Games Creatures Play

by Charlaine Harris

  Jake and I were getting desperate, and for the first time since my Affinity had made itself known, I wished I had a different one, something that would help me find the shooter. There were so many people, and any one of them could have had a hidden gun, expect maybe the one gal in a minidress—she didn’t have room to hide a Kleenex.

  Then time ran out. As Griper had predicted, Foley was the last bowler of the night, and the Castle was nearly silent as he lined up his shot. He was known as a great bowler and I didn’t need Aunt Hester to tell me he was expecting to make a strike—it was in his every movement. He bent over to make his delivery and . . .

  And I conjured the loudest, juiciest fart I’d ever produced, making it seemingly come from Foley’s butt.

  At first there was only shocked silence as the sound echoed through the building, so I added a giggle from the middle of a clump of people and a chuckle from some people in the back. While I was trying to decide which snicker to use, somebody laughed for real. An instant later, so did somebody else, and an avalanche of hilarity began. It was as if all the tension of the night had been released at once.

  For a second I hoped the curse had been dissipated or dissolved or whatever verb applied to reversing a curse, but I felt the magic spiraling up and then down, no longer spread all over but instead targeting one person: Will Foley. His face was deep red, he was holding a two-pound-plus purple pearl Starline ball in both hands, and unless I missed my guess, he was about to lob it at somebody.

  Everybody likes laughing—nobody likes being laughed at.

  I walked toward him, hoping he wouldn’t decide I’d make a good target. “High five, dude!” I said, raising my hand, and amplifying my voice just enough to cut through the continued chortles. “That was awesome! I don’t know how you managed to set it up, but people are going to be talking about that for years.”

  “I didn’t—” he started to say.

  “And fixing it so you’d be the last bowler? Pure genius!”

  I could see Foley’s shoulders loosen, and he transferred the ball to his left hand so he could slap the hand I still had up in front of him.

  “It was pretty funny, wasn’t it?” he said tentatively.

  “I just wish I’d videoed it for YouTube. It would have gone viral. Warn me next time, okay?”

  “This was probably a onetime thing.”

  I nodded as if understanding his self-restraint, then stepped back. “Let me get out of the way so you can finish the string. Good luck!”

  “Thanks.” He got into the spirit enough to turn and bow to the crowd, getting a round of applause in return.

  As soon as I could, I looked for Jake, and sent my voice to him. “Did you spot him?”

  “No. You?”

  “No, damn it.” I sat down in an empty chair, closed my eyes, and really let my Affinity loose. There were so many conversations that it actually hurt to listen to them all, but I eliminated as fast I could, blocking people talking about funny farts, the games, ice cream after the game, an extramarital quickie in the parking lot—eww.

  Finally I heard a voice I recognized from the bathroom. Not Griper, but the lovestruck Whiner. He was bleating to somebody about how much he loved his girlfriend and that his life would be over if she didn’t love him back. I opened my eyes to look at the guy, and realized I knew him. Klip, Klips, Klipt . . . That was it, Rob Klipsch. He bowled regularly at the Castle but was one of the worst bowlers I’d ever seen. I squeezed my way to him, tapped him on the shoulder, and conjured a cone of silence around us.

  “Mr. Klipsch?”

  “Yes?”

  “When you were in the men’s room earlier, did you drop a hundred-dollar bill?”

  “What? I mean, yeah, that was me.”

  I didn’t need to smell that—he lied as well as he bowled. “Seriously, it must have been somebody in there with you. Who was it?”

  “Paul Harmon? I don’t think he dropped any money either.”

  “I’ll go check with him.” I left him mourning the lost C-note along with his girlfriend.

  “Jake,” I asked, “do you know a guy named Paul Harmon?”

  “Yeah, he was last year’s high scorer for the league. He’s on Foley’s team.”

  I’d assumed the killer had to be from one of the other teams. Killing one of your own teammates was just wrong. “He’s the one with the gun!”

  “Shit, he’s right behind Foley. I’m on it! Stall!”

  But it was too late. Though I tried to throw a bee buzzing right behind Foley’s ear, it didn’t distract him from delivering the ball, and as I watched, he made the most perfect strike I’d ever seen. The Castle erupted in cheers and Harmon started to pull his hand out of his pocket, but Jake had managed to get in front of him.

  “You’re blocking me,” Harmon was saying, but Jake said, “Give it up, man.”

  “Get out of my way!”

  Almost instinctively, I threw a cone of silence up around the two of them.

  Meanwhile, having made a strike, Foley got an extra shot. Another strike. The cheers were even louder that time, and I was petrified Harmon was going to use the opportunity to take his shot, but Jake was still keeping him occupied.

  Foley had one last ball, and everybody was watching him. He delivered, the ball rolled, and . . . Another strike!

  The cheers were loud enough for me to get drunk on, but my attention was on Jake and Harmon. It looked as if they were arguing, but I couldn’t penetrate my own cone of silence without everybody else hearing what was going on. Then an impressively tall, wide guy got in my way, and I lost sight of them for a minute.

  When the wall-that-walks-like-a-man finally moved, Harmon was gone and Jake was sitting down, looking winded. I dropped the cone of silence and used my Affinity to say, “What happened?”

  “He’s gone,” Jake said.

  I glanced toward the door and saw Harmon’s back—he must have been running to get there so quickly.

  “Then we’re good?” I asked, but for some reason, I felt the power of the curse spike. Voices were suddenly higher pitched, people were breathing in panicked gasps, and I could tell we were on the edge of pandemonium.

  “Shit!” I said. “The curse is peaking!”

  “Harmon must have spooked people. You’ve got to distract them!”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Make some noise!”

  I couldn’t seem to think. Laughter had held the curse back before, but as I’d seen with Foley, it could go either way. What else would calm people or make them happy? If YouTube was any judge, I needed cute cat videos or a soldier surprising his kids on his return home, or . . . or a proposal.

  I grabbed an empty water bottle and strode out into the middle of lane six, way past where I should have been without proper shoes.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said with Affinity-fueled amplification, my hand wrapped around that water bottle in hopes everybody would think it was a microphone. “Give it up for Will Foley. He’s made Candlepin Castle history by making three end-of-game strikes during league championship play.” I had no idea if it was history-making or not, but it was enough to get people clapping.

  “For another piece of Castle history, I would like Rob Klipsch to please come up here.”

  Klipsch looked startled when I called his name, but when his buddies started pushing him, he gave up and came over.

  I put my hand over the water bottle and shut off amplification to say, “Have you got the ring with you?”

  “Yeah, but how—?”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Whose name?”

  “The one you’re proposing to. What’s her name?”

  “Deb. Deborah Benoit.”

  I went back to my water bottle. “Deborah Benoit, this gentleman has something he would like to say to you.”

 
; A cute brunette wearing a Quiet Willow Nursery polo shirt came up, looking nervous and confused. I was eighty percent sure it was the same woman I’d heard bemoaning the fact that her boyfriend was commitment phobic, but if I was wrong, things were about to get worse.

  “Take it away, Rob.” I held the phony microphone under his mouth.

  “Um, Deb. Deborah. There’s something I’ve been meaning—Something I’ve been wanting to—” He fumbled at his pants pocket and pulled out a ring box covered in soft gray velvet. “Will you marry me?” He even dropped to one knee, though it might have been because his legs buckled.

  Deb pressed her hands to her mouth in time-honored fashion, then nodded furiously.

  “You will?” he said incredulously.

  Before he could queer the deal, I announced, “She said yes!”

  The crowd cheered, and as a tide of well-wishers surged forward to pat Klipsch on the back and hug the bride-to-be, I played salmon-swimming-upstream to get to Jake. Except he was gone, and I saw something I hadn’t seen from a distance. There was blood on the chair where Jake had been sitting. Harmon had shot him!

  Now everybody else was happy, but I was panicking as I listened for Jake. From the staff bathroom I heard a horrendous assortment of noises—popping, cracking, panting. I ran, pushing people out of my way like a fast ball through pins. If I’d needed any more confirmation that the curse’s power was broken, I got it when nobody pushed back.

  There was more blood on the bathroom door, and I was almost afraid of what I’d hear when I went inside. “Jake? Are you . . . ?”

  There was a wolf on the tile floor, surrounded by a pile of Jake’s clothes. He was looking at me, and if it’s possible for a wolf to smile, he was smiling.

  “Can you talk?”

  He gave me a look that was pure Jake.

  So no talking. “He shot you?”

  He nodded his muzzle, and nosed the bloody shirt on the floor. There was a hole in one sleeve. Then he lifted his right hand . . . paw.

  “You changed. Did you lose control?”

  A shake of the head.

  “Then why . . . Did changing help you heal?”

  A nod.

  “And you’re all better now?”

  A particularly emphatic nod.

  “Jeez, Jake, you scared the hell out of me!” I’d known that werewolves were tough, but I hadn’t realized that they could heal from a freaking bullet wound within minutes.

  He shrugged.

  I stopped to listen to the goings-on in the Castle. Friends were congratulating the happy couple, and if Foley was peeved that his historical game was no longer in the spotlight, he wasn’t saying so. Most people were packing up and leaving.

  As for the curse, I could still feel it, but it was about as dangerous as a kitten. It might make somebody annoyed, but only if they were halfway annoyed already. “I think the worst of it is over.”

  He held up one paw.

  “Fist bump?”

  He nodded.

  I went with it, and said, “Shouldn’t you change back?”

  He looked pointedly at the clothes.

  “You think you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before?”

  He stood and stalked toward me, growling deep in his throat.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll go see if I can find you a clean shirt.” After the door was safely shut, I threw my voice into the room to add, “And some kibble.”

  Amar finally emerged from his office, looking embarrassed, and told me to take a break while he herded the rest of the people out the door and locked up. Belle and Rayleigh were as thick as thieves again, and happy to oblige with Cokes and a fresh batch of onion rings for Jake and me.

  While I was waiting for Jake to do whatever it was he had to do, I called Aunt Hester.

  “Hello, dear. You have had an exciting evening, haven’t you?”

  “Aunt Hester, you lied to me.”

  “Elspeth Allaway, I did no such thing.”

  “You told me I couldn’t break the curse!”

  “I did not. I said I couldn’t break a curse. And I can’t. Seeing the future doesn’t do a thing against curses.”

  “But you knew what I thought you meant.”

  “I can’t tell you everything, dear. You have to learn some things for yourself.”

  “Aunt Hester, Jake got shot! That’s a lesson I could have done without.”

  “I am sorry about that, but I knew he’d be all right. And that man who shot him threw his gun into the lake and then went straight to his therapist—he’ll be fine, too. So no hard feelings?”

  I was trying to think of what I could say that wouldn’t get me in hot water with my mother when she added, “Let me make it up to you by explaining something else you might have misunderstood.”

  “Okay,” I said, not sure if I wanted to hear what she wanted to tell me.

  “Remember how you asked me if the curse had anything to do with the Law of Return, and I said it did?”

  “Right, because of the prank I pulled.”

  “How is it you’d put it? Self-centered much? The sprained ankle was the boy’s own fault—he shouldn’t have been out that night and he certainly shouldn’t have jumped out a window. No, the curse was brought on by your boss’s actions.”

  “Amar?” I thought back to something Jake had told me. “Because of firing Theresa?”

  “He handled that very badly, and something was bound to happen. It turns out that girl’s aunt is a practitioner, and frankly, not a nice woman. She cursed the Castle.”

  “So it was nothing to do with me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And I don’t have to worry about anything happening because of the prank?”

  “Oh, no, you’re going to have misfortune because of that. And very soon, too.”

  “Great.”

  “Don’t fret. It’ll be far overshadowed by the good fortune because of the people you helped tonight. You know the Law of Return doesn’t run on a schedule, or you would know if you’d pay more attention to your mother, but this time you’ll get both punishment and reward right away.”

  “Aunt Hester, you seriously creep me out.”

  “I know, dear.”

  She hung up just as Jake joined me, which she had no doubt foreseen. The two of us chowed down, and then helped clean up the unusually messy Castle before clocking out and heading for the parking lot.

  “Crap!” I said, looking at my car’s front end. “I’ve got a flat tire.”

  “You want me to help change it?”

  “Thanks, but I can do it.” Except that when I went toward the trunk, I saw another flat. “Jeez! Another? I’ve only got one spare.”

  “Have you got Triple A?”

  “Yeah. Let me find my card.” Only it wasn’t in my wallet. “The Law of Return strikes!” I muttered. Having two flat tires was worlds better than a curse, but it was a pain just the same.

  “Why don’t I give you a ride home?” Jake said in an all-too-casual way. “I don’t have classes tomorrow, so I can help you get squared away in the morning.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “No, it’s no big.” As we were getting into his car, he said, “You know, I was thinking about hitting the Sonic for something else to eat. Changing and healing take it out of me. You want to come?”

  I was pretty sure the Law of Return had struck again. It was the best thing I’d heard all night.

  COPYRIGHTS

  “Introduction” copyright © 2014 by Charlaine Harris, Inc., and Toni L. P. Kelner.

  “In the Blue Hereafter” copyright © 2014 by Charlaine Harris, Inc.

  “Hide and Seek” copyright © 2014 by William Kent Krueger.

  “Stepping into the Dead Zone” copyright © 2014 by The Zoo After Dark, Inc.<
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  “Dead on the Bones” copyright © 2014 by Joe R. Lansdale.

  “The Devil Went down to Boston” copyright © 2014 by Caitlin Kittredge.

  “On the Playing Fields of Blood” copyright © 2014 by Brendan DuBois.

  “The God’s Games” copyright © 2014 by Dana Cameron.

  “The Case of the Haunted Safeway” copyright © 2014 by Empty Set Entertainment, LLC.

  “Prise de Fer” copyright © 2014 by Ellen Kushner.

  “Dreamer” copyright © 2014 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC.

  “False Knight on the Road” copyright © 2014 by Mercedes Lackey.

  “Jammed” copyright © 2014 by Seanan McGuire.

  “Hide and Shriek” copyright © 2014 by Adam-Troy Castro.

  “Ice” copyright © 2014 by Laura Lippman.

  “Bell, Book, and Candlepin” copyright © 2014 by Toni L. P. Kelner.