one
The Cheat
Cigarette smoke curls around my senses, burning my eyes and nose. It’s hard to astral project when my body is screaming at me so loudly, but I hold here, between realms, as I hunt through the deck of cards and look at everyone’s hands.
The deck in the mortal plane sits at the dealer’s side, unperturbed, but in my place of light and shadows, it rolls out before me in bright pink like a neon sign. The cards in my opponents’ hands light up, showing me what they are so I don’t have to move from the spot.
If Fat-chin hits, and Stink-eye doesn’t—which he shouldn’t—that would leave me a ten.
But I need a three if I’m going to take this hand.
My astral spirit-hand pushes through the cards in the deck. I find a two nearby, and though it’s not perfect, I’ll at least push instead of losing.
I move the card through the others and the deck beside the dealer trembles a fraction.
“Feng!”
The sound of my family name snaps me into my body. The sudden jolt of leaving the astral realm makes me dizzy.
“Shénme?” I bark back in Chinese.
The man leaning through the open door of the dank, illicit basement jerks his head for me to follow him. My card-mates snicker and sneer. I’ve been winning too much. Not so much that I attract attention, but enough to piss everyone off. Maybe I’ve pissed off someone important.
I pull down the sunglasses that effectively hide my eyes while I’m projecting and switch to English. “I’m in the middle of a game.”
“Up. Now,” the man says with way too much authority for this to be something friendly. He’s got the power of a bigwig behind him. Maybe Wang, the club runner.
But what if it’s Zhao Shang?
This ishisillicit basement, after all. He washes some of his dirty money down here. I know better than to deposit any of it into my bank account, opting to buy groceries and pay rent instead. Does it make me a bad person to steal stolen money? Maybe…but that’s the world we live in.
Swindle or get swindled.
I swallow the last of my sweaty beer to cool my aching throat and fold my hand.
“I want my buy-in back,” I say, pointing at the dealer.
He laughs.
“Now!” the man shouts at me.
I growl and scoot my rickety chair back. It scrapes loudly on the concrete floor, making the room go quiet. The occupants at other tables look up at me briefly before returning to their games. I grab my coat slowly, then throw it around my shoulders in a rough toss that bumps Stink-eye. He looks up at me to complain, and I swipe two of his chips and apologize for bumping him at the same time.
Got my buy-in back.
I snatch my remaining earnings and weave through the tables to the banker. She’s an older woman with painted eyebrows that make her look perpetually angry. I cash out and stuff my earnings into my inner coat pocket, then zip it up. I know I’m not the only pickpocket around here.
The man waiting on me looks about as angry as the banker’s painted eyebrows. I follow him up the stairs with a heavy sigh and a complaint. I have a persona to maintain around here and being a loud mouth is part of it. I lose just enough to be welcomed back and talk too loudly to be trusted with secrets. I don’t want anything to do with the other side of things that go on here.
The walkway behind the bar smells like wet cardboard, but when we go through a private hall, the grimy façade is quickly replaced by the signs of power: better lighting, gold-trimmed mirrors, clean carpet.
Oooh, shit.
The man points to a red leather chair outside a glitzy-looking door, and I promptly take my seat. He stands nearby, watching me. We wait for a few minutes, and I decide it’s probably safe to check out who’s on the other side of the door. I lean forward and put my head in my hands like I’m nervous, then close my eyes and astral project out of my body.
The world takes on stark shadows and bright colors. The man watching me has a hazy gray glow around him, which is typical. I don’t see a lot of other magical people, but when I do, it’s always fun to prod their astral bodies a little and find out about them. Sometimes they notice, most of the time they don’t.
But I don’t care about the man watching me. I want to know who I’m waiting for. I float to the door, but instead of passing through it, I’m shot back with an icy zap. I stifle a gasp as I come back into myself and shake out my hand. It’s numb and I’m not sure why.
