“I’m listening,” Big says.
“Your sister’s got resources, sure, but from what I can tell you have more and I need that. I need allies. I need you on my side. Not your own, not the other gods’, not your dad’s. Mine. I win, you help me figure out what I can do. You help keep me alive and away from those fucking psychos. Especially your father. You want me to be your pet Chronicler? I want you to be my pet god. Hell, I’ll even throw in a couple of good words for you with this Chronicler thing.” Once he figures out how it works, that is.
Fitz considers mentioning the other Chronicler Amanda was talking about, but something tells him the longer he keeps that between the two of them, the better off he’ll be.
“Interesting,” Big says. “Though I’m not crazy about this ‘pet god’ business.”
“I’m not crazy about being a ‘pet prophet’ either. So think of it as like being a consultant. Which is better than what you’re asking of me.”
“Fair’s fair, Big,” Amanda says. Fitz looks back at her, thankful for the support. It’s a long shot, he knows, but he needs help and she can’t be the only one to give it to him.
“I don’t see him asking you for that.”
“You don’t see her trying to rope me into a contract, either,” Fitz says. “Speaking of which, what’s to say my winning holds you to our agreement?”
“What’s to say my winning holds you to it?” Big says.
“We’re not in a court of law, Fitz,” Amanda says. “Anything that gets decided here is between the two of you.”
“I could make your life very difficult,” Big says. Fitz has already figured that out. But he could do that anyway.
“Then I need some assurance you won’t try to fuck me over if I win.”
Big turns to Amanda. “How’s my word?”
“I don’t like you,” she says. “And I don’t usually trust you. But screwing Fitz over does you no favors that I can see. If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here. I think it’s good enough.”
“There, see? Good enough. That’s better than I usually get. So, shall we play a friendly game of cards?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
BIG PULLS A wrapped deck from under the table and hands it to Amanda as Fitz sits down in the chair across from him. “Would you be so kind as to act as dealer, dear? I don’t think our mutual friend here would see my handling the cards as all that fair.”
Amanda takes the deck, peels off the wrapper. She riffles through the cards, her eyes twitching as each card speeds past. “They’re clean,” she says.
“Uh, Amanda,” Fitz says, pointing to her face. She wipes blood from her nose with the back of her hand. He wonders how long having this clone active with all her knowledge in its head will last. Will it suddenly shut down and die? Or will it go stupid like on the way back from the museum? He hopes they can get this over and done with so he doesn’t have to find out.
“All good,” she says. She shuffles the deck and places it in front of Fitz to cut. “You sure you want to do this?”
He’s not, but he needs help from a god and this is the only way he can think of to make sure it happens. He supposes that Big could back out of the deal—what the hell is Fitz going to do to stop him?—but he has to believe that he won’t. He answers her by cutting the deck and locking eyes with Big across the table.
“Three hands of five card draw,” Fitz says. “Nothing wild.”
“Nothing wild,” Big says. There’s a tone in his voice that Fitz doesn’t like, and Fitz wonders if he’s bit off more than he can chew. Big is going to cheat, Fitz can feel it. But then what the hell was he thinking going against a god? He takes a deep breath and focuses. He can’t dwell on that. Not now.
Amanda deals out five cards to each of them. Fitz scoops up his hand and looks at the cards, and realizes that he’s made a terrible mistake. He’s got a two of spades, a four of clubs, a five of clubs, a six of hearts and an ace of diamonds. In short, fuck all.
The best he can do is hang onto the ace and ditch the rest, hoping he can at least get a pair of something, or that Big has a crappy hand, too, with a lower high card. Or maybe he should toss the two and the ace and hope he can make a straight with a three and a seven. He stares at his cards, hoping they’ll turn into something else. They don’t.
“You look distressed,” Big says.
“Just weighing my options,” Fitz says, his voice confident even if he isn’t. “I got a lot of them.”
“Right. Mixing and matching? What do you have there? A full house? A royal flush? I think you probably don’t have anything. I think you’re going to lose.”
“Nope,” Fitz says. Maybe he can stall for time, cause a distraction, get out of there before Big’s goons tackle him on the way out of the casino.
“You sure you don’t want to simply give up?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.” Big slides two cards toward Amanda, who draws two new ones for him. “And you?”
“Sorry, what?” Fitz says. He’s still trying to figure out what to do with this shit hand.
“How many cards would you like?”
“Oh, right.” Fitz slides everything but the ace over to Amanda and takes four replacements. He’s still got a shit hand, but at least he’s got a pair of twos in it.
“All good?”
No. He’s not good. He’s starting to freak the fuck out, actually. He nods his head instead. “Whatta ya got?”
“Full house,” Big says, putting his cards face up in front of him for Fitz to see. “Kings and queens.”
Fitz shows his cards, tries to put a brave face on the fact that he has nothing that even comes close.
“How do I know you’re not cheating?” Fitz says. Would he even be able to tell if a god decided to do something weird with cards?
“Amanda?” Big says.
“He’s not cheating,” she says, scooping up the cards and shuffling the deck.
Fitz wants to ask how she knows, but he’s not sure he’d be able to understand. Of course, she could just be lying and working to rope Fitz into doing what Big wants. She said he has to do his thing by choice. He can’t be forced into it. But if he agrees to it, then he’s probably stuck.
No. He can’t think like that. If he can’t trust her he can’t trust anybody and he needs to. He can’t do this on his own.
“Fair enough.”
Big cuts the cards and she deals another hand. This time Fitz is doing a lot better. He’s looking at a straight flush right out of the gate. He does his best to keep his face as neutral as possible, though he doesn’t know why. It’s not like he needs to bluff here. He either wins the hand or he doesn’t.
“Cards?” Amanda says.
“I’m good,” Fitz says. Big cocks an eyebrow at him, shifting into the body of a teenage girl with a spray on tan, big, bug-eyed sunglasses and the look of some generic pop star. She peels three cards off her hand and slides them at Amanda, clearly not happy with the way it’s going.
“Well?” Fitz says.
Big sniffs in disdain. “Bupkes,” she says, throwing her cards at Amanda. “One for one. Feeling confident, Prophet?”
Not particularly, no. Confident isn’t a word Fitz thinks he could really use in this situation. “Just deal the fucking cards,” he says.
Amanda deals the final hand. A pair of sixes. Not a good hand, but not as bad as it could be. At least he’s got something. The rest of his cards are no help: a four of clubs, a nine of spades and a queen of hearts. Nothing to make out of those.
He glances up at Big, who’s studying her hand with an unmasked look of glee on her face. She spies him over her cards and grins. “What should I have you do for me when you’re mine?” she says. “Oh, I know. You should write an epic poem about me. I like poems.”
“I don’t know any,” Fitz says. He’ll keep the pair no matter what, but does he hang onto the queen and hope he gets another to match it, or does he toss all three of his remaining cards and hope for
the best?
“Really? What kind of piss poor Chronicler are you, anyway? At least Homer knew how to spin a yarn.”
“I can’t even tell a joke,” Fitz says.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Really. I suck at them.” Better odds to just get rid of all the cards. The likelihood that he’ll get another queen is so low it’s laughable. But what if he does get one? Shit, now he doesn’t know if he should ditch it or not.
“Prove it.”
“What?”
“Prove you can’t tell a joke. Go on.”
Fitz stares at her. He’s trying to sort out what the fuck to do here and she’s screwing with his concentration. “Knock, knock,” he says.
“Ooh, I love those. Who’s there?”
“Fuck off, I’m thinking.”
“I don’t think that’s how those are supposed to go.”
“I’ll take three cards,” Fitz tells Amanda, sliding his cards to her face down. She scoops them up and passes him three new ones. Fitz picks them up and almost throws up out of panic.
“Wait. No. I gave you the wrong cards.” Instead of giving her the four, nine and queen, he gave her the pair of sixes and the queen instead. And what he got in return was a seven of clubs, a jack of diamonds and a two of hearts. He’s worse off than he was before.
“Seriously?” Big says.
“You had me all fucking distracted and I gave her the wrong cards.”
“It’s too late,” Amanda says.
“Oh, now, that’s a pity,” Big says.
“This is you. You’re fucking with my head.”
“Me? What the hell did I do?” Big says.
“Screwing with my mind. Some god shit.”
“Oh, Fitz. That’s not god shit. Now this, this is god shit.”
Images slam into Fitz’s mind as Big opens up his history to him. Land deals and oil pipelines, stocks and bonds, bribes and drug cartels. Larceny, theft, murder. Economies rise and fall. The thing he represents might be as old as humanity, but he is not. A hundred years or so at most. Older than Amanda, but so much more distilled. Big Money is, well, big money. Small transactions cascade into larger ones, cash changes hands, changes forms, builds bridges and roads, saves lives. Ends them, too.
The images hit Fitz hard, but he can feel its edges now, the way the visions flow in and through him. Less a fire hose, more a wave. And something else. Like a background noise in a song on the radio, the recording hiss on a less-than-perfect recording. It sits there just under his awareness, but the more he looks for it, the more he finds it. He doesn’t know what it is, but it permeates the entirety of the visions in his head.
And just as suddenly it’s over. Fitz blinks and realizes that Amanda is asking him something.
“What?”
“I asked if you were all right.” She glares at Big, who shrugs and goes back to looking at his cards. He’s changed from the pop star girl into a teenage boy in a blue blazer with a Harvard pin on the lapel.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Fitz says. Though the flood of images is gone, that background hiss still echoes in his mind. And when he concentrates on it, it’s almost as though he can see it, too. Thin, red filaments enveloping the proto-god like puppet strings. He traces them from Big to himself and back again.
“Are you sure?”
“He says he’s fine,” Big says. “Now if you don’t mind, we have a card game to finish.”
“That’s right,” Fitz says. “We do.” He feels oddly calm. He puts his cards face up in front of him. He has a shit hand. Worse than his last losing hand. But he knows that it isn’t going to matter.
“You really are going to lose,” Big says, giving a low whistle at Fitz’s cards.
“No, I’m not,” Fitz says, absently watching the thin tendrils wrapping around the god. In his mind he reaches out to one of them and tugs. Ripples of light flow outward from it, down to the cards in Big’s hand and back again.
Something happens. A bending, as though reality is warping just a little bit. A wave of nausea hits Fitz and he doubles over, trying not to throw up. He clutches at the table, his fingers digging furrows in the green felt. A moment later, the feeling passes.
“What the hell was that?” Amanda says. Big is looking at him and frowning.
“I’m good,” Fitz says, the taste of bile strong in his mouth. If what just happened is what he thinks just happened, then he’s home free. And terrified.
Big shakes his head. “I don’t know what you thought that was going to accomplish. I’m not big on sympathy, you know.” He flips over his cards. “I have a full house.”
Amanda and Fitz look at his cards. “No, you don’t,” Amanda says.
“What?” Big follows their gaze and his eyes go wide. Whatever he thought he had isn’t there. Now it’s a three, four, five and six of hearts and an eight of clubs.
“That was a full house,” Big says, jumping to his feet and grabbing the rest of the deck. “Aces over kings. I had a fucking full house.” He sifts through the rest of the cards—looking for extras, Fitz assumes—but they’re all accounted for.
“Problem, Big?”
“He cheated.” Big throws the cards at Fitz and they fall around him like snowflakes.
“Really?” Amanda says. “How? I didn’t see him do anything. Did he have a card hidden in his sleeve?”
“Am I the only one here seeing the irony of Big Money accusing someone of cheating?” Fitz says.
“Oh, don’t you fucking try pulling something over on me, you little shit,” Big says. “I know what you did. I had a full house and you—” He stops, his eyes going wide as it begins to dawn on him what Fitz has just done.
“You changed the cards.”
“No,” Amanda says, grinning. “He changed a god’s cards.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE HOTEL ROOM at the Sheraton just outside the Los Angeles airport is about as generic and bland as Fitz has ever seen. Even the cheap motels he takes prostitutes to have more style than this place. He sits on the bed and picks at the burger delivered by room service; like the room, it has no actual flavor.
Amanda is in the adjoining room. She said something about having to defrag her brain, or something, though Fitz isn’t sure that’s what she actually said. He’s still having a hard time wrapping his brain around the idea that she’s a clone, or a cyborg? Or a cyborg clone. Or the Internet, or technology or cell phones or whatever the fuck she is. Is she even human? Hell, is she even a she?
Fitz pushes the burger aside and picks up a bottle of oxy. He’d like nothing more than to wash a few down with some vodka from the mini-fridge and wake up from all this in a couple of days, but he knows he can’t. This isn’t something that’s going to blow over.
Especially not after what he did at the casino.
Big was not happy. Neither was Fitz. He’s not sure how Amanda felt about it.
When he changed Big’s cards, something changed in him. He can feel it now, crawling around in his brain. The tendrils that he saw around Big Money faded away once he... twisted reality? He’s not sure what he did, actually. Or how he did it. It just happened.
Angry as he was, Fitz got the feeling that Big was also a little scared. He wonders if anyone has ever done something like that before to him. Probably not. He doesn’t think gods grow up with nannies giving them a time out.
But he was true to his word. From what Amanda has told him, these rooms have some sort of protections on them that other gods can’t see through. Like the symbol he wrote on the bucket truck when he escaped Zaphiel, probably.
Big has guards on this floor and downstairs in the lobby. Fitz didn’t notice them when they arrived, but Amanda said they were there. He’s not comfortable with how much he’s having to rely on her.
What happens when they need to leave? He can’t stay here forever. He looks at the two guns on the bed. He needs to get some ammunition for them if they’re going to leave the hotel. Bullets might not kill gods, but he’
ll feel a lot better if he’s armed, anyway.
He should sleep. He’s exhausted, but after the casino he’s too wired and confused to get any rest. He wants to head out, wants to get the ball rolling. He needs to find this other Chronicler and... what, exactly? How the hell is some crazy coot who can’t handle the voices in his own head going to help him? Amanda seems to think he can, though how, she won’t say. Won’t even tell him who it is.
A knock at the connecting door pulls him out of his thoughts. He reaches for one of the guns out of reflex. Stops himself. What the hell good is an empty gun going to do? Besides, it’s only Amanda. Jesus, he’s jumpy.
“Come in,” he says.
She comes into the room. Something about her is off a little, but he can’t tell what it is. A slight shift in focus, like she’s not all there. It’s barely noticeable, and if he hadn’t spent the last several hours with her he might not notice at all.
“You got rid of some of yourself, didn’t you?” he guesses.
She blinks at him and then her focus snaps back. “Yeah. Sorry. It takes a little bit when I do that. I had to move some of myself out and make sure I didn’t lose anything important.”
“And did you? Lose anything important?” It’s creepy and Fitz doesn’t understand it. Near as he can tell, she’s just a shell. Who she is isn’t even really in the room with him.
“I think so. And anything I don’t know I can download easily enough.”
“Like what? What did you get rid of?”
“Nineteenth Century American Literature, repair manuals for French cars built before 1982, lyrics to every Hall and Oates song. Things like that.”
“Why would you even have that in there?”
“We didn’t have a whole lot of time, so I just dumped everything in. Just because I know a lot of things doesn’t mean most of it’s useful. You got a glimpse of some of that.”
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