The Serpent Page 11

  A dark shape beyond the lace-curtained window made her jerk back and press herself against the wall. Barely breathing, she edged closer to the window. There was someone in the yard, beyond the barrier. A man with black hair and olive skin, clean shaven, wearing dark jeans and a T-shirt that clung to his lithe body. He was leaning against a big birch, smoking a cigarette. Watching the house.

  Ernie squinted. She didn’t want to get too close for fear he might see her—he didn’t exactly look like a collector of Civil War–era antiques. The man dropped his cigarette in the grass and stubbed it out with his boot. Then he raised his hand and waved at Ernie. She dropped to the floor with a gasp. Was this the mystery man Gabe had been talking to at the motel, or was this guy another one of Duncan’s allies? Her hands scrabbled for her cards again. Without Gabe here, she’d have to deal with this by herself. Last time, she’d pulled a random card and amplified Gabe’s animal spirit, but this time, she was totally on her own. She shuffled the cards into her palm, sweating, her breath shooting out in sharp little bursts. She raised her head to peek out the window, to see if—

  The guy was gone. Did that mean that he was an ally of Gabe’s, satisfied that she was all right? Or was he on his way in here to get the Marks for Duncan?

  “Crap,” Ernie muttered, crawling away from the window. He could be anywhere now. He could already be inside the house, for all she knew. “Crap!”

  She squeezed the cards and looked down at her arm, half hoping that hideous snake would reappear. But nothing happened. Nothing.

  “Come on,” Ernie whispered.

  She glanced out the window one more time as she reached the door to her mom’s office. She hadn’t just imagined that guy, had she? And did it matter? She had to be prepared—Duncan wanted the Forger’s Marks, and who was to say he’d sit back and wait for her to bring them? She walked into the shop and picked up the old musket from the floor, where her mother had dropped it—or where it had been torn from her hands. She pushed away thoughts of how terrified her mother must have felt as she’d been attacked. And how Jules must have felt, trapped in a car at the bottom of a ravine—

  Ernie drew in a sharp breath and pressed her hand to her chest. “Stop it. That won’t help.” She’d feel everything later. Right now she needed to act, to protect herself and the Marks. The antique weapon was heavy in her hands. Solid.

  The sound of footsteps on the front porch brought her arms up, and when the door swung open, her finger jerked on the trigger. The blast threw Ernie backward, her head and back slamming into the wall.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what the hell?” shouted Gabe.

  Ernie opened her eyes to see that she’d blown a chunk out of the doorjamb, next to which was standing a tall and very angry man. He stomped forward and ripped the gun out of her hands. “Sorry,” she mumbled as he carefully set the gun aside and came to stand in front of her.

  “Didn’t I specifically ask you not to do anything daft?”

  “I thought you were someone else.”

  “You do realize that the only people who’d be able to come in here, besides me, aren’t Dealers?”

  “I saw someone in the yard,” Ernie snapped. “And no, I don’t realize that, because Duncan got in here and stole my mom!”

  “He did that by leaving his cards outside.”

  “Leaving his cards outside obviously didn’t make him harmless, Gabe.”

  He took off his motorcycle jacket, and there was the bird on his bare arm, looking fierce. Glaring at Ernie. “You’re not harmless, either, darlin’. Soon as you realize that—”

  “The cards aren’t working. I tried to get them to . . . I don’t know. The deck is ignoring me. I think it hates me.”

  Gabe frowned. “She can’t come to you, because of that damn tile Duncan stole.”

  “I don’t want the snake. I just want the cards to work,” Ernie said, leaning on the wall, wanting to sink to the ground.

  “You already know those two things are intertwined,” Gabe said, switching on a light in the dim shop and peering at Ernie. “Did you eat something?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “What was the subject, exactly? Another whinge about how you hate serpents?”

  Ernie had to grab a side table to keep from stumbling with light-headedness. “The subject was the guy in the yard.”

  “I asked a friend to guard the house.”

  “And it would have been helpful for you to mention that before you left. If you don’t want me to act daft, then maybe you should do me the courtesy of treating me with some respect.”

  “Respecting you isn’t the same thing as leaving the Marks undefended.”

  She gestured at the musket, her hand flopping like a dead fish and her lips tingling with a growing numbness. “Would you be saying this if I’d shot you in the head?”

  He gave her the hairy eyeball. “You’re looking a bit pasty, love.”

  “Huh? No. I . . .” The memory of Jules hit her again out of nowhere, right in the gut. Too much had happened. Too much had been lost. “Am fine.”

  Gabe took a step closer, towering over her. “Have. You. Eaten?”

  Ernie tilted her head as she thought about it, which made the whole room go askew and her head swim with dizziness. She knew it was well past noon, but the day felt like it had lasted a week. “I’m not sure.” She would have laughed at herself if she could have found the energy—she sounded drunk.

  “Christ almighty,” Gabe muttered as she began to sink toward the floor. He caught her and swung her up into his arms. Ernie sucked in a breath as she slid against his body. He smelled like coffee and whiskey and something deeper and unnervingly masculine.

  “I’m okay!” she protested as he carried her down the hall. His jaw was thick with dark blond stubble that scratched her forehead as her head bobbed against him. She put her hand on his neck to steady herself, and she felt his pulse kick.

  “Couch?” he asked brusquely. “That’s the only place I’m putting you down, since you seem unable to hold your own weight at the moment.”

  “Sunroom,” she said with a sigh, sparks flashing in front of her eyes. What the hell was happening? “I’m usually a lot tougher than this.”

  He gave her a squeeze. “I can tell, but right now you’re being a bit stupid. You’re a Dealer with less than half a deck, and you need to take some care.”

  “You counted them.”

  “’Course I did. Counting cards isn’t banned in this particular game.” He entered the solarium. Glass crunched under his feet, and Ernie squeezed her eyes shut at the reminder of how her mother had been taken. “I’ll clean it up once I mother-bird you.” He gently set her on the flowered settee, where her mother loved to sit and drink tea.

  Ernie laid her head back on the pillow. “Mother-bird me?”

  Gabe left the room for a moment and came back holding a bag from Old Europe. “I plan to poke this into your mouth.” One eyebrow lifted as he considered the metaphor. “But I promise not to chew it up and regurgitate it first.”

  Ernie chuckled. “You’re quite the gentleman.”

  He sat down on the settee, nudging her feet aside. “Few people have ever accused me of that.” He pulled out a fat croissant wrapped in a grease-spotted napkin and handed it to her. “You’d better eat every last crumb.”

  “I usually save my carbs for beer.” Ernie eyed the thing. She typically kept to a high-protein diet with lots of veggies, better for building muscle, and only carb loaded on days before races—and nights out with friends. But her mouth watered at the sight of the flaky golden pastry.

  Gabe looked her up and down. “You think these might be special circumstances, with you preparing to fight a mortal enemy and all?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to mother-bird me up some tea?”

  He grinned. “Point me in the direction of the kettle.”

  Ernie devoured her pastry and listened to the sounds of Gabe in the tiny kitchenette, which
consisted of a cabinet, a utility sink, a hot pot, and a microwave in what had once been the butler’s pantry. He came back with two steaming cups of tea and produced a second croissant from the Old Europe bag. He handed it to Ernie, who opened her mouth to protest as she realized he’d probably meant it for himself. “Not one word,” he said. “Eat up.”

  She did. And when she finished, she sipped her tea and listened to Gabe explain what she needed to do.

  “To use a Forger’s Mark, you have to be in the right state of mind, and you have to offer a blood sacrifice.”

  “Because of course,” Ernie mumbled, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “What do you mean by ‘right state of mind’?”

  “You have to focus on what you want, because this is your one shot.”

  “Aren’t there three of those plates?”

  “You think that means you get a do-over?” Gabe did not resist the urge to roll his eyes.

  “I was kidding,” she replied, and mostly, she had been. Dry humor was a shield against her fear of failure. “But seriously, what kind of focus are we talking about? I have the attention span of a gnat on my best day.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “And the life of your mother isn’t enough to help you concentrate?”

  “I hope it will be,” Ernie said, burying her nose in her cup and finishing the last of her tea.

  “I’ve tallied what you need, which cards you must ask for.” He pulled a piece of her mother’s stationery from the pocket of his pants.

  Ernie took the list and looked down at it. “This is just a bunch of symbols.”

  “Each one is a card you’re missing.” Gabe took the paper back from her. “You require seven of the fourteen Needs cards: Wisdom, Light, Endurance—”

  “That would have come in handy.”

  “Pain, Rest, Healing, and Death.”

  “I don’t know whether to be sad or creeped out. Death is a need?”

  Gabe ignored her. “You have Haven, Nourishment—”

  “So I can just conjure up some food?”

  “You have to think hard on what you want to eat—if your concentration slips, sometimes your deck has its own ideas what that might be.” Gabe gave his bird tattoo a rueful look. “But Nourishment is broader than that. It includes all your basic needs. Food, drink, warmth, sex—”

  “Whoa. I have so many questions.”

  Gabe winked at her. “You also have Strength, Pleasure—”

  Ernie suppressed a little shiver and rubbed her goosebumped arms.

  Gabe paused to watch her before he continued. “Birth, Mercy, and Aid. Really, they’re good cards, but I’d rather you have had Pain and Endurance.”

  “You want me to be in pain?”

  “I want you to be able to cause pain,” he said, looking grim. “And I want you to last long enough to do it.” He glanced at his list again. “Object cards. You need Weapon, dammit; Shelter, double damn; Lock; and Coin.” He growled something in that foreign language. Ernie had decided it might be Gaelic. “You have Tool and Case, and that’s it. Shafted on the Object cards.”

  “Case?”

  “Comes in right handy when you need it. Now—Action cards. There are sixteen of them, and all are crucial for a duel. You need Transport, Discern, Conceal, Strike, which would have been nice to have, Negotiate, Repair, Draw, and Foretell.”

  “Foretell,” said Ernie, her stomach sinking. “Maybe that’s the card he used on Jules.”

  “What?”

  Ernie told him about what had happened to Jules, and as she did, Gabe’s craggy features hardened with anger. “Bastard,” he said when she’d finished.

  “Did he cause her death?”

  Gabe rubbed his hand over his face, looking weary, reminding Ernie that he had given her his croissant. “Foretell is a tricky card and risky to use, because you risk locking in a future you don’t want.”

  “Huh? If that’s the future, though, then—”

  “The future is malleable, Ernie. But Foretell can lock it. More than one Dealer has been burned by using it that way. But if you’re really desperate . . .”

  “Then what’s it good for?”

  “I’ve used it to impose my own will at times, by pairing it with Negotiate, for example. If you cross it with Deceive or even the right Augment in a hairy situation, you can create maximum confusion for your enemy.”

  Ernie felt like her eyes were crossing. “So he didn’t use Foretell on Jules?”

  “That’s less likely than him crossing a few cards just for pure sadism. Wouldn’t be the first time. Wouldn’t be hard.” He pulled out his own deck and tossed five cards onto her lap. “Strike. Transport. Death. Prolong and Inverse. The right combination and imagination is all it takes.”

  Ernie stared at the cards as a chill rode down her back. “The right combination,” she said softly.

  Gabe cursed quietly. He twitched his left hand with his thumb on the deck, and the cards he’d tossed went zooming back to him. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “I know. And thank you.” She looked down at her hands, her fingers, her stubby, bitten fingernails. With these hands, she could deal the cards that changed and ended lives, including Duncan’s. She clenched her jaw. “What else do I need?”

  “Think of what you have first. For Actions, you have Escape, which is damn lucky—that’s the one that got you to Ireland. You also have Translate, Capture, Shield, and Deceive. All good. You have Rend and Sacrifice, and you also have Revelation. If that particular card was in his deck, you’d be in trouble, because you don’t have Conceal. He could find you.”

  Ernie glanced at the windows. “I’m guessing he already knows where I am.”

  “Good point. He’s hoping you’ll come to him, though. Other cards. You have Friend-Lover—”

  “Wait—you just called it ‘Friend’ before.”

  “Because that’s all it was at the time,” he replied with a smirk. “The Lover part seemed a bit premature.”

  Ernie cleared her throat. “Not sure why they can’t be separate cards.”

  “If you’ll allow me to continue . . . ?” He waited until she nodded. “You also have Ally and Family. You’re missing Enemy.”

  “Seems like I have plenty of those. Maybe I don’t need that one.”

  He shook his head. “That card makes it easier to do stuff to them.”

  “Damn.”

  “Augments—the cards you play to adjust the action you’re taking or the object you’re using. You already know you have the Amplify card, and you also have Prolong, which can be crossed nicely with Strength, Escape . . .” A mischievous smile crossed his face. “And Pleasure.”

  “Good grief.” She looked away quickly, hoping her cheeks weren’t turning red.

  “Don’t knock it. Anyway, you really got shafted on the Augments. Duncan has Accelerate, Sharpen, Warp, and the all-important Inverse card.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do with those anyway.”

  “You wouldn’t know what to do with any of them. It takes years to learn, but the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll be an effective Dealer.”

  “I guess that’s why you have to be immortal.”

  Gabe closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he moved on as if the moment hadn’t even happened. “You only have one Realm card—Dreams. He has Land, Sea, and Air. And in terms of Wilds, well. You have Chameleon, but you need Alchemy, Mirage, and Clay.”

  “Mirage. Did you use that card in the fight with Akela?”

  “You rarely use one at a time—and for that, I used four.” He held out his deck again, and the cards pulled themselves from the rest. Gabe spoke their names as they fell onto his upturned palm. “Mirage, Weapon, Aid, and Ally. I asked for help to protect you using an armed illusion.”

  “And you just thought of that on the spot?”

  “I’ve had a bit of experience,” he said. And once again, the fatigue in his voice and expression awakened her concern.

  Te
ntatively, she reached out and touched his arm. “Gabe, are you really okay?”

  “Just bollixed.” He looked down at his cards. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  “You really don’t know what to say to keep someone from worrying, do you?”

  “You have more than enough to worry about, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I thought trust was supposed to be a two-way street.”

  Gabe sighed impatiently and stood up. “I’m not keeping anything from you that will affect my ability to help you or my determination to do exactly that.”

  The heat of his glare made her look away. “Fine. I don’t know how I’m going to keep all of these cards straight.”

  “I’ll write it out with notes so you know what to ask for,” Gabe said. “But if you’re feeling better, I’m thinking it’s time to use the Mark.”

  “Right now?” Ernie’s heart picked up a nasty, frightened rhythm. “I’m not sure . . .”

  “Do you need more rest first?”

  She shook her head, sighing. “We don’t have much time, do we? Or really, I guess I don’t have much time.” She swung her feet to the floor. “Just tell me what I need to do.”

  Gabe considered her for a moment. “You’re like a wee engine.”

  Ernie glared at him. “What do you mean, ‘wee’?”

  He put his hands up. “Where are the Marks?”

  “My purse. It’s in the office.”

  Gabe retrieved the bag and dropped it on her lap. “Just pull one out and spend a few moments thinking about what you need from the Forger.”

  “I can’t keep all those cards in mind at once!”

  “You don’t have to get that specific right now. That’s for when you’re negotiating. Just think about needing to be whole,” Gabe urged. “Feel it in your body—the fatigue, the hunger to have everything you need.”

  “I can definitely do that,” Ernie said as she opened the box and pulled out one of the Forger’s Marks. It was cool and astoundingly heavy on her palm.

  “Focus on the center of the Mark, the circle within the circles. You’re calling to the Forger, who is like a spider in the middle of his web.”