Wild Card (Etudes in C# Book 1)

by Jamie Wyman

  Everything I’d done—the party, putting up with Marius, fighting off creepy pig-men and ginormous birds, surviving Puck’s little mindfuck test—had been working to get that life for myself. Now, it all amounted to nothing. I’d lost it. Like so many people in Las Vegas, I’d lost it all.

  I kicked at the litter of chips on the ground. “I was so close!” I said through my teeth. All the work and running for my life, the humiliation, and I would still lose my soul to fucking Chance.

  “We’ve got to get going,” Marius said as he got to his feet.

  I shot him a bewildered stare. “Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t go in there now. Without the chips, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me!”

  “Regardless, Eris is still your mistress and she beckons. Besides, if I don’t get you there, she will have my hide.” He offered me both hands. “Do it for me, would you?”

  I shook my head and looked away from him. It didn’t matter to Marius what happened to me when the final card dropped. Giving a shit wasn’t part of our bargain. No, as soon as this was over, he’d want his payment.

  I’d failed, lost this game, and gained nothing but a bedazzled thong I’d have to wear on a date with a satyr. Assuming he didn’t take my head off with that sword of his for lying about breaking his curse.

  I let my mind wander over what might wait for me in my nebulous future. If Eris won the game, nothing changed. Same soul-crushing shit, different day. I’d worn a comfortable groove into this version of life. I could stay there if I had to, right?

  If one of the other gods won, though, what then?

  Assuming our meeting at the gala was any indication, Coyote wanted me for a concubine, and I am no one’s whore. Maui needed someone with tech skills to help his people. Of all of the options available, his seemed the most favorable. I’d get to go to Hawaii finally and use my talents. Maybe I’d learn to do the hula. Or maybe I’d get eaten by shark-men or thrown in a volcano. Chaos reigns when you’re beholden to a trickster.

  As for Puck, I’d rather die. I’d already been screwed over by faeries enough to know what sorts of twisted days to expect from them. If it meant execution in that damnable tree, so be it.

  I had no idea what Loki wanted of me. He hadn’t made any sort of move to claim me or test me. He was the wild card. I knew very little of him. Just a couple of myths and the smatterings I’d gotten from Marius. Asgard’s lazy bastard son remained a mystery.

  When all the cards hit the table, I’d know. Bitch, dead, sex-slave, island paradise, or none of the above. Those were my options.

  “Come on, Catherine,” Marius said. “You’re not the type to just sit on your ass and let life happen to you, are you?”

  I wanted that to be true, but hadn’t I done exactly that for the past eight years?

  No more. I failed this time, but I can always try again. It doesn’t matter who owns the mortgage on my soul, my life and choices still belong to me!

  With renewed determination, I took his hands and let him help me up. I might not be able to win, but I’d face the gods—and my future—head on.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “I’ve got a poker game to attend.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Turn It Again”

  Marius hailed a cab and gave the driver an address somewhere off the Strip. I raised an eyebrow and twisted my face with a question.

  “The game is an informal affair at her house.”

  We’d been on the road for a few minutes when Marius leaned over to speak into my ear. “By the by, I would appreciate your discretion if you would be so kind as to not mention anything about my impairment while we are among the others.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Christ, woman, I told you before: I have a reputation to uphold. Besides, Eris already has leverage on me. I don’t need to give that to other, more powerful creatures, too.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. My lips are sealed.”

  “Thank you,” he said. Marius let out a breath and sagged into the seat of the car. For the rest of the ride, he was uncharacteristically silent.

  The cab dropped us off in front of a large two-story home. It wasn’t a mansion by any stretch of the imagination, but with its sleek, modern construction and picture windows, I was sure it cost a pretty penny indeed. Something about its boxy style reminded me of Old Vegas and the 1960s mod look. I could imagine the decor being a mix of June Cleaver and Atomic Age flair. And yet, it seemed to flow with the flat desert, bringing to mind Frank Lloyd Wright. The place was lit up like the Strip, too. White bulbs burned in every visible room and in the entryway. Floodlights illuminated the path to the house—a mosaic of cut-granite slabs running like a river through the desert landscaping. Even the front door was a work of art. A security door made of black metal had been sculpted to form a stylized sunburst with wavy rays.

  Marius rang the doorbell, and I heard a simple, muffled chime from inside the house. Moments later, the interior door opened, and the goddess smiled.

  “Marius. Catherine,” she sang, taking both of us in with those golden eyes. “Excellent to see you. You’re even early. I like that,” she added as she unlocked and opened the security door. “Please, come in.”

  After a courtly gesture from Marius, I stepped in ahead of him. As the goddess led me through the foyer, around a corner, and into the living room, the satyr shut the door behind us.

  I’d seen Eris’s office, so the house’s sparse furnishings didn’t surprise me. What did shock me was that damn near everything was white. The walls, the ceilings, the blanched sandstone tile floor—all white. In contrast, her couch and chairs were black. Like the sofa at Treasure Island, Eris’s furniture looked flattened and modern. It could have come straight from IKEA. Glass formed the end tables, and metal rods made the lamps. What little art hung on the walls represented the more minimal works of Jackson Pollack and his creative descendants: colorful and chaotic.

  The home of Discord baffled me. All at once it seemed both perfectly ordered and completely wrong. The eye had little more to latch onto than black and white, leaving everything looking like an old silent movie.

  I turned in a circle. Hallways speared off into other parts of the house, a formal dining room and patio doors leading to a narrow swimming pool. What interested me most sat in the breakfast nook adjacent to the kitchen.

  The table itself was a round slab of glass resting on a metal frame. Green felt had been cut to the exact measurement and placed over the top. Seven simple chairs sat around the table at regular intervals. The space before two of them was vacant. At five different seats, a pair of cards lay facedown on the felt beside piles of chips of varying sizes. In the center, four cards formed a straight line, face up and winking to the world.

  The queen of spades. The jack of spades. The ten of spades. And the queen of hearts.

  The first four cards in a game of Texas hold ’em.

  I tried to read the tracks the gods had made in the cards and chips lying on the table. I couldn’t tell who sat where, except for Eris. Her spot was the one with cards but no chips. What was it Maui had said? At the fourth card—the turn—she had slid in every last asset she had, including my soul. Sure enough, lying there on the top of the pot was a black poker chip marked with a golden apple.

  Staring at the handsome pile, I couldn’t help but wonder, Is this what I’ve been all along? Nothing more than a game piece? Is this what the gods do with their free time—make wagers and barter away the lives of humans?

  I gazed at the single black chip longing for understanding. All I wanted to do was go back and change the mistakes that led me here—a stumble with a stranger in front of a casino, ill-chosen promises over whiskey and ebony skin, a poor bet at a roulette wheel. I reached out a shaking hand to touch the piece of me that I wouldn’t get back.

  Before I could, though, the crack of a whip filled the air, followed by the rotten-egg stench of sulfur. My fingers burned. I jumped back, pulling my hand to my chest, and l
ooked around wildly for an explanation.

  Smiling like the proverbial cat who caught the canary, Eris sat on the center cushion of her sofa. “Don’t touch that, dear,” she said.

  “What is it? The spell, I mean.”

  “It’s insurance.” When I didn’t immediately follow, she explained. “A neutral dealer comes to all our major games and acts as both line judge and referee. It doesn’t happen often, but if we have to break in the middle of a game, he will place an enchantment over the table so nothing can be disturbed. Only he can unlock it.”

  I nodded mutely. It made sense. How else could one ensure integrity in a game amongst liars and thieves?

  “Please,” Eris said, motioning to the armchair in front of her, “have a seat. Stay for a bit.”

  The chair embraced me with as much comfort as the goddess herself. I didn’t understand the trend for hard furniture.

  Marius did not sit but remained a presence over my left shoulder.

  Opposite the goddess, I realized why this felt so wrong. Goddesses don’t wear pajamas, dammit.

  Eris was dressed casually in a black cotton tank top and black gaucho pants of a fabric that flowed like silk. The darkness of her clothes blended into the sofa, making the pallor of her skin all the more stark. The tank top did not flatter her figure but instead called attention to her flat chest and protruding collarbones.

  I used to think she looked like a Disney villain in her pants suits. Now, though, dressed down, she scared the bejesus out of me. In her office I could see her as a goddess, but here, in the facsimile of a human home, was a true monster in sheep’s clothing. As if she read my mind, her lips spread in a lupine grin.

  Reaching over the arm of the couch to an end table, Eris opened a small wooden box and withdrew a slender cigar, its end capped in a black filter. With the ping of a Zippo and the hiss of ignition, she breathed the cheroot to life. After indulging in a long drag, she let out a smoke ring and turned her eyes back to me.

  “So, Catherine, I’m told you’ve had a wild couple of days.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I hear you even had something to do with the unfortunate accident with the elevator at my building. Is this right?”

  I nodded. Glancing at Marius for some sort of support, I said, “We ran into one of Maui’s birds.”

  The satyr’s face was placid, his eyes totally neutral as he stared at our mistress. I followed his gaze back to her to find her exhaling another ring of smoke.

  “Well,” she puffed, “I’m glad to see both of you came out of this unscathed.”

  Unscathed? Aside from the scrapes on my hands and feet and the knock to my knee, I felt like the past hours had put me through the emotional wringer. My hope of freedom flapped in the breeze like a tattered flag. I’d fought for my life against mythical horrors and backstabbing faery bitches. Oh, and I found out my ex hadn’t merely lost my soul but also bound powers I’d never known existed. And Marius had seen my underwear.

  Yeah, I’d say I felt pretty scathed at that point.

  Instead of listing off the many injuries to body and psyche, I gave her a superficial smile laced with all the ways she could go fuck herself.

  “So, do you have the chips?”

  “I had them,” I said, looking at my hands. “I kept them through shark attacks and faery illusions and falling down an elevator shaft, but some guy ran into me and—”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” she said quietly.

  Meeting her eyes, I saw when she flicked a glance over my shoulder.

  “Marius?” she asked, her lips wrapping around the cigar.

  Silently, Marius crossed the room and stuffed a hand in his pocket. A moment later he dropped three black tokens into her outstretched hand.

  “You found them?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The satyr didn’t answer, nor did he look at me. He just stared at the goddess who let the chips cascade rhythmically from one hand to the other.

  All at once an icy pain filled my stomach, and my heart fell into my toes as I understood. A random stranger who just happened to be carrying an armload of black poker chips… Marius’s sudden interest in checking them for evidence of treachery…

  When you’re beholden to Eris there are no coincidences, no accidents. Everything is a machination.

  I should have guessed it sooner.

  Even with the realization that I’d once again allowed myself to be duped, my eyes refused to squeeze out even a few tears. I didn’t look at Marius. I couldn’t. My anger for him boiled to something volcanic, my blood flowing like molten rock as shame colored my cheeks.

  With a sound of equal parts anger and sadness, I said, “I can’t believe it. Even knowing you have your powers of persuasion, even knowing you’re a fucking bastard, I still trusted you. I actually trusted you, Marius.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” he said, teeth grinding.

  “Foolish mortals and your trust,” Eris said coolly. “You all like to think it’s this treasure you keep under lock and key. But with the right motivations, trust is actually free for the taking. It’s one thing I find so enticing about you humans.”

  “Why?” I asked through my fury. “Why promise my freedom then put me through all of this?”

  “Who promised you freedom? Or anything, for that matter?” Eris took a drag on her cheroot and let the smoke ooze out of her nose in bluish tendrils. When my eyes flickered to Marius and back, she grinned. “No, Catherine, I can’t give you your freedom. Two days ago I may have been willing to part with you if someone else won the game, but that was before I knew about this glorious little power of yours. When Dahlia passed ownership to me, I knew you were a meager talent at best but had no idea she had bound you. Now that the muzzle is off, if you will, and I see what an asset you could be, I cannot let you slip away. Oh, no.”

  “Then why the chips?”

  “At first it was exactly what you thought. You had to gather the chips in order to prove each of the players approved you as a worthy bet.”

  “But now?”

  “Now you are far too valuable for me to lose. Without the chips, the bet is nullified.”

  “But they’ll be here. The others—Coyote, Maui, Puck. They can tell you the truth. They gave me their chips to sign off on your stupid bet!”

  Eris tilted her head to the side with pity. “Dear, do you actually think a table of liars gives a good goddamn about the truth? Please!” She clucked her tongue with disgust. “We’re all in it for ourselves, and we’ll do whatever it takes to win. This way, though, I get to keep you, and I have the added bonus of knowing Maui and Puck have tipped their hands. I see a bit of what they’ve been trying to do, and now I can make them miserable. Even if someone has a better hand, I still win.”

  My head spun trying to sort it all out. The levels of intrigue, the games stacked one on top of the other. I couldn’t fathom the amount of backstabbing and paranoia Eris and her kith lived with. This is why I never played RISK as a kid.

  “And you two!” she exclaimed, head falling back with throaty laughter. She gestured with her cigar between me and the satyr. “The way you pressed one another’s buttons! Here you are, always at the other’s throat, and yet you’re such similar creatures. The chaos you cause one another is simply delicious. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  In that goddamn uncomfortable chair, I simmered and stewed. She was so smug, so proud of the strife she had wrought in my life. My rage damn near choked me.

  “But,” she said rising from the couch, “enough chitchat.” Motioning to the delayed game, she said, “I have guests arriving shortly to settle a small matter, and frankly, dear, I don’t think you’re ready to sit at the big kids’ table.”

  As icy fear plunged into my system, my rage ebbed. “What do you mean?”

  “Marius, take her to the panic room. It’s soundproof, and the walls are made of iron. That should hold her nicely.”

  “She’s a technomage,
” Marius said. “Is it wise to put her there, Lady?”

  Eris waved this off with a flippant sigh. “It’s been disconnected and is little more than a broom closet at this point. Nothing she can do there.”

  “Are you certain you wouldn’t rather I take her back to her apartment?”

  Annoyed, Eris wheeled on him. With a lightning fast motion of her clawlike hand, a whip-crack snapped through the air. Marius reeled back, his hair a black nimbus around his face. As he regained his balance, he brought a hand to his cheek. His fingers came away bloody.

  “Stop questioning me, satyr, and do as you’re told! Put her in the panic room and make sure she stays there until everyone has left.”

  Even as he grabbed me by the arm, Marius wouldn’t look at me. I struggled, hissing insults through my teeth. I kicked his shins and feet, balled up my fists and tried to wrench myself away from him, but my strength was puny compared to his. Adding injury to insult, Marius used the momentum of my flailing to bring my bad knee to a sharp stop against his leg. I let out a yelp of pain as stars flickered in front of my eyes. Sagging into him, I let my arms go limp at my sides and tried to breathe away the fire in my leg.

  We rounded a corner, and while Marius fiddled with a false wall panel, I slipped a hand into my pocket. The plastic of Flynn’s gadget was warm and smooth.

  A thick metal door slid open. Our reflections bounced from a wall of dark monitors. On another wall were a selection of rations and several bottles of wine—at least Eris had her priorities. Stairs of corrugated metal led up to another door. Dual access. Smart. No sense wasting time running up or down stairs in the case of an emergency. On the third and final wall squatted a cushy sofa that would double nicely as a bed.