Torment - Lauren Kate [91]
Shelby maneuvered them through a cramped maze of slot machines, past clots of people at roulette tables shouting at the tiny ball as it spun in the wheel, past big, boxy games at which people blew on dice and threw them and then cheered at the outcome, down a row of tables offering poker and strange games with names like Pai Gow, until they came to a cluster of blackjack tables.
Most of the dealers were men. Tall, hunched-over, oily-haired men, bespectacled gray-mustached men, one man wearing a surgical mask over his face. Shelby didn’t slow to gape at any of them, and she was right not to: There, at the far back corner of the casino, was Vera.
Her black hair was swept up in a lopsided bun. Her pale face looked thin and saggy. Luce didn’t feel the same emotional outpouring she’d felt when she looked at her previous life’s parents in Shasta. But then again, she still didn’t know who Vera was to her besides a tired, middle-aged woman holding a deck of cards out for a half-asleep redheaded woman to cut. Sloppily, the redhead picked up the deck in the middle; then Vera’s hands started flying.
Other tables in the casino were overcrowded, but the redhead and her diminutive husband were the only two people at Vera’s. Still, she put on a good show for them, snapping the cards out with an easy dexterity that made the work look effortless. Luce could see an elegant side of Vera that she hadn’t noticed before. A flair for the dramatic.
“So,” Miles said, shifting his weight next to Luce. “Are we gonna … or …”
Shelby’s hands were suddenly on Luce’s shoulders, practically wedging her into one of the empty leather seats at the table.
Though she was dying to stare, Luce avoided eye contact at first. She was nervous that Vera might recognize her before she even had a chance. But Vera’s eyes passed over each of them with only the mildest of interest, and Luce remembered how different she looked now that she’d bleached her hair. She tugged at it nervously, not sure what to do next.
Then Miles plunked down a twenty-dollar bill in front of Luce, and she remembered the game she was supposed to be playing. She slid the money across the table.
Vera raised a penciled-in eyebrow. “Got ID?”
Luce shook her head. “Maybe we could just watch?”
Across the table, the redhead was nodding off, her head falling onto Shelby’s stiff shoulder. Vera rolled her eyes at the whole scene and pushed Luce’s money back, pointing at the neon billboard advertising Cirque du Soleil. “Circus is that way, kids.”
Luce sighed. They were going to have to wait until Vera got off work. And by then she’d probably be even less interested in talking to them. Feeling defeated, Luce reached out to take Miles’s money back. Vera’s fingers were drawing away just as Luce’s swept over the money, and their fingertips kissed. Both of them snapped up their heads. The weird shock briefly blinded Luce. She sucked in her breath. She looked deep into Vera’s wide hazel eyes.
And she saw everything:
A two-story cabin in a snowy Canadian town. Webs of ice on the windows, wind soughing at the panes. A ten-year-old girl watching TV in the living room, rocking a baby on her lap. It was Vera, pale and pretty in acid-washed jeans and Doc Martens, a thick navy turtleneck rising to her chin, a cheap wool blanket bunched up between her and the back of the couch. A bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, reduced to a handful of cold, unpopped kernels. A fat orange cat prowling the mantel, hissing at the radiator. And Luce—Luce was her sister, the baby sister in her arms.
Luce felt herself rocking in her seat at the casino, aching to remember all of this. Just as quickly, the impression faded, replaced by another.
Luce as a toddler chasing Vera, up the stairs, down the stairs, the worn wide steps beneath her thumping feet, her chest tight from breathless laughter, when the doorbell sounded and