Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,162

looked at a pair of nines. Nothing else to work with, but he put a quarter in the pot.

Freddie barely looked at his cards before pointing a finger at the vampire and laughing. “Raised eyebrows is a tell, my friend. Signals that you’ve been dealt a good hand—maybe a very good hand.”

“Or, knowing that a human would think that, it could be a bluff and I’m trying to fool you into thinking I have a very good hand when I have nothing,” Yuri replied with a little smile.

Freddie studied the vampire. “I can’t get a feel for if you’re bluffing.”

“Maybe because I’m not. I’ll call your quarter and raise another.” Yuri tossed two quarters into the pot.

“Huh. We’ll see.” Freddie looked at Parlan. “You in?”

“I’m in.” Parlan matched the bet and swore silently. Freddie was another Intuit gambler—one who would recognize someone else with his particular skill.

“And the dealer is in. Cards?”

The boy was good with his hands, clever with his patter—and didn’t cheat. Of course, it was pointless to cheat when you were playing for quarters, which was ludicrous. The saloon wasn’t going to make any money, and a gambler wasn’t going to make enough for the time invested.

His place would be for the serious gamblers, not these chickenshit children playing at being men with their penny-ante games.

They played a few hands. The vampire had no feel for the game, and his decision to bet or fold seemed to have no connection to the cards he held since he folded a couple of times when he had the winning hand—something Freddie explained when he turned over his friend’s cards.

Freddie, on the other hand, had decent skills at poker and was equally good as a blackjack dealer. At least, that was the sense Parlan had from the banter between the two males.

From their talk, he gleaned that the place had another bartender and a few girls who gave customers something pretty to look at. Neither of them mentioned the person who actually ran the saloon, which he found interesting.

“Last hand,” Yuri said. “Looks like we’re starting to get customers.”

Freddie didn’t move, just held the cards in a white-knuckled grip before setting the deck on the bar. “No. We’re done.” He took a step back. “We’re done.”

“Freddie?”

Parlan saw the vampire change from genial bartender to predator in a heartbeat.

Freddie shook his head. “I don’t want to deal this hand. We’re done.” He hurried away, heading toward the toilets, if the sign on the back wall was accurate.

Curious about what had spooked the boy, Parlan reached for the cards. That’s when something walked out of the office next to the bar. Female, with gold hair streaked with blue and red—and black eyes that, when he met them, produced a moment of dizziness.

What was that thing?

“Ma’am.” Parlan turned away. Keeping his hand on the bar, he waited for the dizziness to pass before he walked out of the saloon.

They didn’t water the whiskey; that was all. Had there been some kind of scent in the place that affected him, something that he hadn’t noticed? Since he felt fine within moments of being outside, Parlan dismissed the dizziness and strolled around the square, taking a good look at the main business district as he considered possibilities.

* * *

* * *

Scythe watched the stranger leave the saloon, his steps a little hesitant.

“Maybe you took too much?” Yuri commented as he, too, watched the man.

“Barely a sip of his life energy. Just enough to encourage him to leave.” She looked toward the toilets. “Freddie is upset. Why?”

Yuri shook his head. “The Blackstone man didn’t do anything suspicious or try to cheat. After Tolya warned me to be on the lookout for the man, Freddie and I decided on a signal if he sensed anything. But he didn’t say the words.”

“Something made him uneasy.” And it wasn’t me.

“The cards.”

“But he didn’t see them.”

Yuri stared at the deck. “No, he didn’t. And yet …” He dealt the cards as Freddie would have, turning them faceup so they could see each hand. “I would have had four hearts. I think, if I’d discarded the Jack of Spades and drawn another heart, I would have had a good hand. Maybe a winning hand.”

“Better than Freddie’s? He had three females.”

“I play to be congenial and because it seems to be an expected part of a male working in a frontier saloon, but I don’t pay that much attention to what wins and what doesn’t, so I can’t say if my hand