The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [93]
“Next round.” The banker glances round. Again, I can’t stop myself, even though there’s a cold itch at the base of my spine and my wards are ringing like alarm bells. I slide another ten thousand forwards. This time I twitch and nearly scatter the stack everywhere. McMurray spares me a coldly amused glance; then the banker holds up the shoe and the card deck and begins to deal. There’s something very wrong here, I tell myself. But it’s no compulsion or geas I’m familiar with. There’s a pattern to it, something I can’t quite put my finger on. Where’s Ramona? I can sense nothing but velvety darkness where she ought to be. I’m alone in my own head for the first time in days, and it’s not a good feeling. Cards. Queen of diamonds, eight of spades—
A stack of chips approaches me across the table. I pick up my glass and throw back the tequila slammer, shuddering as it hits my throat. I feel out-of-control drunk and coldly sober at the same time: it’s like my brain’s trying to do the splits, its lobes skittering in opposite directions.
“Again, anyone?” asks the banker, looking round the table. I mechanically begin to push my chips forwards, then manage to divert the action, bend down, and twist the heel of my left shoe. Coming up above the level of the table I finish the motion before I can stop myself, all my chips gliding into a pile in front of the banker. He deals. I look around the room. McMurray’s earring is a burning cold teardrop of radium fire. The shadows lengthen behind the drapes, hiding the screams of trapped tree spirits embedded in the fine wall paneling. The Tillinghast resonator is humming along, but when I look at the toad he’s just an ordinary retired fat-cat with a trust fund and a big bank account, enjoying his gambling habit. The same isn’t true of the vultures—I look at them and try not to recoil. Instead of aging former trophy-wives and heiresses I see hollow bags of translucent skin and hair held together by their clothes, hunched over their cards like blood-sucking parasites waiting to be filled.
“Hold or play?” someone asks. I glance at the guy in the white suit and open-necked shirt and see a half-decayed cadaver grinning at me from behind his cards, skin peeling back from dark hollows lined with strips of adipocere: the effect of the resonator reaches my nasal sinuses and I smell him as well. The supermodel on his arm looks exactly the same as before, inhumanly calm and poised as she leans against him, but the shadows behind her are thick and fuliginous, and something about her expression makes me think of a hangman waiting proudly beside his latest client as the warden signs the death certificate.
“Play.” I try hard not to gag as I turn my cards over. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The croupier is raking the chips across to the toad. “Excuse me,” I gasp, pushing my chair back from the table. I stumble towards the discreet side door, my throat burning as the woodwork screams at me and hollow bags of skin turn their empty faces to follow my trajectory to the toilets.
I just lost twenty thousand bucks, I realize numbly as I splash water on my face and look at myself in the mirror above the wash basin. My face in the mirror leers at me and winks. I lift my leg hastily and twist the heel back into place: the face freezes in shock. I can’t afford that. Ghastly visions dance in my mind’s eye: Angleton will call the Auditors on me, Mo will scream blue murder. It’s more than our combined savings account, the money we’ve been socking away this past year towards a deposit on a house. I shudder. My lips are numb from the alcohol I’ve been putting away. My throat and stomach feel raw. I still can’t sense Ramona, and that’s critical: if she’s out of touch we’ve got a real problem with the whole operation. Pull yourself together, I tell the man in the mirror. He nods at me, looking shaken. What to do first? McMurray: The bastard set me up somehow, didn’t he?
The realization gives me something concrete to focus on: I straighten up, carefully check out the stranger in