The Serpent Page 6

  Ernie’s palms hit the table. “But I’m the one with his cards! He should come after me.”

  “Oh, he will—that’ll be his first priority, which is the only reason your ma’s still alive. He’d be here now if he could track you. I’m assuming that one of the cards you stole from him is the Revelation card, which makes you very lucky. Unless he can find someone else to track you.”

  Ernie placed her hand over her pocket. “I’ll give these back to him if he promises to leave me and my mom alone.” There. That was her only leverage.

  Gabe leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs under the table. “You could try, but since you’re here—and since I know you used them earlier to get away from my little bog trap—that means some of them are already bonded to you.”

  “I didn’t bond with anything! All I did was look at the damn things!”

  “You did more than that.”

  Inexplicable anger was bubbling inside of her, turning her voice bitter. “Yeah, I did. I cried on them. Maybe a little snot, too. I had a lot on my mind as a deranged asshole was trying to shatter my car’s window to get to me and tear my freaking heart out.”

  “Ah. There it is. You were in mortal peril, and you made an offering to the deck. Same when you were escaping the bog.”

  “What? You’re talking about these cards as if they’re alive.”

  As if they’d heard her, the cards pulsed with warmth beneath her fingers, and she gasped.

  Gabe smirked.

  “I’m gonna have to ask you to rewind and give me some explanations, preferably before my head explodes.”

  “How much did your mother tell you?”

  “Let me see,” said Ernie, pursing her lips. “Approximately . . . nothing.”

  Gabe glanced around, then leaned forward. “You don’t know about the Immortal Dealers.”

  “Is that a band?”

  “Duncan is an Immortal Dealer.”

  “And I assume what he’s dealing isn’t meth.” She stared across the table at Gabe. “You’re one, too.” She waited, and when he didn’t contradict her, she continued. “You both have a bunch of playing cards that you do crazy stuff with. Seems pretty random.”

  “One way of putting it.” He chuckled. “We’re all damned. Or blessed, depending on how you think about it.”

  “Are you actually immortal?”

  “More or less.” He took another drink. “Depends on your deck.” He patted his chest, right over the spot where he had drawn out his cards earlier.

  “And do you also have a pet snake? Because if so, I really am out of here.”

  He shook his head. “Each deck has its own spirit.” He pulled his deck out of the inside pocket of his jacket and showed her the back. It was an image of a bird on the wing, with its talons sunk deep into a globe. There were other symbols around the animal, too, seemingly hand drawn.

  “Is that a hawk?”

  “A falcon. A kestrel, to be precise.”

  She blinked. “It matches your tattoo?”

  He pulled up his sleeve, showing her his forearm. No tattoo. She glanced at his other arm, and he laughed. “It’s always on the left, darlin’.”

  “I saw it the night we met, though.” It had been hard to miss, taking up the entire expanse of his inner forearm.

  He shrugged. “She’s probably off somewhere, getting a bite to eat.”

  “Wait. Was that the bird I heard up in the tree, screeching, right before that bog tried to eat me?”

  “She doesn’t screech,” he said, leaning back and giving her an aggrieved look. “She has a lovely voice.”

  Ernie rubbed her face with her hands, praying for a dash of sanity to add to the giant bowl of crazy she’d been served. “This is all making perfect sense, and by that I mean not at all. How do you become a Dealer?”

  “A few ways. One is to do what you did—steal a Dealer’s cards and bond to them.”

  She put up her hands. “Whoa. I didn’t mean to steal them. I was just trying to get that psycho away from my mom.”

  “Obviously you didn’t acquire them by merely asking politely. You must be fast and clever if you were able to get them from him at all—or extremely lucky. I’m still trying to figure out which.”

  “I was desperate.” Her fingers wrapped protectively over the lump in her pocket. “But you knew I had them—how?”

  He whipped a card from the deck without even looking and handed it to her. “This.”

  On its face was a symbol—it looked like a head and shoulders. “What’s that?”

  “Omega. This is my Revelation card.”

  Ernie examined it closely. Beneath the symbol was a moving, blurred image. As she watched, the image shifted, warping and swirling. She blinked.

  “I was tracking Duncan using that card,” Gabe continued. “First time I’d gotten a clear bead on him in quite a while.”

  “But you were both in the club that Saturday night I met you. Did you know he was there?”

  Gabe nodded. “But I wasn’t about to challenge him in the middle of a crowded pub. He doesn’t care much about civilian casualties.” He sighed. “I had planned to stay concealed and follow him, but he sent a decoy out the door and probably laughed himself silly as I followed. By the time I figured it out, he was gone.”

  “A decoy?”

  “It’s all in the cards, love.” He tapped his deck, the back of which glowed. “I picked up his scent again earlier tonight, and it led me straight to you. Here, of all places. Imagine my surprise.”

  “Probably nothing compared to mine, so there’s that.”

  “You’re either taking all of this very well, or not even close to seriously.”

  “I’m one snapped thread away from having a screaming fit on the floor.” She grabbed her pint and drained it.

  “You might want to keep your wits about you.”

  “I’m no lightweight, buddy.” But she waved the bartender over and asked him for water, which he brought quickly. “Hey—how come you’re talking about all of this in a public place? Is it not a secret? Are these people all in on it?”

  “They can’t hear a word we’re saying. When they try to listen, our voices slip just under their ability to make out the words.”

  “Um . . . let me guess—another card?”

  “Conceal.” He pulled the card from his pocket and showed it to her. This one showed a diamond with a line right down its center, with that same murky background.

  “But that’s really specific.” She looked around. “People can see us—so we’re not invisible. And that bartender can hear our drink orders just fine.”

  “Only when we’re not talking about the cards.”

  “Are you telling me there’s a card to help you with every little thing you need?” She was beginning to understand why he’d said they were blessed. “You must have a thousand cards.”

  He shook his head. “Only fifty-four to a deck. You have to know how to use them.” He gestured at her pocket. “And if you don’t, funny things are liable to happen. Like ending up in Doodys Bottoms.”

  Ernie sagged in her chair, her body feeling like a bucket of gravel. “I’m not a Dealer, though. I’m a hospital-ward clerk.”

  “Darlin’, I hate to tell you, but you can’t be half-in, half-out. That’ll be fatal.”

  “What am I supposed to do, then?”

  He gave her a somber look. “You have to take the rest of his cards.”

  “I have to take his cards? Have you seen him?”

  Gabe grunted. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘he’s not playing with a full deck’?”

  “So if I don’t take his cards, I’ll get stupider?”

  “No, you’ll die. Slowly. It’s probably already started.”

  Ernie gripped the table, fear twisting inside her. “This is so unfair! Is he dying, too?”

  Gabe nodded. “But it’ll take longer for him. And it’ll make him more dangerous, because his soul is so completely intertwined with the Diam
ondback.”

  “If I lose the deck, I die?”

  Another nod.

  “So earlier, you were going to snatch them straight from my pocket and watch me take my last breaths? That’s your idea of fun?”

  “Did it look like fun?” He raked his fingers through his tangled, damp hair. “The stakes are high—this isn’t just about you.”

  “No kidding! My mom—”

  “I’m talking about the world,” Gabe barked. “You can either help me save it or not, but either way—”

  Ernie jerked to her feet, hand clenched around the cards in her pocket and heart skipping with panic. She staggered backward, colliding with the chairs behind her, needing to get away. The bartender was staring at them.

  Gabe stood up and dropped a few bills on the table, then drew his deck with his other hand. Instantly, a card leapt out of the stack. He caught it and swiped it toward her. Ernie felt like she was falling again, and when her butt hit the ground, she wasn’t in the bar anymore.

  “What the hell?” she shouted, scrambling up from the floor and looking around. They were in a shed of some sort, hay and oil stains on the ground, tools hanging from racks along the walls, a utility lamp dangling from the ceiling. She could hear rain pelting the corrugated roof. “Where the heck are we?”

  “Somewhere safe.” Gabe held out two of his cards and showed her the faces. “Shelter card, Friend card,” he said. “I just crossed them to get us here.” He nudged a third card out from the pair, and it was like it had come from nowhere. “And there’s my Conceal card, which keeps us from being tracked.”

  Ernie leaned against the wall. “I don’t want these cards anymore,” she said, feeling a little woozy, though not from any pleasant beer buzz. “I just want to go home. Can’t I unbond from the deck without dying? Is there a ceremony or ritual or maybe some paperwork I need to sign? Because I want a divorce.”

  Gabe walked over to her, took her hand, and pressed the thin stack of Diamondback cards into her hand, which he’d somehow plucked from her pocket in the last minute or so. They pulsed cold across her palm. “It’s more along the lines of ‘till death do us part.’ So the question is, what do you do with the time you have left?”

  “How about I go into hiding along with my mom?” She’d said the shop was safe—was that real or just one of Mom’s pagan flights of fancy?

  “You could run and hide, but if you can’t unite the deck, you’re still dead.”

  I can’t do this, Ernie thought before reminding herself that she never gave up. Never surrendered. And did her damn best not to show weakness. Besides, if she spoke any more of her scared and wimpy thoughts aloud, Gabe might take the cards from her. Based on what he was saying, that was a death sentence. She bit her lip. She needed more information. “So why do Dealers exist? Are you like a werewolf or a fairy or something?”

  “More like a man who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a very raw deal,” Gabe muttered.

  “You just wander around, playing cards?”

  “No, I wander around, doing favors and jobs when called upon. And when paid.”

  “Did you steal the deck from a Dealer?”

  “No.” He suddenly looked like he needed another pint, but she guessed they’d left the bar far behind. “I got mine a different way.”

  “How?”

  “I thought you wanted to figure out how to survive?”

  “I’m just trying to understand Immortal Dealers!”

  His jaw clenched. “Duncan and I are two very different Dealers. You won’t learn what you need to know about taking his cards if you waste time interrogating me.”

  “Touchy, touchy,” she murmured. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.”

  “The Dealers have been operating in this world since history began,” Gabe said. “We influence people and events. Wars, rebellions, coups . . . We do it all with these.” He held up his deck.

  “Why?”

  “I did mention we get paid?”

  Gabe wasn’t acting like a straight-up mercenary, though. He hadn’t killed her when he easily could have. “So . . . you’re the good guys? Or the bad guys?”

  “Both and neither, darlin’. The world’s a complicated place,” he said wearily.

  “Not to be judgmental, but Duncan seemed straight-up bad.”

  “Too right.” Anger glittered in Gabe’s eyes. “If he gets what he wants from your ma, he’s going to take it to a whole new level.”

  “How do we stop him?”

  “I teach you how to use the cards, and then you use them.” His face was still shadowed with irritation as he snatched her cards from her and thumbed through them, then pulled one out—the one she’d been staring at in her car. “That’s the Escape card. That’s what brought you here. You don’t have Conceal—that’s why I was suddenly able to track the deck, or your part of it anyway—oh, but you have Revelation. He has Strike, though. And most of your Wilds. That’s not good.”

  “You’re starting to lose me.”

  “Each card is one of a kind. Whatever you have, he doesn’t have, and vice versa.”

  “Okay, thanks. Except I don’t know what I do have, let alone what I don’t.”

  “Which is where I come in. I can protect you until you’re ready.”

  “Why, though?”

  His eyes met hers. “Duncan needs to die.”

  His calm tone sent a hard chill down Ernie’s spine. “Can I assume, um . . . that if I get the deck, that homicidal urge won’t also get transferred?”

  “My feelings about Duncan are very specific to Duncan.”

  “If I get the deck,” she said hoarsely, “does that mean I’ll be a Dealer?”

  He regarded her for a few moments. “You already are, Ernie. It’s just a matter of how long you survive.”

  Ernie’s world tilted off its axis. Hell, the axis had been snapped in half. One impulsive move, and now she was on some sort of kill-or-be-killed quest, armed only with half a deck of cards, and . . . “Can I get rid of the snake, at least? I hate snakes. I had a traumatic childhood encounter with a water moccasin at summer camp.” She winced as the deck in her hand pulsed with cold again.

  He guffawed. “The serpent connects the deck to your soul. Lose the snake, lose your connection, lose your life.”

  “Hate. Snakes.”

  “Least of your problems, I would say. Have you seen her since you stole the cards?” He grabbed Ernie’s left hand and ran his fingers along her forearm, leaving goose bumps in the wake of his warm touch. “Any burning or tingling?”

  She yanked herself out of his reach. “What? No!”

  He frowned. “Not good.”

  “In my book, a day without a rattlesnake is a pretty darn good day.”

  “Not when you need her to survive.”

  “Ugh. Is there a special rattlesnake call I need to learn?”

  “You don’t understand,” he growled. “If she stays with Duncan, the deck is primarily his, and even though it seems like you’ve bonded to at least two of the cards, the rest won’t obey you as well as you need them to if you want to live.”

  Ernie’s head was swimming. Her body was no longer numb, either. She was no stranger to muscle aches, but this was much worse. This was hours of bone-deep terror sinking in, and she wasn’t sure she could take much more without buckling.

  Gabe took her by the shoulders. “You look completely bollixed. We should find someplace for you to rest.”

  “I’m fine. I can keep going. My mom needs me.”

  “Not like this, she doesn’t.” He focused on his deck and then slid an arm behind her back. She could barely muster the strength to fight him, and a traitorous little voice in her head whispered that this was nice, that it felt good and safe after so much pain and fear. The inside of the shack was tilting and going foggy. She could barely keep her eyes open. Maybe she was dehydrated, or maybe she was just exhausted, but Ernie had pushed her body through both of those states before, and this was noth
ing like that.

  Maybe Gabe was right. Maybe she was already starting to die.

  With that pleasant thought, her head lolled forward against his chest, and she drifted into heavy, suffocating sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ernie awoke to the sound of a passing truck. She was in a bed, but she had no idea where. She squinted in the darkness and read the glowing red numbers of the clock at her bedside: 5:03 a.m. She sat up and turned on the light.

  She was alone. In what looked like a cheap hotel room.

  She took stock, running her hands down her body. She was still wearing her oversized Toomey’s shirt and her underwear, but her muddy pants lay crumpled in a corner. She couldn’t remember whether she’d taken them off or whether Gabe had helped her out of them, but she suddenly wanted them back on. Holding her breath, she slipped out from under the covers. The effort made her moan; she felt as if she were two days past that Spartan Super she’d done last spring, when her body had ached in places she’d never known she could feel pain. Grimacing, she hobbled over to the window. What she saw made her heart jump—she was home! Well, not home-home, but she was somewhere near the mall, deep in the generic part of town, big-box stores and all . . . and maybe a ten-minute drive from Woodfin, from Mom. Despite her fatigue and the bizarre terror of yesterday, the need to get there overwhelmed her. Gabe had said Duncan would keep going after her mom until he had what he wanted. Ernie had no idea what learning to use the cards might entail, but she did know that she wasn’t going to be able to focus until she knew that her mom really was safe.

  She jammed on her pants but didn’t bother putting on the one shoe that had survived the journey. There was a key on the bedside table but no note. Her Diamondback cards—were they hers?—were stacked next to the key. She rushed over to the table and pocketed both, thinking about how easily Gabe could have taken them and left her here to die. Where had he gone off to?

  She decided to wait. Maybe he’d gone out for coffee? He might be jet lagged or something. It was late morning in Ireland. That would be the most harmless explanation, the one that didn’t involve him trying to beat Duncan to whatever they’d both wanted from her mom. But if that was what he was up to, why drag her along? She sat down on the bed and looked through the cards. Gabe had said there were fifty-four cards to a deck, and she had twenty-four. Not quite half. She looked at the symbols on each, as well as the images beneath them. They weren’t blurred like Gabe’s cards had been, but they weren’t clear, either. More like moving shadows. She couldn’t decide whether they were clearer than the first time she’d seen them, or merely the same, just with better lighting.