“Wait,” Rubio said. His shoulders shook, as if low-voltage electricity were flowing through him. Two women, who had been whispering to one another, leaned toward the table. The entire group had crowded together so that the air around the table had become stale and warm.
“I see a curving shape,” Rubio said. “An ‘S.’”
“Swords, coins, cups, wands, empress, priestess, sun, star, strength...have I forgotten any? Ah, yes, justice. That hardly narrows it down much.”
The man knew his Tarot, Wayne had to admit. Gelbaugh was well-read on any subject he sought to ridicule.
“No, no, this is a different card,” Rubio said.
“Something in the major arcana?”
“Are those the cards without Roman numerals?”
“Nice. Pretending ignorance.”
“I don’t know these cards well. It is not good to know the future.”
Gelbaugh winked at the ad man. “Especially if the future sucks.”
“The shape moves against a field of green.”
“Could be the sun,” one of the onlookers said.
“Shh,” said another.
“It’s not going to help,” Gelbaugh said. “Any guess has the same odds as any other.”
“Snake,” Rubio said with force.
“Ha. Your odds just went from long to zero. There’s no snake in the Tarot.”
“Snake,” Rubio insisted, his eyebrows lowering and his face setting in hard resolve.
“Final answer?”
“Snake.”
Gelbaugh turned the card, revealing an illustrated snake that curled up from a meadow and into a tree. It was done in the same art style as the other cards, though Wayne had never heard of such a card in the Tarot.
Gelbaugh’s grin had frozen on his face, as if he had tasted live worms and found them bitter. “A trick,” he said.
“No trick,” Rubio said. “Your deck, remember?”
“That card’s not part of my deck.”
Rubio turned the card over, face down. “The design matches.”
“I’ve had this deck for years. That card isn’t in it.”
Wayne wondered who would go to such lengths for a prank. Gelbaugh was genuinely angry, overlooking the fact that Rubio had made a correct guess. Or perhaps “guess” was the wrong word. The wizened Peruvian had delivered his earlier readings with a studied equanimity, but his insistence on the answer of “snake” had projected passion and pride and a little bit of fear. Now Gelbaugh owed acknowledgment but all he had was rage.
Gelbaugh drove the bottom of his fist onto the table top, shaking the remaining cards. “Someone’s been in my room,” he said. “I had the deck locked away.”
“Only the hotel staff has room keys,” Wayne said.
The ad man slapped Gelbaugh on the back and said, “Even Steven.”
“He cheated,” Gelbaugh said, furiously counting the deck. “There should only be 70 cards.”
“Maybe he changed the card with his mind,” said a woman in a rumpled silk jumper.
Wayne moved closer to examine the card as Gelbaugh picked it up. The wax had the same amount of wear as the other cards and was clearly not new. It matched the other cards in all other aspects besides its depiction. Wayne wondered what the snake would mean if it were one of the arcana. Probably would imply all the historic and psychological metaphors of serpentine behavior—temptation, poison, and cold-bloodedness, with the flip-side attribute of shedding old skin. And, of course, there was also the Freudian interpretation of male genitalia.
Cristos Rubio leaned back, weary and slumped. “Snake,” he whispered with finality.
“...thirty-seven...38...39....” Gelbaugh counted.
“He pulled it from the bottom of the deck,” someone said.
“I don’t trust either of those guys,” said another.
“Cristos helped me find my car keys,” said a woman who now stood over the self-proclaimed psychic as if she wanted to market his movie rights.
“...sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine.” Gelbaugh touched the snake card, which still rested on the table. “Seventy. Somebody swapped one out.”
“It’s your deck,” Wayne said.
Gelbaugh stood, the Tarot cards in disarray in one hand. “All of you are in on it,” he said. “You, too, Digger.”
“Hey, you didn’t even sign up for a reading,” Wayne said.
Gelbaugh pointed an indignant finger at Rubio. “If you can read minds, then you know what’s coming.”
Gelbaugh grabbed the snake card and fled the room. Rubio smiled, and Wayne noticed for the first time that the seer’s head resembled the blunt, reptilian shape of the snake.
Chapter 17
Janey despised how shabby and cramped her suite was.
Or maybe it just seemed empty and was occupied by things beyond her vision.
She’d taken 226 at the end of the second floor as a fringe benefit, telling the owners she’d keep a better eye on the place if she were on site around the clock. She told herself she wanted to save extra money for retirement, but the real truth was that she had no real place in the world outside the hotel grounds. With the curtains drawn, old photographs gathering dust on the dresser, and the drab royal purple carpet beneath her feet, she could have been in a museum. Or a tomb.
The hunting groups occasionally passed in the hall, but they were much quieter than the usual convention crowd that drank and cavorted on corporate expense accounts. Janey found little comfort in the hunters’ mouse-like passage, as if they were nocturnal creatures who wanted to go about their business undisturbed. Though Janey had sold the owners on promoting the hotel’s supernatural reputation, the shrewd calculation now seemed silly. Dozens of adults were taking it seriously.
And Janey didn’t suffer fools gladly, most of all because she now felt like one. Chad and Stevie were cashing in their chips, and she’d never know if all her hard work would have paid off. This suite that had been her home for nearly half her life would join the rest of the inn under the weight of the wrecking ball. And beyond its walls lay a world she didn’t understand.
Janey found herself glancing into the shadows that clung to the corners of her bedroom. She’d never noticed how long and angular they were, or how they seemed to shift despite the fixed location of the bedside lamp. Janey’s paperback romance, which was so ordinary she couldn’t recall the title, couldn’t dull her into sleep.
She touched the phone, considering a call to the kitchen. The boys would be cleaning up, probably smoking marijuana with rock-n-roll blasting from their CD players. She occasionally placed a special order after hours, partly to check up on the progress and partly to flaunt her power. A couple of fried eggs would be just troublesome enough for both a cook and a dishwasher, a last command from a fading queen.
She dialed the kitchen, keeping one eye on the closet, thinking of young Cody’s suggestion that demons might live in the hotel. Obviously, it was the invention of an imagination fueled by comic books and science fiction, and probably a few sniffs of rubber cement, but the notion chilled her all the same.
“Yullo,” said a male voice she didn’t recognize.
“This is Janey. Just checking to see if the kitchen is still serving.”
“We closed it down 15 minutes ago.”
“Oh.” She affected a disappointed whine. “I was really hungry.”
“We could make you something. No problem.”
She gave a breezy, cheerleader giggle. “You’d do that for me?”
“Sure. Anything for you, Miss Mays.”
“Wow. Who is this, so I can be sure to put a check mark in your personnel file.”
“It’s me, Battle Axe.”
“What’s that?”
The voice grew deeper and sounded as if it had doubled itself. “The thing under the cellar.”