Vegas Knights (12 page)
Authors: Matt Forbeck
"Shut up," said Powi. "Every time you open your mouth, you show how ignorant you are."
"Funny," Bill said, unperturbed, "Jackson never mentioned how hot you were."
Powi sneered back at him. "I liked you better when you were unconscious."
Bill opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Powi pulled the car over to the curb next to a dusty yard that led up to nothing, and she shut off its motor. She turned around in her seat so she could look at both of us.
"I warned you," she said. "I went out of my way to make sure that this jackass here didn't get killed, and I did you an even bigger favor by telling you to get the hell out of town. And you do the exact opposite. You might as well both have painted bright red targets on the seats of your pants."
"We did just fine without you," said Bill.
"Well," I said, "right up until Misha and Gaviota hauled us out of there."
She hung her head and shook it. "When two men like that throw you out of a place, you're lucky to land without breaking your legs."
"You got that right," said Bill. "I'm still sore from landing in that pool."
She raised her head and narrowed her eyes at him. "They threw you into the pool? I've never heard of them trying to drown someone before. You two really are a piece of work."
"No," I said, "we did that to ourselves. Well, not really on purpose, but it all adds up to the same thing."
The look she gave me made me want to shut up for ever.
"Hey, we were doing damned well up until that point," Bill said.
"Up until you threw yourselves into the pool?" said Powi. "Were you trying to drown your sorrows after they cleaned you out?"
"They didn't clean us out," I said. "First they wanted to kill us. Then they wanted to hire us."
Powi's jaw dropped. I'd never seen her speechless before. I liked it.
"That's – that's impossible," she said. "They always clean everyone out. That way they can't ever get charged with stealing the money back from you."
Bill reached over and clapped me on the back. "Oh, they tried. They
tried
! But Jackson here was unstoppable. On fire!"
tried
! But Jackson here was unstoppable. On fire!"
Powi stared at me. The moonlight glowed in her hair. It could have been light from the Luxor, but I preferred to think of it as moonlight either way.
"Who did you say threw you out?"
"No one," I said. "We let ourselves out."
"Actually, we ran like hell. After we broke out of the cooler."
Remembering all that made me wince, I rubbed the sore spot on my arm. "After I got shot trying to stick up for you."
"You were shot?" said Powi. For the first time, her face showed real concern.
"Just a little," I said. "I'll live."
"Let me see," she said.
I shrugged, then stripped off my shirt as gently as I could. Crimson showed through the hand towel I'd wrapped around my bicep. In all the insanity of dropping through the floors in Revolutions, I must have broken open the barely formed scab again.
I held out the arm, and Powi helped me peel off the towel. This worked fine until we got to the last bit. My blood had coagulated into the fibers of the towel, and removing it broke open the wound again. It felt like someone had stabbed me in the already raw flesh.
Powi took the towel from me and used the dry parts to stanch the fresh flowing blood. After wiping it clean, she turned on the map light near the car's mirror to get a good look at it. She grimaced at it, then let her lips twist into a wry smirk.
"It's not too bad," she said. "I think I can help you with that."
"Got a needle and thread?" Bill asked. "Going to stitch him up Rambo-style?"
She ignored him. Instead, she placed the palm of her hand over the wound and clamped it there tight as part of a circle she made with her other hand around my arm. She closed her eyes and began chanting something in a language I didn't recognize.
Bill got up on his knees in the back seat to get a better view. Without a word, he reached over me and shut off the map light.
"Shit," he said, his voice soft and low. "I was right. She's glowing."
In the illumination from the map light, I hadn't been able to detect it. In the dark again, though, I could see a soft nimbus of golden light surrounding Powi's hands.
"Don't move," she said softly.
I had no urge to panic at all. Her hands were warm and soft, and rather than hurting me they seemed to funnel a tingling warmth into my skin. The glow slowly moved from her hands to my arm, along with the tingling sensation that built until it came just shy of an uncontrollable itch.
I held still through all of it. Bill started to say something a couple of times, but a dirty look from me shut him up. After a long, sweet moment, the glow faded from both Powi and me, and she removed her hands.
Powi used the towel to wipe my blood from her hands. Then she flipped it over until she found a clear spot on it and used that to clean off my arm. When she was done, my arm hung bare in the moonlight, a thin white scar tracing the line where the bullet had grazed my skin.
"Wow," said Bill. "Just wow." He sounded like a little boy who'd just seen his first dinosaur in a museum. "How the hell did you do that?"
"My people specialize in healing magic." A knowing smile curled Powi's lips. "You've never heard of a medicine man?"
She looked at me and noticed me watching her. "Thank you," I said.
"You're welcome." She blushed. "You can put your shirt back on."
Although my shirt sleeve still showed a bit of blood on it, I shouldered my way back into it. I enjoyed the total lack of pain in the muscle as I moved. If anything it felt better than my other arm now.
"People specialize in different kinds of magic?" I said. "I didn't know that."
"If ignorance were water, we could flood Las Vegas with what you and your friend here don't know about what you've gotten yourself into."
The moment of tenderness that I'd felt with Powi when she healed me disappeared. She'd brushed it aside like a spiderweb. Perhaps it hadn't been there at all.
Bill raised his hand. "I know I slept through this lecture the last time, but Jackson here gave me his notes, so feel free to not repeat yourself for my sake."
Powi swiveled around in her seat again to glare at Bill. "Since neither of you bothered to listen to me last time, maybe I should just save my breath."
I leaned between the two of them. "No, no," I said. "Please. You're right. We ignored you before, and we paid the price for it." I pointed at my arm. "We're ready to listen to you now."
Powi arched an eyebrow at Bill, and he shrugged in noncommittal agreement. She pursed her lips at us for a moment before she started in.
"Get the hell out of town," she said. "I'll take you to the airport. You can fly standby back to wherever it is you came from. Mark Las Vegas off the list of places where you're welcome, and never come back."
"We can't just walk away from this," Bill said. "There's too much money involved. I've got at least twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of chips in my pocket."
"That handful of clay and plastic is not worth your lives. And I didn't say walk away from this. You jet."
Bill looked to me, and Powi did too. Both of them seemed to think I'd listen to their version of reason, each of which had excellent points. I did neither.
"I'm not ready to leave yet either," I said.
Bill gave a silent victory pump with his fist. Powi's frown was so harsh I thought it might find a way to suck her healing glow right back out of me and leave me hurt and bleeding again.
"I don't care about the money," I said. Bill gasped. "All right, I care a bit. That kind of money would solve a lot of problems for me, but it comes with enough new problems that it's probably not worth it."
"You're insane," Bill said. "Ever since we started out on this trip, it's been the money that brought you here. You kept going on about how this would mean you'd finally be able to stop soaking your grandma for tuition and rent. Was that all a lie?"
"Not at all."
"Do you even have a grandma?"
"You spoke to her on the phone."
"I spoke with someone who sounds like a grandma that might be related to you."
"Now you're the one talking crazy."
Powi cut us off with a wave of her hand. Once she had our attention, she turned to me. "If the money isn't keeping you here, then what is?"
I flushed as I struggled with the words. Finally, I gave up and just started talking. "It's time I came clean with you," I said, mostly to Bill. "The money was never the big draw for me to come to Vegas. If that's all it had been about, Atlantic City is closer to Ann Arbor. Hell, there are casinos in Detroit."
"You'd go into Detroit?" Bill stared at me with wide eyes.
"It can't be any worse than New Orleans."
"You've clearly not been to Detroit."
"Can I finish?"
Bill gestured for me to go on.
"I had another reason to come here, to Vegas, something more important to me than the money."
Bill couldn't help but interrupt me again. "What could be more important than money?"
I opened my mouth to tell him, but another voice called to us out of the darkness to cut me off again.
"I think I can answer that," the man said.
Bill, Powi, and I all jumped out of our seats in surprise. Bill stuck his hand in his pocket to draw one of the guns out of his bracelet. I recognized the voice, though, and I grabbed his wrist to stop him.
"You don't need that," I said. "It won't do us any good."
The man strode forward in a crisp, stylish suit, the moonlight on his face. He glowered at me, as mad as I'd ever seen him, but somewhere beneath his anger I could see a layer of relief wrapped around a core of something else. Maybe delight.
I could hope.
"Hello, Jackson," he said.
"Hi, Dad."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Who?" Bill said. "You told me your dad went missing in Katrina."
"My mom went missing," I said. "He left."
I stared at my father, unblinking. I hadn't seen him since I was just a terrified thirteen-year-old boy. He didn't look much different than I remembered him. He had a bit more gray in his hair, but he looked fit and much better dressed.
"I left you with your grandmother," he said. "I told you I'd be back."
"That was five years ago, Dad. You never wrote or called. I didn't know what had happened to you."
He moved toward the car and put his hands on the top of the driver's side door. He leaned over Powi and ignored both her and Bill.
"I tried, Jackson. Your grandmother, she doesn't care for me much. But that's not the point. I told you to stay put and listen to her, and here you are instead."
"I'm an adult now, Dad. I'm going to college at Michigan."
This took him aback. He stood up, concerned. "Ann Arbor?"
I nodded. "Professor Ultman looked me up and told me all about you. You and the things you did."
"Dammit." Dad put a hand over his eyes and groaned. "I didn't think about Rishi."
"He's sure thought a lot about you, Mr Wisdom," Bill said. "He could go on for hours about all the things the two of you did."
Dad lowered his hand, revealing a grim face. "I'm sure. He probably filled your heads with all sorts of tales of adventure, made it all seem like a series of silly pranks."
Bill nodded and grinned, clearly hoping he'd distracted Dad from his anger at me by leading us down Memory Lane.
"Did he tell you about the times we almost got killed in Detroit?" Dad said. "Or the week we spent in the Upper Peninsula on the run from the thing behind the Paulding Light? Or what happened when we first went to Las Vegas?"
Bill's excitement dropped farther and farther with every question Dad asked. "He must have not gotten to those yet."
"That's because he's a fool. He's always been a fool, and I was a fool for letting him talk me into going along with his idiocies. That's why we haven't spoken in fifteen years."
"Oh," said Bill.
"He told us about your trip to New Orleans," I said. "He told us about how you met Mom."
Dad's face fell as if I'd punched him in the gut. Looking gaunter and older than I'd ever seen him, he frowned at me. "He didn't tell you everything about that either, I'm sure."
"Grandma filled in some bits for me."
"She didn't know everything." His voice had grown thick and hoarse. "We never told her. All she knew was she didn't care for me, no matter how happy I made her daughter."
"She never said a bad word about you to me."
He snorted. "Did she ever say a good word?" He couldn't keep a note of hope from his voice.
I shook my head and crushed that. "Actually, she didn't say much at all."
Dad shrugged. "It's not like you were a baby when I left you with her, Jackson. You remember your mother. You remember us all together as a family."
I felt my throat start to constrict. No one else in the world could get to me like my dad. I don't think he ever knew that. He probably thought I just got choked up and emotional around everyone, but that was the farthest thing from the truth. It only happened around him.
I shoved all that back down and locked it away. I'd been without him for years, and I didn't need him or his approval for anything now.
"What are you doing here, Dad?" I said. "How did you find us?" I shot Powi an accusing glare.
"I didn't have anything to do with it," she said. "I barely know him. We talk about magic sometimes, but that's it."
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