Page 47 of Midnight Secrets

Now the world had found her. Metal, Jacko, the Senior, Felicity, Lauren, Suzanne. And the party at the new lodge—the entire crew, fifty strong. Could she handle that?

“Growing up, our house was always filled with people,” she said softly, looking him directly in the eyes. “I loved it. I think I needed these past months of solitude. I wasn’t fit company for anyone. But now?—”

“You were absolutely fit company!” Joe protested. “It’s just that?—”

“Hey, Isabel.” They both turned to the table where Jacko was holding up a super clean plate. There wasn’t even a molecule of food left. He was trying for pathetic. The waif who hadn’t eaten in days. Even if he was a super buff two-hundred-forty-pound mass of muscle. “Any more of this stuff?”

7

Isabel had never seen a human face with no expression whatsoever on it before. Even blankness was an expression. But Joe betrayed absolutely nothing as he beat the pants off Metal and Jacko. Actually, if it had been strip poker instead of for money, they’d have both been naked right now and a fully dressed Joe would have had a pile of clothes on the table instead of a pile of chips.

They were sitting around the dining room table at her house instead of his and they weren’t talking. The poker game was a form of warfare. Though the three men were clearly very good friends, and Joe had talked a lot about how they’d helped him through rehab, you wouldn’t have known it from the game.

Isabel had offered alcohol. She had a bottle of brandy and a bottle of bourbon, but all three had turned it down, Metal and Jacko with expressions of horror.

“Bad enough playing Joe sober,” Jacko said. So she’d served coffee. The cups steamed at their elbows as they snapped cards up and down.

She didn’t really know the rules of this form of poker, so she wasn’t following the game, she was following the players. It was fascinating. There were moments of tension, but they all came from Metal and from Jacko. Though they had poker faces, too, there were tiny signs of elation or despair. What she knew were called tells.

Metal’s eyelid twitched a time or two, something entirely autonomous. Jacko’s index finger drummed against the hand of cards.

Joe had no tells. None. The skin around his eyes and mouth remained exactly the same. He had deep brackets around his mouth and the skin around his eyes was weather-beaten, but he had those all the time. Nothing at all changed. Not muscles, not his breathing, not his eye movements.

He only broke that utterly blank facade once, to wink at her. Then his face became a blank wall once more.

He’d won either twenty dollars or two hundred dollars—Isabel wasn’t too sure how much money each chip represented—when the front doorbell rang.

“That’s Lauren,” Jacko said, folding with an expression of disgust. “She just texted me. Joe, if you weren’t wearing a T-shirt, I swear I’d think you had an ace up your sleeve.”

“Watch, children, and learn,” Joe said, voice carefully neutral as he spread out his long arms and pulled in a ton of chips.

Metal and Jacko gave loud expressions of disgust just as Isabel opened her door.

Felicity and Lauren rushed in and laughed when they heard the two men groaning. “Joe’s winning again,” Felicity said.

“Winning big.” Lauren shook her head. “That’s real pain I’m hearing.” She offered her hand. “I’m Lauren. I belong to that big sore loser over there—” She pointed at Jacko, who was scowling at his hand of cards. “He’s usually not as sour as that, though he isn’t much of a smiler, either.”

“I heard that,” Jacko grunted as he looked over.

Lauren gave him a sunny smile and, to Isabel’s surprise, Jacko smiled back. It was genuine. He was happy to see her.

Lauren walked over and gave his shaved head a kiss. “Hello, darling, nice to see you, but I’m not here for you.”

“Gotcha. You’re here for the food.”

Lauren laughed. “That, too. But most of all to meet Isabel.”

“Who’s going out with the Prince of Darkness here,” Metal said.

“That’s an interesting thought,” Felicity said as Isabel took her coat and Lauren’s. “Do you think Joe made a pact with the devil? Sold his soul?”

“I’m right here,” Joe complained. “I was shot up but my hearing is just fine.”

“It’s more than possible he sold his soul,” Metal said. “I want a kiss, too.”

Felicity bent to kiss his cheek, whispered something in his ear. He met her eyes and smiled. A private joke.

Isabel’s parents used to do that, all the time. Drove their kids nuts until they got old enough to appreciate the fact that their parents genuinely liked each other. Not many of her friends had parents who even spoke to each other.

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