Forged in Fire: An Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 4) (7 page)

Street performers on the Strip weren't required to register for spots the way they were in the Fremont Experience. That meant anyone wearing dirty, stinking character costumes could compete against college girls in handmade showgirl costumes to coax tourists to take photos with them, hopefully for a tip. As we came to the edge of the gathering, I could see that this wasn't one of those types of performers, though. This was a street hustler.

Some things you don't believe actually exist in real life. A Three Card Monty hustle was one of those things for me. I expected to see them in movies or on TV and that was it. But this guy here was doing the real deal: three bent playing cards on a folding portable table covered with a red cloth. As he spat out his fast pitched patter, he fluidly picked up, moved, and dropped the cards on the table, occasionally tipping one up to show the location of the ace of spades but eventually concentrating solely on mixing up the cards' positions.

When he stopped rearranging the cards, I had a pretty solid idea of which card was the ace of spades. But when the hustler turned the cards over, I discovered I was wrong. It surprised me. I could have sworn I'd nailed that ace's position.

"Damn, I was wrong," I heard Christian whisper.

So I wasn't the only one. Interesting.

The hustler challenged the crowd to bet and eventually a young Latino man stepped up with his girlfriend and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table.

"I'll beat you," the young guy said confidently while his girlfriend hung on his arm and smiled in between sips of her giant plastic yard bottle of pina colada.

"Hey, now, I like a man with confidence. Gotta like a guy who knows what's what and what's where," the hustler chattered. He talked so quickly I was beginning to suspect he might be a monkey shifter like Melanie.

He was dressed ridiculously in a Halloween street pimp costume. Purple flared pants over zebra print boots, a long purple jacket with fat lapels trimmed in gold lamé. He even had the classic pimp fedora on his head with a long white feather sticking out of the hatband. His skin was tea-stained and smooth, his black hair silky and curling leisurely over the shoulders of his jacket. Every feature on his face was thin and spare, like they were slivers leftover from when someone else's features were carved. My guess was he was of Middle Eastern descent, but his spiel was all Harlem.

"You got an eagle eye, an eagle eye, I can tell," he said to his newest challenger as he began shuffling the cards around again. "I'm not getting one over on you, no siree. You're gonna catch me in the act." His hands were a blur as they switched the cards back and forth on the table. "Catch me putting this ace of spaces, this one here, keep your eye on it; it ain't going nowhere if you keep that eagle eye on it. Watchin' it? Of course you're watching it. Your girlfriend just left you and you didn't even turn and look."

The small crowd laughed, including the girlfriend who hadn't, in fact, left.

The hustler dropped the cards with a final flourish. "Now, my man, show me how good you are. You kept your eye on that ace that whole time, I could tell. Now show me the card."

The man pointed at the middle card. "It's that one."

The hustler slapped a hand over his chest. "You're sure? You're absolutely sure? Don't want to change your mind? I'll give you triple your money if you choose another card."

The betting man hesitated for a beat, second-guessing himself, and then shook his head firmly. "No, it's that one. You're trying to trick me."

The hustler winked. "Oh, I'd never do that, no siree."

He reached down and flipped the middle card: queen of hearts.

As the crowd roared, the hustler flipped the remaining two cards, revealing the ace of spaces on the right side of the queen. The hustler snatched up the twenty-dollar bill, pulled off his pimp hat and said, "Thank you kindly, good sir. Care to try again? Just a fluke, right? It's always a fluke." He tucked the money inside the hat and plopped it back on his head.

While this was entertaining, I wasn't sure why we were here.

"This isn't the guy you were talking about, is it?" I said to Vale out of the side of my mouth. Maybe he enjoyed street performers and had wanted to catch the show before we continued on.

"You think this guy is just that good at sleight of hand?" he murmured back.

"I think he's flat out cheating," Christian said.

Vale stepped up to the table.

I hadn't seen him move forward. Christian and I shared a quick, startled look, before swiftly sliding up on either side of him. Was he going to call the hustler out for using magick on non-magickals?

"Ready to beat me, my man?" the hustler asked without looking up. "Ready to beat me at my own game, show me a thing or two, put me in my place, show me how I'm wrong?"

"I'd like to play a different game." Vale's deep voice and unhurried speech patterns made the hustler's sound like it had come out of a chipmunk.

The hustler's head shot up. He gave away his recognition of Vale only for an instant. After that he was smooth as silk.

"What kind of game are you looking for, my man? I got all kinds of ways to take your money." He grinned whitely.

"You also have a shell game."

The hustler's smile widened. "That's my special set. I don't bring it out for just anyone. That's only for the VIPs. Are you a VIP? You got VIP money to wager?"

Vale said, "I've got her."

The hustler noticed me for the first time and his eyes rounded. Did he recognize me as Anne Moody, champion of the Oddsmakers, or as someone descended from dragons?

"My man, now you're talking! VIP to the max, that's what you are. I knew you were an important man the moment you walked up. A shell game, you say? Why I've got the prettiest shell game you ever did see. It'll leave you dazzled, just dazzled."

He swept the cards aside and shoved them into a pocket of his jacket and then leaned down and opened the box that was sitting beneath the table. Dazzle was right. The two hemispheres he brought out looked like a Bedazzling project gone wrong.

The two halves together would make a globe the size of a softball. The way the hustler handled them told me they were made of inexpensive paper-mache. But for some reason a hundred or so cheap rhinestones had been glued over the entirety of their outer surfaces, turning them into two halves of a rainbow disco ball. Since this was a shell game, though, he reached into one of the halves and slid out a third, undecorated hemisphere that had been nestled inside.

The hustler reached into his other pocket, pulled out a small red ball and slapped it on the table. "Alright, alright, alright. All your baller money versus anything I got that you want," the hustler said. "I'm taking that to mean you want what's under my hat and that's a fair wager. Fair enough, I'll take it, won't back down. Ready, Mr. VIP?"

Vale glanced at me. "Ready."

I called up Lucky as an invisible wisp of magick.

I didn't know what kind of magick the hustler would use but with something physical like a ball to keep track of, I felt I had a good chance of countering his efforts. As the hustler brought the three shells toward the table, I had Lucky curl invisibly around the red ball. The hustler slapped a hemisphere over the ball, oblivious of its magickal hitchhiker.

"Keep your eye on these VIP shells, my man," the hustler sang and then began sliding the shells across the table.

Their rhinestones caught the numerous lights from the overhead sign from Circus Circus and the street lamps, throwing off a glitter kaleidoscope that had me squinting a couple of times as laser beams of color light shot straight at my eyes. That was the trick. You couldn't keep your eyes on the shells because they temporarily blinded you. Their light was enhanced subtly by sorcery. It hurt to watch them and once you blinked or glanced away, you lost track of the ball for good.

"Keep watching, don't you ever look away, don't never take your eyes off these, no sir, no, Mr. VIP. Keep watching, keep looking. Where's that ball? Where did it go? I know you know where it is. I know you saw it."

Finally he stopped moving the three shells, lifted his hands from them, and stepped back. "It's all on you, Mr. VIP. Moment of truth. Are you going to be a hero or a zero?"

Lucky curled out from beneath the shell on the right. I whispered as much into Vale's ear.

When he pointed at the appropriate rhinestone shell, the hustler averted his eyes and then slowly shook his head. "My man…"

"I want the shells," Vale told him. "Keep the money under your hat. Consider that a tip."

The hustler frowned, recovering, and growing upset. "You can't take my livelihood."

Vale leaned over the table and said softly, "Only the Ancients guard their property with riddles and games. I beat yours, now honor my victory."

Admiration curled the corners of the man's mouth, and maybe a touch of relief, too.

"Fine, fine, my man. You won fair and square. I don't cheat anyone," he said in a louder voice for the crowd. He grinned widely at them. "I can be beat, I admit it. You beat me, you win.

"Thank you." Vale scooped up the three shells.

"Now was that a fluke or does someone else think they can pull a repeat?" the hustler called to the crowd as we walked back the way we'd come. "Is he the only man in Vegas who can pay attention?"

"I don't get it," I confessed. "Why do we need those things? I hope they're not a gift for me."

"If they are, you should be ashamed of yourself," Christian teased his best friend. "Anne deserves better."

Vale smiled and handed the shells to me. "Start picking the rhinestones off."

With a shrug, I did as he'd instructed, littering the sidewalk with tiny, colored plastic. They'd been glued onto the hemispheres, but the glue had dried clear, allowing me to see the paper-mache beneath.

"You're kidding me," I said when I saw the grid that had been revealed. "All this time, this has been used as a shell game on the Strip?"

Vale shrugged carelessly. "That hustler is no ordinary hustler. No one would have been able to take those from him by force. Being under the constant eye of the public was just further protection."

Christian leaned over my shoulder for a closer look. "What's so good about a bunch of lines?"

I held up the globe to him. "This isn't just a bunch of lines. Look at this line here. See how it curves and these other lines cross it? Doesn't that look familiar?" When he frowned, I added, "Think local."

His eyebrows jumped skyward. "That's the Spaghetti Bowl. Where the freeways all converge. That's a map of Las Vegas." He scrutinized the globe. "But those dots there, they're all over the place. Summerlin, Henderson, Mt. Charleston…the Rift doesn't reach those places. Are those dots supposed to represent the seals? If so, I don't get it."

Vale stepped off the sidewalk behind a wall that ran along the edge of the Circus Circus property. Christian and I joined him, me still obsessively flicking off the rhinestones. The guys watched over my shoulders as I gradually cleaned the shells off. Only two halves were printed with the map. The third shell was blank, likely used just to perpetuate the myth that these were parts of a hustler's game. I chucked the blank half into the nearby Dumpster and we all stared obsessively at the remaining globe, trying to make sense of it.

"I have no idea," I announced. "I'll let one of you guys be the hero."

Vale took it and studied it, but then shook his head. "This is nothing but a trick to steer astray someone who's unfamiliar with the Rift's location. But the truth is in here; we just don't know how to read it. We may end up having to wait for your friend Orlaton after all."

He looked so crestfallen that I nearly laughed. Vale was far from impressed by Orlaton's snooty attitude. I imagine for him, being centuries old, someone like Orlaton seemed like nothing more than a talking fetus.

"Hey, VIP! You can't go yet!"

It was the hustler, his fold-up table beneath one arm, the one hand clamped down on his hat so it wouldn't fly off as he ran toward us.

I clutched Vale's arm. "Uh oh. Does he want it back?"

Vale held up his hand to the guy. "We'll take care of this. You no longer need to concern yourself with it."

He slowed up and shrugged. "Just wanted to tell you you're walking away without the key."

I shared a look with Vale and Christian but they were as clueless as I was. "What key?" I asked.

Grinning, the hustler reached up and plucked the long white feather from his hat. He javelin-threw it at us, making Christian reflexively duck and then laugh sheepishly when the feather, lacking aerodynamics and queerly weighted in the front, spiraled straight into the sidewalk.

"I been guarding that thing for decades," the hustler admitted. "I'm glad to wipe my hands clean of it. Keep it safe, VIP. Say hello to your bro for me."

He bowed at the waist and then turned and jogged back the other way.

"What in the world was that?" I stepped up and picked up the feather. It was no ordinary feather. The calamus had been split and a small razor blade inserted. "Is this supposed to allow you to shred incriminating documents simultaneously while you're writing them?"