High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  Vasel pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and began to calmly clean the spittle from his suit. He glanced at Marcus, and then seemed to notice the growing assortment of jokers gathering around them. “That’s enough talking like this. Get in the helicopter. I’ll explain everything to you. Before long, you will love your father again.” Vasel gestured to the big guy. “Andrii.” He moved toward Olena.

  Marcus, who had watched the interaction dumbly, surged forward. Andrii rolled his massive shoulders threateningly, but it was a small motion from Vasel that seemed to terrify Olena. She threw herself between him and Vasel, who hadn’t done anything more than pluck his coin between two fingers as if he was about to throw it. “No! Don’t kill him! If you kill him, you kill me.”

  Vasel studied her, amused. He motioned for the bodyguard to withdraw. “You must be joking with me. What is this black snake-man to you?”

  Olena looked into Marcus’s eyes when she answered. “He is my lover.”

  The gangster’s one-word response was in Ukrainian, but it hardly needed translation.

  Michelle let herself into the apartment. She’d gotten a late start in the morning, and by the time she’d dealt with all the Committee bullshit in the afternoon, traffic was turning into a bitch. She’d stopped and bought a pizza from Bruno’s for an early supper. It may not have been a healthy dinner, but it was Adesina’s favorite meal.

  Mrs. Klein and Adesina were on the sofa watching TV. They both smiled at her.

  “You got pizza for dinner,” Adesina said, but her voice lacked its usual pizza enthusiasm. She was huddled down into her blue blanket, her wings folded tight across her back.

  “Get enough for all of us?” Mrs. Klein asked as she stood up. “You went to Bruno’s. They have great pies. And I see you got a large.”

  Michelle put the pizza on the dining-room table, then went and sat down next to Adesina.

  “You feeling any better, pumpkin?” she asked. There were circles under Adesina’s eyes and she looked exhausted.

  How can I fix this? Michelle thought. A new flutter of fear bloomed in her chest. I have to fix this. She couldn’t bear to see her daughter looking so frail and frightened.

  “You look like you could use some dinner, pumpkin. I got your favorite—mushrooms and black olives.”

  A wan smile crossed Adesina’s face. It looked like everything was a huge effort for her. There has to be a way to stop this, Michelle thought.

  “I’m not hungry now,” Adesina said, her voice getting softer as she spoke. “Maybe later?”

  “But it’s going to get cold and you hate cold pizza.” Right now she just wanted to get calories into her daughter. She’d try for Mother of the Year later.

  Mrs. Klein slid a couple of slices onto a paper napkin. “I’m going to head across the hall. If you need me, you know where I am. Adesina, feel better, bubbeleh. I’ll bring you some cookies from De Roberti’s Caffé tomorrow. The anise ones you like.”

  But even the promise of cookies didn’t make Adesina look happy. Michelle and Mrs. Klein exchanged concerned looks. There was a new, stronger flutter of anxiety in Michelle’s chest.

  “I’ll check in tomorrow,” Mrs. Klein said, then took a sniff of the slices. “This smells yummy, even with those mushrooms and olives.”

  After Mrs. Klein shut the door, Michelle snuggled closer to Adesina. “How was your day? Did you get any sleep?”

  Adesina shook her head and burrowed down into her blanket. “Not much,” she replied. “I don’t want to go to sleep again. There are things…”

  “You know that you never have to worry about anyone taking you away again,” Michelle said earnestly. “There are no soldiers here—no one who will ever hurt you again. You know I can keep you safe.”

  Adesina gave a slight nod, and Michelle knew that Adesina didn’t believe her. And that felt like a kick in the stomach. Keeping her daughter safe was her job.

  “But you know there are no soldiers here, right?”

  Adesina nodded again. “I’m not afraid of the soldiers, Mommy.”

  “Then what is it? You’ve never been afraid of your dreams before. And you’ve been good about keeping out of other people’s dreams.”

  Michelle worried about Adesina’s ability to slide into dreams and how she could control them. It was a powerful enough capability that Michelle had tried to limit Adesina’s use of it.

  But Michelle had made an exception with Hoodoo Mama. Adesina had walled herself away in part of the dream world while Michelle helped Joey confront the event that caused her card to turn. Watching Joey get raped as a child was something that would haunt Michelle for the rest of her life.

  Despite having Adesina protect herself, it had been a profoundly selfish and dangerous thing to ask of her daughter.

  “If it isn’t what happened to you with the soldiers, then whose dreams are they?” Michelle asked. She didn’t like the sound of Adesina’s voice at all. A dark undertone that didn’t belong to her little girl.

  “No one’s,” her daughter answered. Her eyes began to well up with tears. “I’m not in anyone’s dreams. I’m in mine, but there’s something coming. Something bad.” She shuddered, and Michelle held her tight.

  “Oh, pumpkin, everyone has bad dreams. They can seem very real. You know the difference between real real and dream real, don’t you?”

  “It isn’t like that,” Adesina said as she pulled away from Michelle’s arms and looked up at her. “This was a real place. And there were real monsters.”

  The only real monsters since the virus had hit were people using the wild card as a weapon like they had on Adesina. Mark Meadows had been a monster. She was about to tell Adesina this, but three loud knocks on the front door rattled the door.

  “What the hell,” Michelle said, getting up from the couch. Instinctively, a bubble formed in her hand. Three more knocks, and Michelle crossed the distance to the door in a flash. Another knock, and she flung the door open.

  Standing in the hall was Hoodoo Mama.

  “Joey!” Michelle exclaimed, the bubble popping in her hand. Then her eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Joey walked into the apartment, pushing Michelle aside. “Where’s my girl?” she asked. Usually, she’d have some kind of zombie—Joey had taken to calling them toe tags—trailing behind, but today was an exception. Michelle closed the door, then followed her through the dining area into the living room. Adesina smiled a real smile, and Michelle felt a surge of happiness.

  “Aunt Joey,” Adesina said, though her voice was weak. “Momma didn’t say you were coming.”

  “She didn’t know, niblet,” Joey replied. She gave Michelle a withering glance. “We were talkin’ last night, and she heard you havin’ a bad dream, and she didn’t come back and tell me if you were okay or not.”

  “I guess I forgot.” Michelle knew Joey was pissed. She was happy to have Joey here, pissed or not.

  Joey gave her an I’m-dismissing-your-lame-ass-excuse gesture, then went and sat next to Adesina. Michelle followed and sat on the other side of her daughter. “You didn’t have to come all this way,” Michelle said. “I know you’re busy taking advantage of the marks. You could have called.”

  Joey snorted. “I did call. You never answered. And you always assume the worst, Bubbles. I don’t just fleece the marks. I’ve been takin’ care of other business.”

  Michelle knew exactly what other business Joey was talking about. There was a rough justice Joey meted out on people who hurt children in any way. It was swift and brutal, and Michelle found she never could be angry with her for this. Screw a system that protects those kinds of predators, she thought. Michelle tried to work for a larger good, but secretly she was glad Joey did what she did.

  “So what’s got you all tied into knots, niblet?” Joey asked. There was concern and softness about the question. Joey was rarely gentle like this. Joey was brutal and angry most of the time.

  “Nothing’s going on,” Ade
sina said, putting her head on Joey’s lap. “But I’m glad you’re here. Mommy misses you.”

  “You want some pizza?” Michelle asked. It was time to change the subject. She and Joey had already flogged that dead horse. “It’s from that place you like.”

  “Does it have olives and mushrooms? Because you know that’s disgusting.”

  Adesina giggled. “I’m weird that way.”

  A surge of happiness rolled through Michelle. If Adesina could laugh, everything would be okay. Sure, those nightmares were bad, but they could get through it with some help. And Joey was here. Adesina loved Joey.

  It was just a bad day. That was all.

  Just one bad day.

  Andrii leaned his bulk against the side of the helicopter. He stared at Marcus. He’d been doing that the whole time Olena and her father had been inside the aircraft, talking. It hadn’t been long, but the seconds dragged by, and Andrii’s sunglass-shaded eyes just stared and stared at him. Or seemed to, at least.

  The helicopter door opened. Olena stepped out. Vasel began to climb out after her, but Olena had grabbed Marcus by the hand and led him away before the gangster touched earth.

  At the edge of the village, Olena embraced Marcus. She kissed him, smeared the tears from her eyes onto his cheeks. “You all right?” he asked, looking back at the watching gangsters. “You want me to beat on them?”

  She shook her head. Still planting kisses on him, she said, “You can’t beat my father. He’s an ace, Marcus. He is like Baba Yaga. She spits and you are dead. He flicks his coin and … that’s the end. Believe me, Marcus, you do not want to fight with my father. He doesn’t miss.”

  Throat suddenly dry, Marcus said, “Right. I stay on his good side, then?”

  “He has no good side. He is a bull, remember?”

  Vasel shouted Olena’s name and said something in Ukrainian.

  “What the fuck does he want, anyway?”

  Olena pulled back a little, straightening. She cleared her throat. “I am going with them.” She spoke over his immediate protests. “I have to! There is no choice.”

  “What? Are you forgiving him?”

  “I will never forgive him, but … he’s my papa. I sat there listening to him, hating him, and yet knowing his voice from since I was a girl. You won’t understand. Anyway, if I don’t leave you he will kill you.” Marcus tightened his grip on her shoulders. “Believe me, he will. But if I go he will give you money. Make a phone call. Nobody will stop you from leaving. Fly home to New York, Marcus. If you love me, live. Get away from here, from Baba Yaga and all of this.”

  Marcus grunted. “Baba Yaga is dead.”

  Olena tensed. “You don’t know—”

  “I do. I didn’t get a chance to tell you. When I was out I saw her. I took her out. Dead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “One of the Jokertown cops was with her. He felt her pulse and confirmed it. She’s dead, Olena. Go with your dad if you want, but don’t say it’s because of her.”

  Olena was silent for a moment, and then said, “That changes everything.”

  A few minutes—and increasingly annoyed shouts—later, Marcus and Olena rejoined the gangsters.

  “There’s a change of plans,” Olena said.

  “No change of plans,” Vasel said. The coin danced on his fingers.

  “Baba Yaga is dead,” she went on. “Marcus killed her. Police confirmed it.”

  The coin stopped, pinched between two fingers. “I’ve heard nothing of this.”

  “Not Kazakh police. American. One of those that brought down the casino. She’s dead, Papa. That means everything is changed. When we talked you asked me questions. Had I been in Baba Yaga’s office? Could I describe how to get to it? There’s something in there that you want. Something that you know looters won’t even notice. Marcus and I know the place from the inside. We can get whatever it is you want. In exchange, you let us go. Me and him together.” She crossed her arms. “See? Change of plans.”

  At least Secretary-General Jayewardene agreed with her. He flatly refused to allow Lohengrin to leave the city for East Timor, or to send any of the Committee aces there at all. That made Klaus petulant. “That scheiss korinthenkacker would rather have me sit on my ass at a desk than be out there where I can actually be doing something worthwhile,” he complained to Barbara as they undressed in their apartment late that night.

  “I know,” she told him soothingly. She could see the scars on his body: so many of them. Too many. She bit her lower lip as she slipped on her nightgown. The truth was that Jayewardene had nixed the East Timor mission at Barbara’s insistence, but that was nothing she wanted to admit to Klaus. She and Jayewardene had had a long discussion after she and Klaus had met with Michelle about East Timor, about Talas, about Klaus. “I understand how you feel, love, but I’m sure Jayewardene has good reasons. The situation in Talas…”

  Klaus gave a derisive huff at that. “We’ll wait too long on that, as well,” he said. He stared at her with his single eye. “You agree with him?”

  She shrugged, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I think that Talas is potentially something important, yes. I don’t necessarily agree with him that we should be waiting another day for more information.”

  Klaus sniffed again. “There,” he said, “I agree with you.” The faint trace of a smile touched his lips, then vanished again. He reached for the light on a nightstand next to the bed and switched it off. In the darkness, she felt the bed move as he slid under the covers. “Are we good?” Are ve gut? “You and I, I mean.”

  Barbara slid over and pressed against the side of his body. She stroked his chest, feeling the ridges of the old scars. “Yes,” she told him, kissing his neck. “We’re good. But I worry about you. It feels…” She hesitated, not certain how much she wanted to say. “It feels to me like you’re not happy anymore: with the Committee, with all that happened to you since you joined.”

  “It’s all changed. It’s not like it was when I started this.”

  “I know. And I know you hate all the red tape around everything, and the reports and the meetings, and all that—all the things that I end up handling. Which I don’t mind,” she hastened to add.

  “And which you do exceedingly well. Without you, there would be no Committee anymore. So do you think I’m not happy with you?” he asked.

  Her fingers stopped moving on his chest. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “Yes.”

  He turned to her with that, one arm sliding under her and the other around. “You shouldn’t think that. Ever.”

  “But I do, every once in a while. You want to be out there being Lohengrin and saving the world and I understand that, but sometimes the right thing isn’t just to rush in blindly, it’s to wait and to negotiate…” His mouth covered hers, stopping the words. She resisted, wanting to continue the discussion, but there was also the desire to just be with him, to drown all the fears and uncertainties in just being with him. She brought her arms around his neck, pulling him to her. His hands pulled at the hem of nightgown and she lifted her hips to help him.

  And for a time after that, there were no words at all.

  “She asleep?” Joey asked, stretching out on the couch. Michelle liked seeing her there.

  “Yeah. I had to leave the light on again, but after a while she drifted off. I think she’ll sleep. She’s been up since last night.”

  Joey kicked off her shoes, then shook her head. “That’s some fucked-up shit, Bubbles. I guess things really are starting to catch up with her. Those fuckers in the PPA—if I could’ve, I woulda killed them twice.”

  Michelle lifted Joey’s legs up, sat down next to her, then put Joey’s legs down in her lap and began rubbing them. Something inside Michelle uncoiled. It was a rare moment when they were just together with nothing terrible coming at them from all sides. No leopard men, no Tom Weathers, no secret organizations trying to steal their powers, no assholes causing chaos just because they could. And it was precious to her.<
br />
  “That feels awfully good,” Joey purred. Michelle knew what kind of mood Joey was in when she used that tone of voice. A quiver ran through Michelle. There hadn’t been a lot of times they’d had sex, but Michelle remembered all of them in great detail. And she wanted more.

  But how could she be thinking about screwing Joey after the night Adesina had had? It felt like she was being a terrible mother.

  “You know, fucking doesn’t make you a shitty mother.”

  “Get out of my head,” Michelle said with a weak laugh. She shoved Joey’s legs off her lap. “She’s just in the other room.”

  Joey sat up and slid closer to Michelle. “You want to. I know you do. And she’s going to be okay. I promise. We won’t ever let anything happen to her.” Then she reached out and caressed Michelle’s breast. The nipple stiffened and Michelle gave a little gasp. It had been a long time since anyone had touched her.

  Then Joey pinched the nipple hard, and Michelle felt herself getting wet. She would never have admitted it to anyone, but when Joey got rough it excited her.

  “C’mon,” Joey said, standing and holding out her hand. Michelle took it and let Joey lead her into the bedroom, and then closed the door behind them.

  Joey pushed Michelle onto the bed and slid her hand up Michelle’s leg. Michelle felt another wave of desire, then guilt.

  “We shouldn’t,” she said weakly. But it felt so good and it had been so very, very long. “Adesina’s in the other room.”

  Joey lifted Michelle’s T-shirt and began licking her stomach, slowly teasing upward with her tongue until she got to Michelle’s breasts where she lingered, alternately stroking and slapping the nipples.

  Michelle was trembling, and she felt an electric shock slide through her. Something had been lurking inside her and she didn’t want to face it. Didn’t want to deal with the need.

  “I want you and I can tell you want me.” She clenched her legs tightly and rolled them both on their side, and then yanked Michelle’s sweatpants down. Michelle was afraid of Joey. Afraid of how Joey made her feel. And afraid that this had been what she’d wanted for a very long time. And then she was dizzy.