on Miles's face. For the rst time, she felt pretty badass.
She controlled her breathing and took her time guiding it o the oor and into her hands. Once the large gray Announcer was within reach, the smaller one poured to the oor like a golden bend of the light from the window, blending in with the hardwood planks.
Luce took the edges of the Announcer and held her breath, praying that the message inside was more innocent than yesterday's. She tugged, surprised to feel this shadow give her more resistance than any of the others had. It looked so sheer and insubstantial, but felt sti in her hands. By the time she'd coaxed it into a window about a foot square, her arms were aching.
"This is the best I can do," she told Miles and Shelby. They stood up, drawing close.
The gray veil within the Announcer lifted, or Luce thought it did, but then another gray veil lay underneath. She squinted until she saw the gray texture roiling and moving, realizing it wasn't the shadow she was seeing anymore: The gray veil they were looking at was a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. Shelby coughed.
The smoke never really cleared, but Luce's eyes got used to it; soon she could see a broad half-moon table with a red felt top. Playing cards were arrayed in neat rows across its surface. A row of strangers sat crowded at one side. Some looked jumpy and nervous, like the bald man who kept loosening his polka-dot tie and whistling under his breath. Others looked exhausted, like the hairsprayed woman ashing a cigarette into a half-full glass of something. Her gloopy mascara was wearing o her upper lashes, leaving a seam of black grit under her eyes.
And across the table, a pair of hands were ying through a deck of cards, expertly ipping over a card at a time to each person at the table. Luce inched closer to Miles so she could get a better look. She was distracted by the ashing neon lights from a thousand slot machines just beyond the tables. That was before she saw the dealer.
She thought she'd get used to seeing versions of herself in the Announcers. Young, hopeful, ever na?ve. But this was di erent. The woman dealing cards in the seedy casino wore a white oxford shirt, snug black pants, and a black vest that bulged at the chest. Her ngernails were long and red, with sequins sparkling on both pinkies, and she kept using them to ick her black hair out of her face. Her focus hovered just above the hairlines of the players, so she never really looked anyone in the eye. She was three times as old as Luce, but there was still something between them.
"Is that you?" Miles whispered, trying hard not to sound horri ed.
"No!" Shelby said atly. "That broad is old. And Luce only lives to be seventeen." She shot Luce a nervous look. "I mean, in the past, that's been the deal. This time, though, I'm sure she'll live to a ripe old age. Maybe as old as this lady. I mean--"
"Enough, Shelby," Luce said.
Miles shook his head. "I have so much catching up to do."
"Okay, if it's not me, we must be ... I don't know, somehow related." Luce watched as the woman cashed out chips for the bald man with the tie. Her hands looked sort of like Luce's. The way her mouth set was similarly serious. "Do you think it's my mom? Or my sister?"
Shelby was scribbling notes furiously on the inside back cover of a yoga manual. "Only one way to nd out." She ashed her notes at Luce: Vegas: Mirage Hotel and Casino, night shift, table stationed near the Bengal tiger show, Vera with the Lee press-on nails.
She looked back at the dealer. Shelby was a stickler for the details that Luce never noticed. The dealer's name tag read VERA in lopsided white letters. But the image was starting to wobble and fade. Soon the whole image broke apart into tiny shadow shreds that fell to the oor and curled up like the ash from burning paper.
"But wait, isn't this the past?" Luce asked.
"Don't think so," Shelby said. "Or, at least, it's not far in the past. There was an ad for the new Cirque du Soleil in the background. So what do you say?"
Go all the way to Las Vegas to nd this woman? A middle-aged sister would probably be easier to approach than parents