The big moneymaker was lunchtime in the shopping districts. Nicer restaurants. Women hung their purses off the backs of chairs and then got busy talking to their friends. Lots of people coming and going past tables. If somebody walked by, smoothly eased a bag off a chair back, and kept walking, no one would be the wiser until it was time to pay the check. Then the budding criminal would meet friends around the corner and pass out the plastic. By the time the credit card companies were involved, the nice-looking kids with the fresh faces and conservative clothes could have run up thousands in purchases. The cards, along with the bag and the rest of its contents - except cash – would be in a dumpster within a couple of hours.
He ran the Fagin racket for two or three years before learning - almost by accident - that he had skills to make real money.
One of the other boys had pocketed a deck of playing cards on the way out of a convenience store, even though that kind of minimum return risk was strictly against Angel’s rules. The other kid taught him the rules of poker.
There was no way to judge how good he was, playing other street kids. He could beat them, all of them, without trying, but that didn’t tell him what he needed to know. So he asked around about low stakes street games. Nothing fancy. Something affordable with a cap on bets. He took the gang’s take for the week, which was a big gamble in itself, and tripled the money. Since the other kids had provided the funding – even though they hadn’t known about the plan, he divided the total take in half, kept half for himself and split the other half equally among the others, which meant they profited as well.
Within six months he had enough money to play with big boys. Maybe not the biggest boys, but hefty nonetheless.
When it came to poker, Angel was special. Even more so than he ever could have imagined because that talent was the result of demon blood that enhanced his intuitive ability.
If he’d been satisfied with playing poker, he could have led a cushy, carefree life and had anything he wanted with minimal effort. He’d already made more money than his parents would earn in their lifetime.
There was just one little problem. Angel liked betting on the horses. He liked it even more than playing poker but unlike poker, he didn’t always win. After a while he fell into a cycle of addiction. The only reason he played poker was to get money to bet on horses, which he was sure to lose.
While he could always pull a win with poker, because the energy of cards is static, the energy of living things - like horses - was unstable. Horses have fluctuations in their biological and psychic patterns and they come with personality factors just like all mammals. Some days they feel like running. Some days they don't. Some days they have to win. Some days they don't mind being second. Then there are the unforeseeable factors like accidents that complicate things even more.
Even though a life ruled by compulsion wasn’t a recipe for happiness, it could have been okay. All he had to do was bet the track with poker winnings and go home. But the fever escalated beyond that and he ended up borrowing. No matter how much he won at poker, he could always manage to lose more at the track. From the outside looking in, it was an exquisite form of psychological masochism.
He’d had some close calls with the shark, the guy he called Baph, but he’d always managed it out before it got too dicey and won enough to pay off his debts in money, not blood. At least that was what had always happened before.
CHAPTER 8
Just like every day, Deliverance came at half past nine so that he’d have half an hour to play with Rosie before taking Storm to Jefferson Unit. At ten, Storm picked up his beautiful three-year-old and gave her smooches on her ticklish little neck until she laughed hysterically.
“Say bye Daddy,” he prompted.
“Bye Daddy.”
“See you later.”
“See you later.”
Litha’s emerald eyes seemed to sparkle with iridescence whenever she watched that exchange. When Storm turned toward her, she was clearly eager for her turn. She got a sweet and thorough kiss and giggled like Rosie when he turned around and came back for another.
Storm left with a grin on his face, loving every second of his two emerald-eyed girls waving goodbye. It was a vision so perfect that it burned into his memory like a brand. It would be a memory that he would recall thousands of times.
The trip from the Black Swan Vineyard on the Pacific Coast to Jefferson Unit at Fort Dixon, New Jersey normally took about three minutes. According to the habit they had already formed, Deliverance created a portal in his mind just outside the Sovereign’s office at J.U. before taking Storm in tow by gripping his son-in-law’s forearm.
Perhaps the demon became relaxed in the habit. Perhaps there was interference from another entity traveling the same network of passes. The reason is less important than the result, which was that Deliverance arrived outside Sol’s office alone.
The demon was over eight hundred years old and, in all that time, he’d never once had reason to panic. The rise of that emotion, common to humans, was as shocking and dramatic to him as a heart attack might be to a man.
Glen was just glancing at his watch when his door was opened without a knock. Deliverance looked stricken and the expression was made more alarming by the fact that his olive complexion looked wan.
“Have you seen Storm?”
Glen’s brows pulled down into a scowl.
“No.” Though he was getting a very bad feeling about the exchange, he posed his next question evenly and deliberately. “Have you?”
Deliverance was looking a little wild-eyed. “Um. Yes. He was with me?”
Glen stood up slowly. Calm. Remain calm. “What do you mean was with you?”
It was a good thing that Glen was calm because the incubus was headed toward full-fledged hysteria. Not because he was tight with his son-in-law, but because he knew his little girl would be every possible version of angry about Storm getting himself lost en route.
“I mean I picked him up at home, but he’s not here!! What else might I mean, human?!?”