Page 49 of Hazard a Guest
Sometimes, letting a person speak was all you needed to keep them still. It was the way he’d been taught to manage young children when they were under his care, back before he’d left home. Children were people just like anyone else. Sometimes, all anyone wanted in all the world was to be heard.
Now Joe had heard Freddy, and despite the silence of the night and the peaceful embrace of the winter outside, he couldn’t stop hearing him. The weight of knowledge was so very loud. Cacophonous. Deafening.
It was just another in a line of sleepless nights, he told himself. It did not have to be torture too.
He pulled the pillow over his face. He groaned.
Any fool knew that the worst way to fall asleep was to think about falling asleep.
And then, a divine mercy: someone knocked on his door.
He threw himself off the mattress. It didn’t matter who it was. Some sick gambler, lost in the halls? That vomit-speckled doctor who’d been haunting the rooms for the last week? Freddy, using the front of the room instead of the connection? One of the piskies come alive and calling?
All would work.
He flung the door open with zeal.
It was Ember Donnelly, looking shocked at the strength of his answer, then squeaking in surprise when he grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside, kicking the door shut behind her.
“Thank goodness for you,” he muttered, drinking in the effect of her silhouette in the low light as his eyes adjusted. She looked like an angel, come specifically to ease his suffering. “How did you know I needed you?”
She gave a startled laugh, staring at him, her eyes raking down over his pajamas—a set he’d bought from a street vendor in Lisbon who imported Moroccan silks. Her eyes floated over thesea-green fabric, the dark blue piping, the flowers woven into the cuffs, and then stopped at his open collar.
He felt himself flush. She was still dressed for the evening of gambling, her gown a flashing scarlet, a pile of pearls and crystals falling down the curve of her throat. The scent of her perfume twisted through the air, spicing the previously flat and cool note with the warmth of anise.
And here he was, rumpled from a double embrace of pillows and with nothing on his feet.
As though she could read his mind, she looked down, noting his bare toes sunk into the plush carpet, and she smiled, reaching up to press her fingertips to her lips.
“I didn’t think you’d be asleep,” she said, her voice low, like there were people around them that she was at risk of waking up. “I wasn’t sure where you’d run off to. You vanished before the first bell tonight.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” he insisted, and turned to find the tinderbox. There were coals burning in the corner of the room to stave off the winter chill, but they weren’t much in the way of illumination. “I haven’t been able to sleep much at all for the last few nights.”
“Because of the games?” Ember asked curiously. “I didn’t think they had captured you that way.”
He scoffed, shaking his head. “No, the games are more like a chore than an obsession, at least for me. I hate risking money like that.”
“Good,” she said with what sounded like approval. “You should hate it. I do too.”
He found the spark, watching the flame catch on the edge of his match and waiting for it to soothe itself into a manageable size before he poked it into the lantern. “You hate it?” he asked as he withdrew the light and blew it out, turning with his lantern. “But it’s your livelihood.”
She shook her head, that gentle smile still on her face as she beheld his pajamas in better lighting, her hands folded in front of her. The gems sparkled against the new light from the flame. “When you’re running the games, there’s no true gamble,” she said. “Playing them is another matter.”
He walked back toward her, leaning against the end of the bed frame. “But you’re not truly gambling here, are you? You said you were going to cheat.”
“I am cheating,” she replied, raising her brows. “I keep track of the cards that have already been played, so I know which hands are possible for the other players.”
He frowned. “How much have you won?”
“Nothing yet,” she answered, letting her hands unclasp and fall at her sides. “But I still have to lose money to not draw attention to myself. I’m trying to keep it close to even for now, while I figure out the people here and what they’re after. Unfortunately, I can’t keep Beck in my orbit, and God knows what he’s done with my debt slips. No one has mentioned them to me either as bet or collateral.”
She said Beck’s name with a little wrinkle of her freckled nose. She didn’t like that she had to watch him, Joe realized. She didn’t like that he had to be important to her without her say in the matter.
“Maybe he knows,” Joe suggested with no small discomfort.
“That I’m cheating? He doesn’t.”
“No.” He shook his head, reaching up to shove the fall of dark hair from his eyes. “No, that you want your slips back.”
