Page 89 of Heart and Soul
“You know the ones? With the frickin’ fire on them? So badass, right?” I flash him a toothy smile.
“Right, but—”
“Perfect. I’m at the poker table. Have it brought right over. Big tip coming your way.”
As I cut through the crowd, I can see armed guards looking from mask to mask, moving toward the center of the room. Hillerman and Russo hover near the poker table. Russo is first to see me, doing a double take befitting his jester face. Hillerman follows his gaze to find me, and I see her eyes grow wide behind her mask.
Fortunately, my chair at the table is still open, and Beyona is nowhere to be seen. Doubly fortunate is the giant pile of chips and neatly stacked hundred-dollar bills at my spot. I guess Tabitha couldn’t resist my non-bluff. I’d say I regret not being able to see the look on her face, but what’s about to happen should more than make up for that.
“Jumping jackpot!” I shout, lowering into my chair and dropping the clutch bag at my feet. “The old one-card trick, huh? I’d claim it works every time, but that’s not saying much, because I’ve only tried it once. Somebody please tell me they got that on video for their YouTube channel. I just want to see her face when it happened, like…wait, that’s it, right? That’s how she looked! Am I right?” I point at Tabitha Durran, who is utterly thunderstruck by the sight of me. “That’s exactly it, thank you.” As the bartender arrives to pour my drink, I prattle on. “I’m sorry I missed it, but I had to run all the way up to the roof to take out Rocky and Nash so the rest of my team could come over. I brought them down the chimney, can you believe that? How long’s it been since that thing was cleaned out?”
Sensing something of a problem at the table, the bartender stops pouring my drink, so I say to him, “What, no fire?” When I offer him a hundred-dollar bill, he overcomes his hesitation and ignites the drink. Yellow and orange flames dance across the rim of the glass. “Now look, I know half of you recognize me, so this goes without saying, but rules is rules, so I’m required to announce myself. I’m Shayne Davies of the FUA Double-D, and every single one of you sons-a-bitches is under arrest. Detective Russo, tell ’em what they are.”
Ripping his mask off, Russo turns to the demon thug next to him and knocks him clean out with one punch to the face. “Every single one of you sons-a-bitches is under arrest!” he bellows.
While all attention is on him, I tip my flaming drink over into my clutch bag and kick it further under the table. “If you don’t believe me, go ahead and ask Tabitha Durran if I’m the type who bluffs.”
It’s quiet now. No music. No talking. And some oblivious moron comes running up to Tabitha, all out of breath, and blurts, “Up on the roof! Rocky and Nash—”
Tabitha chops him in the throat and kicks his knee out from under him. He drops, smashing his jaw on the edge of the table and biting his tongue. In the tense silence, we all listen to him gurgling in pain on the floor. Nobody breathes. You could hear a pin drop, or a heartbeat, or a pressurized can of whipped cream expanding in the heat of a fire. From living all my life around a campfire with rowdy boys, I know exactly how long it takes for aerosol cans to explode when tossed into a flame.
“In about ten seconds, I’m going to give the order for my team to storm in here. When that happens, I would advise all of you to panic and start running around like crazy, because that’s more fun for my guys.”
A gun is pressed to the back of my head. A demon guard screams into my ear, “Tell them to stand down! Tell them to—” He cuts off abruptly as his body contorts with spasms. To the shock of the crowd, a shadow figure is wrenched from his body, exorcised by an invisible power. His lifeless body drops behind me. A few other guards in sight lower their weapons and back away.
I feel the heat of the fire at my feet. A few more seconds now. “Before we move on, is there anybody else here who would like to be separated from his or her body?”
Slowly rising to her feet, Tabitha scans the crowd eagerly. “Charlotte?” she calls out. “Is that you?”
Hillerman stands right behind Tabitha. She removes the fawn mask, which, in this thick silence, makes enough noise that Tabitha turns around. They face each other, eyes locked, for what seems like an eternity. I can’t imagine the satisfaction Charlotte must feel to finally have caught up to her past after all these years. To have another shot at the evil that took her husband away.
I only wish I could give her more time. There’s a fizzing sound from my clutch bag, which tells me I’ve got exactly half a second. “Now!” I shout, just before—KABOOM!—the can explodes. Like a balloon being popped, all tension in the room flies apart. In a blind panic, the crowd erupts with pandemonium, rushing in all directions at once. People are trampled; chairs and tables flip over; curtains are pulled down, catching fire from torches.
A demon tries to grab me. I swipe poker chips at his face, and when he flinches, I kick him in the chest, sending him flying back into a stampeding group of sorcerers. I beat a path in the opposite direction, battling my way to the curtain hiding the roof access. I don’t have time to check on Russo and Hillerman. I have to trust that they’re following my lead.
I fly up the steps to the roof, relieved to hear voices behind me—Russo grunting, Hillerman screaming in protest. I open the door, surprised to see a demon come out first. Quickly, I slam the door on his face. He topples backward, falling past Russo, who’s got his arms full wrangling Hillerman. She’s like a raging cat, kicking and scratching to get away from him.
“We’re not leaving! We’re not letting her go!” she shrieks. Seeing me, she pushes Russo away and gets in my face. “I’m not losing her again!”
“There’s something else!” I scream back. “Two trucks heading downtown. I think it’s more bombs. Jay went after them.”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
I shove her toward Russo. “Do what you want! My job was to get you out, and I did that. I’m going after Jay.”
“Go,” Russo says to me. “I’ll stay with her. We’ll go after Tabitha. Go!”
I nearly rush off without the most important thing. Turning back, I say, “The tracker! That revenant’s driving one of the trucks. I need to track him.”
Russo shakes Hillerman, trying to get her to focus. “The tracker?”
“It’s a link,” she grumbles. “I’ll send it to her phone when we get to the car.”
“Be careful,” Russo says in parting.
I clap him on the shoulder. “You too.”
Then I go, and fast. Following the path I’d seen Jay take: sprinting across the roof, leaping down to the next building top, throwing myself into the tree, dropping to the street. Within seconds, my long legs have flown me across a parking lot and a field, then over a chain-link fence to the side of Interstate 96, where I’d left my Tiger-Crap earlier in the day, on the likely chance we’d need a quick getaway.
