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Chapter Sixteen

Delia was right on time, pushing her way through the crowds at the Desert Paradise casino to the spot where Caleb stood.

As far as he could remember, she’d told him that she was still going to work a half day today, but she must have gone home to change since she was now wearing slim jeans and sandals and a pretty embroidered top in a pale sage color that perfectly complemented her copper-red hair.

Just the sight of her was enough to buoy his spirits.

He didn’t quite know why he’d been feeling so anxious this morning, but he supposed that was mostly because, while they guessed some sort of supernatural shenanigans had been going on this whole time, neither of them really knew what the end game was… or what form it might take.

“Hey,” she said as she stopped near him. “Parking was crazy. I hope I’m not late.”

“No, you’re right on time.”

If they’d had a very different sort of relationship, he might have bent down to give her a kiss, or she might have come over and put her arms around him and given him an encouraging hug.

But since they were still floating uncomfortably in the friend zone, he knew neither of those things was going to happen.

Well, it was uncomfortable for him, anyway. If Delia wanted things to progress further, then she was doing an awfully good job of hiding her feelings.

He couldn’t worry about any of that right now. This afternoon, his sole focus was on surviving until the semifinals tomorrow…and, with any luck, the finals on Saturday.

And while he thought it would be great to win the whole thing, he was okay with only advancing a little further.

Just accomplishing that much would let him know that he could hold his own with some serious poker players, even if he didn’t use any of his demonic gifts to help him along.

By this point, a lot of the real amateurs had already been knocked out of the competition, leaving people who, if they weren’t on the pro circuit, still definitely knew what they were doing.

“So…how does this work, exactly?” she asked.

“It’s pretty simple,” he said. “We’re down to eight tables of four people each. Eliminations will take that down to four tables of four during the semifinals. And the final will just be the last four who survived the semis.”

“Funny how you have half the people competing today, but it feels twice as crowded.”

Her observation was correct; the place looked positively packed this afternoon, even with two more rounds to go. It seemed as if a lot of people must have gotten off work early so they could hang out on the sidelines and watch.

“Guess there’s not much else going on today,” he said with a grin.

Delia only shook her head. “Guess not. Do you know which table you’ll be playing at?”

Because he’d already checked in with Hank Bowers a few minutes earlier, Caleb had an easy answer to that question. “The one over there,” he replied, pointing to the one set up on the opposite side of the gaming area.

Maybe her lips pursed a little. “It’s going to be hard to see anything that’s going on.”

The same thought had passed through his mind, and yet there wasn’t much he could do about it.

He didn’t know how the event organizers arrived at the seating arrangements — did they pull the names out of a hat, or maybe use some sort of computer randomization system?

— but he guessed he and Delia would just have to roll with it.

“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.

“Raise,” Ken announced, pushing a substantial stack forward. The chips slid across the felt with unnatural precision.

As Ken made his move, Caleb caught sight of Hank Bowers standing behind the rail, watching intently.

The tournament organizer still wore his usual friendly expression, but something calculated seemed to lurk behind his gaze as it darted from table to table, player to player, in a pattern too deliberate to be random observation.

The turn brought the queen of hearts.

“Check,” Ken said again, but this time his eyes flicked briefly toward Lou, who immediately bet half his stack.

Caleb hesitated. The straight was there if he had a king, and the flush draw was live.

But something about the situation still felt wrong, even though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

When he looked up from his cards, he saw Hank Bowers nod almost imperceptibly in the direction of one of the other tables, and a player there immediately went all-in.