“More fun with two,” Russ said, a sly grin on his face, gesturing to a rusty metal chair.
I sat and nodded to the boys on the other side of the table. David Sheridan was as wiry and jittery as a Pekinese on caffeine. He looked even more wiry and skittish next to Alex Mackenzie, Ian and Colin’s erratic youngest brother.
Alex glared at me, his fists clenched, pupils dilated and black.
Yeah, this will be fun.
“Are we going to play or do you want to ogle me some more, Hampton?” Alex asked. A whine came from beneath the table. I poked my head down to see Alex’s ever-present dog, a huge disheveled Irish wolfhound named Garmer, drooling at his feet.
I stared at the dog and the dog stared back, ears twitching, until I had to look away. That dog had always made me uneasy. I pulled my head up. “Not used to you being so anxious to lose your money, Alex. Or is Sheridan bankrolling you again?”
Everyone knew the Sheridan family had more money than ability. For the past fifty years or so, anyone wanting to move to St. Hilaire had to pass a test administered by the Guild. At least half the members of any new family moving in had to prove they could earn a living as a medium or some sort of service worker or else they couldn’t live here. The Sheridans probably wouldn’t pass that test if they tried to move to town now. But some great-great-great-grandmother of David’s had been one of the super-wealthy town founders and had invested well. No one wanted to lose the family’s money, so they were grandfathered into the rules and allowed to stay.
If what Rice said was true, the rules were changing. I wonder what was going to happen to David and his family.
I couldn’t work up the same concern for any of the Mackenzies, though. Some of them, like Ian, had abilities, but no common sense. Others, like Colin and Alex, lacked both. None of them had money. The family had moved to St. Hilaire when Alex was little and had been creating one sort of scandal after another ever since. Last year, his uncle was kicked out of St. Hilaire for secretly running a signal to a satellite outside of town and betting on horse races during the supposedly “disconnected” summer season.
Russ handed me a stack of multicolored chips and dealt the cards. It wasn’t a bad draw. “Palms on the table,” I said.
“Seriously?” Mackenzie rolled his eyes. “You don’t trust us?”
“There you go using that immense mental power of yours, Alex. Just do it.”
Sheridan and Mackenzie put their hands on the table. Sheridan’s nails were bitten down. Mackenzie’s middle fingers were extended.
Russ and I spread our own hands wide on the table to prove we weren’t doing anything illicit. It was never about counting cards in St. Hilaire, but about reading your opponents, or reading the energy off the physical cards, or contacting someone on the other side. You never knew when someone’s grandfather had been a card shark and would be more than happy to come back from the beyond and help them win a hand.
In St. Hilaire, ghosts were everywhere.
There was always the option of having a Guild member oversee the game, but no one wanted Guild members around on the closing night of the season. Thankfully, not even Russ.
Sheridan and Mackenzie won the first hand, but we won the next five. I could see Russ adding up his chips, upgrading his car options with every win. It made me wish I had a more concrete plan for my winnings; leaving St. Hilaire didn’t have a specific price tag.
“What do you say we up the stakes?” Sheridan said, looking nervously at Mackenzie for approval.
“To what?” Russ shuffled a bunch of twenty-dollar chips in his hand. They probably added up to more money than he’d seen in one place. He and his dad were always just scraping to get by.
Sheridan’s eyes washed over me and then away and back. And instantly I knew what improbable thing Sheridan wanted me to wager.
“No,” I said, fighting to keep from laughing.
“Dec?” Russ asked.
“One minute.” I grabbed a handful of Russ’s coat and pulled him over to the corner where we could talk without having to yell.
“Sheridan wants my piano,” I explained.
The look on Russ’s face was priceless and rare in its astonishment. “The piano?”
“Yup.”
“That’s absurd. Plus we’ve won five hands in a row.”
“This is Sheridan and Mackenzie,” I reminded him. “They could have thrown the games.”
Russ closed his eyes and took a deep, even breath. I waited while Russ felt for vibrations. I never quite understood how that worked, and Russ was always apologetic that he couldn’t explain it better, but everyone had their own method of reading things, and if Russ’s was vibrations, that was okay with me.
“I don’t think so,” Russ said confidently.
“So, they’re serious?”
Sheridan had lusted after the piano in the past despite the fact that he didn’t play and had no real interest in music. All David Sheridan wanted was to belong. And the piano, with its eerie history, was rich in the currency of St. Hilaire: secrets and mysteries.
But as for Alex, his motivation could be anything. Most likely, he wanted to dismantle it, strip it down, and dissect its pieces. Ian had been legendary for collecting things and co-opting them for his own uses. People too. Russ specifically. It was one of the reasons I hated Ian, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Alex was following in his brother’s footsteps.
“Yeah, but one remaining question,” Russ said, running his thumb over his wrist. “What are they putting on the table in return?”
“I don’t know.” Sheridan and Mackenzie both knew there was no way I’d ever give up the piano, so they must have had something big that they were prepared to lose; something so big that they thought it would change my mind. “Let’s go find out.”
“Not saying we’re in. But out of curiosity, what the hell are you willing to wager?” Russ asked them.
Mackenzie chewed on his bottom lip before answering. “The ’Stang.” His voice was surprisingly calm, but his face, tense and tight, betrayed him.
Even I had to be impressed at Alex’s gall. Alex Mackenzie’s Mustang was Ian’s masterpiece. Created from pieces Ian had found, stole, and bribed out of the collections of the older families—some parts, it was said, were dug up from the town cemeteries—the car was notorious and unpredictable. Some said it couldn’t be clocked on police radar and that it could drive itself. But I was pretty sure those were rumors or just wishful thinking. Still, where the Mackenzies were involved, you could never be sure.
The car was the only thing I’d ever known Russ to want. And that alone was enough to make me want to help him win it.