The Rambling

by Jimmy Cajoleas

  They had come for me.

  16

  BOSS AUTHORITY STOOD SMALL AND monstrous in the doorway, his boots clanking on the floor, that great clockwork fist grinding and whirring. He was scarred and foul and weird-eyed, and just his presence in the room made all my hairs stand on end, all the magic he carried with him.

  The room cleared. I mean, folks scattered, whether to the infinite backrooms of Marina’s Place or out into the swamp itself, I didn’t have a clue. Fact is, they fled, and they fled fast, and wasn’t hardly anybody left in that room except us.

  “Marina, my dear. It’s been too long,” said Boss Authority.

  “It’s only been five years, Bobby Felix,” said Marina. “Barely a blink of an eye.”

  “And my old pal Davey Boy,” he said, clapping his hands together. The metal one donged like a church bell.

  “Bobby,” said Pop, nodding his head, grinning as best as he could.

  “The rest of these fellas I ain’t acquainted with,” said Boss Authority. He clomped through the room toward me and Tally.

  “These are just two kids I picked up,” said Marina. “Strays that done lost their way.”

  “Strays, huh? Well children, you sure picked the wrong place and the wrong time to be there.”

  “That’s my luck,” I said. “It’s my durn hexed luck,” and I shot Pop a look ugly enough to shatter glass.

  Harlen the dog-man crept on all fours toward Boss Authority and let out a low growl.

  “You best call that fella off,” said Boss Authority, “whatever ails him.”

  Marina whistled and Harlen came running back to her. She scratched him behind his ears. Harlen rolled over on his back and she rubbed the belly of his ragged overalls.

  “Dog-brained,” said Lawrence. “That’s what ails him, Mr. Boss.”

  “Dogness is an improvement,” said Johnson. “I knew him back in the war!”

  “You mean to tell me this man here wasn’t always canine-inclined?” said Boss Authority.

  “I’m saying this is my place, Bobby Felix,” said Marina, “and in my place you treat me with respect.”

  “You always did have a penchant for dogs,” said Drusilla Fey.

  “And you never could keep your traitor mouth shut,” said Marina. “I don’t know how you got in here at all. My magic should have kept out the both of you, until the sun burned out and all the stars crashed in on themselves.”

  “Could be you were that powerful, say five years ago,” said Boss Authority. “But things change, Marina. Times change. I change.” He brought his clockwork hand up and wiggled the fingers, his long ponytail swishing back and forth like a snake.

  “I don’t think I like your attitude,” said Marina. “I don’t think I like the way you disrespect my house.”

  Marina’s tattoos began to glow. It was like she had embers under her skin, the way the lines lit up and flared, like they’d burn you if you reached out and touched them.

  “Drusilla, if you don’t mind,” said Boss Authority.

  She licked her lips, her tongue forked like a snake’s. “My pleasure, darlin’.”

  Drusilla Fey floated up off the ground, her bare feet lifted, her toenails scratching the floor. Her fingernails grew, they stretched out like bone claws. She clacked them together and it sounded like a snake’s rattle. For one moment she hovered, strange and fluttery, in the air. We all held our breath, everyone in the room, as the two witches squared off, waiting.

  The next bit all happened at once.

  Drusilla Fey let out a shriek and flew toward Marina.

  Mr. Hugo and Cecily Bob drew knives and came for Pop. The coward tried to run, he did. I was never more ashamed in my life.

  Harlen snapped at Boss Authority and Boss backhanded him down, that clockwork hand dinging through the room.

  Me and Tally backed up to where the pianist crouched hidden behind his piano. Tally was full spider and ready to fight, and so was I as much as that was worth, but neither of us knew quite what to do.

  “We could probably get Pop free from Mr. Hugo and Cecily Bob, but I don’t want to risk those knives,” I said.

  Drusilla Fey had Marina on the ground, three of her fingernails snapped off and stuck through Marina’s clothes like daggers, fixing her to the floor.

  “It’s the tattoos, ain’t it, Drusilla?” said Boss Authority. “It’s the tattoos that’s the source of her power.” Boss Authority’s face grimaced like he’d been sucking on a lemon all day. “I want her power. I want those tattoos.”

  He ripped the sleeve off his jacket, his pale, scarred arm all muscles and veins, not a thing natural about it.

  Lawrence stepped creakily toward Boss Authority, his war blade drawn and ready. “You have disturbed the peace of my old age, fiend!” he said. “Unhand Miss Marina!”

  “Give him what’s coming, Lawrence!” said Johnson.

  Boss Authority grabbed the blade in his fist and snapped it in half. Then he pushed the old man backward onto the floor.

  “Lawrence!” hollered Johnson. He hobbled over and knelt by his friend.

  “I can’t just sit here and watch,” said Tally. She skittered herself up the wall of Marina’s Place. In a second Tally was up on the ceiling, hissing at them, her fangs out and ready. She was way braver than I was, and that was a fact.

  Cecily Bob and Mr. Hugo pinned Pop down, had him hogtied, with a bucket ready, like they were going to string him up and drain him right then and there, gather every last drop of his lucky blood. Tally leapt off the ceiling and landed right on Mr. Hugo’s back, sinking her fangs deep in his neck. Cecily Bob whipped out a knife and came after Tally, trying to stab her off Mr. Hugo’s back. That just about did it for me. I picked up a wooden stool and came charging at him, screaming loud as I could. I chucked it at Cecily Bob and it smashed right into his back.

  The stool didn’t do hardly a thing except make him drop his knife. Cecily Bob turned around and kicked me so hard in the chest I went flying, the wind knocked clean out of me. I lay on the floor, helpless as could be.

  I watched as Drusilla Fey’s left-hand fingernails went clicking all over Marina’s arm, and her right fingernails went to work on Boss Authority’s arm. The markings began to disappear on Marina’s arm, to fade and blur and vanish, and reappear just the same on Boss Authority’s arm. He was stealing her magic, he was. Drusilla Fey was leeching it out of Marina and straight onto his skin. Soon the tattoos were gone, Marina’s arm blank of symbols and scratchings, not a lick of ink on them.

  “My mom gave me those tattoos,” said Marina, crouched in a huddle on the ground. “It was the last thing I had of her.”

  I saw Mr. Hugo fling Tally off his bleeding back, saw her scuttle to a corner. I saw my daddy strung up by Cecily Bob, all his lucky blood soon to be drained out. I saw Harlen limp toward Marina, the two of them huddled together in pain and anger on the floor. I saw Lawrence sprawled out on his back, Johnson helping him up to his chair. I saw the durn cowardly pianist inching toward the rear door, and me right there next to him. Everybody else had fled from Marina’s Place.

  We had lost, all of us. The last safe place in the Swamplands had fallen. Pop was captured. Tally was still spider-folk. And no one, not a single person in this room, was paying one lick of attention to me one way or the other.

  I was about durn sick of that.

  I looked around the room, at all the folks I knew and loved, at the ones who I figured were against Boss Authority and on my side. Every single one of them was a hustler. That was just a fact. Every one of those folks had their own game running, in one way or another. They all had an angle, they were all smart and brave, I knew they all had their own plan running quick in the back of their minds. I just needed to give them a little room to operate, that was all. What did Pop say that first night I came to visit him, when he pulled that card trick on me? He said the problem was I was watching him the whole time, didn’t he? That I would understand later. Well maybe I got it now. Maybe magic is w
hat happens when everyone’s looking somewhere else. That was a true hustler’s trick it was, just like Tally did when she was fake-begging, what the priest did when he smuggled us across the waters. I just needed to give Boss and his folks something else to look at, distract them enough to give my people room to work.

  I staggered up to my feet, the air back in my lungs, my body hurt but with nothing broken.

  “Listen up!” I hollered.

  Nobody paid me any notice, same as usual. That right about ticked me off. I cupped my hands and gave it all my lungs could give.

  “I said shut up, everybody! Boss Authority, you faker! You, having to steal other folks’ magic because you ain’t got any of your own. That’s right I’m talking to you. Listen up now, or you’ll be sorry.”

  “You say I’ll be sorry?” said Boss Authority. “I don’t think I got much to fear from a little scamp like you.”

  “Shoot, you ain’t much taller than me,” I said, swaggering toward him like I figured Pop would, poking my chest out, faking brave as best as I could. “Figured if you didn’t have a metal hand and that goofy snake ponytail, I could probably whoop you in a fair fight myself.”

  That got him, it did. Boss Authority took the bait. He walked clank clomp right over to me, stared me down eye to eye.

  “Give me one reason not to slit you gut to gizzard, little man,” he said.

  “You play Parsnit, Boss?” I said.

  “’Course I play Parsnit,” he said. “Ain’t a better Parsnit player on this whole earth than me, and that’s a fact. Just ask that fella strung up over there.”

  He laughed, pointing at my daddy. I couldn’t look at Pop, not if I wanted to keep myself from crying. So I didn’t, I kept my eyes right on Boss Authority, I pulled all the grit and bluster I could into my voice and faked it with every bit of might and power I had.

  “I ain’t got to ask him,” I said, “because he’s my no-good rotten lying scoundrel daddy.”

  “That a fact?” asked Boss Authority. “You his runt, all grown up?”

  “I am,” I said. “And what’s more, I’m ten times the Parsnit player he ever dreamed of being. Besides, I’m blood ain’t I? Parsnit rules say I can take over his bet if I want. I can be his rematch.”

  “But what can you offer me?” said Boss Authority. “Look around you. I already got everything I want.”

  “True,” I said. “But you won half my lucky blood off Pop already, the luckiest blood on this earth.”

  Boy was I laying it on thick.

  “Well, if you wound up here, I don’t think it’s half so lucky as you think.”

  “It is,” I said. “But the other half of my blood is magic, thanks to my mom the witch. That half you don’t own, not yet. Besides, that piano player who just bolted out the back door? He heard me challenge you. What’s he going to tell the swamp, that Boss Authority was too scared to accept a duel from Davey Boy’s son and heir? That he was afeared of some ‘little runt’ as you said?”

  “You got grit, boy,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”

  I felt a tingling on my neck, like cold water dripping down my spine. I heard a rasping little voice in my ear, a voice I recognized. Marina.

  What are you up to? she whispered right into my mind.

  I’m buying you time, I thought back, as hard as I could.

  “House rules say a challenge must be accepted,” said Marina, out loud where everybody could hear.

  “This ain’t Baudelaire Quatro’s spot, last time I checked,” said Boss Authority. “You don’t even allow Parsnit here.”

  “I do now,” said Marina. “It’s my Place, it’s my rules, and I just changed them. So long as this house stands, I still have a say in what goes on. And I say you have to accept.”

  Marina needn’t have bothered. From what they’d told me about Boss Authority, he was wild about magic, he couldn’t get enough of it. I remembered the wore-out folks at Baudelaire Quatro’s, the folks who couldn’t get enough magic. I figured Boss Authority was crazier about magic than all of them put together. He couldn’t resist a game with me, Davey Boy’s son and heir. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to humiliate my pop all over again.

  “I don’t like it, Boss,” said Mr. Hugo. “It’s got to be some kind of jackpot.”

  “Kindly, Hugo, shut your durn mouth,” said Boss Authority. “If I want your opinion on the matter, I will ask for it. Drusilla, can you handle Marina here?”

  “Handle her? I could eat her up and spit her out,” said Drusilla Fey. “I could drink her bones dry.”

  “Then what have we got to fear?” said Boss Authority. He turned to me. “I’m game, boy, if you are.”

  Pop was struggling against his gag, kicking and groaning.

  “Looks like your old daddy’s got something he wants to tell you,” said Boss Authority. “Let him loose, Mr. Hugo.”

  Mr. Hugo sliced the rope they had my pop strung up by, but since his hands were bound he couldn’t catch himself and smashed headfirst onto the floor. It busted his noggin open a little, and I could tell it hurt. I hated watching them hurt Pop, I hated it just about more than I could hate anything on this earth, even if I was outright angry with him at the moment. But I couldn’t let any of that show now. I had to keep a cool head, see if I could get Pop to see things my way.

  “You can’t let him play,” said Pop. “He’s just a boy.”

  “But he’s your boy,” said Boss Authority. “That gives him every right to play. Law by blood, ain’t that what they call it, Drusilla Fey?”

  “I believe that’s just what it is, Boss,” she said, her eyes flashing black in the lamplight. “Blood is the law we call upon, yes indeed.”

  “Buddy,” said Pop, “what in the sam hill do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m about to play some Parsnit,” I said.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed is what you’re doing,” he said, “and it’ll be all my fault. It’ll be every bit my fault.”

  “Nah,” I said. “I learned from the best, didn’t I? And I’m making my own decision now. I got my own luck, don’t I? It’ll come through for me in the right time, that I do reckon, so long as it’s free to.”

  Pop’s eyes got wide then and I think he understood I had something cooking, I think he understood that I was hustling and scheming with every bit of craft I had. I caught the slightest gleam of his gold tooth, and yeah, Pop knew what I was up to.

  “Just go easy on him, Bobby Felix,” said Pop. “He’s just a boy.”

  “Oh you know me,” said Boss Authority. “I’m nothing if not a man of mercy.”

  Mr. Hugo and Cecily Bob and Drusilla Fey got to laughing at that. I for one didn’t see the humor in it.

  “Fine,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I win, you let me and all my friends go. You abandon your magics and skedaddle.”

  “That’s an awful lot for me to wager,” said Boss Authority.

  “What’s the point of playing,” I said, “if you can’t win big?”

  Boss Authority got a chuckle out of that. “I like the way you think, boy. You remind me a little of myself at your age, if you can imagine that.”

  “I would prefer not to,” I said.

  “Got a mouth on you too,” said Boss, rubbing his chin with his metal finger. “Well, fine. If I win, I get your daddy’s blood—which is already mine by right, mind you—and I get your blood, and what else? How about a bottle of poison from the fangs of that one over there? Actually, I want the fangs themselves. I want her face for my collection.”

  “I don’t think that’s mine to wager,” I said.

  “It’s done,” said Tally. “You can have it, Boss.”

  “And you can have Marina’s Place,” said Marina.

  “Marina, honey, it appears your house is already mine,” said Boss.

  “No it ain’t,” said Marina. “This place doesn’t obey anybody but me. The second I walk out of here the whole thing will shutter itself and sink r
ight into the swamp, whether you want it to or not. Same as what happened to Baudelaire Quatro’s. By the way, what did you do with his head?”

  “I kept it,” Boss said, “same as I’m going to keep yours. I’m gonna pickle it, Marina. I’m going to keep it right there on my mantel. It’ll be one heck of a conversation piece.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Marina, wiping a trickle of blood from her chin.

  I wasn’t sure how much I liked this now. I was feeling like maybe they were putting a bit too much faith in me. I was fine playing for myself and my blood, but I didn’t feel too good about playing for anybody else.

  Have faith in us, said Marina into my brain. We’re hustlers, ain’t we? Just keep him occupied as best as you can.

  A’ight, I thought. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.

  “I accept those terms,” I said.

  Right then the witch’s bond appeared on my finger. It burned it did, I wanted to holler out and cry it hurt so bad, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself. For what it’s worth, Boss Authority winced too, I saw it on his face.

  “The bond is set,” said Marina. “There ain’t any other option now.”

  “Enough gabbing,” I said. “Let’s sit down already and play.”

  17

  ON MY LEFT SAT DRUSILLA Fey, dainty as at a dinner party, and to my right Marina, still clutching her bare arm, glowering down like she was out for blood. I felt like no matter what happened between me and Boss Authority, the real battle was here, between witches, a grudge that went deeper and longer and fiercer than even I was aware of. The rest of them—Tally, Pop, Cecily Bob and Mr. Hugo, Lawrence and Johnson—gathered around us, watching, ready.

  I sat there scared out of my mind, facing Boss Authority himself—muscled and tattooed and strange-eyed, magic running like little snakes in black lines through his skin. He would quiver and twitch with it, something sparking in him, like he’d sucked in so much power his skin could hardly contain it. I didn’t know what a man had to go through to want something like that, all the power in the world, so much power it twisted him weird and raw. On his fingers glittered jewels set in bone, around his neck were strung pouches filled with the dust of organs and eyeballs, magic stuff, enchanted all of it, dirt from a thousand-year-old grave, dirty scraps from a bride’s torn veil. He was a fearsome man, I knew that, his ponytail flickering through the air behind him, like it was ready to strike. I didn’t even think he was in control of it all anymore, if there was even a Bobby Felix there left under all that gathered magic. He had hexed himself into something more than human, that’s for sure, but he had lost something in the bargain, you could tell just by looking in that ruined eye of his.