He’s at the table again. This time he’s cuffed, but his hands aren’t bolted down. People know I’m here to play games with the psycho.
I look back at the door and see Wells watching us. No pressure, kids.
Mason smiles at me, but doesn’t speak. I pull up a chair and sit down across from him.
“What’s the game today? Old Maid? Crazy Eights?”
“It’s still the Infinite Game. If you keep thinking we’re playing different games, you’re going to lose.”
“You never said where you learned the Infinite Game.”
He looks away, like he’s thinking.
“You’d be surprised what you hear when you’re alone long enough in Tartarus. I knew I was going to be rescued before it happened because they told me.”
“The Angra?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Someone in Hell sent them to me because they knew I could help their cause.”
“Stop. I can’t deal with your bullshit without a drink. What’s today’s game?”
“Billy Flinch.”
Billy Flinch is a favorite game among the highly intoxicated and the clinically insane. It’s William Tell, only you play it by yourself. Take potshots at the far wall and try to ricochet a bullet so that it breaks the glass on your head. Most people only play Billy Flinch once. It doesn’t have an Old-Timers League.
“They took away my gun, so forget it.”
“That’s disappointing,” he says.
As hard as Mason is to read, this time his pupils constrict a millimeter or two, so I know he’s lying. He wants to play something else.
Two upside-down plastic cups sit on his side of the table. He pushes them into the middle and lifts them. A couple of scorpions make a break for it, but he corrals them back under the cups, laughing as he does it.
I look at him.
“Where the hell did you get scorpions?”
“What’s the scarier answer? That I had them all along or that someone snuck them in to me?”
Neither one’s a comfort, but this is Mason. Nothing about him is comfortable.
“What are we playing?”
“Lady Sonqah’s Wedding Night. Have you heard of it? The Luderes can’t get enough of it.”
“I’ve seen them playing at Bamboo House of Dolls. I don’t know how it works.”
“Give me your hand.”
I put out my right hand. Mason bites off part of the scab over the sigil he cut into his hand yesterday. He squeezes his palm so that a few drops of blood fall onto my fingers.
“I’m glad this isn’t our first date,” I say. “What’s the blood for?”
“It excites the scorpions.”
“There’s still time to switch to Candy Land. I’ll even let you go first.”
“Maybe next time.”
Mason doesn’t wipe the blood off his own hand, so if the game is what he says it is, at least so far he’s playing fair.
He lifts one of the cups, but before the scorpion can run out, he recites some hoodoo and it freezes in place.
“As you see, I’ve tied a slip of paper to this scorpion’s tail. The other one has a similar note. Your job is to get the note off your scorpion without getting stung. Each time you’re stung you get a point. At the end, we add up the points. Low score wins.”
Mason snaps his fingers, releasing the scorpion from the hex. He puts the cup down over the bug and pushes it to my side of the table. I tap the cup with my finger, listening to the scorpion scrabble around inside.
“What if I just squash the damned thing and take the note when it’s dead?”
“That’s an automatic loss and I get to hurt you.”
“Who poisoned Candy?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking about the Angra instead of trying to fix your love life?”
When I don’t make to pick up the cup, Mason reaches across the table and raises it.
“You might want to concentrate on the game.”
The scorpion sits there for a minute, looking as pissed as I feel.
“You made her crazy and almost got some poor street slob killed for nothing.”
“I got a lot more than nothing out of it. I got you to play with me. Just like old times. Your little friend is moving. Play or forfeit.”
Now that the scorpion has decided to move, it’s all over the place. Darting in one direction, then another. I try to follow it, but it never goes in a straight line for very long. Finally, I catch the rhythm of its turns. Get my hand hovering right over its stinger. I’m fast when I want to be. I snap my hand down to the bug, then back again before it can sting me. But I miss the paper. I do it again. And miss again. The third time I come really close, but still miss.
I see the problem. While I’m fast enough to outrun the scorpion, if I go full speed I’m going too fast to grab the paper. The trick is to slow down. Feel the bug’s rhythm and move in at just the right moment.
Which is exactly what I don’t do. The fucker stings me on my first try. I always heard that scorpion stings feel like bee stings. Whoever said that never met this particular scorpion because this thing stings like a hornet with a blowtorch.
I pull back my hand and try to shake some of the pain out of my fingers.
“Will Candy recover?”
“Jades are sturdy beasts,” says Mason. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
I go for another try. And get stung again. I slow my breathing. I’m rushing things. Mason didn’t say anything about a time limit on the game. I’m going to follow the scorpion and wait for just the right moment.
“Still, attempted murder,” he says. “That’s the kind of thing that sticks to a person. Even if the Vigil ever releases her, which they won’t, there won’t be many places she’ll be able to show her face in L.A.”
I get stung again.
“Maybe you two can get a little cabin in the woods. Take up a trade. Pig farming. She can cook biscuits and you can learn to whittle.”
Okay. I admit it. My concentration really is shot. I’m worried about Candy and so fucking mad at having to be here I want to get my knife and take out Mason’s tongue and feed it to him.
I get stung three more times before I get the goddamned paper off the goddamn bug and corral the thing back under its cup. Welts are coming up all over my fingers. Mason didn’t say it, but I have a feeling that healing hoodoo is against the rules, and I’m not about to ask and admit that his little pincered fucker hurt me.
I think when I cut off Mason’s head I’ll put it in a bowling bag and drop him back in Tartarus. Maybe collapse the joint on top of him so no one will ever find him. Let him talk to ghosts all he wants down there.
“So, who poisoned her?”
“Now it’s my turn,” Mason says.
With his cuffed hands, he knocks over his cup and lets his scorpion loose. Like mine, it looks confused and after a few seconds starts running randomly across the table.
He waits, tracking the scorpion’s moves, trying to figure out the best moment to strike. He takes his sweet fucking time about it.
“Before Christmas, please.”
When he moves, it’s fast. He pins the scorpion’s tail with the cuffs, and before it can rear back and get him with its pincers, he grabs the paper. Then slams the cup down on top of it.
“What the fuck, man? You cheated.”
He sets the paper down between us.
“What was it you said when I complained about you putting a bullet in my head? My game. My rules.”
“We’re even now, asshole.”
“Not even close.”
He reaches for his paper, but I put my hand over it.
“Before we count up the points, tell me this. Whose skull is that in the cavern?”
“Mine, of course.”
“I burned your body after I chucked your soul into Tartarus, so unless there’s a rewind button on your bones, that skull isn’t yours.”
I lift up my hand and he slides the paper back to his side of the table.