Rock and Ruin

by Saranna Dewylde

  He didn’t.

  Oh fuck. I was officially by myself in the Flambeau.

  Picking myself up, I kicked at a wall. This was a stupid way to get answers. Why couldn’t we pretend we were normal people and go to a café? Or a regular casino—why not enjoy the buffet? Anywhere but here, chasing after my idiot friends.

  Dust drifted through stale air, making a halo over the glowing phone.

  My eyes widened.

  How many seconds did I have until it went to sleep? I lunged for the phone, scooping it up just as the screen went dark. Fumbling with it, trying to hit the power button, I strained my ears for footsteps. There were scratching sounds all around me as I grappled with the stupid thing. I blew out a huff of relief when the screen finally sprang readily back to life.

  Something skittered behind me.

  With a cry, I jumped, twisting around fast enough to catch a glimpse of a small shadow disappearing into a crack where doorframe met wall.

  Rats. Great.

  How far ahead had Nabila and Oscar gotten? A smart person would go back and wait outside for them. Shrugging in defeat, I crept forward, easing between two strips of tattered wallpaper. Shadows hugged the old hallway, hanging from broken pictures and long-dead light fixtures.

  “You are not in a horror movie,” I whispered to myself. “There’s no such thing as scar-faced psychopaths lurking in old casinos on the off chance kids will venture in never to be seen–”

  A hand closed over my right arm.

  “Argh!” I flailed, waving the light of my phone in a desperate attempt to fend off the evil force attacking me.

  “Ash, be calm,” Oscar’s voice appeared in my ear. I went limp with relief; grateful he maintained his hold on my arm and prevented me from sliding to the floor. “I am sorry to have startled you.”

  “Sure you are,” I grumbled. “As sorry as you are for leaving me alone in the dark?”

  “I—”

  Another screech cut the air. Louder this time. And fully identifiable as Nabila.

  “Where the hell is it?” Her yell was followed by crashing, along with what sounded like curses in another language.

  “What’s up with her?” I asked Oscar. In the dim glow of my phone, his face was nothing more than a lighter smudge against shadows. But I thought he looked sad. Unfortunately, his issue with Nash would have to wait. Because our other friend was busy losing her mind.

  “Nabila is angry.”

  “I got that much,” I said dryly. “What I don’t get is why. She didn’t drag us here just to throw a temper tantrum—did she?”

  I felt him shrug. “It sounds like she is looking for something and cannot find it.”

  “Thanks, Sherlock.” Holding onto his sleeve, we approached a set of carved wooden doors so tall they ran from floor to ceiling.

  One door was pushed inwards. The sounds of Nabila’s anger emanated from beyond. Something hit the wall, followed by the shattering of broken glass. “I know it’s here and I finally understand how to look—so why can’t I see it?”

  “Whew.” I make a face at Oscar. “She really knows how to sell a plan.”

  “I believe we are going to have to intercede before she hurts herself.”

  “Or brings the whole damn building down on our heads.”

  In the pale screen light, his hopeful-puppy face was oddly creepy. “I would rather not confront her alone.”

  “I bet.” I straightened my shoulders.

  Just my luck that I’d find two friends who were completely nuts. But we’d already stumbled our way into the belly of the Flambeau, what was the point of leaving before learning why we’d come here in the first place?

  I held out my hand and gestured towards the entrance. “Let’s go.”

  Side by side, like soldiers preparing to storm enemy walls, we walked through the door. Light speared down from cracks in the ceiling and a broken window set high in the rafters. So I could see with perfect clarity the medley of books and furniture tossed throughout the room.

  In the center of it all was a short figure vibrating with frustration.

  Nabila was unhappy. And the entire space was paying for it.

  Oscar and I watched in silence as our voodoo-priestess-in-training stalked the circumference of what had once been an elaborately outfitted executive office. Drawers stuck out from squat wooden cabinets like rows of empty tongues. Pins littered every surface like pointed, vicious confetti. Books, tattered carpet and torn pieces of decaying wallpaper covered the area, curling in a circle as if a cyclone had torn through the space. A cyclone named Nabila.

  Who was supposed to give me answers.

  “Argh!” Both of her hands fisted in her fro, she spun in a slow, angry circle.

  I elbowed Oscar. He shrunk back and shook his head at me. I pointed at Nabila and gave him a look. He shook his head more vigorously.

  “You’ve known her longer,” I whispered.

  “You’re braver,” he whispered back.

  “Shit.” It was perfectly stupid that the freakishly strong person who could see in the dark was terrified of the short, pin-wielding one. But he was. And right now, I couldn’t entirely blame him.

  Letting out a low whistle, I stepped towards her.

  “Nabila?” I asked, trying for soft and gentle. “You said you’d explain when we got here. So here we are.”

  She whirled around. The raw fury in her brown eyes had me taking a hasty step back. That—and the pins.

  “Whoa.” I held up my hands, fingers splayed. “Easy, killer.” I needed to emote calm, at least up until the point I dodged past Oscar and got the hell out of here.

  “Why isn’t it here?” Nabila asked between tightly clenched teeth.

  “Why isn’t what here?”

  “The answer.”

  My palm met my forehead. It was official; Nabila had fallen off the crazy cliff. I’d only known her for a short time, but it felt like she’d walked a thin line between sanity and lack thereof for a while—no judgment, life with demons did that. And now she’d gone and teetered off the edge.

  “What answer?” I asked, unable to help myself.

  “The… the…” Her lips moved. Hands flexed.

  Oh boy. I braced myself. “Come on, girl. Talk to us.”

  “It’s supposed to be here,” she whispered. She took a step towards me, sunk to the floor, and buried her face against her knees. A snuffling noise reached me. With a start, I realized Nabila was crying.

  Shit. She wasn’t the type to cry—more the type to curse things. Yet defeat was draped around her shoulders.

  “Uh?” I shot a desperate look at Oscar.

  His eyes flicked between me and the exit. I glared at him and made a fist, a silent promise of retribution if he abandoned me with a sobbing Nabila. His chest inflated and shrunk in rapid succession before he nodded.

  “Nabila? If this is a place of sadness, perhaps we should leave?” Oscar slowly passed me to stand awkwardly by her side. “We can talk elsewhere.”

  I watched, frozen, from my place just outside the inner ring of chaos. These two were my friends. Recent friends. I’d known them for just over a month and liked them for less. We might be a band, but I knew far less about them than I’d thought. Not only did I have no idea what was going on, I didn’t have a clue how to make things better.

  Oscar hunkered down next to Nabila and patted her shoulder. “Why don’t you let Ash and I take you out of here?”

  “Ash?” A small, un-Nabila voice asked.

  “Yeah?” I replied.

  “You’re here?”

  “Yeah,” I repeated, with more confusion than sympathy.

  “That’s terrible,” Nabila said. “You should go.”

  “Are you kidding me!” In a flash, my feelings transformed from worry to rage. “You drag my ass down here, have a hissy fit, don’t answer any of the stinking questions you promised to ages ago, and now you’re telling me to leave? Fuck you, Voodoo. You’ve stuck one too many pins in your
crazy skull.”

  Nabila’s head shot out of her hands, wet lines on her face glimmering in the faint light. I took a single step closer, just enough to make out her expression—currently something caught between abject pity and burgeoning rage.

  Better mad than sad, my mom always said. Guess it was time to poke this bear with her own pin.

  “Looking a little puffy around the edges, Voodoo.”

  Something sparked in her eyes and Oscar subtly shifted away. “Watch your mouth, Freshy.”

  Having no intention of watching my mouth or playing nice, I propped my fists on my hips and dramatically perused the room. “Right… Because I shouldn’t insult the dingy, crumbling dump you dragged me into? I’m loving the rats. And the smell.”

  She launched to her feet.

  In the space of a blink of an eye, she was hovering before my face, pins bristling from between tightly fisted fingers. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re right, I don’t.” I poked her in the chest, intent on goading her out of her misery and into an explanation. “Don’t think Oscar has a clue either. We followed you here because you asked us to. Because you said it would be safer to talk here. And because for some, stupid reason we’ve both got your back.”

  Pins shot towards my eyeballs.

  I twitched back. Silver shards stopped a hair’s breadth from my pupils. Wavered. And finally lowered.

  I realized I’d been holding my breath and let it out in a controlled blast. Mom would have called this grabbing a tiger by the tail.

  “You don’t understand,” Nabila whispered.

  “Nope.” I grinned at her. “Spit it out already. What gives?”

  For a horrible moment, I thought she was going to burst into another round of tears. Or stab me in the eye so I’d cry with her. Nabila’s lips trembled, black curls dancing wildly around her head. “We’re not in a dump,” she finally said in fierce, low tones. “We’re in my family. Show respect.”

  My brows furrowed. Head tipped to the side. “Huh? We’re not in your family. We’re in a condemned casino.”

  “We should go outside,” Oscar said from behind us.

  Nabila looked between the two of us.

  I didn’t turn to check, but I was pretty certain Oscar wore a remarkably similar expression to my own—the expression of the completely baffled.

  She sighed and raked her fingers through her hair, returning the pins that had just threatened me to their natural habitat. “The Flambeau belonged to my grandfather,” she said, returning to the center of chaos and sitting on a stack of heavy books.

  “Your grandfather owned this?”

  She nodded and propped her chin on her hands. “My granddaddy was the great Voodoo King of Vegas. I’ve been going through his journals for years. I believe he left me a key somewhere in this casino.”

  “Key?” Oscar asked, taking a seat on the floor, cross-legged before Nabila.

  I glanced at the floor, shrugged and nudged a book over before dropping down beside Oscar. We shared a look before fixing Nabila with rapt attention. She was chewing on her lip and tapping fingertips in quick succession against each other.

  “Does this have something to do with the Principal?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I hope so,” she said. “I mean, after our talk a couple weeks ago, I started thinking about truth as a weapon—or defense—against the Upper demons. Especially the boss ones, like the Principal. So I took another look at my grandfather’s journals, reread some of his more cryptic notes with that in mind. He talks about lots of things, but he keeps mentioning keys in odd places and I thought…”

  “Oh.” Oscar nodded in apparent understanding. Since it sounded like he had a clue what she meant, I poked his side. He winced and added, “Nabila’s granddaddy is the one who made their family contract.”

  I frowned at them. “You think he left some key—that he didn’t use, for whatever reason—that will let your family out of the contract? Don’t you just work off the time and that’s it—like demonic jail?”

  Both Nabila and Oscar stared at me, mouths hanging open.

  Nabila started to smile. The smile transformed into a wide, stretching grin. Then she was laughing so hard that she bent forward at the waist, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Oscar lightly patted my shoulder.

  I sat there, mildly stunned. Apparently, today was a day for the full spectrum of Nabila-emotion.

  I just wished I understood the joke.

  “Oh, Freshy.” She wiped moisture from her cheeks. “I needed that. Thanks.”

  Flames started burning in my chest, high up along where my collarbone met my neck. “So happy to help,” I said through clenched teeth. “Gonna explain what the hell is so funny?”

  “Oscar,” Nabila was struggling to speak around hiccups of laughter. “Explain to Freshy here how this thing actually works.”

  My chin pushed out belligerently.

  I might not know much about this world, but I wasn’t an idiot.

  Oscar apologetically tapped my shoulder, letting his hand rest there with just enough of a grip to let me know he’d stop me before I could get both hands around Nabila’s neck. I narrowed my eyes at him, and debated whether I could fake him out enough to get in one good squeeze.

  “Ash, every contract is brokered for the short term—at the start,” he said. “They’re always a year or two, no more than five. But, you see, there’s always a catch. Once a contract is in place, a demon will do everything it can to keep that soul and its descendants. And a demon can do a lot—especially an Upper demon like the Principal.”

  “But—” I mentally floundered. “Jim said it was only for a year. The contract he signed is only for one year. They can’t make him stay past that—can they?”

  Nabila met my gaze, all traces of revelry gone from her countenance. “When my granddaddy signed his contract, it was for five years. That was in nineteen sixty-three.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “The Flambeau was everything to my family—our base. Our identity. We were Vegas royalty those days. Trailblazers. The only African-Americans to run a top Vegas casino that served both whites and blacks. But you don’t build an empire without breaking some laws.” She gave a short laugh. “This crime boss was about to go down for fraud and take my granddaddy with him, and the cops were only too happy to help. My granddaddy couldn’t face it. So when a gentleman turned up and offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse, he didn’t try. Didn’t think. He signed. What was five years, after all?”

  “But—”

  “I’m the third generation born into contractual serfdom, Ash. What does that tell you?”

  There was a giant elastic band around my chest. It felt like it was going to squeeze tighter and tighter until I burst like a tube of toothpaste when you stomped on it.

  Nabila’s face danced before me. I was shaking too hard to keep her in focus.

  “Breathe, Ash.” A wiry, warm arm wrapped around my shoulders and gave a firm hug. Pale eyes full of compassion met mine, letting me know without words that he knew exactly how I felt.

  “How?” I forced the word out.

  “Lots of ways. First, its benefits, reasons to extend,” she said. “What you’ll get by staying just a little longer. A Principal demon—one of the most powerful of demons that we call Uppers—can offer a lot. Money. Power. Health. After a while, it turns to threats and trickery. Sometimes both. Then it just becomes all you know. Your place.” She shook her head. “Once you’re that far outside the regular world, there’s no way back it.”

  Gasping like I’d been punched, I looked from one to the other.

  Oscar gave a weak smile. His eyes speaking of the infinite sadness that came with a lifetime of servitude.

  Everything in me slumped towards the floor. “There has to be some way out.”

  “And that’s why we’re talking about this here, in the safety of the Flambeau.” Nabila grinned at me with the satisfaction of a teacher
whose pupil had finally begun showing progress. “There are rumors. People who say my granddaddy figured it out, that he was about to break free from his contract and that’s the real reason he died.” Nabila took a breath and gazed around the room. “I think he left the key to that freedom somewhere in this casino.”

  “But you have no idea what this key is or how it works?”

  Nabila attempted to look self-righteous before slouching and giving me a grumpy nod. “Pretty much. I thought it would be in the office. Granddaddy used to say his office was where the truth of the business went down. I used to think he was talking about regular business, but after our chat, I got to thinking maybe he meant something more.”

  “Like how the contract changed from five years to owning your family?”

  “That,” she said, “and where he hid the secret of how to end it. Every time the Principal comes, a contract gets extended. I don’t want that happening this time.”

  “Whew.” I blew out a long breath and regarded her for a long moment.

  She was dead serious. The Principal demon was the end of the contract road, and his coming meant a world of trouble.

  Turning to Oscar, I expected to find him quivering in terror over the prospect of being found disobedient. My eyebrows rose with surprise when I discovered that wasn’t the case. He was pale. And he didn’t look overly confident. But he wasn’t cowering. “What do you think?” I asked him.

  Wide eyes blinked behind heavy lenses. It was obvious Oscar wasn’t used to being asked for his opinion. Tipping his head, he contemplated a partly shredded book lying open before him. “I don’t know,” he said slowly.

  Nabila scoffed, “Of course you don’t.”

  I glared and shushed her. “I don’t think he’s done.”

  “Thank you, Ash,” Oscar replied solemnly. “It is complicated, more for both of you than for me. Perhaps simply more for Ash. My family has no such contract. We are Feeders, we are simply owned. If not by one demon, then by another. Nabila’s family had their contract extended—indefinitely. Before she was born. But Ash, you’ve just been brought into this. The extension hasn’t yet occurred. It’s possible you can avoid this and suffer only a year. Unlikely—” He raised his gaze to mine, allowing me a glimpse of just how remote those chances were, “—but possible.”