Page 64 of Devil in the Details

“I know,” he said. “About all I can do is hope that I survive today and that I get a better table assignment tomorrow. I suppose the good thing is that there’ll be a lot fewer of us in the semifinals, so it should be easier to get close to the action.”

“Oh, you’ll survive,” she said, tone supremely confident.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Did you have a vision or something?”

“Nothing like that,” Delia replied, a flicker of worry passing across her features. It seemed pretty clear that she didn’t like to talk about her psychic powers, even in jest.

Not that she’d exhibited even the slightest hint of precognition or whatever it was that people called it when you could see the future, so Caleb didn’t think she’d added that particular talent to her psychic grab bag.

At least, not yet.

“No, it’s just that you always seem to have luck on your side,” Delia said, and Caleb chuckled.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘lucky’ to have been trapped in Hell for two years.”

No one was paying any attention to what they were saying, which was why he’d felt safe making that remark.

Besides, even if someone had overheard him, they would have thought he was speaking metaphorically, like maybe being stuck in Barstow or something, not the actual real-life Hell.

“But you got out,” Delia replied, and now her expression was very earnest. “That has to mean something, right?”

He supposed it did. Whether it had any bearing on him making it into the semifinals…or the final round…remained to be seen.

A woman’s voice sounded over the P.A. system. “Players, please take your assigned seats. Play will begin in five minutes.”

“Guess I need to go,” Caleb said. He knew he sounded calm enough, and he realized he now felt pretty steady on the inside, too. No nervous butterflies like he’d experienced during the first rounds of the competition, and he wondered if he was getting jaded.

Or maybe his modest wins at the gaming tables on Wednesday afternoon while Delia was conducting the open house at his old property had been enough to reassure him that he still had it, and that there wasn’t any material reason why he shouldn’t do well during the quarterfinals.

Delia flashed him an encouraging grin, and he made his way over to his table. Although he’d seen some of the other people who’d been assigned there during earlier rounds of the competition, he hadn’t formally met any of them.

Today, they were all men — an older guy with gray hair combed straight back from his face who introduced himself as Ken Steele, and then two who looked as if they were in their late thirties or early forties, Lou Bishop and Daniel Fields. Everyone shook hands and then sat down to wait for the dealer to arrive.

Caleb hadn’t felt anything strange from any of the guys when they’d exchanged handshakes, which didn’t necessarily mean much. Sometimes he was able to detect whether someone was a demon in disguise, and sometimes he wasn’t. He still didn’t know for sure whether it was because his own instincts weren’t as great at that particular task as they should have been, or simply because some demons were better at masking their origins than others.

After the dealer — a woman maybe around thirty, with platinum hair and near-black roots — arrived and began shuffling the cards, Caleb settled into his seat, letting his awareness expand across the room. Just at the edge of his peripheral vision, he spotted Ty Carter standing near the bar, his attention fixed not on any particular table but seeming to scan the entire tournament floor with methodical precision.

Had Delia noticed him? She remained where she’d been when she first arrived, straining a little to keep her eyes on the action, so Caleb had a feeling she hadn’t noticed their otherworldly visitor.

If Ty Carter was even otherworldly at all. He could just be an oddball. God only knew that Las Vegas had plenty of those.

The first few hands were played conservatively, with everyone feeling each other out, getting a sense of their limits and, with any luck, their vulnerabilities. Caleb won a small pot with a pair of queens, Daniel folded twice in a row, and Lou took down a decent pot with trip sevens. Nothing unusual…yet.

It was during the fourth hand that Caleb first noticed something funky was going on.

Ken Steele, who’d been sitting almost motionless since the game began, suddenly twitched his left hand when Caleb raised pre-flop. A small gesture, barely perceptible, but in that moment, something strange rippled through the air, reminding him again of heat waves rising from hot asphalt. The cards in the deck seemed to shimmer for just an instant.

Two tables over, a player — a middle-aged man Caleb recognized from the previous rounds, even though he didn’t know the guy’s name — made exactly the same twitch.

The flop came: Jack of hearts, nine of spades, ten of diamonds. A dangerous board with a possible straight in play.

“Check,” Ken said, his voice carefully neutral.

Lou bet aggressively, and Daniel folded at once.

When Caleb called, he felt it again — that strange ripple of energy, like something unseen passing between the tables. His demon senses tingled, picking up patterns he hadn’t noticed before: three players at three different tables all shifting their chips in precisely the same way. Four others maintaining the identical posture.

It was all way too coordinated to be a coincidence, and his back tensed.

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