformed into Ben Gaviota/Bugsy Siegel and from the leader of Chernobyl to Houdini's right-hand man.

  Of course, the book's themes also differ a lot. To make the stakes more personal the conflict went from being about controlling magic to restoring lives – or not. A lot of the ethos behind the way magic works survived into the book, but I never bothered to call it out. I preferred to show you those details rather than tell you, and I hope you enjoyed the difference.

 

Vegas Knights

High Concept

A college freshman and his best friend go to Las Vegas on spring break to see if they can bust the casinos with the best kind of luck: magic. They discover that the casinos have already beat them to it.

 

Set-Up

Magic has always been with us, but those who use it have often been shunned, hunted, or killed. Many successful wizards either turned to crime or had criminals exploit them for their amazing talents. Some of them took to the stage, while others tried to live quiet lives, but magic has a way of calling attention to itself.

  In the 1940s, the Mafia decided to open the Flamingo in Las Vegas and bring serious gambling to the desert. It did so at the behest of its greatest wizard, Harry Houdini. 

  Since faking his death in 1926, Houdini had worked full-time on his greatest labor, to master utter control over fate. To that end, Houdini needed to set up the greatest magical laboratory ever created, a place in which hundreds of thousands of people could believe that anything could happen. Las Vegas became that place.

  Las Vegas's nature pulled in magicians like moths to a torch. Houdini and his heirs demanded their full loyalty and put them to work, unaware of their true places in the master plan. Eighteen years ago, one of these men, who goes by the stage name Luke Wisdom, abandoned his girlfriend and their young child to join one of the many factions now battling over Houdini's legacy.

 

Main Characters

Erik Weiss: Hotheaded student wizard with something to prove to the world.

Bill Chancey: Another student wizard, and Erik's best friend. 

Rishi Ultman: Erik and Bill's professor in wizardry. 

Luke Wisdom: Yakuza wizard, also Erik's long-lost father. Although he's gaijin, he works at Okinawa, a JapaneseAmerican-themed casino.

Marko Hedeon: Leader of the Russian Mob's wizards. Behind the Soviet-themed casino Chernobyl.

Muatagoci Mamaci (Moon Woman): Elderly Paiute shaman who wields a magic far older than the wizards of Vegas. She mentors Powie and is in charge of the Native Americanthemed casino Reservations.

Powaqa "Powie" Strega: Italian-Hopi Indian witch who helps Erik and Bill. She works for Reservations.

 

Plot

Erik Weiss and his pal Bill Chancey arrive in Las Vegas for spring break. They've been studying magic – and real magic, not the stage stuff – under Rishi Ultman a professor of the paranormal at the University of Michigan. Despite their teacher warning them to never mess with games of chance, they make a run on the tables at the Chernobyl casino and end the night up a quarter-million dollars.

  The next day, the boys go down to the tables to try the same thing, this time at Reservations. They dare far too much this time, and casino security – along with Powie – comes after them. They run.

  That night, the boys hit the Strip to party instead of worrying about money. They take in a magic show at Okinawa and see Luke Wisdom in action.

  Disguising themselves with magic, the boys take another shot at the tables at Chernobyl the next day. They do fine for a while, but when a new dealer shows up they hit a long losing streak. Scared about what this means, they try to leave. Instead, security grabs them and hauls them into a back room for interrogation.

  Marko Hedeon explains to the boys the kind of trouble they're causing. Rogue wizards – those not attached to a casino – aren't permitted in Vegas. They have two choices: join him or leave town forever. He gives them 24 hours to decide. 

  After the boys leave, Powie grabs them and takes them to a bar for a drink. She explains to them how things work in Vegas. 

  Everyone has some magical ability, but few can consciously channel it. Vegas is set up to get people in tune with their arcane power and then drain it from them. Alcohol dulls magical abilities, which is why the casinos always ply their patrons with free drinks. They realized she's gotten them drunk to keep them from using their magic against her. 

  Powie asks the boys to join Reservations and go to work for Chernobyl as double agents. If they refuse, Muatagoci Mamaci will have them killed.

  The boys take a room at the Revolution, an American patriot-themed casino. Luke Wisdom, sent by his own masters, finds them there. Erik reveals that Wisdom is his father. 

  Luke knows this. He'd left Erik as a child, hoping to insulate him from this sordid life. Now, he recommends that the boys run as far away as they can.

  As the boys try to leave town, Marko captures them and imprisons them in a suite high above Chernobyl. The Russian mob is about to make a big play for control of all the magic in town, and they need every wizard on hand that they can get – willing or not.

  Backed into a corner, the boys decide to take action. It's not just enough to stop the Russians from gaining control of Vegas's pent up magic though. To make sure no one else can get it, they're going to take it for themselves. 

  Erik and Bill play along with Marko's scheme as long as they can. With the help of Powie and Luke, they manage to defeat Marko and snatch control of Vegas's magic at the last moment. Realizing that this only makes them a target for every casino in town, Erik decides that he must return the magic to the players who brought it in. Every game, every slot machine, every video poker console pays out its top jackpot at once. In the resulting confusion, the boys and Powie get away, leaving Luke to take whatever advantage he can of the chaos.

 

 

ANGRY ROBOT

 

A member of the Osprey Group
Midland House, West Way
Botley, Oxford
OX2 0HP
UK

 

www.angryrobotbooks.com 

Avada kedavra

 

An Angry Robot paperback original 2011 1

 

Copyright © Matt Forbeck 2011

 

Matt Forbeck asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

 

ISBN: 978 0 85766 084 4 

EBook ISBN: 978 0 85766 086 2

 

Set in Meridien by THL Design.

 

Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

 

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Extras...

AUTHOR'S NOTES

UNDER THE HOOD: