Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,57
because you still don’t have a choice.”
“You’re… insolent!” He spat it at me like it was the filthiest insult he could think of.
“Be glad. Maybe that’s what keeps me a step ahead of the other lords even though I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Anyway, how come you’re mad at me and not them?”
“I am mad, but they were just playing the game. You’re my vassal, and you disobeyed me!”
“Because I’m not a vassal. I’m your partner. Live with it.”
He looked like he was about to fire something back. But then he took a long breath and let it out slowly. It seemed to make his cloud of funk even fouler, but maybe that was my imagination.
“You can’t survive in our world without the protection of a patron,” he said. “I hope you figure that out before it’s too late. But for now, we have work to do.”
“Sounds good. Teach me to make a ward that will stop a bullet.”
“That’s not practical. You’re getting stronger, but after the day you’ve had, and the night in front of you, you can’t afford to spend the energy. But you can start learning how to raise the various aspects of yourself into prominence as quickly and easily as you’ve learned to invoke your sign of power.”
So we worked on that till suppertime. To my relief, there was no raw, carved human meat on the buffet tables tonight, maybe because Wotan didn’t show up. Neither did the Pharaoh.
But Gimble and Leticia were there and whispering together. Leticia smiled at me, set her plate of paella and her glass of white wine on a table, and glided over to me in her usual way. Not quite like a pole dancer slinking around the stage, but close enough.
“Poor Pablo didn’t make it,” she said. “And the police have the gun with your fingerprints.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
She laughed. “You’re right. It is. My servants and I cleared out right after you did, so I don’t know what happened when the police arrived. I imagine Mrs. Sullivan handled it all somehow. But I can’t tell you what happened to Pablo.”
“Like I care,” I said.
She smiled. “You have no reason to, but you do. It’s your weakness.”
“Even if it is, you didn’t have any luck taking advantage of it today.”
“Touché! I certainly didn’t. All I did was get us both all hot and bothered. We could take care of that. There’s plenty of time before midnight. No magic, just sex, I promise.”
My mouth got dry and I stepped back a little, like you’d back away from a hot fire. “Right. You promise. And I trust that why?”
She laughed again. “You can’t blame a girl for trying. You have a dab of something on your mouth.” She ran her fingertip over my lips and sent a shiver through me. Then she popped it between her own lips, sucked it, winked, turned, and walked back across the room to Gimble. I tried not to stare at her ass.
She, Gimble, and I were in our seats at the poker table with fifteen minutes to spare. Wotan limped in at ten till with sores and blisters dotting the exposed parts of his tattooed skin.
That surprised me. I understood that the lords were out to get each other just as much as they were the “insolent” human in the game. But after a day when a couple of them had done their damnedest to kill me or at least screw with my head, it was easy to forget.
Leticia gave Gimble an inquiring look. But if he knew anything, he wasn’t talking, and naturally there was nothing to read in the painted face bobbing at the end of his flexible neck.
Wotan called for a double shot of bourbon and knocked it back. Then he watched the door and the grandfather clock. The rest of us started watching with him, waiting to see if the Pharaoh was going to show.
It was three to twelve when he did, hobbling along with Davis’s help. This time he really needed it, because something had ripped off his left leg at the knee and his head off his shoulders. The chauffeur hadn’t bothered to bring along the torn-off piece of leg, but he had the head tucked under his arm.
I stared, and I wasn’t the only one. It was like when Queen started laying eggs. It even startled other Old People, and reminded me they could be as strange and mysterious to one another as they were to me.