Chapter 1
The blubbery lip of the brutish, hulking bridge troll in front of me quivered in frustration. He gnashed his teeth together, staring me down with jaundiced eyes. I wondered, idly, how many people he’d eaten. How many bones had he splintered and mangled over the centuries with those elephantine tusks? My opponent fidgeted, and I could sense he was about to make his move; it was there, in his tensed shoulders, half as wide as I was tall, and his twitching hands, each large enough to palm a beach ball. I waited, pinned to my chair by his beady-eyed gaze, holding my breath. Almost a month’s preparation boiled down to what would happen in the next few minutes, and I couldn’t afford a single distraction. The gargantuan, green-skinned monster slumped forward, snorting through his pierced snout—the rusty septum ring as large as a bracelet—and rested his elbows on the table until it creaked from the strain.
“Fold,” he said, in a plodding, gravelly voice that would have done Andre the Giant justice.
I threw my hands up. “Ye can’t fold, ye idgit. You’re the big blind!”
Paul, the aforementioned bridge troll, studied the cards in his hand once more before nodding. “Fold.” He flipped them over and slid them across the table towards the dealer. Christoff, the owner of the bar and host of this little get together, glanced at me before collecting Paul’s cards and insisting everyone else return theirs. I rolled my eyes and tossed my hand on the table, face-up—pocket Aces. Paul didn’t even seem to notice, but the other members of our impromptu, bi-monthly poker night certainly did; Christoff shrugged at me apologetically; the other two—our newcomers, Othello and Hemingway—barely managed to stifle their laughter.
Othello was a charming Russian hacker who’d rescued me from a debacle several weeks back that had nearly put me in the hospital. We’d been in touch regularly over that span, exchanging information and gossip in equal parts, and she was fast becoming one of my very few friends, despite the fact that she was rarely around; she and her cohort of friends spent the vast majority of their time in the Midwest, oscillating between St. Louis and Kansas City.
Both cities had experienced more than their fair share of supernatural snafus in the last several years, most of which could be classified as Biblical in proportion; some of her stories made rivers of blood and locust plagues seem dull and mild by comparison. At this rate, I wasn’t interested in a Midwest layover, let alone a vacation.
I had enough drama in my life already.
Not that leaving Boston was on my agenda, anyway. Sure, Titletown came with its fair share of baggage, especially for those of us who’d grown up in some of the rougher neighborhoods. But there was something about it I loved—a brutal, vicious history which had bled into its foundations, many of which still stood. I could sense that same hard edge in myself, sometimes—that urge to provoke, to hit and get hit. I don’t know if that made me crazy, but it sure as hell made me a Boston native.
Thing is, you had to be a wee bit batshit to do what I did for a living; peddling magical artifacts sounds like an entertaining gig, I’m sure, but if you think selling drugs or guns on the black market is dangerous, you’ve never met a hungry Bandersnatch or pissed off a Jabberwock.
I’ve stared down creatures out of storybooks and squared off against nightmares, and I had the scars to prove it.
Which is why, as a black magic arms dealer, I knew it paid to have people you could rely on in a pinch; you never knew when you’d end up over your head or up to your neck and need to call in favors. Maybe that’s why I’d invited Othello to tag along tonight; I figured she and Christoff would get along, plus we were a man down, what with Ryan returning to Fae at the behest of the King of the Faeries.
That’s right, I still believe in faeries. I do, I do.
On the other hand, I doubt I would have invited Hemingway if not for Othello’s insistence. The guy creeped me out. He’d aged significantly since I first met him, although he still appeared younger than the rest of us by more than a couple of years; I didn’t have the gall to tease Othello about her jailbait boyfriend—I was pretty sure she’d retaliate by stealing my identity and leaving me penniless on the street. At least he looked legal now, as opposed to the prepubescent kid I’d met a few weeks before. Lately, Hemingway reminded me a lot of Matt Dillon in The Outsiders, both in appearance and temperament—he came off jaded, acting like nothing in the world could surprise him. What really bothered me about him were his eyes, though—it was like he was always staring at ghosts, until he looked right at you, and then he made you feel like you were the ghost.
I motioned for Christoff to deal again. The older man smiled and graciously followed through, expertly tossing cards before each of us. He and Othello chattered back and forth in Russian, flicking their eyes between me and the troll. Hemingway seemed to be following the conversation with little difficulty; he even sniggered at one point. I glowered at them all as I checked my cards. The five of spades and the seven of clubs. I sighed inwardly, then put in the big blind—a blue chip that was supposed to represent money but, in this case, represented information. Othello, who sat to my right, put in the small blind after a moment’s hesitation.
Turns out she’d played before, but not with chips.
I’ll let you figure out what she’d used instead.
The troll peered at his cards and grinned, his pale purple gums on display. Not much of a poker face, but—as you probably noticed—Paul rarely set himself up to fail. Fortunately for me, the game was rigged so that no matter who won, I got what I wanted. Which is the only kind of game I would play, really. Paul matched my big blind with a blue chip of his own, and the others followed suit.
“Burn and turn,” I told Christoff. Christoff turned the first card face down and set it aside, then turned the next three face-up: the ace of hearts, the five of clubs, and the five of diamonds. I stifled my smug expression and studied my opponents, but—other than Paul, whose broad smile had grown into something leering and grotesque—there was no telling what anyone had; Hemingway might as well have been a still-life, and Othello’s cherubic grin could have meant anything, or nothing.
Ordinarily, we’d have taken turns betting, but Paul didn’t seem inclined to wait. He swatted his pile of chips, spilling them forward into the center of the table, and bellowed, “All in!” Hemingway’s eyebrows rose at the outburst, then he casually slid his cards over to Christoff.
Othello studied her own chips before mimicking her boyfriend’s nonchalant expression. “I’ll call.”
Paul seemed to deflate somewhat, but his grin hadn’t faded.
“Me too,” I said, drawing his unwelcome attention.
The bridge troll grunted. Apparently, he hadn’t expected us both to go in with him—and anything that confused Paul made him mad. I’d met plenty of men like him, but none who could yank trees out of the ground and use them as whiffle bats; the bastard still owed me for what he’d done to my poor car. Not that he had any money to speak of—Bridge Tolls in the modern era were strictly a federal form of extortion.
Paul’s residence notwithstanding, he lived on the goodwill of the Faerie Chancery, a shadowy organization that represented the interests of the various Faelings who had settled in Boston over the last few centuries. I knew very little about them, although I suspected they were behind a great many of the deals I’d made in the past. Paul’s relationship to the Chancery was, in fact, the primary reason I’d invited him to join us for poker night.
All part of the plan.
“Alright, Christoff, turn the rest,” I insisted.
He did, burning the first, turning the second, and then repeating the process. I stared down at the cards as if they mattered, flicking my gaze from the ace of hearts to the five of clubs, five of diamonds, four of hearts, and five of hearts. But, really, I was biding my time before the big reveal; I’d lucked into a four-of-a-kind—the third-best hand in poker—early on. Paul, growing impatient, tossed his cards down on the table with a self-satisfied chortle.
He’d had pocket aces.
I grinned and turned my cards for him to see. Christoff adjusted the cards he’d turned so three suits of fives sat higher than the rest. “The full house is trumped by four-of-a-kind,” he declared. I could sense Paul’s confusion; he never had been very good at counting past two. A moment later, I could make out the faint crunch of the wooden table splintering beneath his grubby, waffle-sized hands as he realized he’d lost. Christoff growled in warning, which seemed to register, somehow. Paul shot Christoff an apologetic look, released the table, and began picking up the splintered wood, popping the slivers into his mouth like M&Ms. He chewed with his mouth open, snorted, and folded his arms over his extraordinarily wide chest.
“No fair,” he grumbled.
“Ye can never be too sure what the cards have in store for ye, Paul, me friend,” I chastised. “Ye should know that by now.”
“She’s right, you know,” Othello quipped, holding a single card up for us to see, her grin wider than I had ever seen it.
“Oh, that’s fuckin’ garbage,” I cursed, glaring at Christoff, who had the good grace to at least pretend he had nothing to do with the turning of the tables.
Othello slid the two and three of hearts across the table.
“The straight flush wins,” Christoff declared, coughing into his hand to hide his amusement. I stared down at Othello’s cards in disbelief, knowing that she’d gone all-in with absolutely nothing; she’d had no reason to think she’d win. And yet, she had.
Fucking Russians.
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