Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,45

grave. “You want to get inside and close the lid,” Georgie said. “If you don’t, you won’t have any space between you and the dirt.”

“I could still run out of air and suffocate,” I said. “You know that, right?”

He grinned. “Maybe I’m not as different from the old Georgie as I like to think. Blame your friend Timon. And get in the box.”

I pulled up the squeaky, rickety lid, got in the coffin, and closed it again. One of the hinges had corroded away, and it didn’t shut very well. It also had holes in it, which gave me another second or two of light. They also gave me streams of grit and dust when the ground closed over the top of me. I coughed and struggled not to panic. I didn’t really think the box was going to fill up completely, but there was a trapped-animal part of me that did.

When I got the fear under control, I had to deal with my stomach, at least if I didn’t want to lie there covered in my own puke. The coffin stank as bad as Georgie himself. Not surprising, considering that he’d rested and rotted in it every day for twenty-five years.

It helped when my head stopped throbbing. Then I remembered the new cell phone. Clumsy in the tight space, I dug it out of my pocket and got a lonely, empty feeling when I realized I didn’t know who to call. I didn’t have a number for Timon or the Icarus Hotel. And as far as the rest of the world went, I knew a lot of people, but nobody who’d hop right to it if I claimed I needed him to rush to a cemetery and dig me out of a grave. Oh, and watch out for the zombie who’ll try to stop you.

That left 911. Ordinarily, when you make your living gambling, mostly illegally, you hesitate to call the cops for anything. Timon sure didn’t want them anywhere near his business, and I couldn’t imagine how I was going to explain what had happened to me. But I’d worry about all that after I got out of the hole. I flipped open the phone.

No bars.

Okay, I told myself, okay. The phone wouldn’t work, my physical body was trapped, but I could still spirit-travel. I could fly to Timon and get him to rescue me.

I pictured the lobby of the hotel and wished I was there. I felt a kind of loosening, as ghost me came uncoupled from flesh-and-blood me. I rocketed upward.

For maybe a sixteenth of an inch. Then I felt multiple stabs of pain, from the middle of my forehead down the center of my body, and jerked to a stop. It was like I had invisible spikes sticking in me, nailing my spirit in place, and I’d hurt myself yanking against them.

I remembered the symbols chalked on the coffin lid. They were probably to blame. And if I actually understood anything about magic in general or my own gifts in particular, maybe knowing that would help me.

Come to think of it, maybe it could anyway. If I destroyed the designs, wouldn’t that break their power?

I hooked my fingers in a couple of the holes and pulled with all my strength. I tried not to think about the fact that I was doing my best to tear apart the only thing that was keeping six feet of dirt from pouring down on top of me. I told myself there’d still be a little air to breathe, somehow, someway.

As it turned out, I didn’t find out one way or the other. Not right then. The soggy, decaying wood felt as solid as an up-armored Humvee, not that my buddies and I had actually seen many of those. The same magic that locked my ghost self inside my body was protecting itself against me. I didn’t even end up with any splinters, just stinging spots where I’d rubbed myself raw.

Another wave of fear swept through me. Not for myself, or at least not mainly. I wasn’t having any fun, but I guessed I might have enough air to last until midnight. And even after she’d double-crossed me, I trusted A’marie to dig me up as soon as I no-showed for poker and Timon had to forfeit. But I was scared for Vic.

I told myself that the lord pulling Rhonda’s strings wouldn’t want Vic seriously hurt. Not as long as she was the bait in the trap. But I