“Clear up this mess,” said Hyde.
Everyone in the room flinched at the sound of his voice. Parris gestured quickly for two guards to come forward and carry the headless body out. In the end, Eiko picked up the head and took it away, apparently entirely unmoved. The extra chair was removed from the table, and Leopold and I resumed our seats. Hyde turned back into Jacqueline. And once again, just for a moment, I thought I saw the two of them reaching out to each other in the only moment when they could meet. Reaching out, but never able to touch. This evil brute of a man, and this small delicate woman. Beauty and the Beast, or two sides of the same coin?
Jacqueline gathered the remains of her clothes around her. She didn’t look at any of us.
“I’m just a woman in love with a man,” she said. “I only want what any woman wants—to be able to hold her man in her arms. I only want to know what every other woman knows. I want to be together. And I will not suffer anything to get in my way. Do we have a problem, Mr. Parris?”
“I don’t think so,” Parris said carefully. “Mr. Schmidt broke the rules of the Game when he tried to intimidate you. I would have had my people remove him, anyway, if he’d continued.”
“Then play on,” said Jacqueline. And we did.
The cards went back and forth, to no productive end. Obols passed back and forth across the table, from pile to pile and back again, while I waited for my moment.
Leopold looked at me thoughtfully. “There’s something about you, Shaman. Something I didn’t expect. You’re so much more than your reputation.”
“The nail that stands up gets hammered down,” I said easily. “I prefer to hide my light in the shadows.”
“And I have to ask,” said Leopold, quite casually, “what the infamous wild witch herself, Molly Metcalf, is doing here with you? According to Church files, she is quite definitely involved with a Drood, these days. The remarkable Eddie Drood, no less. I think I can safely say, none of us saw that one coming.”
Molly snorted loudly at the bar. I carefully didn’t look in her direction.
“She still is attached to her Drood,” I said. “I just hired her to be my bodyguard. Dangerous place, this Casino Infernale.”
“And how did someone like you, Shaman, acquire enough money to hire someone like her?” said Leopold.
“With a percentage of my winnings,” I said.
“Of course,” said Leopold. “I knew it would have to be something like that.”
“How did you get to be the famous gambling priest?” I said.
“There’s a lot of card playing goes on at Seminaries,” Leopold said easily. “Almost the only vice we can indulge. Young men together—very competitive. . . . You know how it is. I discovered I had a gift for the cards, and the Church found a use for that gift.”
“And you always win?” I said.
“God gave me a gift, not a miracle,” said Leopold. “It’s all about knowing which cards to back. Like these.”
He placed his cards face down on the table, patted them almost fondly, and then pushed forward every obol in front of him. It was quite a large pile. Leopold smiled around the table.
“Would anyone care to call me? I assure you, God is on my side here.”
I pushed forward my entire pile of souls, to match his. “Do we really need to count them all?” I said to Parris. “It’s every soul I have, against every soul he has.”
“This is acceptable to me,” said Parris. “If it is acceptable to you, Leopold?”
“Of course!” said the famous gambling priest.
Molly was all but bouncing up and down on her stool, trying to catch my eye. I didn’t look at her. I knew what I was doing. I nodded to Leopold.
“You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”
He turned over a full house. Jacks over tens. Should have been a winning hand. Anywhen else, it would be. But I turned over four aces. And for a long moment, no one at the table said anything.
“God might be on your side, Leopold,” I said. “But the cards are on mine.”
Leopold stood up abruptly, staring at me with a shocked, ashen face. He looked genuinely upset. “I don’t understand. . . . It’s not possible! You are not who you appear to be, Shaman Bond! You are in the employ of dark forces! It’s the only answer!”
I looked at Parris. “I’m not in the employ of dark forces. Really.”
“No demonic possessions here,” said Eiko, from the bar. “The mystical null is still operating.”
Leopold’s shoulders slumped, and the fire went out of his eyes. The guards escorted him out of the door, and he went quietly.
Jacqueline looked across the table at me. “Just the two of us now, Shaman.”
“Shouldn’t that be three?” I said.
“Funny man,” said Jacqueline. “But don’t try anything funny with my other half. You wouldn’t like me when I’m funny.”
“Lady and gentleman,” said Parris. “Let’s play cards. It’s still all to play for.”
He shuffled the cards, thoroughly, and play went on. It didn’t take long before Jacqueline decided she had the perfect hand, and bet all her souls on it. You would have thought that she’d learned better by now, or at least spotted a pattern. But no, she bet every soul she had on her hand, and I pushed forward my pile to match hers. She slammed her cards down on the table, and glared at me defiantly.
“There! Four kings! Beat that!”
“No,” I said, showing her my cards. “I have four kings. You have four queens.”
Jacqueline looked down at her cards, and her jaw dropped. “No! That’s not possible! I had the four kings! I did!”
“The cards in front of you are quite definitely queens,” said Parris. And they were.
“You cheated!” roared Hyde, as he lunged across the table at me.
I was expecting the change, but even so it happened so suddenly it caught me by surprise. Only the width of the table kept Hyde’s clutching hands from my throat. I threw myself backwards, rolling out of the chair and across the floor. Hyde threw himself across the table. I scrabbled backwards, and every guard in the room opened up on Hyde. He charged forward so fast he actually avoided most of the bullets, and the few wounds he did take healed almost immediately. He towered over me, massive and monstrous.
I could see Molly on her feet by the bar, frustrated because she couldn’t use her magics to help me. I was feeling equally frustrated without my armour. I yelled to Parris to give me back my gun, but he just shook his head.
“You don’t need a weapon,” he said loudly. “I have my own weapon. Eiko!”
There was something in the way he said her name that made Hyde stop and look around. Just in time to see Eiko turn into a female Hyde. She didn’t become big and bulky, like a female bodybuilder or wrestler. She was tall but slender, lithely muscular, full of a terrible burning energy. Like Jacqueline’s Hyde, just looking at what Eiko had become made you want to kill her on sight. She was wrong, awful, an abomination. Everything a human being is not meant to be, brought to the surface and made material. Evil in the flesh. Eiko launched herself at Hyde, and the two monsters slammed together in a horrid form of violence that was almost sexual. They tore at each other with their bare hands, ripping flesh away in great bloody handfuls. The wounds healed quickly, and the fight went on.